Television and the Genetic Imaginary [1st ed.] 978-1-137-54846-7;978-1-137-54847-4

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xii
Introduction: A Cultural Forum on Genetics (Sofia Bull)....Pages 1-29
Front Matter ....Pages 31-31
Microscopic CGI: Imaging Molecular Worlds (Sofia Bull)....Pages 33-76
Complex Seriality: Genetic Science As Narrative Device (Sofia Bull)....Pages 77-115
Front Matter ....Pages 117-117
Genealogical Intimacy: Materialising Genetic Kinship (Sofia Bull)....Pages 119-158
TV Families: Normalising Assisted Reproduction (Sofia Bull)....Pages 159-203
Front Matter ....Pages 205-205
Televisual Clones (Sofia Bull)....Pages 207-219
Back Matter ....Pages 221-239

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SCIENCE AND POPULAR CULTURE

Television and the Genetic Imaginary

Sofia Bull

Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture Series Editor Sherryl Vint Department of English University of California Riverside, CA, USA

This book series seeks to publish ground-breaking research exploring the productive intersection of science and the cultural imagination. Science is at the centre of daily experience in twenty-first century life and this has defined moments of intense technological change, such as the Space Race of the 1950s and our very own era of synthetic biology. Conceived in dialogue with the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS), this series will carve out a larger place for the contribution of humanities to these fields. The practice of science is shaped by the cultural context in which it occurs and cultural differences are now key to understanding the ways that scientific practice is enmeshed in global issues of equity and social justice. We seek proposals dealing with any aspect of science in popular culture in any genre. We understand popular culture as both a textual and material practice, and thus welcome manuscripts dealing with representations of science in popular culture and those addressing the role of the cultural imagination in material encounters with science. How science is imagined and what meanings are attached to these imaginaries will be the major focus of this series. We encourage proposals from a wide range of historical and cultural perspectives. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15760

Sofia Bull

Television and the Genetic Imaginary

Sofia Bull University of Southampton Southampton, UK

Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture ISBN 978-1-137-54846-7    ISBN 978-1-137-54847-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover Image: Deco Images II / Alamy Stock Photo Cover Design: eStudio Calamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

For my daughter, Nova

Acknowledgements

This book is a descendant of my PhD dissertation on forensic crime television. Everyone who provided input during my doctoral studies has therefore contributed some genetic material to Television and the Genetic Imaginary, in particular my supervisor Anu Koivunen and my external examiners Karen Lury and Helen Wheatley. The idea for this book was first conceived during my year as a postdoctoral researcher the University of Warwick, which was generously funded by Sven and Dagmar Salén’s Foundation. During that time, Helen was again instrumental in the shaping of this project and I’m also forever grateful for the way she invited me into her family whenever I visited Coventry. I’m much indebted to David Martin-Jones, Jussi Parikka, Malin Wahlberg, Kristoffer Noheden, Katie Dow, Malcolm Cook, Elke Weissmann, Fran Bigman and Tim Bergfelder for valuable feedback, and to all my colleagues at the University of Southampton for their kind support. Anne Bachmann provided much needed motivation and cheer at the final stages of writing, and my parents have, as always, gone above and beyond to make my life easier. Most of all, I’m grateful for having Lawrence Webb by my side throughout this process, during which time we also started a family together. He has patiently read this book multiple times, helping to make it far more polished.

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Praise for Television and the Genetic Imaginary “Bull tells a fascinating story about the often overlooked but crucial ways that contemporary television has constructed the cultural meaning of DNA.  This unique book uncovers the complex and unexpected ways that televisual depictions have shifted the genetic imaginary away from a conventional view of DNA as deterministic towards a more uncertain perception of DNA as an object that is malleable and that actually complicates our notions of kinship.” —David A. Kirby, University of Manchester, UK “This thoroughly researched book sharply exposes the pervasiveness of genetic essentialism in television, even as it also probes many instances of ambiguity, contradiction, and insight across a wonderfully expansive range of fictional and nonfictional series.” —Everett Hamner, Western Illinois University, USA “Sofia Bull’s exploration of the ‘genetic imaginary’ is a fascinating analysis of the representation of genes on 21st century television. Bull’s insightful investigation of the aesthetics and language that articulates concepts of complexity and kinship positions television as a key site of cultural debate where the anxieties and fears, but also hopes for post-genomic societies can be explored. Television and the Genetic Imaginary is an important addition to the study of contemporary television.” —Mareike Jenner, Anglia Ruskin University, UK “Sofia Bull’s Television and the Genetic Imaginary is an absolute delight. Wideranging and astute in its analysis, it reveals the complex ways in which TV programmes engage with and modify the cultural meanings of the genome. Its emphasis on the recent shift from genetic essentialism to a dynamic postgenomic view of the genome is particularly refreshing and makes this an important and distinctive intervention. Essential reading for scholars and students of film and television.” —Clare Hanson, University of Southampton, UK

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Contents

1 Introduction: A Cultural Forum on Genetics  1

Part I Complexity  31 2 Microscopic CGI: Imaging Molecular Worlds 33 3 Complex Seriality: Genetic Science As Narrative Device 77

Part II Kinship 117 4 Genealogical Intimacy: Materialising Genetic Kinship119 5 TV Families: Normalising Assisted Reproduction159

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CONTENTS

Part III Epilogue 205 6 Televisual Clones207 Index221

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A Cultural Forum on Genetics

This is a book about television and the complex ways in which TV programmes articulate and negotiate cultural ideas about the genome. More specifically, it examines the televisual genetic imaginary of the early twenty-­first century and traces the post-genomic sensibilities that have gradually joined more firmly established essentialist notions about DNA on US and UK television. In order to offer new insights about television’s distinctive engagement with molecular biology, I consider a broad range of television content to show that the DNA molecule looms large across numerous genres, programmes and images, extending far beyond straightforwardly ‘scientific’ material. While the book is focused on the last 20  years, I want to acknowledge that television has a long history of engaging with different genetic frameworks of understanding, and my analysis includes some important historical comparisons. Television’s fascination with the genome dates back to the early 1960s, a time when numerous science documentaries, science fiction dramas, current affair shows and even religious programmes reflected the growing scientific and cultural emphasis placed on the molecular world after James Watson and Francis Crick’s discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953. But the frequency and magnitude with which genetic discourses figured on television increased explosively in the 1990s and the early 2000s in the wake of a number of widely publicised advances in genetic science, most famously the initiation of the Human Genome Project in 1990 (which was © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_1

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subsequently completed in 2003), and the birth of Dolly the sheep (the first successful cloning of a mammal from an adult somatic cell) in 1996. It would be reductive to understand television as simply ‘responding’ to scientific developments. Examining the increased saturation of ideas about DNA on twenty-first-­century television in more detail, this book positions television as a key site within a wider ‘genetic imaginary’ (Franklin 2000, 198): a ‘fantasy landscape’ (Stacey 2008, 96–97) of discursive formations moulded and negotiated by diverse cultural texts, practices and institutions. The genetic imaginary encompasses medico-scientific practices and media texts, as well as literature and art, and educational and legal practices. Cinematic contributions to the genetic imaginary have received a particularly high amount of scholarly attention. In fact, the term ‘the genetic imaginary’ was first used by Sarah Franklin when studying how the production and reception of the feature film Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) impacted the genetic framework for understanding life itself by ‘imagining the future, and re-imagining the borders of the real’ (Franklin 2000, 198). A majority of the studies that have followed in her footsteps have analysed science fiction and horror films, many with a particular focus on how these genres depict cloning or gene manipulation (e.g. Kirby 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007; Kirby and Gaither 2005; Nelkin and Lindee 2001; Gonder 2003; Haran et al. 2007; O’Riordan 2008; Powell 2015; Flynn 2015; Hamner 2017a, b). Cinematic cloning narratives have been covered comprehensively by Jackie Stacey (2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2010), who has presented a highly convincing argument as to why the clone has been a particularly prevalent cinematic figure (2010, 181), and has identified cinema as taking ‘pride of place in the genetic imaginary’ (2010, 270). I generally agree with Stacey that the figure of the clone has had an especially arresting existence in cinema, but there are also a few evocative examples of cloning narratives on television, most recently in the Canadian science fiction show Orphan Black (Space/CTV, 2013–2017).1 Focusing on the distinctive elements of television’s contribution to the genetic imaginary, I have prioritised the study of other genres and narratives in the main chapters, in order to highlight that alongside the ‘profoundly cinematic figure’ of the clone (Stacey 2010, 270), there are other, profoundly televisual, figures that have played equally crucial roles in the negotiation of ideas about the molecular world and genetic science. In the epilogue, however, I will return to the clone’s prominent status within the genetic imaginary and ask whether we might understand the clones in Orphan Black as a particularly televisual take on this generic figure.

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Plenty of scholarly work has identified the genetic imaginary as a ‘mosaic of images’ (Åsberg 2005, 341) that encompasses numerous cultural expressions and formations beyond the cinematic cloning narrative, including literature (Nelkin and Lindee 2001; Hanson 2007, 2015; Bloomfield and Hanson 2015; Hamner 2017a), art (Anker and Nelkin 2004; O’Riordan 2010; Wald and Clayton 2007), newspapers (Haran et al. 2007), popular science magazines (Åsberg 2005), scientific cartoons and advertisements (Haraway 1997), comic books (Hamner 2018), digital media (Haran et al. 2007; O’Riordan 2010, 2013, 2017), radio (Haran et al. 2007) and television (Franklin 1988; Haran et  al. 2007; O’Riordan 2010; Kruse 2010; Bull 2014, 2015; Hamner 2017a, b). In particular, my work builds on a few earlier studies of the representation of molecular biology, DNA tests and cloning technology on television. These have tended to focus on individual programmes with an educational address. For example, more than ten years before publishing her piece on Jurassic Park, Sarah Franklin (1988, 100) wrote an article on the Horizon biopic docudrama episode Life Story (Mick Jackson, BBC, 1987), arguing that its ‘biology and biography’ obscured ‘science as culture’ and that ‘we need more programmes which explore the cultural and historical origins of the genetic commodity fetishism evident in contemporary society’. Almost two decades later, Joan Haran, Jenny Kitzinger, Maureen McNeil and Kate O’Riordan (2007) examined a two-part drama-documentary titled If … Cloning Could Cure Us (BBC, 2004), as well as the Newsnight (BBC, 1980–present) studio debate that accompanied it. Kate O’Riordan’s book The Genome Incorporated (2010) subsequently included a chapter on the one-off reality-style documentary A Killer In Me (ITV, 2007), in which four celebrities were offered DNA tests determining their genetic risk of getting serious diseases. Recently, there has been a flurry of academic interest in Orphan Black (e.g. Greene and Robison-Greene 2016; Hamner 2017a, b; Wilbanks 2018; Sheldon 2018; Lieberman 2018; Hamner 2018; Dillender 2018; Frankel 2018). Everett Hamner has provided a particularly insightful analysis of the Canadian show’s contribution to the wider genetic imaginary in his book Editing the Soul: Science and Fiction in the Genome Age (2017a), in which he also discusses literature and film, as well as the Canadian science fiction show ReGenesis (TMN, 2004–2008), which portrays a North American Biotechnological Advisory Commission that monitors public health, disease outbreaks and new biomedical technologies across Canada, the USA and Mexico. These analyses suggest that television has started staging more complex negotiations on the moral and

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­ hilosophical implications of advances in molecular biology, but they also p imply that the gene still remains something of the ‘fetish object’ Franklin (1988, 92) identified when discussing 1980s television. To more completely capture the complexity of the televisual genetic imaginary of the twenty-first century, it is time to move beyond the study of single programmes and instead examine a larger material from a range of different genres. Highlighting that the genetic imaginary extends well beyond traditional scientific discourses, this book considers science documentaries as well as crime dramas, hospital dramas, science fiction serials, family history programmes, family reunion shows, sitcoms and several types of reality shows. On a fundamental level, this book identifies television as an important site for the articulation and formation of a set of ideas traditionally understood as ‘medico-scientific’. This affiliates it with a growing body of work that analyses the relationship between media and science. In particular, it follows a recent wave of academic studies examining audio-visual representations of bioscience and medicine.2 Researchers in this interdisciplinary field have often asserted that media and science are locked into a collaborative relationship, which, amongst other things, results in a reciprocal exchange of power that needs to be mapped and scrutinised (Friedman 2004, 4–5; Reagan et al. 2007, 2). Reagan et al. (2007, 2) have provided the following condensed description of this relationship: ‘Medicine provides media with reliably popular content and expertise while media provide medicine with modern communication systems for the powerful delivery of its messages’. While this type of transaction undoubtedly exists between the scientific community and the media, I want to map a more complex set of processes. Rather than simply understanding television as a means for secondary dissemination of scientific knowledge or representation of medico-scientific practices, this book proposes that television actively and independently constructs and re-­ negotiates the genetic imaginary. As this introduction will make clear, my analysis bridges two different theoretical traditions: (1) television scholarship focused on questions of medium specificity, and (2) cultural, social and historical studies of genetic science. As a television scholar, I will be engaging in greater depth throughout the book with the theoretical frameworks I use for understanding the television medium’s distinctive characteristics in terms of its visual form, narrative structure, production, distribution and reception. This introduction will therefore start by discussing the theoretical structures that shape

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my understanding of television’s cultural role and how it negotiates ideas about the genome. Following this, I will outline some key concepts from the medical humanities that have helped me understand shifts in the wider genetic imaginary—in particular, the historical shifts that have led to a recent move from essentialist genetics to a post-genomic framework for understanding life itself.3

Television As a Cultural Forum My approach to studying the televisual genetic imaginary is underpinned by a pivotal theoretical construct in television studies outlining the medium’s general cultural function, namely, Horace M.  Newcomb and Paul M.  Hirsch’s (1983) model for understanding television as a ‘cultural forum’. Written over 30 years ago, this classic piece of television theory was constructed in opposition to older forms of ideological television criticism and their tendency to assume the medium has one monolithic meaning: typically the dominant ideology of a particular moment (45–46). Newcomb and Hirsch offered up a more nuanced way to consider the politics of television texts and forcefully argued for the cultural value of the medium. Most importantly, their framework understood television as participating in processes of public thinking, simultaneously representing, negotiating and constructing social reality in tandem with other media, art forms and cultural expressions (47–48). A key feature of television, they proposed, is its multiplicity of meanings, and the complex and often contradictory ways it deals with ‘our most prevalent concerns, our deepest dilemmas’ (47). This is a medium that expresses oppositional meanings and perspectives both in individual programmes and across its wider flow: highly traditional, repressive and reactionary viewpoints, as well as more subversive and emancipatory affinities, are simultaneously ‘upheld, examined, maintained and transformed’ (47–48). One of the fundamental insights revealed by my analysis of a diverse set of television programmes is the contradictory nature of their contribution to the genetic imaginary. More specifically, the way in which long-standing discourses on DNA intermingle with newer, often completely oppositional ideas is striking, particularly when comparing different programmes and genres. Newcomb and Hirsch’s description of television as a cultural forum is not the only attempt to theorise the multiplicity and contradiction with which the medium treats a wide range of topics. For example, the concept of the cultural forum is in many ways comparable to the framework John

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Ellis proposed in his influential book Seeing Things: Television in the Age of Uncertainty (2002), almost two decades later, although his theoretical influences are markedly different from those of Newcomb and Hirsch. Briefly comparing the two can help pinpoint some of the elements of the cultural forum framework that I find particularly fruitful. Ellis argues that the Freudian notion of ‘working through’ (a psychoanalytical technique whereby forgotten or repressed memories are repeatedly returned to) can be used as a model for understanding the role television plays in contemporary society by continually examining and re-examining different ‘experiences’. While many aspects of Ellis’s explanation of television’s cultural work are highly productive and convincing, there is a risk that the centrality of the concept of ‘working through’ reduces television to primarily a representational practice that mediates a range of original experiences from the surrounding world. Ellis proposes that television repeatedly returns to the same pre-existing events, moments and ideas, displaying them from different perspectives in attempts to deal therapeutically with the traumatic feelings that have allegedly arisen in the audience as a result of being placed in such a position of ‘witnessing’ in the first place (10–11). In other words, the medium confronts the audience with unfamiliar images of the world, which causes a trauma that then has to be worked through by returning to these images. Furthermore, as Helen Wheatley (2005, 149; 2006, 24) points out, the concept of ‘working through’ also suggests television is attempting to produce a ‘sense of conclusion’. Ellis (2002, 79) does emphasise that this process is a ‘multifaceted and leaky’ endeavour, ‘not a straightforward process that takes in hunks of meat at [one] end, and parcels them out as sausages at the other’, but its Freudian roots still imbue the term ‘working through’ with a sense of purpose that would be misleading if used to describe television’s contribution to the genetic imaginary.4 As a therapeutic method, working through holds the promise of treatment. Freud (2001, 155) saw it as a technique for overcoming repressed and traumatic experiences. Admittedly, some of the ideas tied to DNA might indeed be anxiety-inducing, and Jackie Stacey (2010) has argued that cinematic treatments of genetic manipulation and cloning are saturated with cultural multiple anxieties about gender, sexuality and technology. However, to classify scientific developments in genetics as a ‘traumatic experience’ that requires working through, runs the risk of producing an analysis of the televisual genetic imaginary that is both generalising and reductive. To do so would downplay television’s role as an active agent that produces

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events, moments and ideas, and might fail to capture the medium’s multifaceted engagement with wider cultural discourses. In comparison, Newcomb and Hirsch’s (1983) framework identifies television’s process of public thinking as one that is distinctly open-ended and unpredictable. This encourages an understanding of the televisual genetic imaginary as a complexly indeterminate conversation, rather than a linear process of development working towards a specific endpoint. According to Newcomb and Hirsch, the emphasis of television’s cultural forum is ‘on process rather than product, on discussion rather than indoctrination, on contraction and confusion rather than coherence’ (47–48).

An Extended Viewing Strip The method of this book has been influenced by Newcomb and Hirsch’s approach to studying television, but I have also taken into account more recent critiques of the ‘cultural forum’ framework. Writing in 1983, Newcomb and Hirsch asserted that ‘almost any version of the television text functions as a forum in which important cultural topics may be ­considered’ (48), and they included an analysis of the sitcom Father Knows Best (NBC/CBS, 1954–1960) as an example of how multiple viewpoints on a topic could be articulated in one single episode of a programme, thus suggesting that multiplicity could be found on the level of individual episodes and programmes, as well as across entire genres and the television medium as a whole (48–49). However, when suggesting a methodological approach for studying television, they emphasised that complexity would always be ‘heightened’ across a larger body of text (49–50). Referencing Raymond Williams’s (1974) writing on the ‘flow’ of television, they argued that the most useful tactic would be to study what they called a ‘viewing strip’ (Newcomb and Hirsch 1983, 50) consisting of multiple programmes from a range of different genres. This approach was productive, they argued, because ‘the rhetoric of the soap opera pattern is different from that of the situation comedy and that from the detective show. Thus, when similar topics are treated within different generic frames another level of “discussion” is at work’ (50). Newcomb and Hirsch’s belief in the effectiveness of this approach was based on the assumption that it is ‘more akin’ to actual viewing behaviours (50). By selecting material that more resembled ‘the range of options offered by any given evening’s television’, the researcher is supposed to get more ‘accurate’ results insofar as their analysis will be more likely to reflect the experiences of

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actual viewers (50). As this emphasis on the viewing public suggests, this methodology was part of a wider attempt to consider the reception of television content. Using Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding/decoding’ model (1980) as a stepping stone, they acknowledge the importance of not making assumptions about how television content is received by the viewers and argue that one must consider a ‘range of varied responses’ (Newcomb and Hirsch 1983, 52). At the very end of the article, Newcomb and Hirsch remark in passing that their ‘model is based on the assumption and observation that only so rich a text could attract a mass audience in a complex culture’ (53). This nod to a particular socio-historical reception context— the American network-era television landscape—was part of a wider move to consider the experience of the viewers and the impact of television on its audience. Yet, despite this admirable attempt to avoid generalisation, Newcomb and Hirsch’s anchoring of their theory to a specific national and historical viewing experience has also meant that as time has passed, and the medium has developed, the cultural forum concept has become less generally applicable. Amanda D. Lotz (2004, 2007) has conducted one of the most extensive and influential considerations of the cultural forum’s relevance for contemporary television studies. In Lotz’s view, the increased audience dispersion of the current ‘post-network era’—the move towards niche programming and the subsequent redistribution of audiences into highly specialised homogenous groups—poses the question whether television still performs a type of public thinking that makes individual viewers aware of contradictory perspectives on a topic.5 If Newcomb and Hirsch’s theory is built on the assumption that television is watched by a heterogeneous mass audience, whose different ideological convictions must be negotiated, it might no longer hold up when it is ‘increasingly unlikely that ideologically polarized audiences will be watching the same series’ (Lotz 2004, 429). Rather than completely rejecting the notion of television as a cultural forum, Lotz asserts the importance of reflecting on the type of programming one is examining and how it might differ from the material examined by Newcomb and Hirsch. In her book Television Will be Revolutionized (2007), Lotz specifically proposes that the cultural forum function might now be primarily fulfilled by occasional examples of ‘phenomenal television’: ‘a particular category of programming that retains the social importance attributed to television’s earlier operation as a cultural forum despite the changes of the post-network era’ (33, 37). Her argument for why, in some cases, the cultural forum function is still

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retained at the level of individual programmes is straightforward and convincing: even in the post-network era, there are still some programmes, typically those broadcast on one of the traditional networks, that address a relatively large, heterogeneous audience (38). Taking this into account, some of the key case studies in this book are examples of such ‘phenomenal’ programmes that articulate multiple contradictory ideas on DNA, even at the level of individual episodes. One such programme is CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015, henceforth abbreviated CSI), which I discuss in Chaps. 2 and 3. Although CSI never reached the exceptionally high viewing figures of network-era programming such as Father Knows Best (that Newcomb and Hirsch analysed), it played a significant role as one of the flagship shows that significantly raised CBS’s viewing figures in the early 2000s, broadening its demographics and retrieving some of its old prestige as one of the original ‘big three’ broadcast networks.6 Throughout its first ten seasons, CSI gained and retained a domestic audience that, in relation to contemporary standards, was very large and heterogeneous. Such a wide audience address differentiates it from other contemporary shows more clearly marketed to niche audiences.7 Although Lotz is specifically writing about US television, I would also argue that some of the BBC’s flagship programmes retain a similar status. One example of this is Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC, 2004–present, abbreviated WDYTYA), which figures prominently in Chap. 4. WDYTYA has achieved viewing figures of between 3.48 and 7.22 million viewers in the UK, with a majority of its episodes being the most-watched programme during the 9  pm prime-time hour, with between five and six million viewers. Furthermore, the audience size and heterogeneity increase significantly if we also take into account these programmes’ global distribution. Both CSI and WDYTYA have been exported widely, and the BBC show has also been highly successful in the global market for television formats. This suggests that people from different backgrounds and cultures, with different lifestyles, political affiliations and religious beliefs, can find points of interest and enjoyment in these programmes.8 Today’s increasingly transnational television landscape (Parks and Kumar 2003; Bielby and Harrington 2008; Oren and Shahaf 2011) encourages producers to create complex, even contradictory, texts with a wider audience address. Expanding on Lotz’s argument, I argue that the transnational movement of a show is another industrial aspect that should be taken into account when identifying individual shows as examples of phenomenal television.

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However, such individual examples of ‘phenomenal television’ are by no means the sole focus of this book. Rather, I have consciously attempted to examine what might be called an extended transnational viewing strip. My study therefore includes programmes from several different genres across two national contexts, and spans two decades. As my analysis of this material will show, television still articulates multifaceted perspectives across its wider flow. But this raises the question whether we can still understand television as a cultural forum when individual viewers might not perceive any of this multiplicity. On this point, Lotz argues that the cultural forum model has become meaningless for studying anything other than individual examples of phenomenal television, because individual viewers are unlikely to perceive the multiplicity that still exists across different types of niche genres and programmes. When Newcomb and Hirsch proposed viewing strips of weekly network fare as a means for studying viewing experiences in 1983, they could be fairly certain that a considerable amount of viewers would encounter this material. To even call my material a ‘viewing strip’ might then be somewhat misleading. I cannot as readily assume that many actual viewers will have come across this extended material, and, furthermore, because my main aim is to study television’s contribution to the wider genetic imaginary, I am not primarily trying to provide insights about individual viewing experiences. For the purposes of attempting to map discourses about genetics circulating across television as a whole, studying such an extended body of material still makes sense. That said, while I agree that television probably retains less of a cultural forum function in terms of introducing individual viewers to multiple ideological viewpoints on ‘hot’ political issues at a particular point in time, I still believe that Newcomb and Hirsch’s model remains a representative way of understanding television’s cultural contribution over time. A rarely discussed element of Newcomb and Hirsch’s (1983) theory is their argument that the serial nature of many television programmes ‘shifts meaning and shades ideology as a series develop’ (49). The ‘change over time’ that Newcomb and Hirsch note on the level of individual series is even more significant on the level of genre or across the television flow more generally. I propose that in the post-network era, the temporality of the television’s cultural forum function has been extended. Contemporary viewers will primarily perceive the cultural forum over a longer period of time, as programmes and genres slowly develop to express shifting ideas. This makes it all the more important to study an extended viewing strip

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that enables us to take into account historical shifts. While this book might, at first glance, appear to be part of what John Corner (1999, 126) has called the ‘frantically contemporary agenda’ of television studies, I am continuously mindful of historical changes and my approach can be defined as textual-historical in nature.9 Textual analysis serves as my main analytical method, but I aim to execute what Helen Wheatley (2006, 21) has called a ‘close and sustained critical analysis of television texts, dwelling on illuminating moments in the history of television programming’.10 The historical impulse is most clearly detectable in the instances where I genealogically trace how formal and thematic aspects create linkages and discontinuities between my main material and a number of audio-visual texts from earlier historical moments.11 I partly incorporate this historical perspective because I agree with Corner’s (2003, 275) argument that ‘[an] enriched sense of “then” produces, in its differences and ­commonalities combined, a stronger, imaginative and analytically energised sense of now’. But more importantly, these historical comparisons serve to illustrate the temporal function of television’s cultural forum: how its contradictory contribution to the genetic imaginary changes over time.

An Emergent Structure of Feeling Jason Jacobs (2003, 30) has described television as able to ‘anticipate and articulate quite amorphous trends, feelings and attitudes that only emerge concretely later on’, and this goes some way to capture the complex cultural work television does over time. In this vein, I have found Raymond Williams’s (1961, 1977) writing on the concept ‘structures of feeling’ fruitful for capturing television’s gradual articulation and negotiation of a new set of cultural ideas about DNA. Williams is, of course, famous for his work on television, but this particular concept was developed to describe cultural shifts more generally. When he initially described the concept in The Long Revolution (1961, 64–65), he called it ‘the culture of a period’, which is why, as Alan O’Connor (2006, 79) has pointed out, subsequent usages of the term often take it ‘to describe something like the ordinary meaning today of the word culture: shared experience’. However, the idea of a ‘structure of feeling’ makes a fitting addition to the model of television as a cultural forum because, as Williams continued to develop the concept, it more specifically came to describe the gradual emergence of a new experience. In Marxism and Literature (1977), Williams specifically uses the concept structure of feeling to distinguish between ‘dominant,

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residual and emergent’ aspects of a culture at any given moment.12 This results in a more precise understanding of the term, which is important for my own analysis. Williams (1977, 123, 131–132) describes a structure of feeling as an ‘embryonic phase’ where ‘new meanings and values, new practices, [and] new relationships’ are first being expressed and experienced, before having become fully defined and built into institutions and other formations. Although Williams didn’t specifically mention television in his writing on this concept, he did argue that it is important to study cultural practices and products, as this is where structures of feeling first become tangible (1961, 64–65; 1977, 129). He underlines the creative potential of cultural texts to be a driving force in wider discursive shifts: The idea of a structure of feeling can be specifically related to the evidence of forms and conventions—semantic figures—which, in art and literature, are often among the first indications that such a new structure is forming. [As] a matter of cultural theory this is a way of defining forms and conventions in art and literature as inalienable elements of a social material process: not by derivation from other social forms and pre-forms, but as social formation of a specific kind which may in turn be seen as the articulation (often the only fully available articulation) of structures of feeling which as living processes are much more widely experienced. (Williams 1977, 133)

More specifically, Williams’s concept encourages an approach where shifts in form and convention are traced over time, as this can indicate how a new set of experiences is slowly and implicitly becoming expressed alongside older ideas and perspectives. This book therefore pays attention to genre development and takes particular notice of how certain visual and narrative tropes have changed. Williams’s concept can bring a more specific definition to the function of the cultural forum. For Newcomb and Hirsch, the cultural forum is a model for understanding television as simultaneously articulating a multitude of ideas, often contradictory in kind. This has often been understood as something similar to a political debate, but, drawing on Williams, I suggest it is more useful to understand television as a forum that drives and facilitates discursive shifts over time in much more implicit ways. Williams defines the structure of feeling as an experience ‘in solution, as distinct from other social semantic formations which have been precipitated and are more evidently and more immediately available’ (1977, 133–134). It’s only a feeling, not yet a fact or knowledge. This can help recast television’s

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cultural forum as a temporal negotiation between long-running perspectives and newly evolving ideas. Doing so, it is crucial to understand the structure of feeling as a discourse that is still in an uncertain state of manifestation and assert that this is not a linear process of development that will necessarily lead to a new set of ‘dominant’ meanings. I think of it more as a process of negotiation without a set outcome.

The Post-genomic Redefinition of Life Itself This book focuses on television of the twenty-first century because this is a period when a new structure of feeling has become more clearly articulated within television’s cultural forum on genetics. I argue that television participates in a wider shift within the genetic imaginary, which Sarah Franklin has theorised as an ‘emergent’ move, from genetic determinism towards ‘new genetics’ (Franklin et al. 2000, 14; Franklin 2000, 198) or ‘post-genomic’ sensibilities (Franklin 2007, 33). This is the latest transmutation in a longer sequence of significant discursive changes impacting how we understand the human body, biology more generally, and, indeed, ‘life itself’. Franklin aptly summarises this longer development as a process whereby ‘nature becomes biology becomes genetics, through which life itself becomes reprogrammable information’ (2000, 190). As both Franklin (2000, 2007) and Nikolas Rose (2001, 2007) have discussed in some detail, the historical process whereby life has come to be understood with a new vocabulary of genetics has been mapped out by Georges Canguilhem (2000 [1966]) and Michel Foucault (2002 [1970]). In a 1966 essay, Canguilhem began examining how the very concept of life had been transformed from antiquity to the present day (303–320). This line of inquiry was also picked up by Foucault in 1970 when attempting to trace a particular epistemic shift taking place in the eighteenth century, when Darwinist biology emerged as a framework for understanding ‘the facts of life’ (2002 [1970], 136–179).13 Foucault argued that the category of ‘life itself’ only came into existence in its modern meaning when the representational models used for understanding nature shifted from the ‘non-temporal rectangle’ (which sorted things according to their position in God’s creation) to the framework of biology (139).14 Canguilhem’s research points to the next building block in this epistemological history, proposing that a new major shift was taking place in the 1960s: life was becoming redefined by the scientific field of molecular biology (2000 [1966], 317).15 Discussing the discourses emerging

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from the discovery of the structure of the double helix in 1953, Canguilhem argued that the conceptual construction of life was now dropping ‘the vocabulary and concepts of classical mechanics, physics and chemistry […] in favour of the vocabulary of linguistics and communications theory. Messages, information, programmes, codes, instructions, decoding: these are the new concepts of the life sciences’ (316). This inauguration of a genetic era reconfigured life so that it became understood in terms of information (312–317). As Franklin (2000, 194) has pointed out, Canguilhem’s prediction that ‘if we are to understand life, its message must be decoded before it can be read’ (Canguilhem (2000 [1966]), 312) has since been more or less literally realised in scientific practices such as the Human Genome Project, which aimed to ‘decode’ the entire sequence of human DNA. Alongside Franklin (1988, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2007), Evelyn Fox Keller (1990, 1991, 2005), Dorothy Nelkin and Susan M. Lindee (1995, 1998) have done significant work to analyse how the gene became a major cultural icon in the latter half of the twentieth century. The cultural ideas about the gene during this period are familiar to all of us. Variously described as a dictionary, a library, a recipe, a map and, perhaps most commonly, a blueprint of life, the gene came to be understood as harbouring firm facts about our past, present and future. It was frequently seen as a comprehensive and unbiased resource, an orderly reference work that, once deciphered, would be clear, reliable and easily understood (Nelkin and Lindee 1995, 8). As my analysis will show, the televisual genetic imaginary of the early twenty-first century is still heavily saturated with genetic essentialism (Franklin 1993, 34; Nelkin and Lindee 1995, 149–168), which Nelkin and Lindee define as ‘a deterministic tendency to reduce personality and behaviour to the genes’ (2001, 84). Donna Haraway (1997, 148) has called this ‘genetic fetishism’: a belief in the gene as ‘a nontropic thing-in-itself’. The gene fetishist, Haraway explains, ‘forgets’ that bodies are ‘nodes in webs of integrations’ and therefore mistakes ‘heterogenous relationality for a fixed, seemingly objective thing’ (142). Such a viewpoint has been prevalent during the twentieth century (particularly its second half), which Evelyn Fox Keller has called ‘the century of the gene’ (2000), and it remains prominent today. However, television has also begun to express a new structure of feeling, contributing to a wider emergent post-genomic imaginary that voices ideas beyond the more traditional deterministic and essentialist understanding of the gene. As the cultural drive towards ‘geneticization’ (Franklin 2000, 189) or ‘molecularization’

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(Rose 2007, 5, 11–15) has continued, things have seemingly become progressively more complicated. For example, the Human Genome Project and other similar scientific undertakings have not resulted in all the expected revelations of the genome’s hidden secrets about life itself, but have rather produced more questions and uncertainties. Furthermore, this new framework has enabled what Franklin terms a ‘literal and metaphorical prospect of reprogramming biology’, which has resulted in a significant shift from explanatory to experimental scientific practices (Franklin 2000, 190; see also Rose 2007, 15–22). With molecules becoming understood as building blocks of life that can be reprogrammed and recombined, the spotlight is now increasingly directed onto biomedical technologies that can interfere in biological processes in complex ways. Two interconnected tendencies are characteristic of the wider discursive shift towards post-genomic sensibilities. Firstly, a cultural process has emerged through which concepts such as truth, cause and effect, identity, body, reproduction, kinship, emotions, nature, life and death are being redefined.16 This cultural reconfiguration has the potential of allowing for more uncertainty and complexity within the genetic imaginary. Secondly, there has been an increased instrumentalisation of molecular science that intensifies the wider process of redefinition by seemingly making bodies and biological processes modifiable.17 As Franklin has argued, in the ‘age of biological control’, new unconditional biologies are emerging, and these are ‘primarily imagined as plastic, flexible and partible. They no longer work to a logic of a fixed structural system, but to that of flexibly reengineered functionality’ (Franklin 2007, 33). While scientific practices have been crucial for engendering this gradual questioning of genetic determinism, other cultural expressions have served as equally crucial sites for this process of redefinition and negotiation (Hanson 2007; Stacey 2010; O’Riordan 2010). Television is one such cultural expression. As indicated by previous work on the genetic imaginary, this cultural negotiation spans across national boundaries, at least encompassing the West (Nelkin and Lindee 2001; Anker and Nelkin 2004; Åsberg 2005; Hanson 2007, 2015; O’Riordan 2010; Stacey 2010). In adopting a transnational approach that considers both US and UK material, this book continues in the footsteps of earlier studies that have analysed genetic ­ discourses across British and North American cultural texts (Nelkin and Lindee 2001; Anker and Nelkin 2004; O’Riordan 2010; Stacey 2010). As a television scholar working in Britain, where a majority

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of the television landscape consists of a melange of domestic fare and imported US material, it certainly feels ‘natural’ to focus on English-­ language programmes from both sides of the Atlantic. Considering the perennial transnational exchanges and influences between US and UK television (Hilmes 2011; Weissmann 2012), it’s not surprising that many of the US programmes studied in this book have aired on UK television and that some of the UK shows have also been exported to the USA, and, furthermore, that several are co-productions. While this means that my material reflects the transnational nature of contemporary television and points to the international nature of the genetic imaginary, it has not been an explicit selection criterion that the programmes have been aired in both countries. I have included material from two national contexts in order to highlight the transnational dispersal of the genetic imaginary, while also being able to consider how national differences might add to the multiplicity of the cultural forum on DNA. As Donna Haraway (1997, 163–166) argued in the late 1990s, the cultural drive towards geneticisation has been part of a wider process of global world-making at the end of the last millennium, which has given rise to a new emergent universalism (see also Franklin et al. 2000, 6, 11). The Human Genome Project, and the discourses surrounding it, illustrate this wider ‘molecular globalisation’ (Franklin 2000, 190; Franklin et  al. 2000, 6). Conceived as ‘the most global project in the history of biology’, it aimed to sequence the DNA of all humankind as well as numerous other species, thus promising to produce new knowledge on a truly global scale (Franklin 2000, 194). Haraway, Franklin, Lury and Stacey deconstruct this cultural formation and, in doing so, point to the importance of a dual approach which ­considers the located, as well as global, nature of the genetic imaginary. In order to avoid the trap of universalism, this book’s approach serves as a further reminder ‘that located does not necessarily mean local, even while it must mean partial and situated, and that global means not general or universal but distributed and layered’ (Haraway 1997, 121), and acknowledges the complex interweaving of the national and the transnational for both the genetic imaginary and the medium of television.

