Boxed In: Pandemic TV as Intersectional Renegotiation of Feminist Attitudes Toward the Home

Abstract

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.