Framing women: (re)imagined embodiment and affective engagement in contemporary speculative screen fiction
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Ethics Approval Number: S211563
About the project
Why am I doing this research?
I'm a long-term sci-fi fan and fantasy fan. Speculative fiction is my happy place.
The craft of creating another reality is one I have long admired, and as a media studies researcher, I am interested in how and where women have opportunities to share their creativity. While this includes women behind the scenes, as directors, producers, costumers and everything else that goes into making our TV screens come alive, it also relates to how women engage with the texts - how they make meaning from the stories and the ways this impacts their own lives.
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That's why I'm researching three of my favourite TV shows and how they affect the women who make and watch them.
How are these shows are all science fiction?
As a genre science fiction shares certain conventions with fantasy and horror: a thematic focus on an uncanny world, one similar to our own yet disrupted in some fundamental way, and an inherent ‘otherness’ that crosses the boundaries of reality.
While sci-fi has come to be identified through specific tropes and imagery, such as futuristics worlds, robots, aliens, and space travel, one unifying element is scientific intervention. In sci-fi narratives’ technological and scientific developments are responsible for the disruption of reality in the story world.
These three shows are joined by this thematic association. Jessica Jones is set in contemporary New York, while Jessica’s power is derived from illegal human experimentation conducted on her when she was a child. The Handmaid’s Tale is set in an unspecified near future, where environmental degradation has led to widespread infertility. While Killjoys is set in a far future distant galaxy and incorporates the traditional sci-fi tropes of spaceships, aliens, and futuristic technology.
Why only women?
This project focuses on women's stories. As sci-fi is often viewed as by and for men, focusing on women-centric stories shifts this perception. I am a woman and I have long been a sci-fi nerd, so I know the standard view is wrong.
This work aims to develop a deeper understanding of how, where and why women connect with the empowered representations of womanhood in these stories. Dutch, June, Jessica as well as the other kick-ass women in these shows make me supremely happy. I thought they might make other women happy too - the women who helped craft them into being and the ones (like me) who get to watch them be vulnerable and amazing.
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So, if you are a fan or creative who helped bring into being one or more of these fabulous shows, I would be honoured if you would contribute to my project. You can participate in more than one survey, or take part in an interview.
What about my privacy?
All survey participation is anonymous. Your responses to this survey will be confidential. Results from the surveys will be aggregated and used to understand how individuals experience their engagement with the sci-fi texts and their position within the community/industry.
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I will also be conducting interviews early in 2022 - so if you are interested in helping further, or have lots more to say, you can register your interest. I won't spam you with you any advertising material.
All data will be de-identified in all research dissemination, unless approval has been explicitly given by you in writing. You can read the Interview Research Project Information Sheet for more information.