Complexity and Kinship This book is divided into two main parts: ‘Complexity’ and ‘Kinship’. These reflect two recurrent topics within television’s cultural forum on ­genetics: (1) the complexity of molecular life and (2) the construction of

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kinship. These issues are central to television’s articulation of a postgenomic structure of feeling; they function as nodes around which older ideas about DNA encounter and clash with emergent perspectives. The two chapters that deal with the issue of complexity examine programmes that negotiate ideas about the materiality, temporality and knowability of the molecular world. These programmes are still invested in an essentialist framework that sees the molecular universe as logical, linear and decipherable, but their use of certain visual and narrative elements also undermines this established world view, instead suggesting that advances in genetic science are increasingly revealing the random, indeterminate and enigmatic nature of life itself. In the two chapters on the topic of kinship I analyse programmes that construct, and question, ideas about kinship. This material poses questions about what it is that binds people together as kin and what happens to the concept of kinship when genetic science has enabled us to trace genetic genealogies further back in time than ever before, while at the same time allowing us to interfere in the human reproduction process in novel ways. These programmes contribute to the genetic imaginary by articulating opposing ideas about whether biological substance or mutual affective life is at the core of our understanding of heritage, reproduction and family. This structure also reflects the book’s argument about the specificity of television’s role in the genetic imaginary. The concepts ‘complexity’ and ‘kinship’ describe formal and thematic characteristics of the television programmes discussed in each part, and these elements are central to my explanation as to why television has become such a key site for the articulation of the post-genomic structure of feeling. The two chapters in the first part focus on complex visual spectacles and narrative complexity, respectively, while the chapters in the second part analyse television programmes that are thematically focused on genealogy and reproduction. My analysis of these formal and thematic characteristics engages with four theoretical concepts or topics from television studies (one in each chapter) that help me explain why the negotiation between essentialist genetics and post-genomic sensibilities is so easily expressed on television: (1) televisuality, (2) complex serial narration, (3) affective intimacy and (4) the family. John T.  Caldwell’s (1995) concept of ‘televisuality’ describes an exhibitionist tendency in post-network-era television to prioritise visual style and continuously produce novel spectacles to attract the viewers’ attention. ‘Complex serial narration’ refers to a long tradition in television studies to describe long-form serials as an especially ‘complex’ form of

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television narrative. First established in the early 1980s by feminist scholars Christine Geraghty (1981) and Jane Feuer (1984) when analysing soap operas, this theoretical interest has more recently been renewed, most notably by Jason Mittell’s writing on quality serials that he situates within a wider trend towards complexity on American television (2006, 2015). ‘Affective intimacy’ is a term used by Misha Kavka (2008) to describe reality TV’s augmentation of television’s wider ability to make viewers experience feelings of spatial, temporal and emotional closeness. And finally, the concept of ‘the family’ has been of enduring interest to television scholars, both as a crucial cultural context for television reception (Spigel 1992) and as a recurring on-screen trope (Taylor 1989). Each chapter traces its respective formal or thematic element across at least two different genres. Chapter 2 analyses the use of ‘microscopic CGI (computer-generated imagery)’ across science documentaries such as Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001), Inside the Human Body (BBC, 2011) and Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (BBC, 2012), the crime procedurals that make up the CSI franchise: CSI, CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012) and CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013) and the hospital procedural House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012). I use the term ‘microscopic CGI’ to refer to different types of computer-generated imagery that create the illusion that the television camera either enters the human body or is able to magnify entities otherwise invisible to the human eye, highlighting that these special effects have a distinct tendency to accentuate the smallness of objects and spaces, and, by extension, the genetic framework of explanation. I argue that these sequences often have a pedagogic purpose that typically produces a reductively determinist portrayal of cells and ­molecules, but I also note that this tendency has been undermined as an effect of television’s general drive towards televisuality. The urge to constantly produce spectacularly novel imagery has often resulted in dynamic and complex visual elements that instead cast the molecular world as alien and unpredictable, thus inadvertently articulating a post-genomic structure of feeling. Chapter 3 continues to examine CSI and House M.D., focusing on their ‘iterative’ episodic narrative structures, which are compared to the narration in the long-form science fiction serials Fringe (Fox, 2008–2013) and Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010). In all four programmes, genetic science functions as a narrative catalyst, and I argue that their contradictory contributions to the genetic imaginary are dependent on their varying uses of ‘complex’ narrative devices and explicit references to ‘complexity theory’.

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Along the way, the chapter links the wider cultural interest in complexity to post-genomic discourses and the increased prominence of complex narration on television. Chapter 4 considers family history programmes, such as Who Do You Think You Are? and Finding your Roots (PBS, 2012–present), and family reunion shows such as Long Lost Family (ITV, 2011–present) and Searching For… (OWN, 2011). These are two genres that both portray genealogical searches and are deeply invested in the concept of genetic kinship. The analysis concludes that when dramatising genealogy research as an affective journey into the past, these programmes materialise DNA, constructing it as a substantial and enduring basis for kinship that links individuals across time and space. However, at the end of the chapter, I discuss the reception of these programmes, specifically the fact that their generic emphasis on the participants’ emotional displays has been critiqued as ‘scripted’. This points to the potential of these programmes’ affective intimacy to expose the socially constructed nature of kinship, which can (unintentionally) undermine their general adherence to essentialist genetics. Finally, Chap. 5 argues that the post-genomic restructuring of kinship is a prominent topic in family-centric television programmes that portray reproduction processes where characters are struggling with infertility issues and/or make use of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) to help them conceive. This chapter maps the development of ART narratives in sitcoms and factual programmes from the late 1980s up to the present, and compares the sitcom genre’s fascination with ART’s potential for creating non-normative families with the way in which most factual programmes have sought to normalise new reproductive practices (NRP) through a focus on heterosexual couples. Some of the key texts considered here are The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992), Friends (NBC, 1994– 2004), Oh Baby (Lifetime, 1998–2000), The New Normal (NBC, 2012– 2013), One Big Happy (NBC, 2015), A Conception Story (TLC online, 2010–present), Giuliana and Bill (Style Network/E!, 2009–2014) and Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–present). Although the book is structured thematically rather than chronologically, historicisation is still a key element of each analysis. The chapters not only consider the temporality of how the cultural forum negotiates different genetic discourses, but also include some examination of the historical genre contexts of the formal and thematic elements they focus on. My analytical approach reflects a wider interest in genre history and adopts

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textual analysis as a useful method for exploring how stylistic and thematic elements of a specific television programme function through complex generic linkages (Mittell 2004, xvii, 121–153). Jason Mittell (2004) has argued that meaning can be created by generic articulations that, on the one hand, incorporate textual conventions already attached to a set of associations, and, on the other hand, rearticulate and change the elements, creating new assumptions and associations (123). When I compare generic elements in different programmes, I therefore often reflect on the longer genre linkages these signify, as a way of further considering the complex discursive formations at play in these programmes’ contribution to the genetic imaginary.

Notes 1. Other television dramas that have featured clones include The Cloning of Joanna May (ITV, 1992), The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–present), Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002), Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 2004–2009) and Kyle XY (ABC, 2006–2009). 2. This body of work has grown out of scholarship in art history examining anatomical studies and other artistic practices conducted within the context of the scientific community. More recent work across the humanities has sought to understand scientific imaging technologies as cultural expressions, not just scientific tools (Cartwright et  al. 1998; Marchessault and Sawchuk 2000; van Dijck 2005; Pauwels 2005; Shteir and Lightman 2006; Smelik and Lykke 2008; Hentschel 2014; Coopmans et  al. 2014). Following the publication of Lisa Cartwright’s (1995) seminal study of scientific films and health education cinema, a number of books have engaged with media representations of science and medicine (Seale 2003; King and Watson 2004; Friedman 2004; Boon 2008; Reagan et al. 2007; Smelik 2010; Ostherr 2013). 3. I use medical humanities as an umbrella term for scholarly work in a wide range of fields, most prominently anthropology, sociology, history of medicine, philosophy of science, and science and technology studies. 4. Ellis (2002, 79) does point out that the term indicates a process whereby ‘material is continually worried over until it is exhausted.’ 5. Here, it might be useful to acknowledge that Lotz’s (2004, 426) description of the current state of ‘post-network’ television differs somewhat from Ellis’s (2002) deliberations on television in what he calls the current ‘era of plenty’. Rather than describing this as structured by the narrowcast logic, Ellis emphasises that television content has increased in quantity and variety. The differences between the two perspectives can be explained, in part,

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by a difference in national focus. Lotz’s research focuses on North America, whereas Ellis’s theories are influenced by the British context of his scholarship. It could be argued that the redistribution of US television audiences that Lotz discusses has not yet occurred to the same extent in the UK. As this book focuses on both UK and US television, I think both perspectives are relevant and I would suggest that the cultural forum theory still can be usefully applied to the television landscape that Ellis describes (particularly considering that the Ellis’s own framework has some significant similarities to Newcomb and Hirsch’s concept, as discussed earlier). 6. CSI quickly climbed in audience ratings after it began airing in 2000. Halfway through its first season, CBS transferred it from the less popular Friday 9 pm timeslot to Thursdays at 9 pm, a slot notorious as a stronghold for NBC’s ‘Must-See TV’ label. CBS President Nancy Tellem explains that this move was a gamble that turned out to be significant for the revitalisation of the network, resulting in CBS surpassing NBC and archiving ‘primetime dominance’ anew. Tellem has been quoted saying, ‘We obviously had no idea then that this show would mark the sea change, along with “Survivor”, that turned the network around’ (Richmond 2010). 7. Lotz (2004, 428) compares CSI’s ratings as the most watched television show with the 1959–1960 season of Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–1975), which drew an average rating of 40.3 million viewers. However, by contemporary standards, CSI’s ratings were very high. Nielsen Media Research listed the first season of CSI as having 17.8 million US viewers. The ratings peaked during Seasons 2–7, with between 20.34 and 26.26 million viewers. In 2002–2003, it was the highest rating show in the USA, a title that has never before been held by a crime drama. From Season 1 to Season 9, CSI was continuously within the top ten of the highest rating shows. Furthermore, it has attracted the loyalty of a wide range of demographics, allegedly appealing to both genders and a wide range of age-groups (Longworth 2002, 95; Tait 2006). 8. It is, however, important to acknowledge that there is always significant diversity and opposition within an individual nation’s cultural expressions (Higson 2002, 69–72). 9. For more on the textual-historical approach to television studies, I recommend John Ellis’s (2007) chapter, ‘Is it Possible to Construct a Canon of Television Programmes?: Immanent Reading Versus Textual-historicism’. 10. Because of the time-consuming nature of detailed readings of such a large quantity of material, I have identified a number of more specific objects of study: thematic tropes, visual imagery and narrative devices relevant to the televisual genetic imaginary. These function as limits, or focal points, for my analytical process.

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11. For example, in Chap. 2, I discuss science documentaries from as far back as 1960, and Chap. 4 includes a comparative discussion of the representation of artificial reproduction technologies in sitcoms of the 1980s and 1990s. 12. As has been pointed out by Alan O’Connor (2006, 79), these ideas were already implicit in The Long Revolution: ‘because the structure of feeling that interests Williams is not a known culture but the emergent culture of a new generation. The whole point is that the emergent structure of feeling is in part unconscious. It is described with a great deal of difficulty by new literature and art’ (see also: Williams 1977, 121–135 and Williams 1961, 64–65). 13. Foucault traced this change in The Order of Things (2002 [1970]), 136– 179) as part of his endeavour to excavate the history of the human sciences and establish a more suitable method for this type of history writing. Franklin (2000, 191–194) has provided a more detailed summary and comparison between Canguilhem and Foucault’s respective perspectives on life itself. 14. Foucault (2002 [1970]), 139) elaborates that ‘Historians want to write histories of biology in the nineteenth century; but they do not realise that biology did not exist then, and that the pattern of knowledge that has been familiar to us for a hundred and fifty years is not valid for a previous period. And that, if biology was unknown, there was a very simple reason for it: that life itself did not exist. All that existed was living beings, which were viewed through grid of knowledge constituted by natural history.’ 15. For more detailed discussions on this assertion, see Canguilhem (2000 [1966], 317), Rabinow (2000, 20), Franklin (2000, 192, 194), Rose (2001, 13–14) and Rose (2007, 44). 16. Franklin (2000, 188–191) lists the following concepts: nature, biology, living being, vitality, human, body, organism, synthetic and technology (also see Rose 2007, 9–40). 17. Franklin’s (2000, 215–222) analysis focuses particularly on how new assisted reproductive technologies, as one such instrumentalisation, result in a drastic restructuring of genealogy that reconfigures the concepts of reproduction and kinship. Rose (2007, 15–27), in turn, is more interested in how new biomedical technologies promise to enhance and maximise biological processes, bodies and life itself, and how this changes the notion of individuality.

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———. 2017b. Epigenetic Television: The Penetrating Love of “Orphan Black”, Los Angeles Review of Books, 9 June 2017. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/epigenetic-television-the-penetrating-love-of-orphan-black/. Accessed 20 November 2018. ———. 2018. Sterility, Abominations and the Optical Illusions of Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 411–415. Hanson, Clare. 2007. Reproduction, Genetics, and Eugenics in the Fiction of Doris Lessing. Contemporary Women’s Writing 1 (1–2): 171–184. ———. 2015. Epigenetics, Plasticity and Identity in Jackie Kay’s Red Dust Road. Textual Practice 29 (3): 433–452. Haran, Joan, Jenny Kitzinger, Maureen McNeil, and Kate O’Riordan. 2007. Human Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice. New York and London: Routledge. Haraway, Donna. 1997. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_Meets_ Onco-­Mouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York and London: Routledge. Hentschel, Klaus. 2014. Visual Cultures in Science and Technology: A Comparative History. Oxford University Press. Higson, Andrew. 2002. The Limiting Imagination of National Cinema. In Cinema and Nation, ed. Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. London and New York: Routledge. Hilmes, Michele. 2011. Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting. London and New York: Routledge. Jacobs, Jason. 2003. Body Trauma TV: The New Hospital Drama. London: BFI Publishing. Kavka, Misha. 2008. Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 1990. Physics and the Emergence of Molecular Biology: A History of Cognitive and Political Synergy. Journal of the History of Biology 23 (3): 389–409. ———. 1991. Fractured Images of Science, Language and Power: A Postmodern Optic or Just Bad Eyesight? Poetics Today 12 (2): 227–243. ———. 2005. The Century Beyond the Gene. Journal of Biosciences 30 (1): 3–10. King, Martin, and Katherine Watson, eds. 2004. Representing Health: Discourses of Health and Illness in the Media. Palgrave Macmillan. Kirby, David A. 2000. The New Eugenics in Cinema: Genetic Determinism and Gene Therapy in GATTACA. Science Fiction Studies 27 (2): 193–215. ———. 2003. The Threat of Materialism in the Age of Genetics: DNA at the Drive-In. In Horror at the Drive-In: Essays in Popular Americana, ed. Gary D. Rhodes, 241–258. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co. ———. 2004. Extrapolating Race in Gattaca: Genetic Passing, Identity, the New Eugenics, and the Science of Race. Literature and Medicine 23 (1): 184–200. ———. 2007. The Devil in Our DNA: A Brief History of Eugenics in Science Fiction Films. Literature and Medicine 26 (1): 83–108.

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Kirby, David A., and Laura A. Gaither. 2005. Genetic Coming of Age: Genomics, Enhancement, and Identity in Film. New Literary History 36 (2): 263–282. Kruse, Corinna. 2010. Producing Absolute Truth: CSI Science as Wishful Thinking. American Anthropologist 112 (1): 79–91. Lieberman, Jennifer L. 2018. Infertility and Parenthood in Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 401–405. Longworth, James L. 2002. TV Creators: Conversations with America’s Top Producers of Television Drama, Volume Two. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Lotz, Amanda D. 2004. Using ‘Network’ Theory in the Post-network Era: Fictional 9/11 US Television Discourse as a ‘Cultural Forum’. Screen 45 (4): 423–439. ———. 2007. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New  York and London: New York University Press. Marchessault, Janine, and Kim Sawchuk, eds. 2000. Wild Science: Reading Feminism, Medicine and the Media. London and New York: Routledge. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American. New York and London: Routledge. ———. 2006. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. The Velvet Light Trap 58: 29–40. ———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: New York University Press. Nelkin, Dorothy, and Susan M. Lindee. 1995. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company. ———. 1998. Cloning in the Popular Imagination. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics 7 (2): 145–149. ———. 2001. Cloning in the Popular Imagination. In The Cloning Sourcebook, ed. Arlene Judith Klotzko, 83–93. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Newcomb, Horace M., and Paul M. Hirsch. 1983. Television as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 8 (3): 45–55. O’Connor, Alan. 2006. Raymond Williams. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. O’Riordan, Kate. 2008. Human Cloning in Film: Horror, Ambivalence, Hope. Science as Culture 17 (2): 145–162. ———. 2010. The Genome Incorporated: Constructing Biodigital Identity. London: Ashgate. ———. 2013. Biodigital Publics: Personal Genomes as Digital Media Artifacts. Science as Culture 22 (4): 516–539. ———. 2017. Unreal Objects: Digital Materialities, Technoscientific Projects and Political Realities. London: Digital Barricades/Pluto Press. Oren, Sasha, and Sharon Shahaf, eds. 2011. Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders. London and New York: Routledge. Ostherr, Kristen. 2013. Medical Visions: Producing the Patient Through Film, Television and Imaging Technologies. Oxford University Press.

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Parks, Lisa, and Shanti Kumar, eds. 2003. Planet TV: A Global Television Reader. New York: New York University Press. Pauwels, Luc. 2005. Visual Cultures of Science: Rethinking Representational Practices in Knowledge Building and Science Communication. Dartmouth College Press. Powell, Anna. 2015. Growing Your Own: Monsters from the Lab and Molecular Ethics in Posthumanist Film. In The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, ed. Michael Hauskeller, Thomas D. Philbeck, and Curtis D. Carbonell. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Rabinow, Paul. 2000. Introduction: A Vital Rationalist. In A Vital Rationalist: Selected Writings from George Canguilhem, ed. Francois Delaporte, 11–22. New York: Zone Books. Reagan, Leslie J., Nancy Tomes, and Paula A.  Treichler, eds. 2007. Medicine’s Moving Pictures: Medicine, Health, and Bodies in American Film and Television. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Richmond, Ray. 2010. The Minds Behind the Bodies. Hollywood Reporter Special Issue: CSI 100th, 200. Rose, Nikolas. 2001. The Politics of Life Itself. Theory, Culture & Society 18 (6): 1–30. ———. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Seale, Clive. 2003. Media and Health. Sage Publications. Sheldon, Rebekah. 2018. Trans-embodiment and the Biopolitics of Reproduction in Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 385–390. Shteir, Ann, and Bernard Lightman, eds. 2006. Figuring It Out: Science, Gender, and Visual Culture. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press. Smelik, Anneke, ed. 2010. The Scientific Imaginary in Visual Culture: Interfacing Science, Literature and the Humanities. Göttingen: V&R unipress. Smelik, Anneke M., and Nina Lykke, eds. 2008. Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology. Seattle: University of Washington Press. Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stacey, Jackie. 2003. She Is Not Herself: The Deviant Relations of Alien Resurrection. Screen 44 (3): 251–276. ———. 2004. Imitation of Life: The Politics of the New Genetics in Cinema. In Sings of Life: Cinema and Medicine, ed. Graeme Harper and Andrew Moor, 153–165. London and New York: Wallflower Press. ———. 2005. Masculinity, Masquerade, and Genetic Impersonation: Gattac’s Queer Visions. Signs 30 (3): 1851–1877. ———. 2008. Screening the Gene: Hollywood Cinema and the Genetic Imaginary. In Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersection of Media, Bioscience, and Technology, ed. Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke, 94–112. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

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———. 2010. The Cinematic Life of the Gene. Durham: Duke University Press. Tait, Sue. 2006. Autopic Vision and the Necrophilic Imaginary in CSI. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (1): 45–62. Taylor, Ella. 1989. Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wald, Priscilla, and Jay Clayton. 2007. Special Issue: Genomics in Literature, Visual Arts and Culture. Literature and Medicine 26 (1): vi–xvi. Weissmann, Elke. 2012. Transnational Television Drama: Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wheatley, Helen. 2005. Rooms Within Rooms: Upstairs Downstairs and the Studio Costume Drama of the 1970s. In ITV Cultures: Independent Television Over Fifty Years, ed. Catherine Johnson and Rob Turnock, 143–158. Maidenhead: Open University Press. ———. 2006. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Wilbanks, Rebecca. 2018. Orphan Black and Race: Omissions and a New Realism. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 395–400. Williams, Raymond. 1961. The Long Revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin. ———. 1974. Television, Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana. ———. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Television Programmes A Conception Story (TLC online, 2010–present). A Killer In Me (ITV, 2007). Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 2004–2009). The Cloning of Joanna May (ITV, 1992). CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012). CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013). Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002). Father Knows Best (NBC/CBS, 1954–1960). Finding your Roots (PBS, 2012–present). Friends (NBC, 1994–2004). Fringe (Fox, 2008–2013). Giuliana and Bill (Style Network/E!, 2009–2014). The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992). Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–1975). Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010). House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012). If … Cloning Could Cure Us (BBC, 2004). Inside the Human Body (BBC, 2011). Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–present).

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Kyle XY (ABC, 2006–2009). Life Story (Mick Jackson, BBC, 1987). Long Lost Family (ITV, 2011–present). The New Normal (NBC, 2012–2013). Newsnight (BBC, 1980–present). Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001). Oh Baby (Lifetime, 1998–2000). One Big Happy (NBC, 2015). Orphan Black (Space/CTV, 2013–2017). Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (BBC, 2012). ReGenesis (TMN, 2004–2008). Searching For… (OWN, 2011). Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC, 2004–present). The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–present).

Film Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993).

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PART I

Complexity

CHAPTER 2

Microscopic CGI: Imaging Molecular Worlds

This is the first of two chapters with a thematic focus on ‘complexity’. This concept describes certain formal elements of the television programmes I examine across the two chapters and is also a key characteristic of the emergent post-genomic structure of feeling. Whereas essentialist discourses on genetics emphasise simplicity and reduce DNA to a static and straightforward blueprint of life, the post-genomic redefinition of life itself shifts the focus onto the complex, uncertain and dynamic elements of the molecular world. In this section of the book, I will show that television’s own ‘complexity’ makes it a key site where such post-genomic perspectives have begun to be articulated. It is commonly argued that television is narratively complex due to its affinity to the serial narrative form (Geraghty 1981; Feuer 1984; Sconce 2004; Mittell 2015), and this will be the focus of the next chapter. But here I will instead focus on an example of visual complexity, namely, a particular televisual type of computer-­ generated imagery (CGI). If asked to come up with examples of computer-generated special effects in contemporary moving images, most people would probably mention visually extraordinary imagery such as gigantic spaceships passing distant planets, towering dinosaurs grazing prehistoric foliage, hordes of Orc warriors on sprawling battlefields or gravity-defying martial-arts fights. Of course, CGI is also widely used to depict and manipulate far more mundane subjects, objects and locations (Prince 2012), but it is usually © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_2

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the more obviously outlandish, but still visually credible, special effects that grab our attention. Particular value is usually ascribed to CGI effects that manage to balance ‘between the conceptually intelligible and the perceptually incredible’, and therefore offer us ‘experiences in which we do, and do not, believe our eyes, simultaneously’ (Tuck 2008, 250). Hollywood blockbuster movies typically achieve this by ‘going big’ and creating CGI spectacles that move ‘beyond the scale of everyday life’ (King 2003, 118). These include digitally created environments of exceptional scope and grandeur (Bukatman 1995), gravity-defying movement patterns and dynamic locations that create an increased sense of verticality (Whissel 2014, 21–58), giant creatures (Tuck 2008, 257–264) and indefinitely large crowds (Tuck 2008, 261, 267–269; Whissel 2014, 59–90). But the special effects I will discuss in this chapter do the opposite. Instead of accentuating the size of vast spaces, large characters or sprawling multitudes, they accentuate the smallness of objects and spaces that normally remain out of sight. These exceptional spectacles, created by ‘going small’, typically figure the inside of the human body or other invisible biological entities.1 I call this imagery ‘microscopic CGI’. It has been used to figure genetic science on television since the 1970s, but it has grown far more common in the twenty-first century. By visualising the invisible, this type of CGI successfully combines the conceptually intelligible and the perceptually incredible by making the miniature massive and figuring our bodies as hidden worlds that are both familiar and fantastic at the same time. As this chapter will show, these special effects articulate highly contradictory ideas about genetic science and the molecular world, often within the same short sequence. Take, for example, the first few minutes of Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (BBC, 2012). This is a one-­ hour-­ long science documentary that combines talking-head interviews with CGI animations of cells, viruses, DNA strings and mitochondria produced by the Canadian visual effects company Intelligent Creatures. It opens with a short montage of microphotography, microcinematography, electron microscope photography, X-ray cinematography and magnetic resonance images, ending with a series of quickly edited shots of a man bending down to look into a microscope, at which point a montage of microscopic CGI sequences commences. The voice-over that accompanies these shots features sound blurbs from two scientists who assert that we can now ‘burrow into’ and ‘see inside’ the living cell, something that used to be ‘unthinkable’. The images of assorted animated microscopic entities that swim across the screen are thus presented as ‘scientific’ representations

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that allow us to view and understand the innermost corners of our bodies. And the digital animation technologies that have created them are implicitly classified as a new type of scientific imaging technology, following in the footsteps of the microscope and the X-ray. This initial construction of the microscopic CGI as truthful illustrations of a new world now within reach of scientific control is, however, somewhat undermined by a scientist telling us that ‘the more we find out about the universe the simpler it seems, but the cell isn’t like that, the more we find out, the more complicated things get’. The molecular world is then compared to a battlefield where the human body is constantly under attack from aggressive viruses: ‘a four billion year old struggle that has changed the course of our evolution’. Although the documentary generally proclaims that the scientific community now understands the mechanism inside our cells, it also contains a number of significant moments where the scientists’ uncertainties shine through and the molecular world appears more complicated. And the images themselves contribute to these clashing narratives. Complicating the assertion that the cell is more complex than ‘the universe’, the animated sequences in Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell portray the molecular world as akin to outer space and unknown planets, inhabited by unidentified objects and alien invaders and illuminated by distant stars. In some shots, these biological spaces are rendered overtly technological, both through visual references to science fiction tropes and through the use of terms such as ‘power stations’, ‘turbines’ and ‘tiny robots’ to describe the molecular entities we encounter. The viewers are presented with a molecular universe that seems simultaneously biological and technological, recognisable and alien, organised and indeterminate, internal and external, simple and complex. I start the chapter by discussing the wider context of this special effect, identifying it as part of a broader tradition in science documentaries and procedural dramas to visualise invisible biological entities. I then present a brief history of the development of microscopic CGI across both television and cinema. Along the way, I propose that its prolific presence on television can be linked to the medium’s long-standing penchant for the close-up. The remainder of the chapter examines the impact microscopic CGI has had on television’s genetic imaginary. To begin with, I argue that it stages a process of geneticisation that renders a molecular framework of explanation more prominent. I then discuss the impact of the science documentary’s educational remit, as well as the television medium’s general adherence to the logic of ‘televisuality’ (Caldwell 1995), on the

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audiovisual form of microscopic CGI. I argue that this imagery is characterised by both pedagogic and spectacular tendencies, which result in contradictory aesthetic qualities that construct the molecular world as simultaneously straightforward and complex, familiar and alien, easily understandable and enigmatic, predictable and unpredictable, controllable and out of our control. By extension, microscopic CGI often promotes essentialist perspectives on genetics while also beginning to articulate the post-genomic structure of feeling.

Televising the Molecular World The drive to visualise the molecular world, and make the smallest building blocks of the human body available for optical scrutiny, is part of a wider ‘ideal of transparency’ (van Dijck 2005, 5–7) that has permeated Western culture since well before the development of modern scientific imaging technologies, a general belief that ‘the truth’ is hidden inside the human body, and that we need to penetrate the surface to fully understand it (Sturken and Cartwright 2001, 298). Beyond imaging production in scientific contexts, this investment has also saturated other visual practices. On television, the ideal of transparency has been particularly noticeable in documentary programmes focused on science, medicine and the human body, where the inside of the human body has been figured for a relatively long time using a range of different methods. Science and nature documentaries have visualised the hidden corners of the human body since the 1950s, and imagery of cells, chromosomes and molecules has, over time, become a generic component in the following subgenres: (1) documentaries about the origin of life and evolution, (2) documentaries about biology and the human body more generally and (3) documentaries specifically focused on genetics and biomedicine. Medico-­ scientific imagery has been particularly conspicuous in costly ‘landmark’ documentary series such as Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (BBC/PBS, 1980) and Inside the Human Body (BBC, 2011), and prestigious feature film-­ length programmes such as The Thread of Life (NBC, 1960) and Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell.2 But there are also plenty of examples from run-of-the-mill one-hour documentaries. These are typically aired as part of the long-running science documentary series Horizon (BBC, 1964–present) and Nova (PBS, 1974–present),3 but there are also examples of stand-alone programmes.4 Medico-scientific imagery has generally been less common in drama series, but there are some fiction genres that dramatise the ideal of trans-

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parency. One genre that has featured medico-scientific imagery since the 1950s is the crime procedural, particularly the kind focused on the work of police surgeons, medical examiners or forensic scientists.5 A number of scholarly studies of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015, henceforth abbreviated CSI) have argued that it is saturated by the ideal of transparency, in terms of both its narrative structure and visual style (Lury 2005, 47; Gever 2005, 450–454; Kruse 2010, 84; Kompare 2010, 15–20; Bull 2012, 55–62; Kirby 2013, 96), and the same thing can be said of many other forensic-centred crime dramas, including Craig Kennedy: Criminologist (Weiss Productions, 1952), The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976), Quincy M.E. (NBC, 1976–1983) and Silent Witness (BBC, 1996–present) (Bull 2015, 67).6 David Kirby (2013) has convincingly argued that this genre legitimises forensic science by presenting it as a visual crime-solving practice generally aimed at rendering the invisible visible. These shows use a range of ‘scientific visuals’, from digital animation to purple UV lights, that are alluring not only because they are visually spectacular, but also because they ‘display for audiences the hidden world that forensic scientists see when they examine a crime scene’ (Kirby 2013, 96). Medico-­ scientific imagery is also a generic element of hospital dramas, particularly programmes in the style of Medic (NBC, 1954–1956) or House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012, henceforth abbreviated as House), with a narrative focus on medical procedural.7 While the forensic crime dramas typically use scientific imagery to assert the investigators’ ability to locate and examine invisible evidence, medical procedurals have used medico-­ scientific imagery of the inside of the body to display the capacity of the doctors to identify and interpret symptoms, make an accurate diagnosis and eventually cure the patient. The way in which both genres tend to conflate the gaze of the scientist or medical doctor with the gaze of the television camera (and, in extension, that of the viewer) can on a basic level be understood as a dramatisation of the Foucauldian notion of the medical gaze (Foucault 2008 [1963], 152–182), but as I will argue later on, the visual focus on the molecular world has reconfigured this gaze in significant ways. Across science documentaries and procedural dramas, invisible biological units have been figured using a wide range of visualisation techniques. Both factual and fictional programmes have featured images produced in a scientific context with the help of technological tools developed to extend the reach of the human eye for medico-scientific purposes. These include X-ray diffraction images of DNA and the widespread ‘barcode imagery’ produced through gel electrophoresis (popularly known as

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‘DNA fingerprints’), but the most frequently featured scientific imagery is produced by microphotography, microcinematography and electron microscopes. Microscopic images have had a particular longevity on television. For example, the 1975 National Geographic documentary The Incredible Human Machine featured microscopic imagery of cleavage (the early stages of cell division in an embryo) when explaining genetic heritage,8 and its 2007 remake still used microcinematography (but this time of amoebas splitting and human sperms) to illustrate human reproduction. Similarly, in the 1970s, the forensic procedural Quincy M.E. used inserts of microscopic photographs in many episodes to display physical evidence examined by its investigator, as did the British crime drama McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998) 20 years later. In addition to images originally produced in a scientific context, both types of programmes also utilise other types of visualisation techniques. Different types of visual metaphors are common, like the expressionistically blurred live-action footage of a man dressed in white that The Great Sperm Race (Channel 4, 2009) uses to illustrate the process whereby the male and female chromosomes merge after conception or the way in which the title sequence of the procedural drama Identity (ITV, 2010) distorts wall-mounted screens of surveillance footage into abstract rows of coloured rectangles that emulate a DNA fingerprint (thus acknowledging the DNA test’s status as a new surveillance technology). Other recurrent visualisation techniques include footage of physical models, hand-drawn illustrations and hand-drawn animations. For example, the Science International (BBC, 1959) episodes ‘What is Life?’ and ‘The Last Scourge’ both featured a giant model cell on set, deemed problematically ‘spectacular’ in a contemporary review (Boon 2008, 224), and The Thread of Life similarly displayed an enormous model of the double-helix structure in its dark television studio. Furthermore, the first episode of Life on Earth (BBC, 1979) used a hand-animated sequence to depict ‘the chemical soup’ from which life first emerged and the process of genetic mutation leading to an ever-growing variety of species. There is a long history of combining live-action footage with hand-­ drawn animation in factual and medical films. Since the 1920s, cinematography and animation techniques have been understood as two innovative and creative visualisation techniques of equal value to the medico-scientific community (Ostherr 2012; Roe 2014, 178). Traditional animation techniques continued to be used to illustrate the molecular world in science documentaries well into the 2000s, often featured alongside

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footage produced by scientific imaging technologies. One representative example of this is the Horizon episode Is GM Safe? (BBC, 2000), which combines a pedagogical 2D animation sequence with DNA barcode imagery to explain how soy DNA can be manipulated to produce a better crop. However, during the early 2000s, digitally produced animation increasingly replaced hand-drawn animation, particularly as a key method for visualising atoms, molecules and cells. As I will outline in the next section, microscopic CGI has a much longer history on television, but it has grown far more prolific in the twenty-first century, and it is the impact of this development that I examine in this chapter.

