‘I could see myself doing something like that’: US women’s engagement with characters who experience abortion, adoption and surrogacy on Little Fires Everywhere

Abstract

Building on existing scholarship examining how audiences interpret reproductive experiences on film and television, we investigate how viewers make meaning of representations of motherhood, abortion, adoption, and surrogacy on the Hulu television miniseries Little Fires Everywhere. We recruited twenty-one participants to watch the series and conducted three virtual focus groups of seven women each. Based on the racial identities of the main characters in the series, we segmented these groups by race: one group each of white women, Black women, and Chinese American women. Focus groups were facilitated by moderators who matched the racial and ethnic backgrounds of each group. We asked participants about their overall reactions to the series, their impressions of various characters, and each reproductive health plotline. Participants expressed both tender and critical reactions to characters who endured motherhood, surrogacy and adoption, yet most participants were overtly critical of Lexie, the character who obtained an abortion. We argue that this is likely because the character of Lexie is written as largely unsympathetic, leaving audiences with little opportunity to form a parasocial relationship with her. We discuss the implications of this for cultural conversations and understandings of abortion more broadly.

Keywords:

• Abortion
• adoption
• surrogacy
• television studies
• audience studies

Acknowledgements

We thank Cris Bain-Borrego Research and Jackson Associates/Screen Engine for support with recruitment.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicting interests to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by an anonymous funder.