Vulnerable Women and Resistance in Contemporary Speculative TV in North America

Abstract

Taking as starting point of analysis Butler et al’s concept of “vulnerability in resistance” (2016) which emphasizes the active role of vulnerability in practices of resistance to oppressing power structures, and feminist theories that propose the posthuman subject as an alternative way of resisting normative ideas regarding gender and race (Braidotti, Ferrando), this paper seeks to analyze popular narratives of resistance at work in contemporary speculative TV in North America. Specifically, I will focus my analysis on texts that portray vulnerable women who find spaces of resistance that provide them with the means to overcome their marginalization and become active agents of change and hope for the future. Hence, TV series like Orphan Black (Space and BBC America, 2013-2017) and The Power (Amazon Prime, 2023) stand as science fictional narratives in which women’s bodies are disciplined and exploited, and yet, their vulnerability leads to active ways of resistance, imagining spaces of fight against power structures. As it will be argued here, vulnerable women in the popular speculative TV series Orphan Black and The Power resist patriarchy and encourage viewers to consider and respond to problems that need urgent remediation in current societies, such as the exploitation of the female body by discriminatory power structures. The self-aware clone sisters in Orphan Black escape the systemic control and stigmatization they have been experiencing and create a non-normative family that is key for their liberation, while the enhanced women in The Power resist patriarchal structures of power thanks to an inborn new organ that allows them to electrocute people, empowering them. Although addressed differently, vulnerability can be read in both popular TV series as a means of resistance that reflects upon the unjust effect of some neoliberal practices on women’s bodies and subjectivities.