The Rise of Microscopic CGI I use the term ‘microscopic CGI’ to refer to a range of special effects that use digital technology to create the illusion that the camera either enters the human body or is able to magnify entities otherwise invisible to the human eye. When mapping the different kinds of digital-based animation techniques being used in prime-time documentaries, Craig Hight (2008, 19) labels this type of imagery the ‘invasive surveillance mode’ of CGI. Describing it as ‘the use of CMI [computer-media imaging] and CGI to extend the range and penetration of the documentary lens, typically combining animation techniques with medical scanning imagery and forms of miniature and endoscopic cameras’ (19), Hight argues that it constitutes a form of ‘penetrative voyeurism’ (21) which ultimately has the effect of ‘[expanding] the scope of documentary representation’ (22).9 Writing about the uses of this special effect in science fiction films, Stacey Abbott (2006) similarly emphasises its tendency to penetrate the skin, stretching and extending the body ‘beyond its usual limits’. What Abbot describes is a particular kind of microscopic CGI that specifically creates the illusion of the camera entering, and then moving through, the human body. As Abbott’s study makes clear, this type of imagery has a varied history across both film and television.10 Following in the footsteps of the iconic opening titles of Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997), which features extreme close-up footage of falling fingernail clippings, hairs and dead skin fragments, over the last two decades, microscopic CGI has become a particularly popular choice for opening titles and credit sequences of films in which gene mutation or manipulation is a key narrative catalyst.11 For example, the opening titles of The Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003), X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006) and Prometheus (Ridley Scott,

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2012) all combine animated DNA strings and different types of cellular CGI: fluorescent green cells going through meiosis, cells containing the mutant ‘x-gene’ and multiple alien zygotes undergoing cleavage.12 But there are also examples of microscopic CGI sequences in other film genres. For example, Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) and The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014) both take the audiences on journeys thorough their main characters’ brains, swirling in-between an intricate web of neuron cells as they fire off electric signals and chemical particles. In 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2011), the camera travels inside the protagonist’s arm during an amputation scene, and The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011) uses a combination of time-lapse photography and microscopic CGI to dramatise deep time from the Big Bang to the point when an asteroid causes the extinction of the dinosaurs. Because I consider the uses of microscopic CGI across both factual and fictional television texts and specifically focus on its contribution to the genetic imaginary, I use a terminology that places more emphasis on its tendency towards magnification. By not primarily defining this effect as characterised by voyeuristic and penetrative elements, my definition of microscopic CGI also includes a slightly different form of imagery that more explicitly emulates microscopic images than the penetrating zooms and internal rollercoaster rides that Hight (2008) and Abbott (2006) have discussed. This second type of microscopic CGI typically consists of relatively static images that magnify miniscule objects and entities. These typically appear as a form of extreme close-up inserts, but I also consider animations displayed on screens within the diegesis. This second form of microscopic CGI is not unique to television; there are plenty of examples from cinema where characters study digitally created magnifications on computer screens. One example of this is Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011), which features recurring scenes of characters intently studying monitors displaying multicoloured CGI models of viral strains and molecular structures.13 However, both types of microscopic CGI have had a more long-­standing, prominent and influential presence on television. Hight (2008, 19) has suggested that the invasive surveillance mode of CGI ‘seems particularly suited to the televisual space’, partly because prime-time documentaries have already naturalised similar special effects (such as time-lapse photography, time-slice photography and motion-control technology) and partly due to the prominent use of ‘surveillance tools within investigative reporting’ on television and the ways in which the rise of reality TV contributes

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to ‘wider cultures of surveillance’. I would add that the television medium’s enduring penchant for extreme close-ups provides a more fundamental explanation as to why it has embraced microscopic effects to such an extent. As many television scholars have observed, the close-up is one of the most frequently used shots in television (Lang and Lang 1953; Sorlin 1998; Lury 2003), and it indicative that many early programmes were promptly discussed as analogous to the microscope in that through the use of frequent close-ups, they allowed the viewers to carefully scrutinise ‘the hidden small scale life’ (Jacobs 2000, 120–123). The close-up of the human face has received particular attention as one of the most prevalent visual tropes on television, but as Karen Lury rightly reminds us: ‘[different] degrees of the closeup shot are everywhere on television’ (Lury 2003, 102), displaying people, objects and events alike. Lury has argued that visual proximity is so widespread on television that it has become conventional and ‘almost mundane’ (102), particularly in comparison to cinema, where the extreme close-up remains relatively rare and thus appears more excessive. But she also points out that there are a number of strategies through which the television close-up is rendered spectacular and sensational, specifically mentioning the tendency to have the camera literally move inside the body (Lury 2003, 104–105). Microscopic CGI can, in other words, be understood as a continuation of the medium’s persistent impulse to magnify and draw near, which brings this tendency to new levels. In science documentaries, television microscopic CGI shots were first used in the 1970s. While it was a far less commonly used effect then, there are a number of interesting early examples of landmark science documentaries that experimented with new digital technologies to provide novel ways of visualising the molecular world. This is in line with television’s long history of revolutionising the visual representation of science (Boon 2008, 184). The BBC has played a key role in innovative uses of CGI in science documentaries more generally (Campbell 2016, 11), and in the development of microscopic CGI effects specifically. The educational efforts central to the public service remit of the BBC has meant that the broadcaster has had a long-standing commitment to producing science documentaries that feature experimental uses of new technologies (Boon 2008, 184–241). Science programming has, as Vincent Campbell (2016, 6) explains, ‘proved pivotal in the organisation’s attempt to position and establish itself, both in the context of successful commercial television from the mid-1950s onwards and in terms of seeking a global television status’.

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Two key landmark programmes in the development of microscopic CGI are the BBC-produced multi-episode special series Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973) and the transatlantic co-production Cosmos: A Personal Voyage. The first episode of Ascent of Man, titled ‘Generation upon generation’ (S01E11), featured a digitally produced 2D animation sequence illustrating James Watson and Francis Crick’s attempts at figuring out the structure of the DNA molecule. The second episode of Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, titled ‘One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue’ (S01E02), boasted not only the more-often discussed composite sequence of Carl Sagan walking across a cosmological calendar (Campbell 2016, 16), but also two different digital 3D animations of the double-helix structure. Another milestone moment in the history of microscopic CGI is The Human Body (BBC/TLC, 1998), which featured a wide range of anatomy-centred digital animations, many of which focused on the molecular world. When this series first aired on BBC, it attracted 6.3 million viewers and an audience share of 38%. It was subsequently licensed to over 50 countries, adapted into the 15/70 film format to be distributed to IMAX cinemas worldwide and won multiple awards (BBC Press Release 2002). In a short article on the prevalence of the extreme close-up on television, Karen Lury (2003, 104) mentions The Human Body as a key example of a type of documentary aesthetics that would subsequently become even more common, describing the programme as bringing its viewers ‘very close, perhaps too close for comfort, crowded into the most intimate and delicate places of the body’. The history of microscopic CGI in fictional television programmes is shorter: it was pioneered by CSI in 2000. Even so, it is hard to overstate the importance of CSI’s use of microscopic CGI; the show has played a crucial role in popularising this effect across both television and film. From very early on, CSI used visual magnification as a conscious and central strategy to make it appear innovative and stand out in the increasingly crowded television landscape. This has been acknowledged by the series’ executive producer Carol Mendelsohn, who, in an interview celebrating the programme’s 100th episode, stated: ‘One of the things we did from the start that was unique was that we didn’t go big, we went small. We took a fibre and made it look like a redwood forest’ (Richmond 2004). The most familiar example of this wider visual tendency of magnification in CSI is the snap-zoom effect, initially ‘produced via a mixture of prosthetics, slow-motion capture photography and CGI’ (Lury 2005, 53). It quickly became widely known as the ‘CSI shot’, and scholarly writing has

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typically described it as depicting the interior of the dead body (Flaherty 2004, 15; Lury 2005, 53; Tait 2006, 54; Jermyn 2007, 80; Weissmann and Boyle 2007, 94).14 The very first example of this type of shot, in ‘Pilot’ (S01E01), shows the camera travelling into a corpse via a bullet wound, but it is by no means limited to only figuring the dead body. For example, the two following snap zooms in ‘Pilot’ magnify a hair follicle and a broken-off nail. The microscopic quality of most CSI shots is also emphasised by the fact that many of them share stylistic similarities with microphotographs. There are plenty of examples where CSI shots are diegetically motivated by characters using microscopes, such as in ‘BangBang’ (S06E23), where CGI is used to create the illusion that the camera zooms into a drop of blood, displaying red molecules, which is then followed by a shot of the lead forensic scientist Gil Grissom (William Petersen) looking into a microscope, thus anchoring this CSI shot as a microscopic point-of-view shot. CSI was one of the most successful fictional television programmes worldwide throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century. After premiering on US television on 6 October 2000, it went on to air for 15 seasons. Throughout its first ten seasons, it gained and retained a domestic audience that, in relation to current standards, was exceptionally large and heterogeneous. Nielsen Media Research listed the first season as having 17.8  million US viewers. The ratings peaked during Seasons 2–7, with between 20.34 and 26.26 million viewers. In 2002–2003, it was the most watched show in the USA, a title that had never before been held by a crime drama. Furthermore, CSI promptly received much interest from international broadcasters when first previewed at Marché International des Programmes de Communication (MIPCOM), the annual TV trade show in Cannes (Guider 2000), and in 2010, CBS’s website stated that the CSI franchise had been licensed to over 200 national markets globally (CBS Corporation Website 2010). Capitalising on the Las Vegas-set show’s success, CBS quickly created two spin-offs, CSI: Miami and CSI: NY, which also featured plenty of the signature CSI shots. The franchise served as a source of inspiration not only to numerous forensic crime dramas, but to other genres too. No doubt keen to produce their own global hit, Fox bought a concept for a show that was pitched by screenwriter and producer Paul Attanasio as a ‘CSI kind of idea’, namely, ‘a crime/police procedural, but instead of bad guys, the germs were the suspects’ (Frum 2006). The result was House, which also incorporated microscopic CGI as a key aesthetic trope and became a global hit show in its own right.15

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While it was science documentaries that initially pioneered the use of microscopic CGI on television, it is interesting to note that the influence has been mutual between factual and drama programming. The CSI franchise and House did, no doubt, draw from science documentaries to establish a distinctive medico-scientific visual style that asserted their wider investment in, respectively, scientific crime-solving methods and medical diagnostics and treatment. Subsequently, they have also served as an important source of inspiration for a wide range of factual programmes (not least the many forensic-focused true crime documentaries that have subsequently thrived on television).16 Having presented this brief historical outline of the rise of microscopic CGI, I will now move on to analyse in more detail the specific uses of this special effect across CSI, House and a number of science documentaries. Asking how microscopic CGI contributes to the televisual genetic imaginary, I am following Kristen Whissel’s advice ‘that it is important to consider the signifying power of digital visual effects’ (Whissel 2014, 4). In an attempt to move beyond the traditional focus on the purely affective impacts of digital effects, Whissel has argued that ‘many awe-inspiring, spectacular visual effects articulate a range of complex concepts and thematic concerns that are central both to the narratives of the films in which they appear and to the broader historical contexts in which the films were produced and exhibited’ (4). The same is, of course, also true for special effects on television.

Geneticisation Through the growing pervasiveness of microscopic CGI, television is on a very basic level engaging with, and contributing to, the wider cultural processes of molecularisation (Rose 2007, 5, 11–15) and geneticisation (Franklin 2000, 189) of life itself. Since the discovery of the double helix in the middle of the twentieth century, knowledge about ‘life itself’ has increasingly been imagined as hiding at the level of molecules and genes, waiting to be decoded by new scientific practices and technologies. On television, CGI has—with increasing frequency—been presented as a kind of scientific imaging technology that, alongside other scientific innovations, is providing us with new and ever-growing insight into the genetic building blocks of life.17 Since they first started being used in television production, digital animation techniques have been a particularly popular choice for illustrating

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genes, DNA strings and chromosomes, as well as various properties, processes and practices encompassed under the umbrella of genetics. Consider, for example, a couple of the earliest examples of CGI in television science documentaries. The Ascent of Man uses a number of different visualisation techniques to display miniscule entities from the human body (including numerous microcinematographic sequences of eggs, sperms and cells, as well as microscopic photographs of chromosomes), but digital animation is only used to illustrate Watson and Crick’s model of the molecular structure of DNA. Similarly, Cosmos: A Personal Voyage features a sequence where CGI is edited together with several other types of footage to reveal increasingly remote biological spaces and entities. The scene in question takes the television viewers on ‘a journey into the nucleus of the cell’ through a composite sequence starting with live-action footage of Carl Sagan piercing his finger with a rose thorn, shown in successively more extreme close-ups. Once we ‘enter’ his body, a series of microcinematographic shots display broken blood vessels, then to be replaced by electron microscope imagery of a white blood cell and, subsequently, a hand-drawn 2D animation sequence of the inside of that cell. Finally, a digital 3D animation is used to illustrate the smallest entity included in the sequence: a string of DNA. Sequences such as these have helped establish the idea that CGI is a particularly suitable technique for illustrating DNA, constructing it as a ground-breaking (scientific) imaging technology able to extend our gaze beyond the reach of other modes of representation. Compared with other uses of CGI in science documentaries, this specific type of digital animation has met with surprisingly little suspicion, perhaps because they typically portray entities and processes that cannot be represented though traditional photographic technologies.18 Since the 1970s, genetics-focused microscopic CGI sequences have grown increasingly lengthy and more common, appearing in a wider range of television material. This has, not surprisingly, resulted in a greater visual and narrative emphasis on genetics. Television’s contribution to the cultural process of geneticisation is even more clearly observable across the history of the forensic crime drama. A comparison of forensic-centred procedurals from different periods quickly establishes that the size of physical evidence has gradually been figured as increasingly small. There is a long history of visual magnification within the genre: even the earliest programmes from the 1950s, like Craig Kennedy: Criminologist, regularly inserted extreme close-ups to depict small pieces of evidence. These shots were sometimes motivated by the

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diegetic use of magnifying glasses, but the pieces of evidence were typically objects detectable by the human eye, such as fragments of fabric, grains of sand or wads of hair. Even so, the diegetic use of (albeit low-tech) visual aids, alongside the cinematographic use of extreme close-ups, emphasised the narrative importance, as well as the physical smallness, of these objects, placing them under extra scrutiny.19 When forensic crime dramas grew in popularity during the 1960s, particularly in the UK where the forensic scientist was presented as a progressive hero of the technocratic revolution, the types of evidence still remained the same (small, but visually detectable, objects like strands, grains, hairs, nails or bone fragments), but the technology used to examine these changed. Silent Evidence, Thorndyke and The Expert all featured microphotographic inserts, which were diegetically anchored in light microscopes used by the investigators. These microscopic images not only displayed the objects more clearly, but the increased magnification resulted in further heightening the sense of their relative size, making them seem even smaller by conversely appearing even larger. Microphotographic inserts and diegetic uses of light microscopes continued to feature in the 1970s procedurals, and with more frequency than before. But Quincy M.E., as well the later seasons of The Expert, also staged an implicit jump in scale by no longer only magnifying evidence already visible to the human eye, but also featuring a few microscopic images of invisible biological entities such as bacteria and viruses. This imagery would probably have originated from electron microscopes, but the characters on-screen do not usually explain this.20 This significant jump in scale was not diegetically acknowledged until the 1990s, when programmes like McCallum and Silent Witness repeatedly showed their investigators using the latest electron microscopes and provided complementary point-of-view shots in the form of microscopic imagery of evidence completely undetectable to the human eye, such as eggs, sperm, cells and bacteria. Since the turn of the millennium, the CSI franchise and House have gone even further by regularly providing visual illustrations of strings of DNA, viruses, molecules and even atoms in the form of microscopic CGI. This brief genre history of inserts displaying physical evidence shows how the pieces of evidence have grown progressively smaller, while they have simultaneously been increasingly magnified, moving towards a genetic framework of explanation. The gradual extension of this televisual ‘forensic gaze’ can be seen as parallel to, and interlinked with, the wider cultural development which Nikolas Rose (2007) has described as a move

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from the traditional medical gaze towards the new molecular gaze. The medical gaze, described by Foucault as dominating the nineteenth century, imagined the body as a systematic whole and searched for hidden answers on the ‘molar level’ of organs, tissues and flows of blood (Foucault 2008 [1963]; Rose 2007, 11–12). Since the mid-twentieth century, this framework of explanation has gradually been supplemented by a new ‘molecular gaze’ that specifically visualises the secrets of life as hidden at a different level: the molecular. There is another key way in which the use of microscopic CGI in procedural dramas such as CSI and House engenders a process of molecularisation. While microscopic imagery in forensic crime dramas up until the 2000s adhered to the aesthetic conventions of photographs produced by (mainly light) microscopes, the use of CGI to generate microscopic inserts has generally freed the televisual apparatus from the constraint of ‘real life’ scientific imaging technologies. The computer-generated images have resulted in a new freedom to imagine the molecular world in a number of novel ways, not always adopting the aesthetic conventions of imagery produced in a scientific context. This has resulted in a curious reduction in size differential: the imaginary processes of magnification make most objects appear similarly minuscule, no matter if they are actually detectable by the human eye, a magnifying glass, a light microscope or an electron microscope. In consequence, even microscopic CGI that does not depict genes and molecules per se still contributes to the programmes’ wider assertion that knowledge about life itself is located on levels of scale increasingly removed from human sight. While earlier forensic crime dramas articulated a traditional biological framework of knowledge by portraying its investigators as chiefly finding answers on the molar level of organs and tissues, the CSI franchise and House embrace genetic frameworks of explanation by promoting a molecular gaze that visualises significant information as hidden in evidence existing at a completely different level of size. This effect becomes particularly apparent in CSI’s seventh season, where an extended narrative arc self-reflexively dramatises this general visual tendency when staging an investigation into the so-called miniature killer. When dealing with a serial killer who has a habit of leaving behind perfect miniatures of each crime scene, the criminalists are forced to relocate their investigation to these microscopic worlds. This process alters their understanding of the original crime scenes, which mirrors the way in which the televisual process of magnification alters the perceived materiality of a wide range of objects, conversely pushing them all towards

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the lower end of the scale. As a result, a wide range of physical evidence is enveloped within the same explanatory framework, namely, that of molecular biology and genetics. The emergence of microscopic CGI generally works in tandem with the crime genre’s wider tendency to use DNA evidence as a kind of deus ex machina. As CSI trace technician David Hodges (Wallace Langham) mournfully points out in the episode ‘Still Life’ (S06E10): ‘DNA gets all of the glory these days.’ Drawing on a quantitative analysis of 51 randomly picked episodes from the first six seasons of CSI, Barbara Ley, Nathalie Jankowski and Paul R. Brewer (2010, 10) have concluded that 39% of the episodes feature cases where DNA evidence is used to help solve the crime. Throughout its 15 seasons, CSI evokes ideas about DNA that casts it as a type of super-molecule, able to survive long after it has been isolated from an living organism, as harbouring the true identity of individuals, as able to determine future potential, as providing the bases of social relationships and as a basis for locating and tracing individuals in time and space. Furthermore, this narrative reliance on DNA evidence is not unique to CSI. DNA tests have figured in many different types of crime drama since the early 1990s, in which they are generally portrayed as the ultimate proof that forces the most stubborn perpetrator to confess and swiftly remove any sense of confusion and doubt at the end of an episode. With the re-emergence of forensic-centred programmes in the late 1990s and early 2000s across both UK and US television, scientific certainty became a primary convention for police procedurals more generally (Jermyn 2007; Kruse 2010; Bull 2012; Kirby 2013). When asserting this point in his article on recent forensic crime dramas, David Kirby (2013, 101) quotes Doug Lyle, a crime writer and forensic advisor for scriptwriters, who claims that ‘[real] life forensic science has many uncertainties, as does science in general. But, in fiction writing for crime stories you do not want ambiguity. The audience wants your guy to get the answer and they want it nailed down in 42 minutes of screen time’. DNA evidence has become a quick-fix narrative tool for achieving such a sense of certainty, drawing on a determinist understanding of genetics to construct traces of DNA as simple truth: it is shown to provide reliable, matter-of-fact and unambiguous facts about how a crime is committed and who did it (Ley et al. 2010; Kruse 2010). The use of microscopic CGI in both the science documentaries and procedurals typically identifies the most significant scientific knowledge as residing at the level of cells, genes and molecules. In addition to augmenting

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a general process of geneticisation, there are crucial ways in which microscopic CGI has contributed essentialist and determinist perspectives to the genetic imaginary. In the next section, I will discuss how the educational drive inherent in many examples of microscopic CGI helps construct the molecular world as easily understandable, predictable and within our control.

Clarity and Control Since its invention, microscopic CGI has often been used to generate pedagogical illustrations that aid the television viewers in understanding abstract and complex scientific theories. This is perhaps of little surprise in the context of science documentaries. As Annabelle Honess Roe (2014) puts it, a wide range of factual programmes and films tend to use animation as ‘a communicative aid to clarify, explain, illustrate and emphasise’ (179), and a strong educational drive is perhaps particularly expected of science documentaries produced for public service channels such as the BBC and PBS. But such didactic uses of microscopic CGI are also common in the CSI franchise and House, in spite of their fictional format and more commercial impetus. Across the documentary and drama programmes, microscopic sequences are often accompanied by a voice-over narration that guides the viewers’ gaze (directing them to pay attention to a particular part of the image) and helps them make sense of what they are seeing. In the CSI franchise and House, this type of didactic animation is usually inserted in scenes where the criminalists or doctors gather to discuss different theories about a crime or a disease. For example, in the House episode ‘Occam’s Razor’ (S01E03), shots of the doctors discussing the results of a recent blood test are intercut with footage of the patient having a negative reaction to the antibiotics he is receiving intravenously, which includes an animation of ‘the camera’ travelling along one of the patient’s veins, surrounded by swirling blood cells. The sound editing superimposes the dialogue between the doctors across the parallel scenes so that the doctors’ verbal conclusion that ‘his kidneys are shutting down’ accompanies animated images of the blood cells suddenly being refused entry into the kidney. In this case, as in many other examples from both types of programmes, verbal exposition is crucial for rendering the imagery intelligible. In this scene from House, there is no clear visual information telling us that this blood vessel leads to the kidney and few of us (if

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anyone) know what it ‘actually’ looks like when blood cells are denied access to a kidney. Furthermore, the computer-generated footage is often carefully designed to further elucidate the verbal information that accompanies it. This becomes particularly apparent in a case such as Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001), which features animation sequences that diverge from the aesthetics of other, more conventional, scientific imaging technologies in particularly noticeable ways. For example, in a scene that illustrates the process of meiosis (a specialised type of cell division that reduces the chromosome number to half in eggs and sperms), the computer-­ animated effects deviate from the ‘photorealism’ of other microscopic CGI sequences in order to further underline and simplify the information provided by John Lithgow’s voice-over: John Lithgow: In almost every cell of your body you have thirty thousand or more different genes, spread out on very long strands of DNA called chromosomes. Most cells have two versions of every gene on a total of 46 chromosomes. Exactly half of those, 23, came from your mom, and 23 came from your dad.21

During this verbal exposition, the ‘camera’ zooms in on a cell depicted as merely consisting of two transparent membranes, in order to highlight that the core contains 46 chromosomes, represented by red and blue strings (23 each). In order to further drive home the point that the chromosomes are made up of genetic material of different ancestry, the gendered colour coding of the red and blue is emphasised by the way the red and blue strings ‘light up’ when Lithgow mentions the respective words of ‘mom’ and ‘dad’. This is one example of how didactic uses of microscopic CGI often follow the aesthetic traditions of hand-drawn animation techniques traditionally used in science communication to depict and explain cellular biology, molecular science and genetics to the general public. Hand-drawn animation has a long history of being used for pedagogic effect because it holds the potential to convey visual information in a clearer and simpler way than photographic images (Ostherr 2002, 2012, 2013). The Eastman Medical Films that Kirsten Ostherr (2012, 370–371) has analysed are a telling example of how, at least in the context of educational science films, live-action photography of the human body often could be ‘faulted for simultaneously showing too much detail to be pedagogically useful and

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too little detail to transcend the limits of the bodily surfaces that the surgeon was expected to see through’. Animation techniques could be used to rectify this problem by honing in on specific details while simultaneously stripping away the visual barriers between the human eye and the inner corners of the body. Just as in the animation sequences in The Eastman Medical Films, many of the microscopic CGI sequences on television, from the 1970s up to the present day, have been used to reduce visual complexity in order to convey scientific information in the form of simple, understandable facts. More ‘realistic’ forms of microscopic CGI have also been characterised by similarly ‘simplifying’ tendencies. What counts as ‘realism’ here is a complicated issue, since these images typically depict entities and processes that the human eye cannot see, and therefore lack a visible referential. In many cases, a sense of realism is achieved by drawing on the aesthetic ­conventions of other types of scientific imaging technologies, but it is important to remember that these generate representations of the molecular world that are dependent on the technology and process used to create them. Scientific imaging technologies have themselves been created to produce easily interpretable images, and this shows how some of the aesthetic traditions that microscopic CGI draws on were already characterised by a pedagogical drive. This is particularly true for digital animation that attempts to achieve a sense of photorealism by mimicking the aesthetic traditions associated with microphotography or microcinematography. For example, the CSI episodes ‘Little Murder’ (S03E04) and ‘Swap Meet’ (S05E05) feature animated sequences of magnified hairs, skin cells and unicellular algae where the edges of the screen are masked to resemble the rounded lenses of a light microscope. In ‘Little Murder’, the image is also momentarily blurred to imitate the effect of a lens being pulled into focus. Both effects can be used to direct the gaze of the viewers, guiding their attention to a particular part of a wider image. Another way to emulate ‘actual’ microscopic images is to reduce the depth of field and produce a more distinct sense of flatness, which is a visual characteristic closely associated with the traditional microscopic apparatus. By doing so, many programmes inadvertently incorporate a didactic ambition that has been an integral part of this technology since its inception. The reduced depth of field that characterises microscopic images is a consciously constructed aesthetic form, chosen to manage the dynamic qualities of the image (Cartwright 1995, 84–90). A flatter image, it was thought, would help avoid confusion and achieve a greater sense of scientific lucidity. Hence, by

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featuring microscopic animations that adopt such visual characteristics, the television programmes essentially reproduce the need for order, simplicity, particularity and clarity that traditionally govern the microscopic apparatus. By extension, this pedagogical drive often results in visualisation of cells, genes and molecules that imbues the microscopic world with a sense of transparency and certainty. Across the history of microscopic CGI, both factual and drama programmes have strived to produce lucid imagery that can convey scientific ideas in concise and conclusive ways, frequently producing the type of essentialist and determinist ‘gene talk’ that Nelkin and Lindee (1995) have written extensively about. The pedagogical drive stages a molecular gaze that constructs the gene as embodying a reassuring promise of ‘certainty, order, predictability and control’ (Nelkin and Lindee 1995, 194). This essentialist framework dominated the genetic imaginary of the second half of the twentieth century, but it also remains prominent in more recent programmes. With the aid of CGI, the gene has continued to be figured as a blueprint of life itself that harbours a number of firm facts about the past, present and future of our bodies and identities, which can be easily understood once the relevant part of the gene is identified and decoded. For example, in The Gene Code (BBC, 2011), CGI is used to create a literal illustration of the idea that our ability to decode the genome has provided us with a more in-depth understanding of our ancestry, and that this gives us more control over life itself. At regular intervals throughout the first episode, the programme’s expert presenter, geneticist Dr Adam Rutherford, is depicted as intently looking at the palm of his hand, above which an animated double- helix structure, or a cluster of chromosomes, floats—visual metaphors conveying the essentialist idea that our genes (and the secrets they hide) are both in our sight and within our power. However, far from all examples of microscopic CGI are characterised by these simplifying and didactic characteristics. There are also plenty of computer-­ generated animations that elude any sense of certainty and order, instead constructing the molecular world as a dynamically complex place. The articulation of such emergent post-genomic sensibilities is, I will argue, at least partly the result of the logic of televisuality (Caldwell 1995)—the need to continuously produce stylistically innovative imagery to attract the attention of the television viewer in a highly competitive media landscape. In the following section, I will draw on this notion of televisuality to explore in more detail why many microscopic animations prioritise spectacle over education.

