Screening Affect: Rape Culture and the Digital Interface inThe FallandTop of the Lake

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Bibliographic Details
Authors and Corporations: Horeck, Tanya
In: Television & New Media, 19, 2018, 6, p. 569-587
published:
SAGE Publications
Media Type: Article, E-Article

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further information
Physical Description: 569-587
ISSN: 1527-4764
1552-8316
DOI: 10.1177/1527476418768010
published in: Television & New Media
Language: English
Subjects:
Collection: SAGE Publications (CrossRef)
Table of Contents

<jats:p>Although it often goes unremarked, digital screens are a key point of commonality across the many different transnational renditions of the story of violence against girls and women found in contemporary TV crime drama. The Fall (United Kingdom, 2013–) and Top of the Lake (United Kingdom/Australia/New Zealand/United States, 2013–) are two striking examples of TV crime dramas that frame their self-conscious interrogation of rape culture through digital media. Considering the mutual imbrication of feminist politics and the deployment of new media technologies on these shows, this essay considers how the digital interface functions as a way of mediating viewer response to violence against women. Resisting a reading of digital technologies as either inherently oppressive or inherently liberatory, the essay explores how these TV series navigate the tension between the simultaneous violence of new media and its investigative/feminist/affective potential.</jats:p>