Recent contestations of the ascendancy of Fredric Jameson’s definition of pastiche (Ingeborg Hoesterey, Pastiche: Cultural Memory in Art, Film, Literature, 2001; Richard Dyer, Pastiche, 2007) harmonise with Judith Butler’s endorsement of the “pastiche-effect” of certain forms of parody that employ subversive repetition to illuminate the artificiality of categories that pose as ‘natural,’ or ‘authentic’ (Butler, Gender Trouble, 1990). As well as outlining some emergent and historical definitions of pastiche as critique, this paper illustrates its parodic functioning by presenting an analysis of artist Tracey Moffatt’s video works Lip (1999) and Love (2003).

Moffatt often makes subversive use of the collation of affiliated imagery to reveal the excessive repetitions of hegemonic cultural forms, particularly those of dominant cinema. The two films discussed here directly sample stereotypical cinematic images of both the subservient black maid and the desirable white woman, removing these from their sources and recombining them to produce works that both shock and entertain. Numerous film theorists, attempting to articulate a theory of counter cinema, insist that direct engagement with both the form and content of narrative cinema is necessary for its effective critique. Moffatt’s pastiche films use strategies of repetition and imitation to effectively destabilise cinematic myths of womanhood, particularly black womanhood as servile.