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Scientific Spectacle House and the CSI franchise feature plenty of microscopic imagery that is inserted without clear visual cues or verbal explanations, taking on a role that is decidedly different from pedagogical illustrations. Microscopic CGI in House can be divided into two distinct categories: (1) diagnostic inserts that visualise and clarify the doctor’s theories or conclusions and (2) symptomatic inserts that appear spontaneously, without explanation, and signal the still unknown disease raging in the patient’s body. Rather than aiming to convey scientific facts to the viewers, the symptomatic inserts figure the inner body as a mysterious and chaotic place that—at least for the moment—remains unknown and out of control. Similarly, it would be reductive to describe all CSI shots as only functioning as visual counterparts to verbal exposition. The microscopic CGI used in the CSI franchise is rarely ‘necessary’, in terms of being essential for the audience to understand a piece of information. Its primary function is rather to provide visual interest to what would otherwise be rather technical and dialogue-heavy narratives. It is illustrative that Josh Berman, a writer and producer on CSI and Bones, has argued that television writers are more proficient (than cinema scriptwriters, presumably) in ‘writing visually’ and that ‘interesting visuals’ provide the key to the CSI franchise’s success: ‘I think that is something Carol Medelsohn, the showrunner, brought to CSI—was how to write visually. To start every scene with what makes it most interesting visually, and all the close ups and zooms we do in that show’ (Kirby 2013, 95). These comments inadvertently highlight the central role that the magnifying snap zooms in CSI play in the producers’ overarching strategy to catch the viewer’s attention through innovative visual spectacle. Microscopic CGI sequences also function as visual wonders intended to entertain and excite in numerous science documentaries. Many factual programmes feature recurring montage sequences that edit together a wide range of scientific imagery—including microscopic CGI—in ways that present them as visual spectacles that should be enjoyed rather than understood. These montages are typically accompanied by either bombastic music or a voice-over that encourages the viewers to simply marvel at the images as such—admiring their aesthetic splendour or the technologically savvy nature of their production—thus underlining their status as entertainment, rather than factual illustration. Helen Wheatley (2016, 164) has argued that the lack of guiding narration in the opening montages of documentaries such as Body Story (Channel 4, 1998), The Human

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Body, Miracles in the Womb (Channel 4, 2007) and Inside the Human Body results in a figuration of the body that ‘initially disorientate[s] and disturb[s]’, presenting it ‘as a foreign terrain, a pink, pulsating, squelching alien landscape shown from a series of different angles and in different ways’. This is a generic trope that pre-dates the emergence of CGI effects, and it features in many science documentaries (no matter if they include animation sequences or not). Tellingly, the 1975 version of the National Geographic documentary The Incredible Human Machine and its 2007 remake both start with an introductory montage during which a voice-­ over promises viewers a ‘fantastic voyage’ featuring the ‘miracles’ of the human body. Both use a range of scientifically produced imagery, including microcinematography and endoscopic films, to give the viewers a taste of the exciting spectacles that will follow, but the later version also features a number of microscopic 3D animations. Wheatley’s analysis helps elucidate that microscopic CGI is simply one of many different types of scientific footage that has the potential to construct the human body as a spectacularly strange place. Innovation clearly plays a key role in creating this sense of alienation towards the biological spaces portrayed. In the 1975 version of The Incredible Human Machine, it was the novelty of electron microscope imagery and endoscopic films that resulted in a similar figuration of the body as a mysterious landscape within. While the accompanying voice-over initially acknowledges the sense of strangeness these images might inspire, it also asserts that the new ability to visualise these unknown spaces holds a promise of eventual certainty and control: ‘Of all the exotic places on our planet, none is more wondrous, more awesome than a vast and beautiful world that until recently lay dark and unseen. Just like a child haltingly explores the world above, we have begun to explore [it]’. There are, however, also plenty of microscopic CGI sequences accompanied by voice-overs that simply invite the viewers to marvel at the peculiar nature of the microscopic universe inside us all, highlighting its ‘fantastic’ and ‘spectacular’ qualities. Writing about sequences in The Human Body where ‘the camera appears to go literally inside the body’, Karen Lury has argued that the ‘kinetic’ qualities of this type of CGI push it beyond the remit of education: Blood or air at times seemingly rushes towards the camera lens, and the effect of being inside and up close is further supported by sound effects of air rushing past or through the warm watery sounds of the blood being pumped around the body. In one sense the images and sounds are justified

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by the voiceover which explains, for example, how many litres of air can be expelled at any one time, or how many heartbeats occur per day. More than this, however, is clearly occurring. The images and sounds are literally sensational, unexplainable, even revolting; this seems to be an obvious attempt by the programme-makers to stimulate a physical, sensual response. (Lury 2003, 104)

Lury’s proposition that the affective qualities that characterise many microscopic 3D sequences expand their function beyond mere science communication has been further supported by Alexia Smit’s (2013) ­writing on what she describes as a more general move towards ‘tele-affectivity’ on television in the 2000s. Smit has identified a ‘growing breed of visceral television programmes [that] foreground the capacity of their special effects to appeal to the “gut” responses of viewers’ (92–93). More specifically, Smit argues that the explicit and invasive depiction of the body in science documentaries such as Inside the Living Body and Inside the Human Body has been produced with the same aim as the microscopic snap-zoom effects in the CSI franchise and House—to attract and retain the viewers’ attention by eliciting sensorial responses. Smit draws on John T. Caldwell’s concept of ‘televisuality’, which describes a wider tendency in contemporary television to ‘flaunt and display style’ as a response to the increased competition that network shows have faced from cable and other distribution channels since the 1980s (Caldwell 1995, 5). While Smit aims to explain the recent increase in a specific type of affective imagery, Caldwell’s more general model of televisuality can be used to explain why many different types of scientific imagery on television are primarily visual attractions rather than educational tools, including footage that fails to elicit the kind of affective response described by Smit (2013) and Lury (2003). It is worth pointing out that while Caldwell contended that television has become more stylistically exhibitionist since the late 1980s, scholarship by Mimi White and Helen Wheatley has emphasised the medium’s ‘abiding interest in visual spectacle for its own sake’ (White 2004, 85) and demonstrated its enduring fondness for programmes emphasising visual pleasure (Wheatley 2011, 238–239; Wheatley 2016). In Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure (2016), Wheatley studies the history of what she calls the ‘how the body works’ documentary on UK television, starting with the landmark 1958 series How Your Body Works (BBC), which offered up microcinematography, X-ray films and other

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body imaging techniques as spectacular illustrations of the body as ‘a mysterious place’ (162). She also points out that throughout the 1960s, both the BBC and ITV frequently scheduled programmes about the human body in the weekend factual entertainment slots. Programmes such as The Wonder of Man (ATV, 1960), Science on Saturday: Human Biology (BBC, 1961), The Science of Man (BBC, 1963–1965) and Your Living Body (ATV, 1969) were thus firmly positioned as ‘family entertainment […] programming at the centre of a public service remit to inform, educate and entertain’ (163). Looking across the history of the science documentary, it quickly becomes apparent that producers have always sought new spectacular imagery, and the incorporation of novel scientific imaging technologies provided one way to do this. The 1975 version of The Incredible Human Machine, for example, encouraged its viewers to marvel at the sight of images produced by electron microscopes, thermal vision cameras and endoscopes, and in 1979, Life on Earth rendered microcinematographic footage newly spectacular by displaying it in a range of bright and vivid colours. As these examples suggest, novelty is central to the logic of television style. As Caldwell notes, television producers strive to retain the viewers’ attention by constantly ‘[reinventing] the stylistic wheel’ (Caldwell 1995, 5). Crucially, it is not just that producers aim to create easily distinguishable visual styles, but that the medium favours perpetual visual innovation in more general terms. And while this tendency evidently goes back further than the 1980s, Caldwell’s argument that this strategy has become more important as the television landscape has grown more competitive remains convincing. In this era of heightened competition, digital technology has also become an important tool for creating new types of visual spectacle. As I have suggested, the scientific community has long been a source for providing television with novel imagery, but CGI has made it easier to produce perpetually innovative imagery that still retains scientific status. The unparalleled malleability of digital imagery is key here. While traditional microscopic iconography is a recurrent reference point for CGI across both science documentaries and procedurals, the programmes’ scientific televisuality does not adhere to one static formula that continuously repeats the same imagery. Instead, these programmes continuously stage aesthetic transformations that offer new imaginative visualisations over time, sometimes even changing from episode to episode. Hence, even when the digital technology is no longer understood as novel in itself, it is versatile enough to keep producing fresh imagery for visual thrills.

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I would suggest one important amendment to Caldwell’s understanding of televisuality, namely, his assertion that visually excessive special effects and aesthetically novel images generally ‘resist analysis as content’ because they are intended to attract audiences on their own terms (Caldwell 1995, 5). No matter the initial incentive for the stylistic reinvention staged by the programmes under consideration in this chapter, their use of microscopic CGI has a significant impact on the genetic imaginary. In an insightful discussion on the animated journey through the protagonist’s brain in Fight Club’s opening sequence, Christopher Kelty and Hannah Landecker (2004, 32) point out that such spectacular figurations of the cellular world are really neither magnifications nor illustrations, but ‘a complete de novo construction of an image “grown” from an analytic theory of [cellularity and time]’. This is a crucial reminder that microscopic CGI animation is used to illustrate theoretical ideas about biological entities and processes, rather than to represent biological objects per se. Furthermore, I suggest that different characteristics of microscopic CGI articulate different theories about the molecular world, sometimes simultaneously. In the next section, I argue that the televisual drive to produce innovative images has resulted in a gradual articulation of a post-­ genomic structure of feeling that increasingly casts the molecular world as complex and uncertain—ideas that have been emerging alongside the more dominant essentialism of the didactic aesthetics described earlier.

Visual Complexity Throughout the history of microscopic CGI, the televisual impetus for ever-changing visual spectacle has increasingly been competing with the simplifying tendencies of the educational drive described earlier. Even sequences that are accompanied by a didactically reductive voice-over narration frequently embrace a dynamic visual style that conversely produces an enhanced sense of spatial and temporal complexity. The spectacular qualities of the imagery can often inadvertently undermine the determinist ideas articulated by the narrator. In order to make them appear more visually spectacular, many microscopic animation sequences accentuate the layers within the image, which creates a more acute sense of depth of field. Atoms, blood cells, viruses and DNA strings are, for example, often portrayed in large quantities, seen floating across each other in what appear as spacious cavities. In addition to featuring multiple layered objects within the image, techniques of colour, lighting and focus are used to expand the

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spatial impression of both width and depth. The entities in the foreground are often brightly lit in contrast to the background, which not only emphasises the layered nature of the image further, but also inadvertently portrays the body as having dark hidden corners. Things are left out of sight: there are still unknown areas the medico-scientific gaze cannot reach. Earlier I argued that digital attempts to create a sense of photorealism can have a reductive effect, but conversely, mimicking the photographic lens can equally render the imagery more dynamic. Take, for example, microscopic CGI that emulates the blurry look of shallow focus or the process of rack focusing. While techniques such as these can be used to direct the viewer’s attention to a certain part of the image (and therefore reduce its visual complexity), they can also inadvertently draw our attention to the part of the image that remains blurry, highlighting the potential lack of visual clarity. Another way to create a heightened sense of dynamic spatiality is through movement—both the movement of on-screen objects or entities and the ‘camera’ itself. Particularly spectacular examples of microscopic CGI often include moving elements that travel past the ‘camera’ before disappearing into the distance. One recurring example of this is footage of a flock of sperm seen swimming rapidly through vast spaces within the female reproductive system in hunt for an egg to fertilise. As they rush past the ‘camera’, it typically pans rapidly to keep the sperm within the shot, and, in some cases, the ‘camera’ itself chases after the flock. Such sequences are featured in Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle, The Great Sperm Race and Inside the Human Body, as well as in episodes of CSI and House. The movement of both the sperm and the ‘camera’ is made to appear exceptionally speedy and fluid in these sequences. Unlike the traditionally static microscopic lens, the digital apparatus is itself free to move through the narrowest spaces of the human body, at top speed. Again, expressionistic uses of colour and shadows can help enhance the sense of movement and flux.22 By breaking from many of the aesthetic qualities traditionally associated with microscopic imagery, such spectacular sequences can have an alienating effect, figuring the innermost spaces of the human body as unpredictable, complex and still beyond our control. Considered beyond individual episodes, across whole seasons, programmes and genres, the ever-changing nature of the digital imagery itself lends a sense of increased mutability to the molecular world. In accordance with the televisual drive, many programmes strive to produce their own unique rendering of molecular spaces and entities. Though most

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viewers have already seen multiple digital visualisations of the inner body, the malleability of digital footage continues to mark cells, molecules and DNA as both wondrous and mysterious. The changing figuration of the double-helix structure in digital sequences since the 1970s clearly illustrates this process. Early digital illustrations of DNA tended to emulate the molecular model assembled by Watson and Crick—a stiff, usually vertical, spiral staircase consisting of colour-coded shapes representing atoms. Subsequently, the figure has become far less generic, ranging from graphic diagrams consisting of the letters GATTACA (The Gene Code), to far more smooth and organic-looking coils of some undefined biological material (CSI) or distinctly digital necklaces of pitch-black atomic beads moving with mechanical purpose in an alien-looking landscape (The Secret Life of the Cell). Furthermore, even though the earliest digital animations of the double helix tended to figure it in motion, this movement has increased in fluidity and complexity over time: the simple static movement of one rigid spiral circling its own axis has gradually been replaced by imagery of multiple coils of DNA simultaneously twisting, rotating and roaming cellular spaces in seemingly random patterns. This mutability adds another dimension of complexity to the microscopic digital imagery, which has the potential to undermine the essentialist and determinist discourses otherwise articulated by the didactic elements described earlier. By taking the viewers on ever-changing multisensory roller-coaster rides, an increasing number of microscopic animations emphasises the dynamic, indeterminate and messy aspects of cells, genes and molecules. The more visually complex and dynamic aspects of the digital footage engage with the increased cultural tendency to express fascination with, and instil value in, ideas about complexity and unpredictability that have emerged across a range of different fields and discourses in the late twentieth century (Thrift 1999, 32–33; Urry 2005, 4–5). The spectacular and mutable aspects figure the microscopic world as more physically, spatially and temporally dynamic than before. They place more emphasis on complex interactions between microscopic biological entities, as well as on their continuous development over time. Cells, molecules and genes are figured as fluid, vital and interactive, rather than as static and enclosed. More specifically, this aesthetic tendency contributes to a wider cultural move from genetic determinism towards discourses on new genetics (Franklin et  al. 2000, 14; Franklin 2000, 198) or post-­ genomic sensibilities (Franklin 2007, 33). The gradual shift, from understanding the gene as a fixed blueprint of life to seeing it as a reprogrammable

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code, has also brought with it an increased emphasis on the complex and random nature of this ‘code’. Rather than simply having granted us complete control over life itself, advances in genetic science seem to have produced a heightened awareness of our genes’ inherent malleability and the illusively intricate ways in which they interact with the surrounding world. While this sense of unpredictability and uncertainty is not yet the dominant discourse in television’s cultural forum (Newcomb and Hirsch 1983) on genetics, a post-genomic structure of feeling is gradually accumulating over time, for example, expressed though the more visually dynamic tendencies that have increasingly characterised microscopic CGI. The post-genomic sensibilities that are growing more prominent on television in the twenty-first century are, however, not necessarily new. While microscopic CGI is a key site for the articulation of this structure of feeling on television, it is important to acknowledge that such sensibilities have also been ‘lurking’ in older scientific imaging technologies for some time. Hannah Landecker (2012) has identified a number of live-cell imaging technologies, including microcinematography, as significant forerunners to the current post-genomic tendencies of microscopic CGI. Discussing digitally created ‘scenes of cellular interiority’ in Hollywood films such as The Hulk, Magnolia and Fight Club, Landecker argues that such imagery is a continuation of early twentieth-century experiments in microcinematography and time-lapse techniques aiming to capture living cells on film (Kelty and Landecker 2004, 31–34, 53–56; Landecker 2005, 937). Alongside Christopher Kelty, Landecker has proposed that early microscopic films of living cells were revolutionary because of their ability to animate still images and create a simulation of fluid movement, which was crucial for convincing observers of the truth of cellular theories of life itself (Kelty and Landecker 2004, 34–41; Landecker 2012, 381–384). The vitality and reproduction process of cells had previously been represented through a series of static photographs and diagrams of stages, and so the basic idea that cells were living organisms that developed over time and eventually divided was not new. But time-lapse microcinematography brought such still images ‘to life’, and the illusion of movement thus demonstrated ‘unequivocally, what they could not otherwise see: life’ (Kelty and Landecker 2004, 38). Furthermore, Scott Curtis (2004, 221–222) points out that the ability of film to represent movement and temporality highlights that the traditionally static nature of many types of medico-scientific images aimed to

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manage the fact that ‘the human body is oppugnantly alive, frustratingly resistant to contemplation, study and interpretation: the history of medicine could be written as a history of attempts to tame—to hold still—the unruly body’. Unlike microscopic photography, microcinematography ‘fails’ to manage the unruly nature of the human body, and if anything, it actually emphasises the vitality of the cellular world by speeding up the movement of most cells (through time-lapse technology) in order to make it (temporality) visible to the human eye. In a more recent article, Landecker (2012) has suggested that the inherent temporal complexity of early microcinematography heralds the post-genomic sensibilities of modern live-cell imaging technologies such as genetically engineered fluorescent probes that enable a digital visualisation of the movements of cells and molecules in  vivo. Landecker convincingly shows that a set of new imaging technologies is now figuring the world of cells, genes and molecules as not only moving, but as a moving set of complex relations—a network of interactions that dissolves the boundary between the organism and the environment surrounding it (390). The type of genetically produced digital images that Landecker discusses has, so far, rarely been included in popular science documentaries on television. But I would argue that some televisual examples of microscopic CGI achieve a similar effect by further emphasising the spatial and temporal complexity of the microscopic world. In this section, I have discussed how some of the more dynamic aesthetic tendencies of microscopic CGI might articulate post-genomic sensibilities, but microscopic CGI continues to be governed by a pedagogical drive, and many of these sequences are still primarily saturated by traditional essentialist understandings of genetics. When considering this visual trope alone, post-genomic ideas about complexity, uncertainty and malleability still remain in an ‘embryonic phase’, to borrow Williams’s term, only gradually emerging alongside older ideas about the molecular world (Williams 1977, 123). Many CGI sequences simultaneously articulate contradictory discourses on genetics, staging the molecular world as simultaneously familiar and alien, simple and complex, fixed and malleable, manageable and indeterminate. In the final concluding section of this chapter, I want to consider the contradictory nature of microscopic CGI by further examining how the distinctly digital quality of this imagery contributes to the genetic imaginary.

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Digital Codes, Genetic Codes As discussed earlier, computer-generated animation has been a particularly popular method for visualising the gene on television. Several of the earliest examples where science documentaries featured digital images, including Ascent of Man and Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, specifically used this new technology to illustrate theories about DNA and genetic inheritance. From the 1970s onwards, it has been deemed fitting to use a code-based technology to portray a scientific theory that imagines life as a hidden code needing to be deciphered. Throughout its history, microscopic CGI has helped construct genes as akin to computers in that they communicate through a kind of algorithm, which—if deciphered—can also be recombined. Here television has participated in a wider cultural movement whereby digital technology and (genetic) biology were becoming understood as interchangeable models for one another. Jussi Parikka (2010, 145–168) has traced the development of a number of theoretical frameworks in the 1980s and 1990s where computing more generally, and CGI specifically, were mapped onto the natural world, and vice versa. Parikka shows how assumptions of ‘the sameness of nature and the computational environment’ became increasingly prominent across the life sciences, informatics and visual culture (151). On television, this metaphorical relationship between digital technology and genetic science was not only augmented through the use of CGI, but was also more explicitly asserted by recurring footage of genetic scientists working on computers. Ascent of Man is, again, an early example of this. The first episode includes a sequence where the expert presenter Jacob Bronowski sits down in front of a computer while explaining the theory of genealogical descent. He types in a command, prompting the computer to display a simple digital animation visualising the atomic components of the DNA molecule and its double-helix structure. The visual trope of ‘the genetic scientist by the computer’ has been particularly common in science documentaries focused on genetic manipulation, gene therapy or assisted reproduction, which exemplifies how the computer was becoming understood not ‘only as a tool but as a catalyst for a new way of thinking about nature and its phenomena’ (Parikka 2010, 159). The Horizon episode Brave New Babies? (BBC, 1982), for example, contains a dramatisation of a future where families visit a ‘gene architect’ when they want to reproduce: a genetic expert who uses a computer to search for suitable donors whose genes can be combined with that of the

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future parents to produce a baby with the desired physical and mental traits. Rather than depicting the process of assisted reproduction as taking place in a hospital or a lab, it is constructed as a completely computerised procedure. The endurance of this trope is illustrated by the fact that this very sequence was reused much later in another Horizon episode on the same topic: Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? (BBC, 2005). This later episode also featured an interview with a geneticist who has ‘identified a gene that makes people more neurotic’, and this discovery’s therapeutic potential is illustrated by showing him working on his computer, presumably attempting to develop ways to repair the ‘faulty’ genetic code. While digital technology is presented as a tool enabling assisted reproduction, the computer is also clearly meant to help the viewers grasp this novel way of understanding reproduction as a process whereby genes are creatively and consciously recombined. The idea that scientists will be increasingly able to reproduce, instigate and shape genetic processes is central to the post-genomic discourse (Rose 2007, 16), and although this notion has a relatively long history on television it has gradually grown more prominent with the increased popularity of microscopic CGI. The visibly digital nature of many of the microscopic animations has also contributed to the construction of the ‘gene code’ as similar to the reprogrammable digital code. It is perhaps not that surprising that early CGI sequences of the double-helix structure looked distinctly digital: the images were pixelated, and the shapes, textures, and colours had a noticeably inorganic look. The ‘failure’ of these visualisations to mimic more traditional representations of the human body wasn’t necessarily a problem, as they usefully marked the ‘blueprint of life’ as analogous to digital technology. Even though the development of more sophisticated digital imaging technologies has made it possible to achieve a more organic look, many recent microscopic animations still retain a distinctly digital aesthetic by choice. In parallel with the emergence of more spectacular sequences designed to withdraw affective responses by emulating the visceral qualities of the body, a number of science documentaries have resisted the drive towards biological photorealism and instead draw on the ‘technofuturist aesthetic’ that was central to the use of digital special effects in 1990s science fiction films (Pierson 2002, 86–87). Much like the digitally created virtual spaces in films such as The Matrix (the Wachowskis, 1999), some programmes foreground the digital properties of the imagery and depict the molecular world as a hyperreal electronic space, often lacking a consistent sense of weight, mass

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or gravity. A particularly telling example of this is Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell, which figures the cell as a technofuturist ‘secret universe’ where cell membranes resemble the high-tech synthetic fabric of superhero suits, viruses look like alien spaceships (black, shiny and geometric) and the cell nucleus looks like a supernova radiating multicoloured light into the darkness of space. These alien landscapes are distinctly digital. As the digital imagery has become more and more malleable, the analogy between digital algorithms and DNA further augments the notion of genetic malleability. However, as my examples highlight, the notion of genetic recombinability is not ‘new’ as such. While it’s a key element of the emergent post-genomic structure of feeling, it has a longer history, also figuring in more traditional essentialist discourses. The idea that we might be able to reprogramme the ‘blueprint of life’ once the code has been deciphered was an important motivation behind ventures such as the Human Genome Project. Crucially, the basic concept of genetic recombinability does not necessarily break with the essentialist and determinist logics of traditional genetics. For example, both Brave New Babies? and Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? reproduce this dominant discourse when suggesting that advances in science will give us complete control over our genes at the simple click of a button. In many science documentaries, both old and new, genetic manipulation figures as a straightforward medical process whereby one essential genetic trait is exchanged for another. What characterises the more recent post-genomic focus on genetic manipulation is not simply a more frequent emphasis on genetic recombinability, but also an increased acknowledgement of the complex and uncertain aspects of such processes. And the CGI itself plays a crucial role in articulating this more radical post-genomic notion, which is partly engendered by the inherent malleability of this imagery: ‘the fact that the digital image is not itself a static representation but an algorithmic process, made of pixels that are refreshed on a constant basis’ (Parikka 2010, 162). Of course, the same can be said about the televisual image itself, both in its analogue and digital forms (Zettl 1978; Gwóźdź 1999). The ever-­ changing nature of CGI is, if anything, heightened when displayed on television—a medium known for its ‘liveness’ and characterised by a continuous flow of broadcasts conveying feelings of vitality, spontaneity and uncertainty, both due to their supposedly unscripted and unpredictable nature, and because television’s very apparatus has continual movement and development at its technological core (Feuer 1983). It is not surprising, then, that even when framed by determinist narration, microscopic

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CGI sequences can still stage the molecular world as an inherently creative, unpredictable and plastic place. This inherent tendency is further articulated in the cases where a technofuturist aesthetics is embraced, truly rendering the molecular world the stuff of science fiction: an ever-changing alien universe where our new-­ found ability to decipher the gene code does not necessarily give us complete control, but makes us more aware of the complex and mutable nature of the human body. The voice-over narration in Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell makes this metaphorical relationship even more explicit by telling the viewers that ‘beneath the surface of every [cell], lies a world stranger than any in science fiction. A world in which a billion microscopic machines all play their part working in concert through every second of our lives.’ With a wider articulation of the postgenomic structure of feeling, the figuration of an analogical relationship between DNA and CGI increasingly produces a more radical sense of malleability. The basic idea that developments in genetic science are allowing us more control over our genes is gradually morphing into a sense of ‘unpredictability and potential lack of control’ (Wynne 2005, 67). As the voice-over in Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell also asserts, ‘the more we learn about the universe the simpler it seems, but the cell isn’t like that. The more we find out, the more complicated things get.’ To conclude, if we study microscopic CGI sequences across different episodes, programmes and genres over time, it becomes clear that they contribute multiple, often opposing, discourses on cells, molecules and genres to television’s genetic imaginary. Considered across such an extended viewing strip, this visual trope is characterised by a tension between stillness and movement, stasis and change, flatness and depth of field, simplicity and complexity. On the one hand, it asserts older essentialist and determinist notions on these entities as predictable, pre-­programmed and decipherable. On the other hand, it conveys a sense of unpredictability and uncertainty that articulates the post-genomic idea that life itself is increasingly found to be more dynamic and complex than we initially thought. These visual special effects are just one ‘site’ within television’s cultural forum on genetics, and in the next chapter, I will move on to discuss another ‘node’ in the medium’s multifaceted negotiation of essentialist reductionism and post-genomic complexity: serial narration. Whereas this chapter focused on elements of visual complexity, the next chapter will consider narrative complexity.

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Notes 1. However, by magnifying the miniscule, they can also, in a way, be understood in continuation with the traditional fascination with oversized special effects. These are images that make something very small appear very big. 2. Other examples include How Your Body Works (BBC, 1958), Eye on Research (BBC, 1959), The Science of Man (BBC, 1963–1965), What is Life? (BBC, 1968), Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973), Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 1975), Life on Earth (BBC, 1979), The Human Body (BBC/TLC, 1998), Superhuman (BBC, 2001), DNA: Threads of Life (BBC, 2002), DNA (PBS, 2003), Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 2007), Inside the Living Body (National Geographic, 2007) and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Fox/National Geographic, 2014). 3. Episodes such as Eye on Life (BBC, 1969), Brave New Babies? (BBC, 1982), Miracle of Life (PBS/SVT/BBC, 1982), Is GM Safe? (BBC, 2000), Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001), The Ghost in Your Genes (BBC, 2005), Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? (BBC, 2005), Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome (BBC, 2010) and The Cell (BBC, 2011). 4. For example, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC, 2009), The Great Sperm Race (Channel 4, 2009) and The Gene Code (BBC, 2011). 5. This type of show first emerged in the USA in the 1950s, and there are a number of UK programmes from the 1960s that can be identified as part of this subgenre, but it wasn’t until ‘the second wave’ of forensics-themed shows hit UK and US television in the mid-1990s and early 2000s that the genre term ‘forensic crime drama’ started circulating widely (Bull 2012, 44–46). 6. Other key examples of this type of programme include Diagnosis: Unknown (CBS, 1960), Police Surgeon (ITV, 1960), Silent Evidence (BBC, 1962), Thorndyke (BBC, 1964), McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998), Dangerfield (BBC, 1995–1999), Bliss (ITV, 1995, 1997), and Waking the Dead (BBC, 2000–2011), Crossing Jordan (NBC, 2001–2007), CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012), Without a Trace (CBS, 2002–2009), Cold Case (CBC, 2003–2010), NCIS (CBS, 2003–), CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013), Bones (Fox, 2005–) and Numb3rs (CBS, 2005–2010). 7. Other medical dramas include City Hospital (BBC, 1952–1953), Dr. Kildre (NBC, 1961–1966), Ben Casey (ABC, 1961–1966), Dr. Finlay’s Casebook (BBC, 1962–1971), Marcus Welby M.D. (ABC, 1969–1976), The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (NBC, 1969–1973), St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–1988), Casualty (BBC, 1986–), Chicago Hope (CBS, 1994–2000), ER (NBC, 1994–2009), Gideon’s Crossing (ABC, 2000–2001), Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010), Bodies (BBC, 2004–2006) and Pure Genius (CBS, 2016–2017).

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8. The voice-over specifically states: ‘There is so much we don’t know, but logic tells us that at this moment the zygote contains specific information for one homo sapiens of given sex and colour and potential size, perhaps even intelligence, personality, health, the contributions of ten thousands of generations. A blueprint for a creature of 16 trillion cells in a package no bigger than the point of a pin.’ 9. Hight (2008) is correct that this type of special effect often articulates an unequal relationship of power by staging a medical gaze that observes an often dehumanised and seemingly unknowing subject. 10. Abbott (2006) acknowledges the role that CSI has played in popularising microscopic CGI, though she places more emphasis on filmic iterations. She argues that these shots were pioneered by the action film Three Kings (David O.  Russell, 1999), and mentions subsequent examples such as Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000), Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (McG, 2003), Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003) and Blade: Trinity (David S. Goyer, 2004). I would point out that there are also considerably earlier filmic forerunners to this type of shot, using other forms of special effects to create the illusion of the camera entering into the human body. One key example is Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), the cult classic science fiction film where submarine crew are miniaturised and enter a scientist’s body to remove a blood clot in his brain. 11. Gattaca’s titles did not use digital animation, but imitated the look of microcinematography by filming oversized models of the biological material. 12. The use of microscopic CGI in title and credit sequences to signpost that genetics is a key plot point in a film also has some intriguing precursors in the opening titles of the British psychological thriller Twisted Nerve (Roy Boulting 1968) and Brian de Palma’s slasher film Sisters (1973). Twisted Nerve superimposes optically morphed footage of (1) a scientific poster of ‘chromosomal constitution’, (2) child-like, expressionistic drawings of colourful X and Y shapes and (3) a wooden bead maze in a toy store, structurally reminiscent of Watson and Crick’s double-helix model, to foreshadow that the duplicitous personality and violent tendencies of its main character might be caused by ‘chromosomal damage’. Similarly, the use of a series of Lennart Nilsson photographs of foetuses in utero in the title sequence of Sisters points to the protagonist’s murderous rage at being linked to her genetic origin as a (formerly) conjoined twin. 13. Caetlin Benson-Allott (2011, 14) has analysed Contagion’s avoidance of the kind of microscopic CGI where the camera enters the body and the choice to keep ‘its computer-generated models on monitors and within frames’, arguing that it contributes to the film’s wider insistence on ‘the limits of visibility’. In Contagion, the time spent studying visual illustrations

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of the virus itself does little to ‘explain the catalyst behind the epidemic’ (14). It is, however, relatively rare that feature films place such narrative emphasis on microscopic CGI; Contagion’s conscious use of this type of imagery to stage an investigation into scientific visualisation practices and medico-scientific knowledge stands out. 14. This is not surprising considering that the series creator, Anthony Zuiker, has described his initial idea for this type of effect as specifically wanting the camera to zoom into, or travel through, the body (Longworth 2002). Interestingly, the first CSI shot did not include any use of CGI, but was produced by inserting an endoscopic camera into a prosthetic body, but a vast majority of the microscopic CGI in the show is digital animation. 15. Another example of a drama programme that prominently features microscopic CGI is the Canadian science fiction show ReGenesis (TMN, 2004–2008). 16. Writing about the popularity of CGI effects, ‘depicting, for instance, the interior of tombs and graves and the insides of bodies of dead animals and humans, as well as […] the reconstruction of bodies’ in science documentaries, Campbell (2016, 50–51) has argued that there has been ‘something of a forensic turn in factual entertainment programmes’ that has filtered through from the rise in popularity of forensic science within popular culture—a development significantly augmented by the CSI franchise (Weissmann 2010; Bull 2012; Steenberg 2012). 17. In both science documentaries and procedural dramas, microscopic CGI sequences have often been given the same status as both live-action material and scientific imagery (produced by actual microscopes, X-rays and endoscopes). The digital imagery is, on occasion, explicitly presented as a ground-breaking scientific achievement in itself. Inside the Human Body, for example, begins with Dr Michael Mosley telling the viewers that the programme uses ‘sophisticated imaging technologies to illustrate the latest medical research’. This type of claim partly rests on the now relatively long history of digital imaging technologies being used in the fields of science and medicine. In the 1970s, the film and television industries were by no means alone in trying to find ways of utilising the development of new digital imaging technologies. And as Markus H.  Gross has outlined in some detail, by the late 1990s, computer graphics had found advanced applications in a wide range of medical fields, including ‘radiation and operation planning, prosthesis design, dental treatment, education and training’ and had fundamentally changed the way medical data were analysed (Gross 1998). Even though the microscopic CGI sequences I study in this chapter tend to have been created specifically for television (i.e. not for the purpose of actual scientific analysis), some are not that different from their medico-scientific counterparts. The digital 3D animation of body

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parts, skeletons and organs featured in The Human Body is, for example, reminiscent of The Visible Human Project: an effort to create threedimensional and anatomically detailed digital representations of a male and a female human body, which was completed only a few years prior to the premiere of The Human Body and had been widely publicised as ‘a revolution in anatomy’ (van Dijck 2005, 120). 18. As Annabelle Honess Roe (2013, 42–45) and Vincent Campbell (2016, 36–38) summarise, documentary uses of CGI have often been met with feelings of unease resulting from the prevalent idea that digital images lack the indexicality, and, by extension, the verisimilitude of the photographic image. In anticipation of digital animation becoming increasingly more lifelike and photorealist, there are also those who fear that the ontological boundaries between digital and life-action footage will become progressively blurred (Roe 2013, 54–55). Science pedagogy scholar Anneke M.  Metz (2008, 336) has, for example, warned against the use of CGI technology in ‘edutainment’ documentaries such as Walking With Dinosaurs (Discovery, 1999), Walking with Cavemen (Discovery, 2003) and Alien Planet (Discovery Channel, 2005), which she fears might trick viewers into believing that the scientific theories they present are ‘real’ or, at least, uncontested scientific facts. For more discussion on documentary uses of CGI see also Mark J.P. Wolf (1999) and José van Dijck (2006). 19. The unaided human eye can, under the right circumstances, see objects as small as 0.1  mm long (roughly the equivalent of one-fifth the size of a grain of salt). 20. A light (optical) microscope uses a system of lenses, and the magnification is limited by the wavelength of visible light, thus only allowing for a useful magnification of approximately 500–2000x. In turn, an electron microscope uses an electron beam, which can produce a photographic magnification of 1,000,000x. 21. More recent estimates suggest that there are probably only 19,000–20,000 human genes, but this figure could continue to drop further with more research. 22. The CSI franchise, in particular, favours bold and expressionistic uses of colour, which also play a crucial role in its microscopic animation: the inside of the human body is not only figured using the expected red hues (typically used to image blood and muscle tissue), but the molecular world is also filled with fluorescent greens, yellows and blues. This, I would argue, is part of what Hannah Landecker (2012, 395) has described as a more general ‘rise of the fluorescent aesthetic in the public visual culture of science’, which she links to recent developments in cellular imaging, especially genetically engineered fluorescent probes. Taking an example from cinema, Landecker points out that ‘where The Hulk once glowed green

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due to gamma radiation, he now transgenically fluoresces’ (395). Even though in Landecker’s view ‘the penetrance of the complexity of systems biology, epigenetics, cell signalling or proteomics into the public presentation of science is to date rather insignificant’ (395), some programmes contribute to the emergent post-genomic structure of feeling implicitly by embracing the fluorescent colour scheme associated with new genetics.

