Screening women’s trauma: constructing trauma for television in Westworld and The Handmaid’s Tale

ABSTRACT

This article examines the recent popularity of women-centric narratives of trauma for television, in order to explore the politics of screening women’s trauma. The first part of the article locates the shift towards women’s “trauma TV” at the intersections of “quality” and “complex” television, “popular trauma culture” and “popular feminism.” Following arguments that female trauma has become a mode of program differentiation in the post-network era, I demonstrate that the uptake of women’s trauma is just as much a function of aesthetic and narrative trends as it is politics. The second part of the article looks to HBO’s Westworld (2016-present) and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-present) to examine how women’s trauma is represented for television, as well as the effects and implications of its representation and consumption. Through these series, I explore some of the issues and concerns of packaging women’s trauma as television entertainment.

KEYWORDS:

• Television
• complex TV
• women
• violence
• trauma

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Portmanteau of viewer and user that is used to describe participatory audience engagement in the networked media environment.

2. Precedents would include crime dramas such as Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present) which is known for its episodic concentration on female victims of gendered violence and, sometimes, their traumas.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amy Boyle

Amy Boyle is a sessional academic, PhD Candidate (University of Wollongong, Australia) and research assistant for the Program in Gender-Based Violence (University of Newcastle, Australia). Amy’s research explores the representation of women, and the circulation of heteropatriarchies and feminisms through western television and popular culture. Amy has published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society and MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture.