Abstract
Reproductive politics in American culture remains salient as the cultural, political, and legal debates surrounding abortion rage on. Yet, as infertility rises among men and women and the commercial fertility industry expands, surrogacy has become increasingly commonplace. Over the past twenty years, American television producers have responded to these trends by creating series which feature and explore surrogacy storylines. This paper employs CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000-2015), Law and Order: SVU (NBC, 1999-), and NCIS: LA (CBS, 2009-) as case studies to examine representations of markets in reproductive services. I situate my paper within feminist television criticism drawing from genre studies and feminist philosophy asking: How does the crime procedural genre shape surrogacy storylines on television? What meanings do these storylines produce about women’s reproductive choices, the morality of this labor, and the legal and ethical implications of capitalizing on this arrangement? In what ways do these narratives illuminate broader values about children, motherhood, and families? Through my examination of these series, I find that elements of the crime procedural aid in painting surrogacy as akin to baby selling, where contracts reduce women to wombs and treat children as products. These series do not simply depict surrogacy as an unnatural or illegitimate method of forming a family, but a moral and national threat. Ultimately, surrogacy storylines have not been a focus of study, but remain critically significant because these narratives have the power to shape discourses around gender roles, motherhood, family formation, and bodily autonomy in American culture.
Presenters
Reut OdinakPhD Candidate, American and New England Studies Program, Boston University, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Feminist Television Criticism, Representation, Reproductive Politics, Surrogacy, Genre Studies