Bibliography Abbott, Stacey. 2006. Final Frontiers: Computer-Generated Imagery and the Science Fiction Film. Science Fiction Studies 98 (33): 89–108. https://www. depauw.edu/sfs/backissues/98/abbott98.html. Accessed 8 August 2018. BBC Press Release. 2002. The Human Body Wins Prestigious Large Format Award. 15 October 2002. http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleases/2002/10_october/human_body_award.shtml. Accessed 22 August 2018. Benson-Allott, Caetlin. 2011. Out of Sight. Film Quarterly 65 (2): 14–15. Boon, Timothy. 2008. Films of Fact: A History of Science in Documentary Films and Television. London and New York: Wallflower Press. Bukatman, Scott. 1995. The Artificial Infinite: On Special Effects and the Sublime. In Visual Display: Culture Beyond Appearances, ed. Lynne Cooke and Peter Wollen, 255–289. Seattle: Bay Press. Bull, Sofia. 2012. A Post-genomic Forensic Crime Drama: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation as Cultural Forum on Science. Stockholm: Acta Universitatis Stockholmensis, Stockholm University. ———. 2015. Televisual Forensics on the Edge of Chaos: Postgenomic Complexity in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Screen 56 (1): 64–80. Caldwell, John Thornton. 1995. Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Campbell, Vincent. 2016. Science, Entertainment and Television Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cartwright, Lisa. 1995. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. CBS Corporation Website. 2010. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Is the Most Watched Show in the World. 6 November 2010. http://www.cbscorporation. com/news-article.php?id=652. Accessed 25 February 2012. Curtis, Scott. 2004. Still/Moving: Digital Imaging and Medical Hermeneutics. In Memory Bytes: History Technology, and Digital Culture, ed. Lauren Rabinovitz and Abraham Geil, 218–254. Durham and London: Duke University Press. van Dijck, José. 2005. The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. ———. 2006. Picturizing Science: The Science Documentary as Multimedia Spectacle. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (1): 5–24.

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Feuer, Jane. 1983. The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology. In Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, 12–22. Los Angeles: AFI, University Publications of America, Inc. ———. 1984. Melodrama, Serial Film and Television Today. Screen 25 (1): 4–16. Flaherty, Mike. 2004. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Companion. New  York: Pocket Books. Foucault, Michel. 2008 [1963]. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception. London and New York: Routledge. Franklin, Sarah. 2000. Global Nature and the Genetic Imaginary. In Global Nature, Global Culture, ed. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, 188– 227. London: SAGE Publications. ———. 2007. Dolly Mixtures: The Remaking of Genealogy. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Franklin, Sarah, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey. 2000. Introduction. In Global Nature, Global Culture, ed. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, 1–16. London: SAGE Publications. Frum, Linda. 2006. Q&A; with “House” Creator David Shore. Macleans.ca. https://web.archive.org/web/20071010052544/http://www.macleans.ca/ culture/entertainment/article.jsp?content=20060320_123370_123370. Accessed 22 August 2018. Geraghty, Christine. 1981. Continuous Serial – A Definition. In Coronation Street, ed. Richard Dyer, 9–26. London: BFI Publishing. Gever, Martha. 2005. The Spectacle of Crime Digitized: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Social Anatomy. European Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (4): 445–463. Gross, Markus H. 1998. Computer Graphics in Medicine: From Visualization to Surgery Simulation. SIGGRAPH 32 (1): 53–56. https://www.siggraph.org/ publications/newsletter/v32n1/contributions/gross.html. Accessed 26 March 2015. Guider, Elizabeth. 2000. “CSI” Registers Strong O’Seas Sales: Bruckheimer Hits Mipcom to Tout Skein. Daily Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR11 17787290?refcatid=14&printerfriendly=true. Accessed 3 October 2012. Gwóźdź, Andrzej. 1999. On Some Aspects of Television Temporality. Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media (Fall). http://www.arts.uwaterloo. ca/FINE/juhde/gwoz992.htm. Accessed 19 August 2006. Hight, Craig. 2008. Primetime Digital Documentary Animation: The Photographic and Graphic Within Play. Studies in Documentary Film 2 (1): 9–31. Jacobs, Jason. 2000. The Intimate Screen: Early British Television Drama. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jermyn, Deborah. 2007. Body Matters: Realism, Spectacle and the Corpse in CSI. In Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, ed. Michael Allen, 79–89. London: I.B. Tauris.

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Kelty, Christopher, and Hannah Landecker. 2004. A Theory of Animation: Cells, L-Systems, and Film. Grey Room 17 (Fall): 30–63. King, Geoff. 2003. Spectacle, Narrative, and the Spectacular Hollywood Blockbuster. In Movie Blockbusters, ed. Julian Stringer, 114–127. New  York: Routledge. Kirby, David A. 2013. Forensic Fictions: Science, Television Production, and Modern Storytelling. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44: 92–102. Kompare, Derek. 2010. CSI. Malden: Wiley-Blackwell. Kruse, Corinna. 2010. Producing Absolute Truth: CSI Science as Wishful Thinking. American Anthropologist 112 (1): 79–91. Landecker, Hannah. 2005. Cellular Features: Microcinematography and Film Theory. Critical Inquiry 31 (4): 903–937. ———. 2012. The Life of Movement: From Microcinematography to Live-Cell Imaging. Journal of Visual Culture 11 (3): 378–399. Lang, Kurt, and Gladys Lang. 1953. The Unique Perspective of Television and Its Effect: A Pilot Study. American Sociological Review 18 (1): 2–12. Ley, Barbara, Nathalie Jankowski, and Paul R. Brewer. 2010. Investigating CSI: Portrayals of DNA Testing on a Forensic Crime Show and Their Potential Effects. Public Understanding of Science 27 (May): 1–17. Longworth, James L. 2002. TV Creators: Conversations with America’s Top Producers of Television Drama, Volume Two. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Lury, Karen. 2003. Closeup: Documentary Aesthetics. Screen 44: 101–105. ———. 2005. Interpreting Television. London: Hodder Arnold. Metz, Anneke M. 2008. A Fantasy Made Real: The Evolution of the Subjunctive Documentary on U.S.  Cable Science Channels. Television & New Media 9 (4): 333–348. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: New York University Press. Nelkin, Dorothy, and Susan M. Lindee. 1995. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: W.H. Freeman and Company. Newcomb, Horace M., and Paul M. Hirsch. 1983. Television as a Cultural Forum: Implications for Research. Quarterly Review of Film Studies 8 (3): 45–55. Ostherr, Kristen. 2002. Contagion and the Boundaries of the Visible: The Cinema of World Health. Camera Obscura 17 (2): 1–39. Ostherr, Kirsten. 2012. Operative Bodies: Live Action and Animation in Medical Films of the 1920s. Journal of Visual Culture 11 (3): 252–377. Ostherr, Kristen. 2013. Medical Visions: Producing the Patient Through Film, Television and Imaging Technologies. Oxford and New  York: Oxford University Press. Parikka, Jussi. 2010. Insect Media: An Archaeology of Animals and Technology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Pierson, Michele. 2002. Special Effects: Still in Search of Wonder. New  York: Columbia University Press. Prince, Stephen. 2012. Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Richmond, Ray. 2004. The Minds Behind the Bodies. Hollywood Reporter Special issue: CSI 100th. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com. Accessed 1 March 2010. Roe, Annabelle Honess. 2013. Animated Documentary. Basingstroke: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014. The Evolution of Animated Documentary. In New Documentary Ecologies: Emerging Platforms, Practices and Discourses, ed. Kate Nash, Craig Hight, and Catherine Summerhayes, 174–191. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rose, Nikolas. 2007. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Sconce, Jeffrey. 2004. What If: Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries. In Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson, 93–112. Durham: Duke University Press. Smit, Alexia. 2013. Visual Effects and Visceral Affect: “Tele-Affectivity” and the Intensified Intimacy of Contemporary Television. Critical Studies in Television 8 (3): 92–107. Sorlin, Pierre. 1998. Television and Close-Up: Interference or Correspondence? In Cinema Futures: Cain, Abel or Cable? ed. Thomas Elseasser and Kay Hoffman, 119–126. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Steenberg, Lindsay. 2012. Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright. 2001. Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tait, Sue. 2006. Autopic Vision and the Necrophilic Imaginary in CSI. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9 (1): 45–62. Thrift, Nigel. 1999. The Place of Complexity. Theory, Culture and Society 16 (3): 31–69. Tuck, Greg. 2008. When More Is Less: CGI, Spectacle and the Capitalist Sublime. Science Fiction Film and Television 1 (2): 249–271. Urry, John. 2005. The Complexity Turn. Theory, Culture and Society 22 (5): 1–14. Weissmann, Elke. 2010. The Forensic Sciences of CSI: How to Know About Crime. VDM Verlag. Weissmann, Elke, and Karen Boyle. 2007. Evidence of Things Unseen: The Pornographic Aesthetic and the Search for Truth in CSI. In Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, ed. Michael Allen, 90–102. London: I.B. Tauris.

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Wheatley, Helen. 2011. Beautiful Images in Spectacular Clarity: Spectacular Television, Landscape Programming and the Question of (Tele)visual Pleasure. Screen 52 (2): 233–248. ———. 2016. Spectacular Television: Exploring Televisual Pleasure. London: I.B. Tauris. Whissel, Kristen. 2014. Spectacular Digital Effects: CGI and Contemporary Cinema. Durham: Duke University Press. White, Mimi. 2004. The Attractions of Television: Reconsidering Liveness. In MediaSpace: Place, Scale and Culture in a Media Age, ed. Nick Couldry and Anna McCarthy, 75–91. London: Routledge. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wolf, Mark J.P. 1999. Subjunctive Documentary: Computer Imaging and Simulation. In Collecting Visible Evidence, ed. Jane Gaines and Michael Renov, 274–291. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Wynne, Brian. 2005. Reflexing Complexity: Post-genomic Knowledge and Reductionist Returns in Public Science. Theory, Culture and Society 22 (5): 67–94. Zettl, Herbert. 1978. The Rare Case of Television Aesthetics. Journal of the University Film Association 30 (2): 3–8.

Television Programmes Alien Planet (Discovery, 2005). Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973). Ben Casey (ABC, 1961–1966). Bliss (ITV, 1995, 1997). Bodies (BBC, 2004–2006). Body Story (Channel 4, 1998). The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (NBC, 1969–1973). Bones (Fox, 2005–2017). Brave New Babies? (BBC, 1982). Casualty (BBC, 1986–present). The Cell (BBC, 2011). Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC, 2009). Chicago Hope (CBS, 1994–2000). City Hospital (BBC, 1952–1953). Cold Case (CBC, 2003–2010). Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (BBC/PBS, 1980). Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Fox/National Geographic, 2014). Craig Kennedy: Criminologist (Weiss Productions, 1952). Crossing Jordan (NBC, 2001–2007).

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CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012). CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013). Dangerfield (BBC, 1995–1999). Diagnosis: Unknown (CBS, 1960). DNA (PBS, 2003). DNA: Threads of Life (BBC, 2002). Dr. Finlay’s Casebook (BBC, 1962–1971). Dr. Kildre (NBC, 1961–1966). ER (NBC, 1994–2009). The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976). Eye on Life (BBC, 1969). Eye on Research (BBC, 1959). The Gene Code (BBC, 2011). The Ghost in Your Genes (BBC, 2005). Gideon’s Crossing (ABC, 2000–2001). The Great Sperm Race (Channel 4, 2009). Horizon (BBC, 1964–present). House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012). How Your Body Works (BBC, 1958). The Human Body (BBC/TLC, 1998). Identity (ITV, 2010). Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 1975). The Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 1975). Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 2007). Inside the Human Body (BBC, 2011). Inside the Living Body (National Geographic, 2007). Is GM Safe? (BBC, 2000). Life on Earth (BBC, 1979). Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001). Marcus Welby M.D. (ABC, 1969–1976). McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998). Medic (NBC, 1954–1956). Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome (BBC, 2010). Miracle of Life (PBS/SVT/BBC, 1982). Miracles in the Womb (Channel 4, 2007). NCIS (CBS, 2003–present). Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010). Nova (PBS, 1974–present). Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001). Numb3rs (CBS, 2005–2010). Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (BBC, 2012).

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Police Surgeon (ITV, 1960). Pure Genius (CBS, 2016–2017). Quincy M.E. (NBC, 1976–1983). ReGenesis (TMN, 2004–2008). Science International (BBC, 1959). The Science of Man (BBC, 1963–1965). Science on Saturday: Human Biology (BBC, 1961). Silent Evidence (BBC, 1962). Silent Witness (BBC, 1996–present). St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–1988). Superhuman (BBC, 2001). The Thread of Life (NBC, 1960). Thorndyke (BBC, 1964). Thorndyke Waking the Dead (BBC, 2000–2011). Walking with Cavemen (Discovery, 2003). Walking With Dinosaurs (Discovery, 1999). What is Life? (BBC, 1968). Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? (BBC, 2005). Without a Trace (CBS, 2002–2009). The Wonder of Man (ATV, 1960). Your Living Body (ATV, 1969).

Films 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2011). Blade: Trinity (David S. Goyer, 2004). Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (McG, 2003). Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011). Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966). Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999). Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997). Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000). The Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003). The Matrix (the Wachowskis, 1999). Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012). Sisters (Brian de Palma, 1973). The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014). Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999). The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011). Twisted Nerve (Roy Boulting 1968). Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003). X–Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006).

CHAPTER 3

Complex Seriality: Genetic Science As Narrative Device

In the previous chapter I showed how DNA evidence has been an important narrative tool in crime dramas since the 1990s, a tendency that has been especially prominent during the early 2000s in forensic procedurals. Portrayed as an enduring and reliable source of information about how a crime is committed and who is responsible, traces of DNA typically function as a key narrative catalyst, not only furthering the investigation but ultimately leading to the crime being solved. In the 2010s the crime genre’s focus on forensic procedures subsided somewhat and many crime dramas in this period shined a spotlight onto the subjective, uncertain and ambiguous elements of the investigative process. Quality crime serials such as The Affair (Showtime, 2014–present), True Detective (HBO, 2014– present) American Crime Story (FX, 2016–present), Big Little Lies (HBO, 2017–present), Manhunt: Unabomber (Discovery Channel, 2017) and Mindhunter (Netflix, 2017–present) all examine, in one way or another, the reliability of both physical evidence and witness testimonies, while also questioning people’s ability to interpret them objectively and with certainty. Furthermore, the lauded true crime documentaries Making a Murderer (Netfix, 2015) and The Jinx (HBO, 2015) have made viewers more aware of the flaws of DNA evidence, highlighting the fact that the collection and testing of DNA are delicate processes (samples can be contaminated, mixed up or even tampered with) and that the test results must always be interpreted (even if someone’s DNA is found at the scene of a crime, this does not necessarily link the person to the crime itself). © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_3

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There are, however, also interesting earlier instances from the heyday of the forensic crime drama where the generic construction of DNA evidence as endlessly reliable was already being self-reflexively examined. The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015, henceforth abbreviated as CSI) episode ‘Chaos Theory’ (S02022) is one such example. The forensic scientists from the Las Vegas crime lab are trying to figure out what has happened to college student Paige Rycoff (Shelby Fenner), who went missing on the night she moved out from her dorm room. The investigation initially proceeds along familiar lines. The criminalists find traces of blood, semen and vaginal fluids on Paige’s bed and they gather her toiletries hoping to retrieve her DNA. But their initial assumption that she has been raped and murdered in her room is swiftly refuted: neither the blood nor vaginal fluid is Paige’s. After establishing that the traces stem from the rape of her former roommate by an unknown perpetrator, the forensic scientists collect DNA samples from all the men living in the dorm, thinking one of them might be guilty of both crimes. This does lead to the identification of the rapist, but he has a watertight alibi for the night of Paige’s disappearance. Interestingly, the episode places a lot of visual and narrative emphasis on the process of collecting and interpreting DNA evidence, almost unusually so. The DNA lab technician Greg Sanders (Eric Szmanda) complains that the crime scene investigators are guilty of ‘overkill’ when they bring him the entire contents from Paige’s bathroom (hairbrush, toothbrush, nail clippers, tweezers, razor, etc.) for testing. He later calls head investigator Gil Grissom (William Petersen) back to the lab by sending him a pager message signed ‘Friedrich Miescher’: the biologist who discovered how to isolate DNA from white blood cells. The episode also contains several other scenes detailing the collection and processing of DNA, which does seem like ‘overkill’ considering that in this particular case, DNA evidence does not actually produce a solution to the mystery of what happened to Paige. It is just a series of red herrings. In the end, circumstantial evidence leads Grissom to concoct a theory that Paige was squashed to death behind a dumpster when a car accidently hit it as she was climbing in to retrieve a dustbin she dropped. Her death was, he argues, an unpredictable consequence of a series of small random circumstances coinciding (a love affair, a faulty garbage chute, excessive rain and a traffic jam). Trying to convince his colleagues, Grissom argues that such a complexly interlinked network of events can only be explained with reference to chaos theory:

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Grissom: H.L.  Mencken once said ‘There is an easy solution to every human problem. Neat, plausible and … wrong.’ So if the solution to our problem isn’t neat, plausible and wrong, then it could be messy, unlikely and right. Right? A butterfly flaps its wings off the coast of Brazil, we get a hurricane in Florida. Chaos theory. Random events, the wholesale rejection of linear thought. If we apply it [to] our case at this particular moment in time then we can say: life is unpredictable.

His fellow criminalists receive this speech with scepticism and Paige’s parents are enraged, outright rejecting the notion that nobody is ‘responsible’ for their daughter’s death. When Grissom is puzzled at their response, his more emotionally savvy colleague Catherine Willows (Marg Helgenberg) explains that while his explanation might be ‘true’, it still fails to bring ‘closure’. This sets up something of an opposition between genetic science and complexity theory. Chaos theory is presented as a scientific model that might offer some explanation in cases where the criminalists’ usual methods fail to produce a solution. But unlike investigations where DNA evidence produces undeniable knowledge about ‘whodunit’, this theory leaves a nagging sense of uncertainty. The episode also leaves its viewers with the insight that DNA evidence can indeed fail to provide closure. In this chapter, I will show that the episode ‘Chaos Theory’ is part of a wider tendency in programmes of this period that use genetics as a key narrative device. If even a show like CSI, which is widely known for its essentialist investment in DNA evidence, inspires feelings of uncertainty with unexpected regularity, then it’s not surprising that there are other programmes preoccupied with science’s inability to achieve ‘closure’. In this chapter, I will argue that the increased prevalence of non-linearity, unpredictability, uncertainty and complexity on contemporary television contributes to the cultural forum’s multifaceted nature. I will also suggest that this tendency points towards interesting linkages between (1) the popularisation of complexity theory, (2) the increased prominence of complex serial narration on television and (3) the emergence of post-­genomic sensibilities. Whereas the first chapter focused on how a visual trope (microscopic computer-generated imagery) simultaneously articulated residual, dominant and emergent ideas about the molecular world, this chapter will instead consider what certain narrative structures and narrative devices (characteristic to television) add to the genetic imaginary. I will continue to examine two of the procedurals discussed in Chap. 1, CSI and House M.D.

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(Fox, 2004–2012, henceforth abbreviated House), which will here be compared to the science fiction serials Fringe (Fox, 2008–2013) and Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010). I have chosen these four programmes because they have a number of intriguing similarities and differences. Firstly, they all use genetic science as a narrative catalyst, but in distinctly different ways. In CSI and House, the criminalists’ and the medical doctors’ increased abilities to access the world of genes and molecules allow them to solve crimes and diagnose diseases. Typically, genetic science not only propels their narratives forwards, but also helps provide narrative closure. However, as this chapter will show, in both CSI and House, genetic science also contributes to the wider insight that small events might have catastrophic outcomes that are impossible to predict. While such post-genomic sensibilities still remain embryonic in CSI and House, they are far more prominent in Fringe and Heroes. Unlike CSI and House, which primarily feature different types of relatively established DNA testing techniques, the narratives of Fringe and Heroes are focused on fantastical forms of genetic science. These shows use genetic mutation and genetic engineering as key narrative catalysts, articulating genre linkages to earlier science fiction shows such as The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002, 2016–present) and Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002). More specifically, Fringe and Heroes both present genetic modification as an explanatory framework for their characters’ abilities to travel in time (and in Fringe’s case, travel between alternate universes). By extension, the temporal and spatial complexity that these travels entail is explicitly and implicitly linked to developments in genetics. Secondly, their narrative structures are distinctly different, but all contain narrative devices that are, more or less, complex. As network procedurals, CSI and House adhere to a fairly conventional episodic narrative form: new cases (criminal or medical) are typically introduced in each episode and solved before the episode ends. But more specifically, both shows are examples of what Robin Nelson (1997) has called the ‘flexi-narrative’ form. More long-running story arcs, bridging several episodes or seasons, also complement the episodic plots, but most of the longer plotlines are easily ignored by all but the most devoted viewers and each episode ends with at least one case being solved. It is possible to dip in and out of these shows, or even watch episodes completely out of order, which is why they have been suitable for endless reruns. Furthermore, they also contain a number of other, rarely acknowledged, complex narrative elements, and in this chapter, I will discuss their ongoing preoccupation with ­unpredictability, uncertainty and non-linearity.1 In turn, Fringe and Heroes are examples of

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long-form serial dramas, with narrative arcs spanning whole seasons (and longer). This is a narrative form that has far more often been identified as complex. Seasons 1 and 2 of Fringe initially adopt a procedural flexi-narrative structure similar to that of CSI and House (each episode features a new mysterious case, while also touching upon recurring plots), but the episodic elements gradually disappear and later seasons almost exclusively favour longer serial arcs. Fringe’s narrative structure thus becomes increasingly similar to that of Heroes: a serial that features a large number of characters in parallel interconnecting plot lines that bridge multiple episodes and seasons. As I will discuss further in the chapter, Fringe and Heroes also convey an increased sense of complexity by extending their narratives across multiple media platforms. Finally, all four programmes feature episodes that explicitly reference complexity theory, which I will discuss at length in the chapter. I will begin this chapter with brief overviews of the scholarly writing on complex seriality in the field of television studies and the growing popularity of complexity theory, which leads to a discussion of how this wider interest in complexity links to post-genomic discourses and the increased prominence of complex narration on television. I then move on to map the complex narrative tendencies of CSI, House, Fringe and Heroes, ending with an analysis of how some episodes deal with the themes of uncertainty, unpredictability and interconnectedness more explicitly. Throughout, I also suggest some ways in which this general construction of the world as a messy, unpredictable and complex interlinked system impacts the genetic imaginary.

Seriality and Complexity in Television Studies Within the field of television studies, there is a fairly long tradition of describing long-form serials as a particularly ‘complex’ form of television narrative. Early discussions on the medium’s seriality by Raymond Williams (1974) and Horace Newcomb (1974) singled out the long-form ‘serial’ as holding particular potential for presenting rich and textured narratives of political importance, while also expressing a disappointment that television producers seemed less interested in this narrative form than in episodic ‘series’ (Williams 1974, 56–58; Newcomb 1974, 254).2 It wasn’t until a few years later that feminist television scholars more explicitly used the concept of ‘complexity’ to argue that one previously overlooked television genre had already fulfilled the potential described by Williams and Newcomb: the soap opera.3 Mapping the complex elements of the soap

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opera’s narrative form, scholars such as Christine Geraghty (1981) and Jane Feuer (1984) showed that television was, in fact, already producing original serial narratives of both formal and political importance. Primarily focusing on British soap operas such as Coronation Street (ITV, 1960–present), Geraghty argued that this type of ‘continuous serial’ should be valued for its complex narrative form, specifically referring to the way soaps continuously interweave multiple narrative plot lines and figure a group of characters who are all engaged in an interlinked web of relationships, and also their extended temporality, aimlessness and lack of final resolution (1981, 11–13, 15–16, 21; 1991, 11–16).4 In her 1991 book on the soap opera, Geraghty also added that these complex elements had served to make soap viewers more ‘aware of the rhythms of the ­narrative’ itself, thus identifying the self-reflexive tendencies of the genre as contributing further complexity (19).5 Around the turn of the millennium, a new wave of publications started to once again ascribe value to the serial narrative form. This recent trend in television studies has shifted the focus from soap operas to more prestigious serial dramas associated with the ‘quality TV’ label (McCabe and Akass 2007; Newman and Levine 2012, 15) that often address male target audiences.6 Even so, when considered in tandem, these studies suggest that such quality serials simply herald a wider trend in television for a more diverse set of genres to embrace complex narrative devices. Scholars such as Robin Nelson (1997) and Jeffrey Sconce (2004) have mapped the gradual collapse of the serial and episodic narrative form on prime-time television, showing that it has resulted in more programmes that provide some closure in each episode while also featuring many recurring characters, multiple parallel plot lines, long-running narrative arcs, self-reflexive tendencies and more ambiguous treatments of complex issues.7 Angela Ndalianis (2004, 2005) has also argued that episodic television displays an increased resistance towards linearity and closure, which she sees as part of a wider ‘neo-baroque aesthetic’ that has recently rendered ‘labyrinthine complexity’ a central element of several different types of popular entertainment. That the classic episodic and serial structures are merging to produce more complex narrative forms is also a key argument put forth by Jason Mittell in his influential article ‘Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television’ (2006) and subsequent monograph Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling (2015). Much like Nelson, Sconce and Ndalianis did before him, Mittell argues that televi-

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sion dramas have grown more complex over time, particularly since the 1990s. For Mittell, a new form of ‘complex TV’ has emerged that, in many ways, surpasses the soap opera’s classic serial form in complexity by not only rejecting narrative closure, but also offering viewers the pleasure of complex narrative special effects or ‘narrative pyrotechnics’. This self-­ reflexive mode of storytelling, or ‘metareflexive’ as Sconce (2004, 106–108) has called this aspect of contemporary dramas in his study, foregrounds the narrational strategies themselves by including stand-alone episodes that break with the show’s usual conventions or feature complex narrative devices that break with the usual temporal structure and cause-­and-­effect logic of linear narration (Mittell 2006). Mittell’s work (2006, 2009, 2019) has subsequently inspired numerous other studies of complex television narration (e.g. Lavery 2009; Booth 2011, 2012a, b; Bourdaa 2011; Ames 2012; Marinescu et al. 2014).

Complexity Theory and Complex TV The most recent wave of interest in complex television narration is, I propose, part of a wider cultural tendency to express fascination with, and invest value in, ideas about complexity, non-linearity and indeterminacy across a range of different fields and discourses. Although most television scholars do not directly reference scientific theories of complexity, there are still significant similarities between television studies’ growing interest in complex narration (viz. multiple interlinked plotlines, non-linear forms of narration and the lack of narrative closure) and the wider ‘structure of feeling in Euro-American societies which frames the world as complex, irreducible, anti-closural’ (Thrift 1999, 34). The scientific concept of complexity has come to encompass a range of ideas, but is typically used to describe the world as made up of a number of interlinked systems that conventional scientific frameworks struggle to understand because their properties are not fully explained by their component parts (Gallagher and Appenzeller 1999, 79). The scientific study of ‘non-linear relationships between constantly changing entities’ and complex behaviour that ‘evolves or emerges from relative simple local interactions between system components over time’ (Mason 2001, 406) can be traced back to a number of conceptual precursors going back to the 1920s, but it became established as an interdisci­ plinary field of research in the late 1970s.8 By the late 1980s and early

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1990s, the umbrella terms of ‘complexity research’ or ‘complexity theory’ started getting wider circulation beyond a fairly limited scientific community. This was partly due to the publication of accessible books that narrated the development of this budding field and summarised its key ideas, for example, James Gleick’s Chaos: Making of a New Science (1987), M.  Mitchell Waldrop’s Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992) and Roger Lewin’s Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (1992). Ideas of complexity gradually became accepted across a wider range of academic communities during the 1990s and even more so after the inclusion of a section on complexity theory in the April 1999 issue of the prestigious journal Science. In the early 2000s, ‘complexity’ became a widely used term across an ever-growing number of fields and practices, ranging from biology, genetics and physics, to sociology, politics, geography and economics, as well as architecture, design, digital technology (Urry 2005a, 2) and, not least, television and television studies. Crucially, this interdisciplinary field’s growing influence has developed in tandem with new genetics and epigenetic biology. Some of the most influential applications of complexity theory have been made within the fields of molecular biology, genetics and medicine, which have also played a significant role in challenging genetic determinism (Capra 2002; Higgins 2003). There has, in Barry Barnes and John Dupré’s words (2008, 8), been a shift that ‘involves genomes rather than genes being treated as real, and systems of interacting molecules rather than sets of discrete particles becoming the assumed underlying objects of research’. The post-genomic structure of feeling incorporates ideas of complexity as a key element, placing more emphasis on the interactions between the gene and its surrounding environment. What Evelyn Fox Keller (2013, 2) calls the ‘post-genomic genome’ is now seen as ‘a dynamic and reactive system’ that is complex and dynamic in its organisation. Complexity theory has encouraged a new understanding of the molecular world as a complex system of dynamically interlinked structures, and, in turn, new research in genetic science has provided further reinforcement to wider discourses on complexity. Television has, I would argue, a similarly reciprocal relationship to the wider cultural interest in complexity. During the same period that complexity theory has gained purchase in both science and popular culture, television has itself grown fonder of more complex forms of narration. This development is a result of a number of industrial and technological changes within the medium. Mittell (2006, 31–32; 2015, 34–41) has persuasively argued that the rise of ‘complex TV’ is linked to, amongst other

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things, more specialised post-network-era TV channels attempting to attract ‘boutique audiences’ and dedicated cult followers (rather than large and heterogeneous crowds) and the impact that cable, VCR, Tivo, DVD and streaming has had on television viewers (e.g. allowing for more flexible viewing habits). He also points out that the internet has played a crucial role in providing more possibilities for interactions between viewers, and, as a result, more television programmes attempt to offer ‘cognitive workouts’ for their viewers to gather online to solve (Mittell 2006, 32). However, the medium’s increased tendency to structure its dramatic worlds in ways that highlight complexly interlinked systems, non-linear temporalities and indeterminate outcomes are also, I would argue, directly entwined with the wider cultural turn towards complexity. Something similar has already been suggested in relation to the development of more complex forms of cinematic narratives. Around the same time as television studies showed a renewed interest in serial narration, numerous film studies scholars started mapping a new cycle of popular films that used complex and unconventional forms of narration and encouraged more intense forms of spectator engagement (Bordwell 2002, 2006; Kinder 2002; Branigan 2002; Martin-Jones 2006; Cameron 2006; Staiger 2006; Panek 2006; Ramírez Berg 2006; Newman 2006; Simons 2008; Elsaesser 2009; Buckland 2009, 2014; Elsaesser and Hagener 2015, 169–193).9 Some have argued that the figuration of non-linear temporalities, branching timelines and indeterminate causalities in recent films should be understood as either ‘parallel to’ (Cameron 2006, 69) or ‘borrowed from’ (Simons 2008, 112) or, simply, the same as (Brown 2014, 128–131) the concept of complexity as defined by complexity theory and its subsections of chaos theory and network theory. There are even those who have seen the popularisation of such scientific theories as a direct cause (albeit one of several) of this film cycle. Bordwell (2006, 93) has, for example, suggested that chaos theory doubtless prepared the way for films such as Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998), Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998) and The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress/J.  Mackey Gruber, 2004). In turn, J.D. Connor has asserted that the films Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993) and Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) allowed studio executives to metaphorically work through their new-­found interest in chaos theory and potentially adapt it into their business model, which Connor sees as a direct result of the popularity of Gleick’s (1987) book on chaos theory:

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Chaos was a huge best seller for a popular science book in 1987 and again in paperback, when it was a Book of the Month Club selection. Of those millions of copies of a book that took the math and turned it into a story—the story of the making of a science—many landed in Hollywood. Gleick made the butterfly effect part of casual studio conversation. (Connor 2015, 217)

The fact that plenty of television programmes, including CSI, House, Fringe and Heroes, feature plotlines directly engaging with chaos theory does indicate that television producers (or, at least, writers) have also been inspired by Gleick’s book and the numerous other popular representations of chaos theory that followed it. I am not going so far as to argue that complexity theory has instigated any of the more fundamental changes that the television industry has undergone since the late 1980s. If anything, I would rather suggest that the inherent complexity of serial television has contributed to people’s readiness to accept the world view promoted by complexity theory. As Geraghty’s (1981) and Feuer’s (1984) respective work on the soap opera shows, television has a long history of representing the world as ambiguously complex. And as more and more television programmes have embraced complex narrative structures and devices, the medium has become an active contributor to the wider cultural discourse on complexity. In the rest of this chapter, I will provide a detailed analysis of how both episodic and serial narrative structures can figure the world as interconnected and unpredictable, and how these more general tendencies interlink with the programmes’ representation of genetic science to produce a multifaceted contribution to television’s genetic imaginary.

