In this talk, I focus on the fluidity between the regulation and the occurrence of taboo language within the fictional audiovisual media in the United States and show that tabooed lexical items in the fictional media are simultaneously performative and performed. Tabooed words present a fascinating source of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic puzzles, puzzles that can be mediated through the indexicality of performativity (as action) and performance (as highly stylized representation). First, I illustrate a range of functions fulfilled by taboo terms in the fictional media, including their various grammatical functions and their place within the narrative. Second, I show how the regulation of taboo usage highlights an iterative, dialectic tension between performance and performativity. This tension is uniquely visible in the fictional media because, on the one hand, regulation occurs within the fictional material itself (e.g. a character performs the admonition of another character with “that’s a bad word”) and, on the other, regulation occurs through external institutions (such as, in the United States, the Federal Communication Commission or the Motion Picture Association of America). By drawing on the performativity of taboo utterances to reframe regulation away from preventing offence (due to breaking a taboo) to the ideological protection of children, regulatory bodies must engage the dialectic between performance and performativity and thereby index competing cultural norms and ideologies, mechanisms of prohibition, commercial interests, freedom of expression, artistic/poetic expression, and entertainment.