In pandemic TV, the horror of the home was not only part of the narrative in several shows that depicted pandemic-related plots, but also a result of the tension between the textual and the contextual. As people were feeling trapped indoors, even the most colorful televised living room stood as a symbol of the inability to leave the spatial confines of domesticity. In this paper, I show how pandemic television added an ominous layer to the representation of the home, either directly through narrative means or indirectly through text-versus-meaning dissonance. Intersectionalizing feminist analysis of the domestic space, I argue that texts that attempted to sidestep pandemic-related content often emphasized it even more so, through format and framing, therefore negating the escapism they were trying to achieve.
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