Episodic Complexity and DNA in CSI and House Jason Mittell (2006, 29) opens his article ‘Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television’ by stating that a new form of complex television had emerged ‘alongside the host of procedural crime dramas, domestic sitcoms, and reality competitions’ that characterised television of the late 1990s and early 2000s, thus classifying the episodic crime procedural as a narrative form separate from ‘complex TV’. At the time when Mittell’s article was published, CSI and House were the two most watched procedural shows on American television.10 House is technically a hospital drama, but as a medical procedural it has much in common with CSI and other procedural crime dramas. Dr Gregory House (Hugh

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Laurie) and his team of doctors hunt diseases instead of criminals. In each episode, they are presented with a mysterious medical case and, much like the criminalists in CSI investigate crime scenes and dead bodies in order to ascertain ‘whodunit’, Dr House and his colleagues examine their patients’ bodies and their everyday environment (their homes or workplaces) as a means to establish the cause (and subsequently the cure) of the illness. Mittell’s dismissal of the procedural drama as a less complex form of television was probably based primarily on the genre’s close association with the episodic narrative structure. When defining complex TV in his 2015 book, he specifically distinguishes complex programming from the reductive elements of the episodic form: ‘Complex television employs a range of serial techniques, with the underlying assumption that a series is a cumulative narrative that builds over time, rather than resetting back to a steady–state equilibrium at the end of every episode’ (18). The episodic narrative form has a long history of being understood as more reductive, determinist and conservative than the serial form, primarily because of its emphasis on narrative closure, which is typically thought to forcefully assert the status quo (Feuer 1984, 15–16). Several studies of CSI have argued that the show’s episodic narrative structure serves to provide assurance that the criminalists will always solve the crime and thus restore a sense of order. Elke Weissmann (2007) and Derek Kompare (2010, 14) have, for example, both contended that CSI adheres to the basic narrative structure of classic crime films, which is roughly based on the ideal narrative famously described by literary theorist Tzvetan Todorov. In short, this structure consists of a movement from equilibrium to disturbance, and back to the reinstatement of a new equilibrium. Crime narratives have become known for using this structure with the intent of propagating law and order over crime and chaos. By depicting the disruptive force of crime, and then having the investigative process reinstate the equilibrium, crime dramas are said to assure their viewers that law and order are necessary powers of good. The fact that CSI’s plotlines almost always end with a verbal explanation of the events surrounding the crime (a narrative device reminiscent of the end-­ monologues in Agatha Christie’s classic crime novels) has, for example, been discussed by Ellen Burton Harrington (2007, 367) as a type of ‘conservative conclusion [that] reaffirms the efficacy of the detective procedure and the stability of society’ by providing a satisfying sense of knowing the causes and effects behind the crime. Considering the narrative similarities between House and CSI, it is easy to convincingly argue that House

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similarly results in a reductive assertion that the medical doctors will find the cause of their patients’ illnesses and restore them to health, thus reinstating a kind of equilibrium. The episodic form obviously tends to promote simplicity and certitude rather than complexity and uncertainty, but there are also elements of CSI and House’s procedural narrative forms that articulate complexity alongside their more reductive elements. Like most crime procedurals narrated strictly from the perspective of the investigators, both shows’ short episodic arcs possess an inherent complexity because the wider stories about the events surrounding the crime—or in the case of House, the onset of the disease—are difficult for viewers to infer with any certainty while the investigation is ongoing. These events have largely taken place off-screen, and it is usually impossible to guess what happened before the investigators come to a conclusion themselves. By extension, episodic procedural dramas can rarely be described as having a straightforwardly linear plot; they are typically layered narratives that deal with the difficulty of reconstructing a story without having all the facts. It is easy to assume that CSI and House construct forensic science and medicine as practices that provide simple solutions to the intrinsic problem of how to know the past with any certainty. As outlined in the previous chapter, CSI follows a long line of forensic crime dramas such as Craig Kennedy: Criminologist (Weiss Productions, 1952), Silent Evidence (BBC, 1962), Thorndyke (BBC, 1964), Quincy M.E. (NBC, 1976–1983), The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976), McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998) and Silent Witness (BBC, 1996–present), which all celebrated forensic science as an exceptionally effective and trustworthy method for ascertaining reliable information about past events through analysis of physical evidence. Physical evidence is given an important narrative role in all forensic crime dramas due to its cultural status as an indexical trace from events, objects or individuals removed in time and space. The discovery of a new piece of evidence not only functions as a catalyst driving the investigation forwards, but also allows the viewers to infer more information about the events surrounding the crime. As I have detailed earlier, on CSI, this wider tendency is probably most apparent in the cases where DNA evidence is used, due to the exceptional status awarded to genetic traces. In many episodes, DNA evidence has something of a deus ex machina function. Portrayed as the ‘holy grail’ of physical evidence, it is often attributed divine properties: invisible, yet omnipresent, eternal and endlessly reliable. Once the investigators have

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located DNA evidence and found a match, it will typically contribute to the crime being solved, resolving the entanglements of the plot. CSI’s intensified focus on physical evidence undoubtedly serves to assert that criminalists are now able to access and analyse more miniscule pieces of evidence than ever before. Curiously, however, the unparalleled narrative role given to DNA evidence does not simply result in an increased sense of certainty. While most earlier forensic crime dramas tended to exclusively include physical evidence of actual narrative importance (that revealed a relevant and crucial piece of information about the crime), CSI’s tendency to showcase a veritable smorgasbord of minuscule evidence regularly acknowledges that some traces can throw the investigation off-track, which inadvertently result in a far less linear understanding of past events. In CSI, most crime scenes contain red herrings, and the criminalists have to figure out which pieces of evidence actually contain information relevant to solving the crime. As my discussion of the episode ‘Chaos Theory’ at the beginning of this chapter showed, DNA evidence can also turn out to be irrelevant. Something very similar happens in House. Symptoms, test results or physical clues recovered from the patients’ homes usually reveal new information about the cause of the illness while simultaneously pushing the investigation closer to finding a cure. However, the journey towards discovery is by no means straightforward and there is always a risk that the clues uncovered set the doctors off on a false lead. As Lotz (2013, 28) points out in her analysis of House, the title character’s guiding mantra is ‘everybody lies’, a notion that underlines all the medical mysteries on the show: ‘Patients, even when not trying to confuse the diagnostician, change their stories and omit vital details in ways that require physicians to reconsider everything they thought they knew’. Just as in CSI, where many witnesses and perpetrators lie, physical evidence is crucial for ascertaining the truth about what is happening to a patient. But it is not simply the case that physical clues always provide fail-safe knowledge: in both CSI and House, the investigators constantly have to figure out exactly which traces or symptoms are relevant for solving the crime or curing the patient. The medical investigations in House, for example, follow a series of tests and treatments, many of which are far from successful. The episodic plotlines of both shows can thus be described as a succession of iterative cycles presenting a number of tentative solutions rather than a straightforward linear development. These are narratives of trial and error: new physical traces are repeatedly recovered, analysed and interpreted, sometimes with

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different outcomes. The process might reveal new useful facts, but it could also result in problematic assumptions, faulty hypotheses or irrelevant pieces of information that have to be refuted by new evidence. In CSI, the complexity of this iterative episodic structure is enhanced by a repeated use of flashbacks. Although earlier forensic crime programmes rarely featured flashbacks, they are still a long-standing narrative device in the crime genre more generally, typically used to visualise verbal testimonies. Generically such flashbacks have tended to corroborate the stories told by witnesses, victims or suspects, though they are occasionally used to highlight the subjectivity and partiality of memory. So even though temporal jumps can add to the complexity of a narrative, flashbacks are usually presented as fairly reliable accounts of past events, driving the plot as well as the story forwards in a linear fashion. CSI’s use of flashbacks is interesting because they can be triggered by the analysis of physical evidence as well as verbal testimonies. Mittell (2015, 186) has mentioned CSI as an example of a show using a quite uncommon type of flashbacks that he calls ‘replays’: flashbacks that are not framed as character’s memories but instead presented from a more objective third-person perspective. He concludes that ‘crime dramas such as CSI often use replays in the context of retelling the previously seen crime scene, but they present new narrative information in the retelling, making the flashback less about memory than filling story gaps’ (186). However, far from all of CSI’s flashbacks can be classified as ‘objective’, and not all of them actually provide new or reliable information about the events surrounding the crime. Considering the programme’s overall construction of witness testimonies as unreliable, it is not surprising that many of the flashbacks motivated by verbal accounts are later revealed to depict either misconceptions or outright lies. But flashbacks instigated by physical evidence are also habitually exposed as being similarly unreliable. Flashbacks triggered by the discovery of a new piece of evidence often illustrate the criminalists’ theories of what happened rather than actual facts, and they frequently turn out to be wrong. The regular viewer of CSI will quickly learn that the show features many different types of flashbacks: subjective memories, deliberately false witness accounts, scientific theories (that could be either right or wrong) and objective replays of actual events. Furthermore, all flashbacks are presented in a similarly expressionistic style (they are distinguished from the narrative proper though the use of fuzzy or coloured

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filters, overexposure, tilted camera angles or other visual devices associated with a non-realistic style), which renders them all equally uncertain; the viewers are never given any reliable tools for deciphering which are true until the end of the investigation. As Martha Gever (2005, 449) points out, CSI’s portrayal of the crimes in ‘imaginary reconstructions’ rather than in ‘prosaic realism’ results in a continual disruption of the cause-­ effect logic that these kinds of crime narratives usually display. CSI’s flashbacks not only impact the linearity of the plot about the investigation (which is broken up by periodic time warps), but also result in a story about the crime that is both fragmentary and (at least until the very end) uncertain. The events around the crime are presented in a non-linear manner that makes them appear, at least initially, unpredictable and potentially inexplicable. Up until the very end of each episode, the narrative structure emphasises the difficulties in establishing the causal relationships between different events, objects and individuals. The iterative structure and the unreliable flashbacks stage the world as a more complex place than one might have initially assumed. Pieces of physical evidence are not constructed simply as indexical traces, but as nodes in a dynamic web of temporal and spatial relationships. The narrative structure articulates the possibility that a more perceptive scientific gaze (as described in the previous chapter) might produce too much information. This risk specifically relates to DNA evidence, due to the show’s general assertion that out of all types of physical evidence, DNA is the most resilient and enduring. It is indicative that many of the contemporary spoofs of CSI made fun of it for portraying every crime scene as being ‘covered in semen’.11 It seems that rather than convincing its viewers of the prevalence and reliability of DNA evidence, the show’s narrative structure actually helped highlight the impossibility of determining what information is relevant in a world covered in microscopic traces. House’s cyclical structure similarly presents a set of symptoms as potential signs of several different diseases, and, in turn, several possible treatments. Some of these may provide temporary relief, but most will have no impact at all, and many make the patient even more unwell. Viewers are thus introduced to a world with an abundance of indeterminate symptoms, many of which could be a sign of multiple illnesses and thus require an exceptional medical genius such as Dr House to figure out the right cure. Both CSI and House are procedurals where it is practically impossible to guess the solution in advance. Until the end of each episode, the iterative

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narrative structure is characterised by a series of unresolved moments that—albeit in passing—express a post-genomic sense of unpredictability and uncertainty. In both programmes, this sense of unpredictability is already established in the opening scenes that precede the title credits. In CSI, they usually portray some events either before the crime is committed or after the discovery of a dead body, and in the case of House, the opening normally depicts the first onset of disease in a patient. As viewers, we are invited to guess who might end up dead, where the next body might be found and who might become sick. However, in both programmes, the opening scenes usually feature some form of misdirection. As Lotz (2013, 23) puts it, when describing how this particular complex narrative device works in House: ‘for instance, it is not the overweight, middle-aged man complaining of chest pains who will become this week’s case, but his apparently healthy wife who will inexplicably collapse’. Comparably, in CSI, we might assume that the woman running through a deserted park at night is about to be murdered, but instead she trips over what turns out to be a half-buried dead body. In addition to attracting the viewers’ attention and keeping them entertained (these sequences are often witty or even somewhat humorous), they also serve to remind us to expect the unexpected. These are narratives that will take unforeseen turns, at least up until the very end. The main reason the iterative episodic structure has received relatively little scholarly attention is probably because most episodes of these programmes still end in narrative closure. The forensic scientists in CSI are usually able to at least establish the ‘how’ and the ‘who’ (how did someone die and who is responsible). For guaranteed clarity, we are usually offered a clear verbal explanation that lays out the surrounding events in a coherent chain. In turn, Dr House and his colleagues will always be able to make a diagnosis, and the episodes typically end with the patients getting out of bed and leaving the hospital, once again wearing their everyday clothes to underline their status as ‘cured’. While the iterative structure momentarily disrupts the traditional linear drive of the narrative, the equilibrium is eventually reinstated and any previous sense of uncertainty is reduced. In episodes of House that feature DNA evidence or genetic disease, the episodic resolution definitely plays a significant role in the programme’s more general essentialist portrayal of genetics as a source of objective knowledge.

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Serial Complexity and Genetic Modification in Fringe and Heroes Serial narratives, which are characterised by a ‘continual postponement of the final resolution’ (Geraghty 1981, 11), tend to convey feelings of ambiguity and unpredictability in more forceful ways as their lack of narrative closure at the end of episodes assert the indeterminate nature of the future. As viewers, we cannot predict how an episode will end, and we are also left to wonder what will happen in the next one. Fringe illustrates the difference between the episodic and the serial structures’ relationships to complexity in particularly clear ways, as it has gradually developed from using a flexi-narrative form with a fairly strict focus on episodic plotlines to becoming a ‘pure’ serial from the third season and onwards. Furthermore, as a programme ‘about’ fringe science, it is also a particularly clear example of how narrative structure contributes to the discourses about scientific knowledge in general, and genetic science more specifically. The characters in Fringe repeatedly voice the idea that ‘all answers just lead to more questions’, a guiding mantra that is used to defend the need to explore unconventional scientific theories and methods, but as the programme develops it becomes a more fundamental call for acceptance of the inexplicable elements of life. This shift is engendered by the show’s move from episodic closure towards increased serial openness. Throughout Seasons 1 and 2, Dr Walter Bishop (John Noble), his laboratory assistant Agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) and his son Peter Bishop (Joshua Jackson) usually manage to find some kind of explanation for the seemingly inexplicable events that FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is tasked to investigate. Most of these explanations are pretty unorthodox, but in the universe of the show, most ‘fringe theories’ are taken as facts that provide some form of closure. However, in later seasons, less emphasis is placed on solving individual fringe-related crimes, and the larger mysteries, which remain more or less unsolved over multiple seasons, become more central. As soon as one question seems to have been answered, new ones appear, thus undermining any truly satisfying sense of closure. Something similar is true for Heroes, which lacks episodic closure altogether and also conveys an acute sense of indeterminate openness through its numerous characters and plotlines. The first season introduces 11 main characters and whenever someone is written out of the show, others replace them, which means that there are always a large number of plotlines in

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motion. The continuous refusal to provide definite closure in Heroes and Fringe is also enhanced by both shows’ complex play with temporality. Melissa Ames (2012, 111) has argued that both programmes ‘include experimental temporality and centre their plots on anxieties concerning time: the longing to correct mistakes of the past, the panic of living in a hypersensitive present, and the fear of the premeditated future’. As the show develops, Fringe makes increasing use of flashbacks and flash-­ forwards, with whole episodes being set in the past and the future, but it also features plotlines set in a parallel universe and multiple alternate timelines in both universes. Heroes, in turn, is characterised by a similarly intricate temporality. Here, the complex use of flashbacks and flash-forwards is diegetically anchored in some of the characters’ abilities to either see the future or bend the time-space continuum (i.e. to time travel and teleport). Genetics figures in both programmes as a key narrative catalyst used to motivate their complex narration. In Heroes, it is a genetic modification that gives some people superhuman abilities that break the laws of nature. Only a few humans are born with this genetic mutation. The rest have had their genetic set-up altered by scientists who developed a ‘genetic modification formula’, and this invention is revealed as one of the things that will eventually lead to the destruction of the entire world. In Fringe, it is scientist Walter Bishop’s wish to cure his son’s fatal genetic disease that pushes him to develop a way of observing, and eventually open a portal to, a more scientifically advanced alternate universe where a cure for the genetic disorder has been developed. In both programmes, post-genomic ideas about the inherent malleability of the genetic code become intimately interlinked with their complex narration, which results in a wider portrayal of time as unpredictably non-linear, and people and events as complexly interconnected. Post-genomic ideas are thus far more prominent in Fringe and Heroes than in CSI and House, due to their narrative focus on genetically modified bodies and the possibilities of genetic engineering. The idea that developments in science and medicine provide a new potential for fundamentally redefining the concept of bodily identity is central to the emergent post-­ genomic discourse (Franklin 2000, 189; Rose 2001, 5, 11–15). Fringe’s plotlines about the genetically modified superhuman ‘Observers’, and the many plotlines in Heroes about the ‘genetic modification formula’ which give special abilities to people who are not born with them, all construct genetic engineering as a technology of ‘plastic pluralism’ creating a future where seemingly anything goes in terms of individual self-transformation

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(Bordo 1991, 115–117). Rather than only seeing genetic science as a potential source for cures to diseases, it is portrayed as having a potential for far more radical bodily changes, fuelled by fantasies of limitless transformations and change. In this sense, Fringe and Heroes share post-­genomic sensibilities with somewhat earlier science fiction shows such as The X-Files and Dark Angel, which portray experiments in trans-species genetic engineering where the human genome is mixed with, respectively, alien and animal DNA to produce radically new forms of malleable corporality. More radically yet, Heroes not only portrays genetic science as a catalyst for new forms of bodily plasticity (i.e. as enabling change through different types of genetic engineering), but also suggests that the body itself is far more inherently plastic than we might have thought. The idea that some people are born with a genetic mutation that has given them special abilities dramatises the basic post-genomic idea that the very core of the human body (the gene) is inherently malleable and indeterminately changing.12 The final seasons of Fringe and Heroes do, however, reach some form of narrative conclusion, and genetics also plays a crucial role here. Season 5 of Fringe ends with Walter travelling into the future through a wormhole, finally stopping the genetic experiment that led to the creation of the Observers (genetically ‘evolved’ humans who have been travelling back in time in order to ‘rise to a position of totalitarian power’), thus stopping their invasion of the Earth in 2015. In the case of Heroes, each of its seasons includes discrete narrative arcs that come to a close in the season finales. The first season finale ‘How to Stop an Exploding Man’ (S01E23) ends with a confrontation between Sylar (Zachary Quinto)—a serial killer with the genetic ability to instantly understand the structure and operation of complex systems, who has been targeting other ‘evolved’ humans to steal their brains and gain their abilities—and the other ‘heroes’. They clash in front of a giant red abstract sculpture, its double-twisted staircase structure bringing to mind the double-helix spiral of DNA and, by extension, the source of the heroes’ abilities: a genetic mutation.13 The scene ends in (what the viewers assume is) the killing of Sylar, and the two brothers Peter (Milo Ventimiglia) and Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) committing joint suicide by flying into space after it has become clear that Peter is in fact the ‘exploding man’ that has been predicted to end the world (although in the following season, we find out they have all survived). The fourth, and final, season similarly ends with a group of heroes working together to stop another villain with special abilities, who is threatening the very existence of the planet.

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While the serial narrative structures of Fringe and Heroes place less emphasis on narrative closure than the episodic form of CSI and House, both shows still provide a sense of resolution to a greater extent than, for example, a generic soap opera narrative (which typically ends seasons with multiple cliff-hangers). The season and series finales of Fringe and Heroes do, at least momentarily, restrict the complexity of their narratives and provide a sense of relief and certainty: the riddles posed along the way have seemingly been solved and the world has been saved. In Geraghty’s (1991, 11) words, we still expect that ‘in the end the significance of what we are watching will be revealed’. These solutions also contribute to the genetic imaginary in crucial ways. Although they express considerable fascination with the genetically engineered post-genomic body, these narrative resolutions make apparent that they also express fears about genetic malleability, which are still rooted in essentialist beliefs about DNA.  In both programmes, genetically modified bodies (no matter whether the alteration has occurred ‘naturally’ or been engineered) are as dangerous as they are captivating: they literally threaten the existence of the entire world. Implicit to this portrayal is essentialist nostalgia for a time when the genome was simply a determinate, unchangeable, blueprint of life.

Happy Endings and Dynamic Middles To place too much emphasis on the element of narrative closure in both episodic and serial programmes can, however, be misleading. These are all long-running shows, and to argue that their endings (whether of individual episodes or at the end of a series or season) have the most important impact on their construction of genetics is, I would argue, reductive. It is, for one thing, possible to question how much of a sense of closure the series finales of Fringe and Heroes actually supply. As one reviewer of Fringe pointed out: ‘If you’re the type of viewer that wants all [the plotlines] neatly tied up, or if you want your stories to be tightly plotted, or if you like story build-up to be resolved concretely, then [season five] was probably not very satisfying to you’ (Isler 2013). It is similarly difficult to view Season 4 of Heroes as a ‘final’ ending since its fictional world has kept expanding in other media, even returning to television with a 13-episode miniseries titled Heroes Reborn in the autumn of 2015. Both Fringe and Heroes are prominent examples of ‘transmedia storytelling’ (Jenkins 2003, 2006), with stories unfolding across multiple media platforms, which bring more complexity to their narrative worlds.14 Even

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though each ‘entry’ should work separately, they also feature cross-­ references that allow the initiated reader to spot parallels and significant links, thus resulting in a more expansive and interlinked ‘universe’. Henry Jenkins (2007) has discussed the Heroes comic books as examples of transmedia storytelling, and he quotes Heroes’ writers Aron Eli Coleite and Joe Pokaski, who have asserted that ‘Our first rule going in was that you didn’t have to read the comic to enjoy the show, but it created an enhanced experience if you did. On the other side, we wanted people who did watch the show and read the comic to feel rewarded—that they were taking part of something larger […]’. Jenkins’s analysis further demonstrates that Heroes’ transmedia form provides increased character development, a deeper understanding of the events in the television series and a generally richer experience of the universe. The multiple forms of narrative construct the story world as a complex network, and the key scenes that overlap between the programmes serve as notes of entry that highlight the layered nature of the transmedia story. Similarly, Mélanie Bourdaa (2013) has discussed Fringe as consisting of a complex system of transmedia stories. In this case, the story universe not only extends across the television programmes and a set of comic books, but also specially created vinyl records for a fake music group featured in the programme and a website created for the fictive company Massive Dynamics, as well as an ‘alternate reality game’ (i.e. an interactive networked narrative that used the real world as a platform for the participants) titled Imaging the possible that encouraged the viewers to listen to broadcasts of weather reports on radio stations, explore a number of viral websites and participate in a scavenger hunt at Comic Con. Bourdaa (2013, 211–213) proposes that Fringe, as a transmedia story, also gains further complexity through the fan practices and fan productions that the programme has inspired. Drawing on Mittell’s assertion that complex TV often encourages more viewers than before to participate in what he calls ‘forensic fandom’ practices (Mittell 2009, 2015), Bourdaa (2013, 207) argues that Fringe is a form of ‘narrative puzzle’ that encourages viewers to attempt to collect, map and organise the information dispersed across multiple platforms, a practice that has, for example, resulted in the website FringePedia. Fan practices further serve to highlight the complexly interconnected nature of the programme’s numerous plotlines and multiple characters. These examples certainly illustrate Mittell’s (2015, 319–322) assertion that conclusions (which offer a sense of finality and resolution) are comparatively rare for US television dramas, which he traces back to

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the commercial system they are produced in. Because US programmes tend to be renewed for more seasons as long as they are generating decent ratings (i.e. they are not created with a specific run in mind), television writers are forced to design more expansive narrative worlds, and open-­ ended storylines can be sustained for an unknown amount of years (Mittell 2015, 34). I would argue that the fact that ‘the industry equates success with an infinite middle and relegates endings to failures’ (Mittell 2015, 321) not only contributes to the open-ended nature of serials like Fringe and Heroes, but also serves to somewhat undermine the sense of closure that the episodic structure of series such as CSI and House has traditionally been thought to provide. As I have already mentioned, CSI and House have both been exceptionally successful and have thus remained on-air over a long period. CSI encompasses 336 episodes, and one TV movie, while House consists of 177 episodes. Both programmes have also had multiple reruns, which means that people have continued watching them well after their original air date, often out of order. The longevity and multiplicity of these programmes destabilises the impact of the closure provided at the end of each episode: there is always another episode around the corner where the equilibrium will once again be disturbed. The regular viewer will therefore be well aware that even though one crime is solved and one disease is cured, yet another is waiting in the next episode. Consequently, the fact that CSI and House conform to episodic norms of closure and resolution does not completely negate their unresolved moments. The same is true for the series and season finales of Fringe and Heroes. Their conclusions assert that the dangerous nature of genetically modified bodies does not negate the wonder and excitement they express about fringe science, special abilities and time travel. While endings are, no doubt, a significant narrative device that are traditionally given much cultural importance, endings alone do not tell the whole story. And furthermore, there are many different forms of narrative closure, not all reductive and conservative (Neupert 1995; Mittell 2015, 319–353). James MacDowell’s (2010) critique of a tendency in film studies to overuse the often under-defined concept of ‘the happy ending’ as a ‘bad object’ could fruitfully be adapted to the field of television studies, which would benefit from more in-depth studies of what meanings the episodic form actually results in. As MacDowell (2010, 16–18) points out with reference to the generic happy ending of Hollywood cinema, it is often assumed that n ­ arrative

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closure always brings about resolution and by default is a normative and ideologically conservative form. To set up such an artificially simplistic binary between closed and open endings can function as a forceful rhetorical move, useful for celebrating a certain type of programme or taking an ideological stance, but it risks missing significant nuances. By paying attention to both the ‘happy endings’ and the more dynamically complex ‘middles’ of these programmes, a clearer image appears of how their narration contributes to the genetic imaginary by staging a multifaceted cultural forum that simultaneously articulates both older essentialist investments and emergent post-genomic sensibilities. The former might still be dominant, but to further highlight how all four programmes have also begun to examine a new structure of feeling, I will now discuss examples where the four programmes engage more directly with post-­ genomic issues of interconnectedness, unpredictability and non-linearity through the kinds of stories they tell. However, in the subsequent concluding remarks, I will also acknowledge that there are significant reductive tendencies to these programmes’ treatment of complexity, which further highlights the contradictory nature of television’s genetic imaginary.

Interconnectedness, Non-linearity and Unpredictability Interconnectedness is a key idea in new genetics and complexity theory. The gene, the human body and the world surrounding it are all seen as consisting of intricately interlinked systems (Waldrop 1992, 9–12, 28, 119; Kelly 2007). Fringe and Heroes both continuously figure interconnected networks of events, processes and entities. For example, a majority of the mysterious cases that the fringe division investigates in Fringe are fairly quickly established as mysteriously interlinked: the characters realise that these events happen with some regularity at certain locations that together form ‘the pattern’. Their investigations also reveal other commonalities between the discrete fringe cases, linking them to the larger questions posed by the programme’s more long-running plotlines. Many of the fringe events involve ‘shapeshifters’ (a kind of inorganic human hybrids), and the ‘Observers’ (bald men wearing 50s suits) are sighted at many of the crime scenes. The relationships between the different plotlines grow to become even more complex over time, as Fringe introduces parallel plotlines set in an alternate universe that

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features doppelgängers of all the main characters. Heroes also consists of numerous parallel plotlines that continuously interweave, overlap and collapse over the seasons. Each is focused on a character with a genetic anomaly, resulting in superhuman abilities, pointing towards the show’s general construction of genetics as a framework of explanation that ties all these disparate people together. In spite of the distinctive nature of their abilities (including such varied skills and attributes as acidic blood, age shifting, cloning, emphatic mimicry, enhanced strength, gravitational manipulation, melting, nerve manipulation, shape shifting, teleportation and weather control), the diegetic explanation for their ‘superpowers’ is that they all share the same ‘genetic marker’. Heroes asserts that these people are linked together through their shared genetic set-up, although it seems to manifest in highly unpredictable ways. As Stan Beeler (2012) points out, ‘many of the characters that appear in the series are related to each other not only though this somewhat random genetic similarity, but also though a bewildering network of familial connections’ (30). That the ‘exceptionals’ should be understood as a complex network of people interconnected by genetics is even further emphasised by the narrative exposition that the geneticist Dr Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari/Ravi Kapoor) has mapped and tracked the people with unusual powers using the Human Genome Project. Interconnectedness is not given the same overarching structuring role in the episodic shows, but CSI regularly engages with the concept by featuring episodes where the criminalists’ investigations into seemingly disparate crimes eventually turn out to be connected. Episodes of CSI usually feature at least two parallel plotlines (‘A and B’), each featuring a discrete criminal investigation. Mittell (2006, 34) observes that most shows with this type of structure tend to feature A and B plots that, at the most, ‘offer thematic parallels or provide counterpoint to one another’. More complexly interlinked parallel plotlines have traditionally been relatively rare, but the number of shows that feature multiple plotlines that ‘collide and coincide’ has increased since the 1990s, particularly within the sitcom and comedy genres (Mittell 2015, 42). Perhaps taking a cue from shows such as Seinfeld (NBC, 1989–1998) or Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000– present), CSI repeatedly features episodes where different investigations unexpectedly collapse into each other. ‘Homebodies’ (S03E03), for example, opens with three distinct lines of investigation: (A) Gil Grissom and Warrick Brown (Gary Dourdan) process a crime scene with a mummified woman locked into her own closet, (B) Catherine Willows investigates a

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weapon found in a backyard by a little boy and (C) Sara Sidle (Jorja Fox) and Nick Stokes (George Eads) get called out to a home invasion and discover that the case also involves the rape of a teenage girl. As the forensic searches progress, the criminalists not only realise that Grissom, Warrick, Nick and Sarah are all searching for the same perpetrator, but they also discover that Catherine’s inquiry is connected to one of Warwick’s earlier cases. Another interesting example is ‘4x4’ (S05E19), where the forensic scientists investigate no less than four different cases in one shift, which all connect back to each other and also sport several thematic similarities. Further emphasising the complexity of the relationships between the cases, the episode also features an unusual reversed temporal structure (each new investigation depicted in the episode takes place before the last, indicated though a rewinding clock). Episodes such as these not only diverge from the traditional storytelling conventions of episodic crime dramas in ways that provide pleasure by adding an element of surprise. They also require the viewers to re-examine the cause-and-effect order of previous events. The interweaving plotlines construct the world as a complexly interconnected system where seemingly discrete characters and events actually turn out to be related. Another key concept in the field of complexity theory, particularly associated with its sub-field of chaos theory, is ‘non-linearity’, which refers to the lack of a consistent relationship between causes and effects, making the outcome and severity of an event hard to predict. In complex non-­ linear systems, a miniscule alteration can lead to dramatically large consequences (Lewin 1999, 11; Thrift 1999, 32–33; Manson 2001, 406–407; Urry 2005a, 4–5). A popular metaphor often used to explain this idea is that a butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane on the opposite side of the globe. The so-called butterfly effect was popularised in the 1960s by mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorentz, who used it to explain the idea that a very small change at one point in a complex system can have large effects elsewhere (Lorenz 1963; Lewin 1999, 11). A similar illustration of non-linearity had already been conceived in Ray Bradbury’s short story A Sound of Thunder from 1952, where a character travels back in time and accidently steps on a butterfly, and this seemingly insignificant event has major effects on the future. Discussing Lorentz’s theory, Roger Lewin has pointed out that ‘a butterfly flaps its wings over the Amazon rain forest, and sets in motion events that lead to a storm over Chicago. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, however, nothing of meteorological consequence happens. This is

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[another] feature of nonlinear systems: very slight differences in initial conditions produce very different outcomes’ (Lewin 1999, 11). The concept of non-linearity can thus lead to the insight that predictions are impossible even in deterministic systems (even under consistent circumstances, a specific ‘cause’ might result in different ‘effects’), which points to an inherent uncertainty in complex systems of both the natural and social worlds (Urry 2005b, 238; Lewin 1999, 11). The programmes analysed here feature multiple direct references to the butterfly effect. Grissom describes it in the CSI episode ‘Chaos Theory’, but it is also referenced in the title ‘The Butterfly Effect’ (S03E02)—the episode of Heroes that begins to investigate the major consequences of an assassination attempt on Nathan Petrelli by a future version of his brother Peter (who has travelled back in time). Two episodes on, in ‘I am Become Death’, (S03E04) future Peter explains to his present self that his time travels has caused serious problems by saying that he has ‘stepped on too many butterflies’, referring to Bradbury’s story. Beyond such ‘name dropping’, all four shows repeatedly dramatise the concept of non-linearity in ways that are more implicit. For example, House continuously emphasises that many deadly diseases with horrific symptoms are caused by microscopic entities, tiny genetic anomalies or the most mundane events. One representative example of this is the episode ‘Guardian Angels’ (S04E04) where a young funeral-home cosmetician starts suffering terrifying hallucinations, painful wounds on her arms, an enlarged spleen and, finally, an acute liver failure. The doctors initially misdiagnose her as suffering from Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (the human form of Mad Cow disease and a hereditary form of Parkinson’s disease), but in the end they finally realise that all her symptoms are caused by ergot poisoning from mould in the organic rye bread she ate. She almost died from the simple act of eating bread, illustrating that a tiny genetic alteration can have severe effects on the body. House is very fond of ailments that cause disproportionately catastrophic symptoms that also seem impossible to avoid. The concept of non-linearity is also crucial to the narrative resolution that Fringe eventually provides for viewers (which is perhaps why many felt it provided an unsatisfactory sense of closure). We are told that it was Walter Bishop’s impulsive choice to cross over to the alternate universe (to save the other version of his son Peter to die from the same genetic disease as his actual son) that created ‘cracks in the delicate membrane between the universes’, which subsequently caused a series of unexplained events in both universes and set them ‘on a collision course’. This explanation constructs

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the relationships between the cause (Walter’s act) and its subsequent result (the destruction of two universes) as one precisely characterised by nonlinearity. Fringe asserts that one man’s attempt to rescue one boy’s life can result in the subsequent destruction of two entire universes. As Melissa Ames (2012, 119) points out in her analysis of two more episodes that feature explicit references to chaos theory—the Heroes episode ‘Brave New World’ (S04E18) and the Fringe episode ‘The White Tulip’ (S02E18)— the dramatisations of non-linearity and the butterfly effect in Heroes and Fringe produce the didactic message that ‘changing the past/future is something to regret’. As Peter Petrelli’s mum tells her son in ‘The Butterfly Effect’: ‘You don’t screw with time. It’s called the butterfly effect. You step on a butterfly today, three years from now a million people are wiped out.’ The concept of non-linearity is generally called upon to hammer home the notion that you can never predict what outcome even the smallest act will have. So even if you travel back in time to correct a wrong, your actions— however unassuming—might have catastrophic repercussions that you could never have foreseen. This point is also brought home though CSI’s tendency to figure untimely deaths that turn out to have been caused by random accidents rather than murder. For a show about crime scene investigation, death is surprisingly often presented as a random, unpredictable and coincidental occurrence rather than a result of pre-meditated murder—something that can happen to anyone, at any time and without any warning. The poignantly titled episode ‘Ending Happy’ (S07E21) is an illustrative example of this. Here, the iterative attempts at solving a mysterious death finally reveal that a much-hated former boxer died from accidentally falling into a pool due to a broken chair, even though there had been multiple serious attempts on his life the very same day. This solution suggests that the boxer’s early death was unavoidable because a complexly interlinked series of small circumstances conspired to cause his death (the assassination attempts, his seafood allergy, the broken chair, etc.). This is only one of numerous plotlines in CSI that end in the knowledge that a series of small and seemingly insignificant events can have unexpectedly severe outcomes. For example, in ‘Feeling the Heat’ (S04E04), a man accidently electrocutes himself after a homemade swamp-cooler short circuits his massage chair, and in ‘Revenge is Best Served Cold’ (S03E01), a gambler dies of lead poisoning from his favourite brand of chocolate, made from West African cocoa plants that have soaked up acid rain.

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Episodes such as these convey the idea that the world is an essentially ‘messy’ and unpredictable place. Although the criminalists can use forensic science to find out what happened, they can never stop new crimes from happening or other people from dying. CSI provides very little sense of crime investigations enabling any type of preventive measures; the law enforcement representatives do not seem able to provide a lasting sense of security or make the world a better place by preventing future crimes. Thanks to new scientific developments, not least in genetic science, the criminalists are able to explain the events, but this does not seem to ultimately result in an increased sense of security. Forensic science is instead depicted as exposing the world as an inherently incontrollable and uncertain place; randomness and chance are depicted as central aspects of natural deaths, accidents and murders alike. Another illustrative example of this is the CSI plotline in ‘Toe Tags’ (S07E03), where the criminalists investigate the lethal stabbing of a soldier who has just returned home from his second tour in Iraq. The evidence shows that the assailant randomly attacked the soldier while being in an irrational state after inhaling a toxic substance. The arbitrary nature of the crime is implied further by the fact that the soldier has just survived a war (he would have been more likely to be killed in service). When the criminalists explain the circumstances to his grieving widow, she exclaims: ‘It was just random?! That’s the reason I don’t have a husband? That’s why?!’ Plotlines such as these undermine the sense of closure usually ascribed to the episodic structure of crime dramas by also making it difficult to place blame. Many of CSI’s episodic endings emphasise that the world is an inherently uncontrollable and uncertain place by presenting solutions that make it hard to identify one clearly innocent victim or guilty perpetrator. As Elke Weissmann’s (2010) examination of CSI shows, a majority of the episodes portray the circumstances of crime as decidedly ‘messy’ in a way that undermines any coherent legal discourse: [Crimes are] borne out of difficult relationships: at work, in friendship networks, within families and sexual relationships. [Rather] than offering a clear indication of who the ‘bad guy’ or the good person is, CSI can offer a portrait of social life as difficult and complicated. CSI therefore provides a portrayal of the circumstances of crime as messy which also makes the use of a legal discourse difficult: in a world in which people are driven to crime how can guilt be defined as absolute? (Weissmann 2010, 16)

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This evasion of moral closure is further enhanced by the programme’s general ambiguity in tone: CSI regularly features ‘quirky’ and outright comical plotlines that undermine morality by casting murder or manslaughter as spectacular curiosities or humorous oddities rather than as serious threats against society. Furthermore, unlike the investigators in many other crime dramas, the criminalists in CSI are not aiming to uncover the motives behind the crimes. Their investigations are focused on establishing what happened and who did it, not ‘why’, which means that viewers regularly are left without a clear sense of the complete cause-and-effect chain. As a result, CSI’s episodic structure does not primarily construct forensic science as a tool for placing blame, inflicting punishment, achieving justice or creating a safer world, but rather as a means to study the world in all its strangeness and messiness. Furthermore, this sense of disorder is not so much presented as a failure of law enforcement to ensure order, but rather as an inherent quality of life. CSI’s comparable unwillingness to express moral judgements becomes particularly apparent through a comparison with CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012) and CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013). Both spin-offs devote much more screen time to untangling the morals of each case they depict and do so in ways that clearly establish responsibility, blame and guilt. As implied by a voice-over at the end of CSI: Miami’s pilot episode ‘Golden Parachute’ (S01E01), forensic science is in this show depicted as a tool for establishing the truth about the crime that will bring justice to ‘those innocent victims who are powerless’, ‘because without the truth, we ourselves become powerless’. By comparison, CSI does not explicitly portray science as a means for gaining the power to place blame and punishment. Whereas CSI: Miami’s discourse on science suggests that a chaotic world should be understood as a failure of the criminalists to expose the truth, CSI depicts chaos and uncertainty as a result of the scientific gaze becoming more perceptive than ever before. The messiness of the world is not due to a failure of science to control it, but rather an inherent quality of molecular life that we are only beginning to understand. As economist Brian Arthur has expressed it, the messiness of all complex systems is not ‘created by the dirt that’s on the microscope glass. It’s that this mess is inherent in the systems themselves’ (Waldrop 1992, 329).

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Reductive Essentialism In arguing that CSI, House, Fringe and Heroes figure worlds that are inherently dynamic, unpredictable and messy, I am not proposing that they celebrate or promote a post-genomic perspective in any straightforward way. While they begin to articulate ideas about complexity, all four programmes are also characterised by more reductionist tendencies and essentialist discourses on genetics. When compared with many academic and scientific voices within the current cultural debate about genetics and molecular science, these programmes display far less conviction about the progressive nature of a post-genomic framework of explanation (Thrift 1999; Urry 2005a, 1–3). CSI and House still remain invested in the controlling tendencies associated with more traditional scientific and medical frameworks, and Fringe presents fringe theories as alternative ways to explain events that would otherwise be inexplicable, thus asserting that some sense of certainty and control can still be reached. Furthermore, although Fringe and Heroes continuously remind us of the unpredictability of the future and the futility of attempting to change the past, both programmes still feature plotlines that end with the characters having successfully saved the world from destruction. This is in line with the general reductionist tendencies that, according to Brian Wynne (2005, 68), are characteristic of many popular accounts of complexity theory, which he suggests is the result of a prevalent myth about the general public being ‘incapable of living with the provisionally of scientific knowledge’. A reductionist approach is often assumed necessary to avoid an increased public distrust of science that would damage its reputation and power. Wynne points out that this is largely a faulty assumption, but one that still impacts the public imaginary about complexity (Wynne 2005, 68, 71). The narrative complexity of these programmes never results in a truly radical sense of uncertainty. As Mittell (2015) has pointed out, complex TV regularly features analepses (alterations in chronology), repetitive time loops, Rashomon effect, fantasy sequences and different forms of unreliable narration, but the effects of such non-conventional devices do not tend to be as drastic as they sometimes are allowed to be in the context of art cinema where audiences can be left truly confused about the temporality and spatiality of the on-screen world: These strategies may be similar to formal dimensions of art cinema, but they manifest themselves in expressly popular contexts for mass audiences—we

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may be temporarily confused by moments of Lost or Alias, but these programs ask us to trust in the payoff that we will eventually arrive at a moment of complex but coherent comprehension, not the ambiguity and questioned causality typical of many art films (50).

Although the viewers of CSI, House, Fringe and Heroes experience moments of uncertainty, they are still generally able to follow the plotlines and navigate the temporal and spatial dimensions of the diegetic worlds. Furthermore, while they repeatedly dramatise ideas about interconnectedness and non-linearity, this does not automatically mean that they do not also articulate determinist ideas about genetics. The concept of interconnectedness can, in particular, also be used to assert essentialist perspectives. For example, the recurring assertion in House that small genetic anomalies can cause major symptoms is rooted in essentialism and conveys the idea that we might all have hidden defects programmed into our genes that will sooner or later affect our lives. The CSI episode ‘Happenstance’ (S07E08) is another interesting example. It features two plotlines, each following a team of criminalists investigating, on the one hand, the suspected suicide of a successful career woman and, on the other hand, a housewife shot and killed when picking up her husband’s dry cleaning. The two cases become linked when the bodies of the two victims are brought to the morgue and the criminalists realise that they are physically identical: the women are twins. The subsequent investigation reveals that the sisters have remained unaware of each other’s existence after having been adopted by two different families after birth. The housewife was shot because of her physical resemblance with her sister (a colleague of the career woman wanted her dead), but also due to a strange coincidence: they just happened to use the same dry cleaner, making their paths cross with the murderer. Although the episode highlights the unpredictable nature of these interlinked deaths, what seems like coincidence is ultimately explained by the sisters’ shared genetic identities. After the revelation that the victims are twins, the investigation becomes a process of mapping the similarities between them: they look alike, have similar handwriting, share the same taste in watches and nail polish and have intersecting schedules: similarities that are explicitly ascribed to their shared genetic origin by the criminalists.15 The substantial nature of their genetic kinship was already evocatively established in the episode’s opening teaser, which abridges the final hour of the two women’s lives by cross-cutting between the two. Although leading drastically different lives (one is doing the dishes and interacting with her child, and the

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other is preparing for a hot date), they are shown as visually mirroring each other’s movements, suggesting that their bodies are essentially one and the same due to their shared DNA. Hence, across CSI, House, Fringe and Heroes, post-genomic complexity and essentialist determinism are simultaneously articulated through different elements of their narrative structures and use of narrative devices, as well as their thematic treatment of ideas about interconnectedness, non-­ linearity and uncertainty. In the next chapter, I will have a closer look at some of the ideas about genetic kinship that I just described as central to the CSI episode ‘Happenstance’, but instead focusing on two factual television genres: genealogy programmes and family reunion shows.

Notes 1. One scholarly study that has already engaged with the more complex elements of House is Amanda Lotz’s (2013, 24) chapter on a particularly idiosyncratic episode, which focuses on the impact that ‘confounding techniques such as dream sequences, flashbacks and imagined alternate realities’ have on the overall characterisation of the character of Gregory House. 2. In Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974), Williams outlined the basic difference between two of the television medium’s most characteristic dramatic forms, the series and the serial (56–58). In addition to clarifying that these two forms of serialised drama offered different types of continuity (the series features recurring characters in stand-alone episodic plotlines, while the serial is characterised by dramatised action that continues to play out across multiple episodes), he also complained that most serials up until then had tended to get their prestige by adapting wellknown classical texts. Arguing that ‘few forms on television have the potential importance of the original serial’, he suggested that serial dramas would have a bright future if only television producers would support more original work (56–58). The same year, Horace Newcomb similarly expressed a regret that the television medium had yet to fully realise that serial continuity was one of its ‘strongest techniques for the development of rich and textured dramatic presentations’ (Newcomb 1974, 254). 3. Williams and Newcomb both mentioned the soap opera as an example of serial television, but neither seemed to think that it completely fulfilled the true potential of the form. 4. Jane Feuer has similarly argued that the lack of narrative closure is a crucial feature of US prime-time soaps such as Dallas, Dynasty and Falcon Crest, and that the open-ended structure results in an ideological ambiguity.

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Although Feuer does not use the term complexity, it should still be pointed out that her analysis of the moral complexities of these programmes must be understood as a forerunner to many subsequent scholarly studies that have argued that the open-ended serial form is a prime example of complex narration (Feuer 1984). 5. Geraghty specifically referred to viewing habits where the audience attempts to predict future events and an increased tendency within these serials to self-reflexively stretch and break the conventions of the genre. 6. Furthermore, the political aspirations of the feminist scholarship on soap opera narration have largely disappeared; many of the key studies in this new scholarly conversation are neoformalist in their approach. 7. Another scholar who is part of this wave is film scholar Kristin Thompson, who has written on what she sees as a qualitative form of ‘art television’, represented by shows such as Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–1991) and The Singing Detective (BBC, 1986). Thompson’s claim that these television programmes import complex narrative elements from art cinema has been the subject of criticism from scholars more rooted in the tradition of television studies, who in turn assert that these aspects of complex seriality should be understood as elements intrinsic to the televisual form, and not a heritage from art cinema (Thompson 2003; Mittell 2015, 18). 8. As Steven M. Manson (2001) has outlined, such precursors include ‘the ‘philosophy of organism’ (Whitehead 1925), the concepts of neural networks (McCulloch and Pitts 1943), cybernetics (Wiener 1961) and cellular automata (von Neumann 1966)’, as well as general systems theory (von Bertalanffy 1968). 9. This tendency has been given a wide range of names—‘database narratives’ (Kinder 2002), ‘multiple-draft films’ (Branigan 2002), ‘modular narratives’ (Cameron 2006), ‘forking-path narratives’, ‘puzzle films’, ‘subjective stories’, ‘network narratives’ (Bordwell 2006, 72–103) and, simply, ‘complex narratives’ (Simons 2008). 10. According to the Nielsen ratings data, CSI was the highest-ranking drama show on American television for the 2006–2007 season, with 20.5 million viewers in total (it followed American Idol and Dancing With the Stars), and House was not far behind, with 19.4 million. 11. Think, for example, of the sketch in Touch Me, I’m Karen Taylor (BBC, 2007–2008), where two criminalists use black light at a crime scene which reveals semen not only on a bed, but also on one investigator’s face, or the scene in teen comedy Superbad (Greg Mottola 2007), where a cop complains that: ‘It really isn’t like shows like CSI make it out to be. When I first joined the force I assumed there was semen on everything! And that there was some huge semen database that had bad guy’s semen in it. There isn’t! It doesn’t exist! I often go to sleep and dream of waking up in a world

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where everything is covered in semen. […] Like the crime scene today, if the man had ejaculated and then punched you in the face we would have a real good shot at catching him!’ 12. A basic difference between these two interlinked discourses is how they view human control over the body. Within the more long-lived paradigm of ‘plasticity’ (Bordo 1991), science is primarily seen as providing us with more conscious control over the body: it can increasingly be altered at our will. But with the emergence of the post-genomic discourse, the body is seen as malleable even beyond our control. Even on a molecular level, it is constantly changing, and science is gradually allowing us to get a better understanding of the inherent plasticity of the body. 13. This is Herbert Bayer’s ‘Double Ascension’, which was installed in 1973 in front of the Bank of America building at 151 South Flower Street, Los Angeles. The scene was filmed on location in LA, standing in for Kirby Plaza in New York City, where the closing scene of Season 1 takes place. 14. Henry Jenkins defines a ‘transmedia story’ as one unfolding: ‘across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best—so that a story might be introduced in a film, exploded though TV, novels, comics […]. Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game and vice-versa’ (2006, 95–96). 15. Grissom explains to his colleagues: ‘People’s first explanation with twins are always parapsychology, but the truth is there is a lot of biological encoding at work. I mean, if you have the same musculature and bone structure in your hand, the chance of writing the same is not out of the question. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder and you see with the same eyes, or taste with the same tongue….’

Bibliography Ames, Melissa. 2012. The Fear of the Future and the Pain of the Past: The Quest to Cheat Time in Heroes, FlashForward and Fringe. In Time in Television Narrative: Exploring Temporality in Twenty–First–Century Programming, ed. Melissa Ames, 110–124. Jackson: The University Press of Mississippi. Barnes, Barry, and John Dupré. 2008. Genomes and What to Make of Them. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Beeler, Stan. 2012. Elective Affinities: Heroes and the Contemporary Conception of the Family. In Investigating Heroes: Essays on Truth, Justice and Quality TV, ed. David Simmons. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Company. Booth, Paul. 2011. Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television. Television & New Media 12 (4): 370–388.

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———. 2012a. The Television Social Network: Exploring TV Characters. Communication Studies 63 (3): 309–327. ———. 2012b. Time on TV: Temporal Displacement and Mashup Television. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Bordo, Susan. 1991. ‘Material Girl’: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture. In The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, ed. Laurence Goldstein, 106– 130. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. Bordwell, David. 2002. Film Futures. SubStance #97 31 (1): 88–104. ———. 2006. The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdaa, Mélanie. 2011. Quality Television: Construction and De-construction of Seriality. In Previously On. Interdisciplinary Studies in TV Series in the Third Golden Age of Television, ed. Miguel A. Pérez-gómez, 33–44. Seville: Frame. ———. 2013. “Following the Pattern”: The Creation of an Encyclopaedic Universe in Transmedia Storytelling. Adaptation 6 (2): 202–214. Branigan, Edward. 2002. Nearly True: Forking Plots, Forking Interpretations. A Response to David Bordwell’s ‘Film Futures’. SubStance 31 (1, Issue 97): 105–114. Brown, William. 2014. Complexity and Simplicity in Inception and Five Dedicated to Ozu. In Hollywood Puzzle Films, ed. Warren Buckland, 125–140. New York and London: Routledge. Buckland, Warren, ed. 2009. Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema. Malden: Wiley–Blackwell. ———, ed. 2014. Hollywood Puzzle Films. New York and London: Routledge. Cameron, Allan. 2006. Contingency, Order and the Modular Narrative: 21 Grams and Irréversible. The Velvet Light Trap 58 (Fall): 65–78. Capra, Fritjof. 2002. Complexity and Life. Emergence 4 (1/2): 15–33. Connor, J.D. 2015. The Studios After the Studios: Neoclassical Hollywood (1970–2010). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2009. The Mind–Game Film. In Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Warren Buckland, 13–41. Malden: Wiley–Blackwell. Elsaesser, Thomas, and Malte Hagener. 2015. Film Theory: An Introduction Through the Senses. 2nd ed. New York and London: Taylor & Francis Ltd. Feuer, Jane. 1984. Melodrama, Serial Film and Television Today. Screen 25 (1): 4–16. Franklin, Sarah. 2000. Global Nature and the Genetic Imaginary. In Global Nature, Global Culture, ed. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, 188– 227. London: SAGE Publications. Gallagher, Richard, and Tim Appenzeller. 1999. Introduction. Science 284 (5411): 79. Geraghty, Christine. 1981. Continuous Serial – A Definition. In Coronation Street, ed. Richard Dyer, 9–26. London: BFI Publishing.

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———. 1991. Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime Time Soaps. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gever, Martha. 2005. The Spectacle of Crime Digitized: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Social Anatomy. European Journal of Cultural Studies 8 (4): 445–463. Gleick, James. 1987. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking Books. Harrington, Ellen Burton. 2007. Nation, Identity and the Fascination of Forensic Science in Sherlock Holmes and CSI. International Journal of Cultural Studies 10 (3): 365–382. Higgins, John P. 2003. Nonlinear Systems in Medicine. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 75: 247–260. Isler, Ramsey. 2013. A Look Back on Fringe’s Final Season. IGN, 23 January 2013. http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/01/24/fringe–season–5–review. Accessed 6 August 2015. Jenkins, Henry. 2003. Transmedia Storytelling. Moving Characters from Books to Films to Video Games Can Make Them Stronger and More Compelling. Technology Review. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/transmedia–storytelling/. Accessed 7 August 2015. ———. 2006. Convergence Culture. In Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. ———. 2007. “We Had So Many Stories to Tell”: The Heroes Comics as Transmedia Storytelling. Confessions of an Aca–Fan Blog, 3 December 2007. http://henryjenkins.org/2007/12/we_had_so_many_stories_to_tell.html. Accessed 7 August 2015. Keller, Evelyn Fox. 2013. The Post-genomic Genome. Seminar Paper, 11 September 2013. https://postgenomic.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/keller–the–postgenomic–genome.pdf. Accessed 27 July 2015. Kelly, Susan E. 2007. From “Scraps and Fragments” to “Whole Organisms”: Molecular Biology, Clinical Research and Post-genomic Bodies. In New Genetics, New Identities, ed. Paul Atkinson, Peter Glasner, and Helen Greenslade, 44–60. New York: Routledge. Kinder, Marsha. 2002. Hot Spots, Avatars and Narrative Fields Forever: Bunuel’s Legacy for New Digital Media and Interactive Database Narrative. Film Quarterly 55 (4): 2–15. Kompare, Derek. 2010. CSI. Malden: Wiley–Blackwell. Lavery, David. 2009. Lost and Long Term Television Narrative. In Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, ed. Pat Harrigan and Wardrip-Fruin Noah, 313–322. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. Lewin, Roger. 1992. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1999. Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos. 2nd ed. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

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Lorenz, Edward N. 1963. Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow. Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20 (2): 130–141. Lotz, Amanda. 2013. House: Narrative Complexity. In How to Watch Television, ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell, 22–29. New  York and London: New York University Press. MacDowell, James. 2010. Does the Hollywood Happy Ending Exist? In Happy Endings and Films, ed. Armelle Parey, Isabelle Robin, and Dominque Sipière. Paris: Michel Houdiard. Manson, Steven M. 2001. Simplifying Complexity: A Review of Complexity Theory. Geoforum 32: 405–414. Marinescu, Valentina, Silvia Branea, and Bianca Mitu, eds. 2014. Critical Reflections on Audience and Narrativity. Stuttgart: Ibidem Verlag. Martin-Jones, David. 2006. Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mason, Steven M. 2001. Simplifying Complexity: A Review of Complexity Theory. Geoforum 32: 405–414. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. 2007. Quality TV: Contemporary American Television and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris. McCulloch, Warren S., and Walter Pitts. 1943. A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology 52 (1/2): 115–137. Mittell, Jason. 2006. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. The Velvet Light Trap 58: 29–40. ———. 2009. Lost in a Great Story: Evaluation in Narrative Television (and Television Studies). In Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show, ed. Roberta Pearson, 119–138. London: I. B. Tauris. ———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York and London: New York University Press. Ndalianis, Angela. 2004. Neo–Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2005. Television and the Neo–Baroque. In The Contemporary Television Serial, ed. Lucy Mazdon and Michael Hammond, 83–101. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Nelson, Robin. 1997. TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change. London: Macmillan. Neupert, Richard. 1995. The End: Narration and Closure in the Cinema. Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press. Newcomb, Horace. 1974. TV: The Most Popular Art. New York: Anchor. Newman, Michael Z. 2006. Character and Complexity in American Independent Cinema: “21 Grams” and “Passion Fish”. Film Criticism 31 (1–2): 89–106. Newman, Michael Z., and Elana Levine. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural Status. New York and London: Routledge.

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Panek, Elliot. 2006. The Poet and the Detective: Defining the Psychological Puzzle Film. Film Criticism 31 (1–2): 62–88. Ramírez Berg, Charles. 2006. A Taxonomy of Alternative Plots in Recent Films: Classifying the ‘Tarantino Effect’. Film Criticism 31 (1–2): 5–61. Rose, Nikolas. 2001. The Politics of Life Itself. Theory, Culture & Society 18 (6): 1–30. Sconce, Jeffrey. 2004. What If: Charting Television’s New Textual Boundaries. In Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, ed. Lynn Spigel and Jan Olsson, 93–112. Durham: Duke University Press. Simons, Jan. 2008. Complex Narratives. New Review of Film and Television Studies 6 (2): 111–126. Staiger, Janet. 2006. Complex Narratives, An Introduction. Film Criticism 31 (1–2): 2–4. Thompson, Kristin. 2003. Storytelling in Film and Television. London: Harvard University Press. Thrift, Nigel. 1999. The Place of Complexity. Theory, Culture & Society 16 (3): 31–69. Urry, John. 2005a. The Complexity Turn. Theory, Culture & Society 22 (5): 1–14. ———. 2005b. The Complexities of the Global. Theory, Culture and Society 22 (5): 235–254. von Bertalanffy, Ludwig. 1968. General Systems Theory: Foundation, Development, Application. London: Allen Lane. von Neumann, John. 1966. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata. Champaign, Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Waldrop, M.  Mitchell. 1992. Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. Weissmann, Elke. 2007. The Victim’s Suffering Translated: CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and the Crime Genre. Intensities: The Journal of Cult Media 4. http://intensities.org/Essaus/Weissmann.pdf. Accessed 13 October 2009. ———. 2010. The Forensic Sciences of CSI: How to Know About Crime. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr Müller. Whitehead, A.N. 1925. Science and the Modern World. New York: Macmillan. Wiener, Norbert. 1961. Cybernetics: Or, Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana. Wynne, Brian. 2005. Reflexing Complexity: Post-genomic Knowledge and Reductionist Returns in Public Science. Theory, Culture and Society 22 (5): 67–94.

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Television Programmes The Affair (Showtime, 2014–present). American Crime Story (FX, 2016–present). Big Little Lies (HBO, 2017–present). Coronation Street (ITV, 1960–present). Craig Kennedy: Criminologist (Weiss Productions, 1952). CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012). CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013). Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000–present). Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002). The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976). Fringe (Fox, 2008–2013). Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010). House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012). The Jinx (HBO, 2015). Making a Murderer (Netflix, 2015). Manhunt: Unabomber (Discovery Channel, 2017). McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998). Mindhunter (Netflix, 2017–present). Quincy M.E. (NBC, 1976–1983). Seinfeld (NBC, 1989–1998). Silent Evidence (BBC, 1962). Silent Witness (BBC, 1996–present). Thorndyke (BBC, 1964). True Detective (HBO, 2014–present). The X–Files (Fox, 1993–2002, 2016–present).

Films The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress/J. Mackey Gruber, 2004). Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993). Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993). Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998). Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998). Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007).

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PART II

Kinship

CHAPTER 4

Genealogical Intimacy: Materialising Genetic Kinship

With this chapter, my focus shifts from ‘complexity’ to ‘kinship’, which is another key concept within television’s genetic imaginary. Whereas the previous section examined examples of visual and narrative complexity across different genres, this section investigates programmes that are thematically and narratively centred on familial relationships, an endeavour that is also continued in the following chapter. In this chapter, I will consider family history programmes and family reunion shows, two genres that are heavily invested in determinist genetic discourses and prominently stage DNA as the essence of kinship. The subsequent chapter will, conversely, focus on programmes that—at least at first glance—instead embrace a post-genomic re-imagining of kinship: family-centric reality shows and sitcoms that portray infertility struggles and characters who use assisted reproductive technologies to extend their families. However, my analysis across the two chapters will show that both sets of texts contain contradictory elements, articulating multifaceted perspectives on the concepts of kinship and genetic heritage. When family history programmes and family reunion shows emerged on US and UK television in the mid-2000s, they joined a number of other television genres that staged ancestry investigations (particularly into paternity) and, as a result, portrayed personal identity as rooted in the knowledge of one’s biological kinship. In the late 1990s, the daytime talk shows Maury (Syndicated, 1991–2012), The Montel Williams Show (Syndicated, 1991–2008) and Ricki Lake (Syndicated, 1993–2004) played © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_4

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a crucial role in popularising so-called genetic paternity tests. In the UK, paternity tests first figured on the Trisha Goddard Show (ITV, 1998–2010), a tradition that The Jeremy Kyle Show (ITV, 2005–present) continued throughout the 2010s. The tabloid-style address of this genre favoured spectacular and surprising cases of uncertain parentage, such as young women becoming pregnant as a result of affairs with their stepfathers, twins with different fathers and children whose skin colour appears mismatched to that of their parents. The basic premise tends to be the same: a paternity test presents a definitive moralistic verdict on infidelity, promiscuity and family secrets. In addition to affirming monogamous romance and honesty, the generic paternity ‘reveal’ is also structured by an essentialist belief in shared genetic substance as the overriding definition of kinship. On these shows, biological fathers are encouraged to establish an emotional bond with their offspring, while men who find out that they have no biological connection with children they thought were their own are conversely expected to ‘de-bond’, despite their affective and social kinship commitments.1 In the 1990s, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique became the standard process for determining paternity, boasting test results with 99.99% accuracy.2 The PCR test is a form of DNA ‘fingerprinting’ where DNA identity tests of two individuals are compared and while it can be used to establish other kinship relationships, the media initially focused on its ability to help verify paternity. As Dorothy Nelkin (2005) has shown, this was partly the result of a ‘burgeoning and aggressive genetic testing industry seeking to expand its market’ (5), but also because narratives of ‘paternity palaver’ proved popular with audiences (3–4).3 In the early 2000s, ratings for Maury would raise an average of 6% when episodes featured paternity tests (Stanley 2002). It is not surprising, then, that a wide range of television genres started to feature DNA tests in plotlines about uncertain parentage. It quickly became a recurring trope on soap operas and daytime court shows, and even cropped up in many primetime dramas, including Louis and Clark (ABC, 1993–1997), Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–2002), Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010), Alias (ABC, 2001–2006) and House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012).4 The genre that featured DNA test with the highest frequency during this period was the crime drama, and in a common plot twist, DNA tests that were intended to identify a perpetrator instead reveal surprising family relationships. Typically deeply invested in the ideal of the nuclear family and traditional ‘family values’, crime television has a history of policing reproduction practices and familial rela-

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tionship as much as criminal behaviour (Jermyn 2007, 91–100; Rapping 2003, 169–173; Bull 2014). This wider tendency becomes particularly apparent when considering the occurrence of ‘accidental incest’ narratives, where DNA tests reveal that biological relatives (usually brothers and sisters, or parents and their adult children) are involved in voluntary sexual relationships.5 In a number of episodes in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015), CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012), Law and Order: Criminal Intent (NBC/ USA Network, 2001–2011), Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999–present), NCIS (CBS, 2003–present), Numb3rs (CBS, 2005–2010) and Perception (TNT, 2012–2015), the forbidden nature of incestuous relationships serves to render DNA test results even more significant, a taboo which is usually emphasised further by directly linking the voluntary incestuous relationship to the act of murder. The characters often commit murder to either cover up the relationship or as a reaction to the relationship being exposed. Not only are these crimes solved thanks to genetics, but also, the murders are committed because of genetics and multiple episodes even present the sexual attraction itself as based on genetics. In both Perception’s ‘Toxic’ (S02E04) and Law and Order: Special Victims Unit’s ‘Father Dearest’ (S13E20), the pseudo-scientific theory of ‘genetic sexual attraction’ is presented as a scientific fact explaining incest as a natural drive rooted in our very genes.6 The genetic framework is conversely used to both explain and condemn incest. Because these cases of incest are depicted as voluntary relationships without any elements of coercion and sexual violence, they are almost solely problematised on the basis of genetics. Specifically, it is the reproductive potential of these relationships that the shows worry about. The incestuous characters are often portrayed as carrying genetic diseases or suffering from reduced fertility, ailments that are culturally understood as longterm effects of mating between close relatives. In the Numb3rs episode ‘Nine Wives’ (S03E12) and the CSI episode ‘Genetic Disorder’ (S12E10) the familiar genealogical image of the family tree is used to illustrate the perceived cross-generational ­dangers of these relationships.7 In both, the crime investigations become a form of genealogical research, most clearly so in ‘Genetic Disorder’, where the victim is a professional genealogist, but rather than resulting in the expected family reunions and happy endings these ancestry searches end in murder and misery, simply because the biological kinship uncovered diverges from the ‘normal’ linear form of descent.

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By the time ‘Nine Wives’ and ‘Genetic Disorder’ aired in 2007 and 2011, both US and UK television schedules were already rife with family history programmes and family reunion reality shows and crime dramas were now referencing generic tropes from these other ancestry investigations. Only a relatively small number of the family history programmes and family reunion shows actually feature genetic ancestry tests, but as I will show in this chapter, these two types of programmes have nevertheless contributed to the genetic imaginary by further asserting the idea that developments in genetic science have made it possible to trace and identify shared biological matter with more certainty and across a greater number of generations than before. Following a more detailed introduction of these two genres, the chapter begins with an analysis of their portrayal of genetic ancestry tests and then moves on to map other ways in which they articulate ideas about genetic heritage. Discussing a number of recurring tropes (family tree imagery; a preoccupation with physical likeness; the motif of the journey; re-enactments) and the general tendency towards ‘affective intimacy’ (Kavka 2008) in these genres, I argue that they primarily contribute essentialist ideas to the cultural forum. However, I also acknowledge some instances where such determinist notions are undermined, either as a result of the reception of the programmes or through some emergent articulations of post-genomic motifs within the programmes themselves.

Genealogy TV In the mid-2000s, a number of new documentary and reality formats emerged across UK and US television. These shared a common interest in genealogy, the practice of identifying relatives and tracing their ancestral lineage back in time. In the UK, this trend was primarily instigated by the success of Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC, 2004–present, henceforth WDYTYA), which first aired in the autumn of 2004 on BBC Two, only to be transferred onto BBC One in 2006 after achieving both significant viewing figures and critical acclaim. At the time of writing WDYTYA has aired its 15th season, and throughout its run it has regularly achieved viewing figures of between 4 and 7 million domestic viewers. Each episode of WDYTYA follows a celebrity guest as they are aided in a genealogical search, usually focusing on one or two specific ancestors or family lines. The concept of having celebrity personalities conduct investigations into their family history was subsequently picked up in a number

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of other UK programmes, many with a more specific focus than WDYTYA. For example, Coming Home (2007–present, BBC) focused on celebrities that investigate their Welsh heritage; Empire’s Children (Channel 4, 2007) followed six celebrities as they discovered how the legacy of imperialism has affected modern Britain as well as their own sense of self; You Don’t Know You’re Born (ITV, 2007) depicted celebrities travelling to a place previously inhabited by their ancestors to experience their lifestyle; and Meet the Izzards (BBC, 2013) showed comedian Eddie Izzard taking a genetic ancestry test and then tracing the migration of his ancestors out of Africa and into Europe. The celebrity angle has also been used to a somewhat different effect in My Famous Family (UKTV History, 2007) and So You Think You’re Royal? (Sky, 2007), which are both ‘reversecelebrity family history formats’ (Holdsworth 2011, 66) that follow members of the public as they uncover ancestors that are, respectively, famous or of royal birth. There has also been a number of other UK programmes focused on the genealogy of non-famous subjects. When WDYTYA premiered on BBC Two it was directly followed by Family Ties (BBC, 2004–2006) on BBC4, a programme in which experts instead helped ‘ordinary people’ explore ‘intriguing secrets in their family histories’. Family Ties was followed by a number of one-off programmes that portrayed more specialised genealogical investigations. The first episode of the documentary series Not Forgotten (Channel 4, 2005) tracked down descendants of soldiers listed on war memorials and the specially commissioned documentary The Last Slave (Channel 4, 2007) commemorated the 200th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the slave trade by following ‘a young black Londoner’ as he ‘uncovers the story of his ancestor Archibald, who was among the last slaves transported by the British from Africa to Jamaica’.8 Similarly, both 100% English (Channel 4, 2006) and Face of Britain (Channel 4, 2006) used genetic ancestry tests to investigate migratory histories and the ‘ethnic descent’ of the British population. The question of ‘ethnic heritage’ has been an even more central theme in the corresponding cycle of programmes on US television. Here, this type of programming was pioneered by PBS, which in addition to an early informative documentary on how to conduct genealogical research titled Ancestors (PBS, 1997), has aired a multiple of shows all presented by literary scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: African American Lives (PBS, 2006–2008), Faces of America (PBS, 2010) and Finding your Roots (PBS, 2012–present). Like WDYTYA, the programmes that feature Gates all focus on the family histories of famous people, and in terms of branding

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and aesthetic choices they display clear similarities to the British precursor. But rather than only covering one individual in each episode, all three follow a group of people whose family histories are intercut and juxtaposed across an entire season. In 2010, a US version of Who Do You Think You Are? (NBC, 2010–2012/TLC 2013–present) premiered.9 There is also a US non-celebrity focused programme, The Generations Project (BYU Television, 2010–present), available through satellite or cable providers. This transnational cycle of programmes has not been promoted, or received, as belonging to one distinct genre and previous scholarly discussions of this type of programming have used a number of different labels to describe this phenomenon. WDYTYA, for example, has alternatively been categorised as a ‘hybrid documentary’ (Weissmann 2011, 195), a ‘history’ programme’ (Evans 2015, 454; Grey and Bell 2013, 18), a ‘family history’ format (Holdsworth 2011, 66; Scodari 2013, 207), ‘biogravision’ (Lynch 2011, 209), and ‘genealogy TV’ (Kramer 2011, 429). All these categories emphasise slightly different aspects of WDYTYA, but for my purposes I will apply Anne-Marie Kramer’s term genealogy TV to this wider cycle of programmes.10 I do so partly because the term underlines their focus on kinship linkages and partly because it is flexible enough to also include another, somewhat less prominent, cycle of programmes that has rarely been discussed in relationship with the aforementioned shows: reality series reuniting estranged family members. This includes Gene Detectives (BBC, 2007), a talkshow/gameshow hybrid, which aired at 9.15 am and staged genealogy searches after estranged family members as a kind of game-show (the person attempting to locate missing family members were presented with three potential relatives that would then undergo ‘a series of intense genealogical tests’ to prove their biological bond), and the more conventional reality format Long Lost Family (ITV, 2011–present) which reunites estranged family members using more orthodox genealogy methods. The format of Long Lost Family has a lot in common with the US shows Find My Family (ABC, 2009) and Searching For… (OWN, 2011), which is in part explained by the fact that both Long Lost Family and Find My Family are based on the long-running Dutch format Spoorloos (KRO, 1990–present). Some of the family history programmes occasionally include instances where the subjects discover living relatives, but shows such as Gene Detectives, Long Lost Family, Find My Family and Searching For… are more squarely concentrated on the present moment. The fact that they are only interested in re-establishing kin-

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ship relationships between living relatives (rather than memorialising diseased ancestors) means that they have fallen outside the attention of scholars examining genealogy TV as part of a wider shift in history programming (Hunt 2006; Lynch 2011; Grey and Bell 2013; Evans 2015) or as a form of television memory work (Holdsworth 2011, 65–94; Kramer 2011). It is somewhat more surprising that the second cycle of programmes has also largely been left out of discussions specifically focusing on television’s role in what has been described as an ‘unprecedented boom in the family heritage industry’ (Kramer 2011, 428). A number of scholarly studies have already discussed genealogy TV as intimately interlinked with a growing interest in genealogy more widely boosted by the increased proliferation, digitisation, commercialisation of genealogical methods (Cannell 2011; Mason 2008; Lynch 2011; Cohen 2013, 257–269; Scodari 2013, 206). Since the 1990s, more and more archives have made their collections of historical records available to the public in digital form, new specialised genealogy websites have simplified the process of s­ earching through them (some also make it possible to connect with long-lost relatives who are also conducting genealogical research), and a range of genetic ancestry testing methods have been made readily available to the general public at lower cost. I would suggest that both the family history and family reunion strands of genealogy TV have played a crucial part in this wider development. The main reason I discuss both types of programmes is their shared emphasis on biological kinship bonds, and more specifically, their tendency to draw on ideas about genetics when figuring these bonds as important. Both variations of genealogy TV attempt to re-establish kinship relationships that have been broken up by distance in time and space, thus asserting that genetic bonds should always matter even if the two relatives have been separated for long periods of time, over vast geographical distances and even by death. In the analysis below I will primarily discuss the family history-centric programmes WDYTYA, 100% English, Face of Britain, African American Lives, Faces of America and Finding your Roots and the family reunion shows Gene Detectives, Long Lost Family and Find My Family. By considering these two strands of genealogy TV together, I will examine the ways in which genealogical investigations into private family histories serve to equate kinship with shared DNA. As many of these programmes capture, knowledge about one’s genetic heritage often helps produce a sense of belonging that can be deeply significant and

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highly productive for individual people as well as certain social groups, and by extension, society more widely. Many episodes of Long Lost Family movingly illustrate that the act of seeking out biological kin can help alleviate identity issues and feelings of loss in adoptees, while African American Lives, Faces of America and Finding your Roots show the potential of genetically focused genealogy searches to engender wider societal healing by providing diasporas with a clearer understanding of their heritage. Without wanting to downplay the emotional and cultural importance of such experiences, this chapter examines the discursive formations that constitute genealogy TV’s assertion that blood bonds always matter (both biologically and socially). The process of making kinship matter takes a lot of work and by highlighting that the programmes are carefully constructed to figure ‘genetic kinship’ (Nash 2004) as a material, substantial and enduring biological bond I here focus on the more problematic elements of the current cultural obsession with genetic heritage.

Televising Genetic Ancestry Tests Ideas about genetic kinship, genetic heritage and genetic identity are prominent across genealogy TV. In some of the programmes such discourses are articulated more explicitly because they feature genetic ancestry tests and therefore explicitly identify kinship and ancestry as located in, and determined by, our genetic make-up. The US programmes African American Lives, Faces of America and Finding your Roots all offer the participants an opportunity to take genetic ancestry tests to complement the more conventional genealogical research methods used to investigate their family histories. African American Lives, in particular, figures genetic genealogy methods as a new means of overcoming the limitations that characterise the traditional process of searching through historical records. Genetic ancestry tests are specifically presented as providing information not available in the written records because these are incomplete, incorrect or do not go back far enough in time. All three shows celebrate genetics for providing a trace beyond the paper trail, offering proof of kinship that is more enduring and, as a result, seen as more complete and reliable than archival sources. Genetic ancestry tests play a particularly important role in the US programmes because they pay specific attention to the problems that people of African American descent face when trying to trace their family

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histories. There is a particular lack of records detailing the identities and origins of people brought to the ‘New World’ against their will as part of the slave trade. In the voice-over accompanying the first episode of African American Lives, ‘Listening to our past’ (S01E01), Henry Louis Gates Jr. explains that, ‘For generations we have been unable to learn about our African heritage or our family trees, [but] now, thanks to miraculous breakthroughs in genealogy and genetics, we can begin to [trace our roots]’. In the final episode, ‘Beyond the Middle Passage’ (S01E04), he further elucidates this point: ‘We now know that our ancestors brought something with them that not even the slave trade could take away, their own distinctive strands of DNA.’ This exposition clearly establishes the idea that genetic heritage is both an essential and enduring part of any individual, the innermost core of their identity. In African American Lives, Faces of America and Finding your Roots the celebrity participants are generally offered at least two of the following: DNA tests, an autosomal (admixture) test, a mitochondrial DNA test or a Y chromosome test.11 The autosomal tests (or ‘admixture analysis’) consists of a so-called biogeographical ancestry analysis of the DNA contained in the 44 non-sex chromosomes (which contain a shuffle of genetic material inherited from both parents). ‘Biogeographical ancestry analysis’ is an umbrella term for a number of methods for inferring theories about the geographical origins of the genetic material that have been passed down, and mixed up, over multiple generations of descent. The results of autosomal tests are typically presented in the form of a diagram displaying what percentage of the participant’s DNA that belongs to the categories of African, European and Asian/Native-American. Unlike an autosomal test, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) test and Y chromosome (Y-DNA) tests instead examine genetic materials that have not undergone recombination and have thus been inherited unchanged from either the maternal or paternal line (or, at least, largely unchanged; both types of genetic material can undergo mutations). MtDNA is inherited from the mother’s egg by both female and male children and can be collected from the mitochondria (small structures in the human cells that generate energy) in both men and women, but only provides ‘information’ about one maternal line. In turn, a Y-DNA test can only be taken by men (who have a Y chromosome) and only provides ‘information’ about one paternal line.12 Because mtDNA and Y-DNA remain largely unchanged across vast generational divides, they have also been used to define ancient migratory populations (haplogroups); a process that identifies additional biogeographical

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information about the part of the world that the ancient maternal or paternal ancestor originated from (and the migratory routes of her/his population). All three types of genetic ancestry tests can also be used to determine if two individuals are related, or at least to establish the probability of two people being related in a certain way. Through DNA profiling or ­fingerprinting, autosomal DNA tests can be used to determine paternity, maternity or sibling relationships (as well as other more distant forms of biological kinship), and mtDNA and Y-DNA can determine whether two people are related along the same maternal or paternal line respectively (but they cannot determine their exact kinship relationship). But the family history programmes almost exclusively use genetic ancestry tests to produce biogeographical information, figuring them as a means to establish an essential ethnic identity for the test subject rather than a method for locating living kin. Even Gene Detectives, a programme that was marketed as providing proof of kinship between estranged relatives by putting them through a ‘series of intense genealogy tests’ only has their participants undergo mtDNA tests or Y-DNA tests to identify their haplogroups (rather than, for example, determining the exact kinship relationship though DNA profiling). There is one exception, in the final episode of Faces of America Gates reveals to the celebrity guests that they have compared their DNA test results and that some of them actually share a common ancestor. However, this information is just treated as a rather amusing piece of trivia without much emotional impact. Apart from Malcolm Gladwell, who turns out to be related to Henry Louis Gates Jr. himself, the celebrities do not get to meet their newfound ‘cousins’ and the most common reaction to this information is laughter. This nonchalant treatment goes against the programme’s deep investment in the importance of knowing one’s extended biological family, but it can probably be explained by a felt need to distinguish the family history genre from the many, far less prestigious, programmes that featured genetic ancestry tests. African American Lives, Faces of America and Finding your Roots clearly want to distinguish themselves from daytime talk shows and daytime court shows, which were already well known for their spectacular reveals of DNA test results, generically followed by highly affective reunions between estranged family members.13 Many of the genealogy programmes are very vague about the exact type of DNA tests used. 100% English simply tells the viewers that they have conducted a ‘global test’, which breaks down the DNA of the sub-

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ject’s into ‘four ancient population groups, European, East Asian, Sub-­ Saharan African and Native American’, and a ‘Euro test’, which identifies their ancestry as either Northern European, South Eastern European, Middle Eastern or South Asian. The ‘global test’, at least, must be an autosomal test, as the presenter explains to one of the participants that it tests ‘all of your DNA’. Face of Britain is similarly imprecise about its genetic testing methods and exactly how these support the theories it presents about the biogeographical heritage of the British population. This programme was produced to disseminate some of the findings from the Wellcome Trust-funded research project ‘The People of the British Isles’, headed by Professor Walter Bodmer at the University of Oxford. In an article on the project’s use of television as a channel to broadcast its findings, Anne-Marie Fortier (2012, 158) clarifies that ‘Bodmer’s approach used a range of variants in DNA (blood type, rhesus factor and variants of the HLA system) alongside Y chromosome and mtDNA variants.’ Again, these tests are specifically used to identify what is essentially presented as people’s ethnic heritage. All participants in the study are identified as being predominantly descended from ‘the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons, the Vikings or the Normans’. Christine Scodari’s (2013, 211–216) discussion of the treatment of genetic ancestry testing in the Henry Louis Gates Jr. programmes suggests that genealogy TV is characterised by a highly contradictory discourse on ethnicity and race. On the one hand, many of the programmes are emphasising that genetic ancestry tests should be understood as a new genealogy method that allows us to move beyond certain racist issues and conventional racialised identities; it allows African-­ Americans to trace their ancestry further back in time despite the lack of historical records and often encourages the participants (and in extension the viewers) to think about themselves as having a mixed ethnic heritage, rather than simply being ‘black’, ‘white’ or ‘native American’. On the other hand, genealogy TV also makes it easy to ‘use geographical markers interchangeably with racial categories [which] can provide grist for racist, racializing rhetoric’ (Scodari 2013, 212) and their emphasis on biogeographical heritage ultimately constructs race or ethnicity as intrinsic biological components of identity. Furthermore, the vagueness with which the genetic ancestry tests are explained often serves to further present the biogeographical test results as straightforward and unquestionable facts, when they are actually tentative findings based on theories that might be disproved in the future. In general, the programmes often follow in the footsteps of the commercial

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companies that offer genetic ancestry tests, which have tended to overstate the scope and precision of the services they have on offer. As Henry Greely has pointed out, customers of web-based companies such as AncestryDNA, African Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23 and Me are often led to believe that the results of mtDNA and Y-DNA tests are fully representative of their ancestry (Greely 2008). The same is true for many of the genealogy programmes; it is rarely highlighted that the haplogroup results only represent one ancestral line out of the several thousand that make up our autosomal DNA. Genetic ancestry is thus reduced to a limited number of distinct racial categories that present genetic kinship as an essentialist and unambiguous foundation for identity.

Genetic Kinship Beyond the DNA Test There are other ways in which genealogy TV engages with ideas about genetics beyond the portrayal of genetic ancestry tests, which similarly tend to enforce traditional determinist discourses within the genetic imaginary. The idea that kinship, ancestry and heredity are ultimately located in, and determined by, our genes underlines all the genealogy programmes, including those that do not feature genetic ancestry tests. For one thing, this notion is often expressed verbally, both by the participants and the programme makers (as represented by presenters or, as in the case with WDYTYA, actor Mark Strong’s voice-over that guides the viewers through the process of uncovering forgotten family histories). Even though it does not feature genetic ancestry tests, WDYTYA quickly established genetics as an important framework for making sense of both the information and the emotions that the genealogy searches give rise to. The first season of the programme, when the format was still in the process of being established, contained a number of scenes where the interactions between the participants and the interviewer were kept unedited (in later seasons the questions posed to the celebrity subjects are typically edited out, presumably to keep the illusion of them conducting the genealogical search on their own accord more intact) and this gives us some indication that the production team, at least initially, actively encouraged the participants to discuss their relationship to ancestors using terms such as ‘DNA’, ‘genes’ and ‘genetics’. For example, in the Ian Hislop episode (S01E05) the interviewer requests that Hislop considers whether he sees aspects of his Presbyterian grandfather in himself by explicitly asking him if ‘there [is] a lot of [his grandfather’s] DNA transmitting itself?’ Prompted or not,

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throughout all seasons of WDYTYA the celebrities continuously use this type of language to discuss character traits that they feel they share with their ancestors. In many of the cases, the celebrities specifically refer to aspects of their personality that would not conventionally be thought of as genetically inherited because of their subjective nature, such as a particular sense of taste or a feeling of belonging. Comedian Vic Reeves (S01E10), for example, muses that ‘I love the countryside […]. I like striding purposely across woodlands and […] fields, perhaps that’s something that has been passed down to me in genes’. Similarly, interior designer and TV presenter Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen (S05E08) initially wonders if his love for being by the sea is ‘something that [he has] made up for [himself] or is it something that is included in [his] genetic make-up’. At the end of the episode he concludes that, ‘When I’m by the sea I find it a very familiar […] and it’s not hard to see that as, ok, I have got salt in my DNA.’ In other cases, genetics is used as a framework for understanding an attitude that the celebrity in question sees as an essential part of their worldview or behaviour. Comedian Billy Connolly is, for example, pleased to find an ancestor who can be described as ‘an incontinent, alcoholic, mad shagger’, ‘someone I’m descended from who impressed me by their wildness […] someone [who] I can say, that’s the one, that’s where my DNA came from!’ Similarly, fashion model Jerry Hall sets out on her genealogical investigation explicitly hoping to find an answer to why she is so adventurous. When it is eventually revealed that she is related to American pioneer and explorer Daniel Boone, she exclaims, ‘I guess the pioneering spirit is in my genes!’ A range of different types of character traits are thus cast as genetically intrinsic, rather than socially acquired. WDYTYA generally favours genealogical narratives where it is possible to portray the participant and at least one ancestor as sharing some apparent characteristic. Out of the numerous lineages and ancestors that the programme could focus on in each case, the producers tend to pick ones where the ancestor can be identified as ‘alike’ the celebrity participant, which by extension implies that character traits have been passed on genetically across the generations. There are, for example, a number of episodes that constructs the participant’s choice of profession as part of their ancestral heritage. The episode focusing on celebrity baker Mary Berry (S11E06)—a judge on The Great British Bake Off (BBC/Channel 4, 2010–present)—finds an ancestor that worked as a baker and the episode following choir master Gareth Malone (S12E05) asserts that he has ‘singing in his blood’ because his great-great-grandfather was a musical-­comedy

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star. Similarly, actress Emilia Fox (S08E05), ‘of the Fox theatrical dynasty’, uncovers ‘just how far back the family’s acting roots go’. In many cases it is left up to the viewers to decide whether such behavioural similarities should be understood as a result of ‘nature’ or ‘nurture’, but alongside the repeated references to genetics such behavioural similarities at least hold definite potential to figure kinship as a relationship based on shared ‘substance’ between the related individuals. This idea is also articulated through the family history programmes’ primary focus on ‘direct descendants’, rather than on other socially constructed kinship relationships. An exception that proves this rule is the WDYTYA episode that features TV presenter Nicky Campbell’s exploration of ‘the history of the family that adopted him’, which is presented as a stand-alone ‘adoption special’ that was aired outside the context of any of the programmes regular seasons.14 The knowing construction of this episode as a ‘special’ serves to clearly mark it as a diversion from the standard format of the programme, but unlike special episodes of TV dramas or sitcoms, which usually attempt to attract more viewers by offering longer narratives, seasonally themed plotlines or the signature of an auteur, the Nicky Campbell ‘special’ does not stage a narrative or stylistic deviation from the standard format of WDYTYA. The episode adheres to the regular narrative structure and audio-visual form, the only difference being that Campbell is tracing the ancestry of his adoptive father, which is framed by Campbell’s assertion that it is his social heritage—‘forged by his adoptive family’—that has made him ‘who he is’. The only difference this special offers is thus one of definition: it stands apart from its peers merely by defining kinship and ancestry as socially constructed, rather than based on shared biological matter. This episode has the potential to undermine the programme’s overall determinist investment in genetic kinship, but the overt construction of it as diverging from the ‘normal’ matter of affairs only highlights the importance that WDYTYA, as well as a majority of the other genealogy programmes, normally places on notions such as ‘direct descent’, ‘blood relatives’ and ‘genetic kinship’. Seemingly inevitably, even this ‘adoption special’ eventually comes to emphasise the importance of genetic heritage; as Campbell explores his adoptive dad’s troubled relationship to his deaf father, the genealogical research reveals that deafness and hard of hearing were traits that ran in the family for multiple generations and must therefore have been the result of a genetic disease. Ultimately, the episode presents this decidedly genetic heritage as the source not only of deafness but emotional struggles and difficult relationships.

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Genealogy TV’s general construction of genetic kinship bonds as more significant than other types of relationships follows a long-running Western tradition of constructing kinship as a type of relationship that has a biological basis. As anthropologist David Schneider (1980, 1984) has outlined in his classic studies, Euro-American culture has a history of differentiating between two types of kinship relationships, ‘blood relatives’ or ‘relatives by marriage’ (1980, 21–23) and the first type is seen as more ‘compelling and stronger than […] other kinds of bonds’ because it is understood as being something ‘largely innate, a quality of human nature, biologically determined’ (1984, 165–166). Schneider points out that the notion ‘blood is thicker than water’ has played a crucial role in rendering kinship into a privileged system in Euro-American societies (long before the invention of genetic science), identifying the supposed bond between ‘blood relatives’ as instinctual and inborn rather than socially constructed (1984, 165–177). The bond between ‘blood relatives’ is considered more ‘real’ or ‘true’ than other social affiliations, an objective fact of nature that can never be terminated, changed or severed (1980, 24). This notion is repeatedly referenced in the genealogy programmes through both dialogue and imagery used to depict genealogical searches. For example, when a woman who was adopted at birth reunites with her birth mother in an episode of Long Lost Family (S01E04) the two women explain their strong emotional reactions by saying that ‘this person is a blood relative of mine’ and ‘it’s like an animal recognising their young’, thus asserting that the bond between them is more ‘natural’ than any other. Similarly, many of the programmes that feature genetic ancestry tests choose to illustrate the process using the iconography of blood, even though a majority of the genetic ancestry tests could likely have been done through a simple buccal smear. Some of them—including 100% English and African American Lives—do feature footage of the participants collecting cells from the insides of their cheeks using a swab, but footage of blood being drawn from people’s arms, or of lab technicians handling vials full of bright red blood, are more common and certainly more effective when it comes to investing these kinship bonds with a heightened sense of biological materiality, and by extension, significance.15 As Schneider (1980, 23) highlights, it is popularly believed ‘that both mother and father give substantially the same kinds and amounts of material to the child, and that the child’s whole biogenetic identity […] comes half from the mother and half from the father’. This essentialist genetic discourse extends into some more specific conclusions about kinship that

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are all articulated within contemporary genealogy TV. For example, the social relationship between two related individuals has tended to be seen as determined by the degree of their shared genetic substance, ‘kinship is whatever the biogenetic kinship is’, so ‘[if] science discovers new facts about biogenetic relationship, then that is what kinship is and was all along’ (1980, 23). This is a crucial idea underpinning the genealogy search, particularly as it is figured in genealogy TV. The aim of the genealogy search is to uncover kinship relationships that have been severed or forgotten, to reunite estranged family members or establish information about distant ancestors. The programmes continually assert that these kinship bonds will resume their privileged status and become instantaneously and inherently significant, once uncovered or recovered. Gene Detectives, Long Lost Family and Find My Family have a particular tendency to completely conflate the genetic bond between related individuals with the cultural process whereby a familial relationship is socially categorised. Even participants who have never previously met or interacted with their ‘lost’ parents, children or siblings are figured as promptly conforming to the expected filial feelings and behaviours associated with the respective kinship category. As exemplified by the first episode of Gene Detectives, the family reunion shows actively emphasise that the recovery of new facts about a genetic relationship should transform the social relationship between the individuals and, specifically, make them act as if they have always had this privileged bond (even though they previously were completely unknown to one another). In this case Gene Detectives helps a woman—Jayne—who has discovered that the man who raised her was not her biological father. Towards the end of the episode, she is introduced to Peter, her biological father, and she embraces him while crying out ‘Daddy! […] I love you!’ and Peter later explains to the viewers that ‘It was just like I had been with her all my life’, suggesting that this new knowledge has somehow retroactively altered his relationship (or lack thereof) with Jayne for the last 45 years. We are subsequently show a montage of Peter having lunch with Jayne in her home, looking at family ­photos and playing with Jayne’s daughter and granddaughter, all scenes adhering to conventional expectations of how a father and daughter should spend time together. The significance of this imagery as illustrating that Jayne and Peter have quickly conformed to the social codes of conduct associated with their respective kinship roles is further emphasised by a voice-over asserting that, ‘[Peter] has not only been united with his daughter, but he has also been united with his granddaughter Sam and his

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great granddaughter Grace. […] It’s obvious to see, there is already a close bond between all of them.’ Hence, codes of conduct culturally associated with different kinship categories are presented as biologically determined, rooted in the material substance of genes. The discursive construction of kinship as a ‘relationship of substance’ (Schneider 1980, 93) endows relationships (and their associated codes of conduct) with endurance across both time and space. It casts kinship as a reliable material link leading back in time and across geographical distance, an indexical trace that can never be erased, so even if it has been forgotten about it can always be rediscovered and tracked down. In Schneider’s (1980, 93) words, ‘substance […] in its biogenetic sense is a state of affairs, a fact of life that nothing can change. Either it is there or it is not, and if it is there it cannot be altered or terminated’.

Materialising Kinship The essentialist understanding of genetic kinship is ultimately rooted in the traditional Darwinian framework that understands genealogy as a substantial trace between generations, a continuous and unified vertical passage of genetic material. The family history programmes’ recurring use of family tree imagery illustrates the genre’s general investment in this long-­ running discourse. The use of the tree as a visual metaphor for structuring genealogical diagrams has, as Mary Bouquet’s (1996) research shows, a complex history, with roots in both Christian iconography (tree imagery being used when representing the genealogy of the characters in the Bible) and the secular tradition of documenting pedigree, as well as in the scientific tradition, where tree structures have been used to illustrate theories about species affinity and evolution since well before Darwin. But the popularisation of the phylogenetic (or evolutionary) ‘tree of life’ imagery that followed the publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 shows that Darwin’s work was crucial in making the tree the most common visual metaphor for kinship in Western culture (Archibald 2014, 53, 113). The relatively orderly branches of the generic family tree diagram brought simplicity and clarity to the immensely vast, complex and ever-changing network of social and biological relationships that make up anybody’s ancestry. Generally, by only presenting a limited number of ‘branches’ on each ‘family tree’, family history programmes tend to overemphasise the significance of a particular ‘blood line’. This makes it easier to argue for the privileged status of ‘blood relatives’ by concealing the sheer multiplicity of each

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participant’s genetic heritage (it would be difficult to argue for the enduring significance of thousands and thousands of ancestors). The use of the tree metaphor is crucial for this process of simplification, as it typically visualises a limited number of branches that therefore come across as all the more important. It is indicative that the increasing focus on the complexity and multiplicity of genetic kinship that characterises the emergent post-genomic discourse has called for new visualisation techniques, and so the traditional grand old oak tree with a limited number of clearly visible, robust branches is gradually being replaced by imagery such as ‘the dynamic multidimensional metaphor of the web’ (Hanson 2015, 446) and ‘the virulent and untamed box hedge’ (Lynch 2011, 116). However, the type of private family tree imagery that figures on genealogy TV is still conventional and typically focuses on the ancestry of an individual. Family tree imagery is most noticeable in WDYTYA, in which it is generally used for pedagogical clarity. Each time a new ancestor is introduced, their exact relationship to the celebrity is mapped out on a digitally constructed family tree diagram, superimposed onto footage of a blue sky. The celebrity participant’s name is displayed at the bottom of the screen and the ‘camera’ then travels vertically upwards, following the abstracted ‘branches’ of the tree, connecting the participant’s name to those of their ancestors. At times, photographs of the ancestors are displayed beside the names, further asserting the physicality of these bonds and the role they presumably play in the creation of personal identity. The family tree tells us that the individual is the total sum of their ancestry and that the biological ties between these people are substantial and enduring (Bouquet 1996, 60–61). This metaphorical function is made even more apparent in the opening credits of not only WDYTYA but also Finding Your Roots and Faces of America. All three sequences use computer-­ animated trees as either a starting point, or the destination, of graphical lines that travel across a montage of images (typically showing the participants of the season in question), connecting these together. In both Finding Your Roots and Faces of America the otherwise fairly abstract lines momentarily morph into a double helix structure, making absolutely clear that it is genetic substance that connects relatives together across time and space, a biological trace that the genealogists on the show will follow back in time. Furthermore, by specifically identifying this shared substance as genetic (rather than referring to more vague and general categories such as ‘blood’ or ‘biology’), these title sequences also proclaim that genetic science has vastly improved our ability to know and trace our ancestry. As

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bloodlines have turned genetic, they can seemingly be traced further back in time, and with far more certainty than before, which by extension is thought to produce an even clearer understanding for the vertical nature of descent (Nash 2002, 2004, 2005). The use of family tree imagery is only one of several visual and narrative tropes that stage a materialisation of genetic kinship on genealogy TV. First and foremost, kinship is constructed both as a relationship of shared (genetic) substance and identity by emphasising physical and behavioural likeness between biologically related individuals. This can, at least in part, be understood as responding to a wider understanding of DNA as existing on an invisible molecular level. There is, so to speak, a risk that the imperceptible nature of genetic material might make kinship seem intangible and even insignificant. Genealogy TV implicitly addresses this by continuously presenting physical and behavioural likeness as concrete material markers of kinship—visible proof where the genetic substance shared between relatives is clearly mapped onto the surface of the body. Both family history programmes and family reunion shows tend to encourage the viewers to identify physical similarities in relatives through dialogue and a number of visual means. For example, in the very first episode of WDYTYA (S01E01) comedian Bill Oddie repeatedly exclaims that there is a ‘family resemblance’ between him and the previously unknown relatives he is introduced to as the genealogical search progresses. Meeting a distant cousin, Oddie addresses the camera operator, and by extension the viewers, asking, ‘You can see the family resemblance, can’t you? Small, fat and with a beard’, thus encouraging us to read similarities in stature, body type, and choices in facial hair styling as proof of their shared genetic substance. Any potential elements of physical resemblance between relatives are emphasised and enhanced through means of cinematography and editing. In many of the programmes, relatives are usually filmed sitting close together and side-by-­side, typically in a medium two-shot, which allows for easy comparison of their body shape, posture, hairstyles and facial structure. When Oddie meets his distant cousin, the camera also pans back and forth between their faces, shown in close-up, further encouraging the viewers to look for visual similarities. Viewers are often encouraged to compare physical characteristics through repeated cuts between close-ups of the participant’s faces and photographs of their relatives. Amy Holdsworth (2011, 72) has argued that family photography is a key textual and narrative strategy of the family history programme which functions ‘as a conduit, allowing an intersection

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with wider historical narratives and acting as an anchor, connecting the viewer to the subject of the investigations’. Moreover, photographs are also offered up as visual proof of kinship as a means for displaying markers of physical likeness. This function is perhaps even more apparent in the family reunion shows’ generic use of family photographs. In Long Lost Family, the previously estranged family members are always shown a photograph of each other before they actually meet in person, a narrative formula that allows the participants to freely reflect on what their relatives ‘look like’ (which they might not have done as readily and openly if the person had been in the room with them). This habitually produces contemplations on family resemblance, not the least because it is enthusiastically encouraged by the presenters, who always respond affirmatively to the generic question, ‘Do you think they look like me?’ In one episode (S01E05) where a son tentatively points out that his estranged father ‘got my smile’, the presenter goes beyond simple confirmation by exclaiming, ‘He IS you!’ The implication that shared physical traits are a sign of shared identity rooted in shared genetic substance is even more forcefully conveyed in Gene Detectives, where the game show format requires the participants (and by extension the viewers) to compare their facial features and other ‘physical characteristics’ with three potential relatives. They are initially shown photographs of the three ‘contestants’ and are encouraged to guess which one is the relative, partly based on ‘gut instincts’ and partly on a comparison of ‘facial characteristics’, which the narrator tells us ‘can be passed down through generations’. The presenters then reveal the results of a ‘proper test’ where the facial features have been compared using ‘the latest computer technology’, namely, animated 3D models of their heads. Each is displayed on screen alongside the participant and a number of facial features are highlighted (by masking other parts of the faces) to allow for extra clear comparison. This is followed by a series of physical tests verbally presented as all having ‘a genetic component’, where the cholesterol levels, height, eyesight, lung capacity, blood pressure and ‘funny little body quirks’ (e.g. the ability to go cross-eyed) are compared. Without even acknowledging that many of these traits are heavily reliant on environmental factors, the voice-over asserts that any similarities will ‘give a strong indication as to which one is [the] real [relative]’. Faces of Britain also uses computer animation to assert the scientific veracity of facial features as proof of shared genetic substance. In this case, CGI (computer-generated imagery) models have been generated by facial recognition software that creates a compound image based on numerous

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photographs of people from a certain part of Britain, presented as ‘the average face’ of that part of the country. These models are then put through two rounds of comparisons. Firstly, the presenter collaborates with two ‘locals’ to identify random people on the street that are typical ‘characters’ for the area, and secondly, he considers an ‘anthropological reconstruction’ of what people from that part of the country would have looked like in ancient times, in the form of facial reconstructions of skulls recovered in archaeological digs (created by a forensic anthropologist). Through this elaborate process, facial features and other physical characteristics (such as hair and eye colour) are forcefully constructed as external markers of a joint genetic identity, not only shared by close biological relatives but entire ‘populations’ or ‘people’. This is yet another example of how culturally constructed ideas about race are called upon to further figure DNA as a significant material substance that has an enduring corporeal impact across countless generations. These visual and narrative tropes of likeness express an investment in genetic kinship that is rooted in the more long-standing cultural construction of ‘a blood relationship [as a] relationship of identity’ (Schneider 1980, 25). These programmes dramatise the common belief that traits such as ‘temperament, built, physiognomy, and habits’ are not only signs of a shared biological make-up but also mutual ‘special identity’ (Schneider 1980, 25). This assumption forms the basis of the question posed in WDYTYA’s title: if you are not aware of the common identity you share with your ancestors, you do not truly know yourself. The process of uncovering new facts about genetic kinship is not only presented as something that changes the way related individuals interact with each other but also their sense of self. The participants are thus portrayed as moving ‘towards self-definition and completion through an understanding of their ancestry’ (De Groot 2009, 79). However, genealogical research is usually not presented as engendering a fundamental change in identity but rather as a process that provides you with a more complete sense of self. It is portrayed as allowing you to discover aspects of your identity that has presumably been part of your genetic setup all along, only you were not yet aware of it. This interlinking of identity and kinship has become even stronger with the geneticised understanding of kinship, as it is firmly rooted in essentialist and determinist genetic discourse and figures the genome as harbouring a blueprint of both our identity and ‘immediate, historic and prehistoric relatedness’ (Nash 2004, 2). Within the wider genetic imaginary, identity and relatedness merge, and the act

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of uncovering information about our family history is also seen as a process of self-­discovery. The face of a newly discovered relative is therefore presented as a mirror that suddenly allows us to notice aspects of ourselves to which we had not previously paid attention.

Making Kinship Matter Through Affective Intimacy Several scholars have already pointed out that WDYTYA stages genealogy research as a physical and emotional journey to self-discovery and self-­ awareness (Little 2010, 174–175; Holdsworth 2011, 70–78; Kramer 2011, 433–435; Lynch 2011, 108; Cannell 2011, 469). The celebrity participants typically start out by visiting one of their closest relatives, usually a parent or sibling, and their initial conversation about the family history becomes the starting point for an investigative narrative that prompts the participants to travel to a number of geographical locations where their ancestors once lived and worked. Family reunion programmes such as Long Lost Family and Find My Family also tend to stage the quest of uniting estranged family members as a journey. In many cases, the participants literally travel abroad (the missing family members have often been hard to locate precisely because they had left the country and many episodes focus on cases of international adoption). Furthermore, the genealogical investigation is not only staged as a geographical journey but also constructed as a kind of time travelling. The participants must journey into their past and reconnect with people and places they are no longer ‘in touch with’. In Long Lost Family, the generic scene where the estranged family members are finally reunited always takes place at a location with significance to the participants’ shared past. Hence, the narrative trope of the journey not only functions as a metaphor for self-discovery it also constructs particular geographical locations and physical environments as crucial for the process of uniting relatives and family members that have ‘lost touch’. Fenella Cannell (2011, 465) has pointed out that genealogy research is more widely understood as ‘reconnecting the living to their dead as kin […] enlivening their sense of the dead as “persons” and thus overcoming “distance” and activating relatedness’. Both on genealogy TV and in the wider cultural discourse on genealogy research, the process of overcoming distance is often packaged as an ‘ancestral experience’ (Little 2010, 174). WDYTYA’s journeying motif is no doubt linked to the growing popularity of ‘genealogical tourism’ (Little 2010, 174–176), as well as ‘heritage tourism’ more generally (Martin-­

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Jones 2014, 157, 162–163). The act of visiting a location once inhabited by kin is understood as bringing the participant closer to their ancestors physically and emotionally, specifically re-establishing an affective connection. Hannah Little (2010, 173) has noted in passing that the idea of ‘walking in the footsteps of your ancestors’ constructs the act of doing family history as a ‘phenomenological project’ which can produce ‘a deep affective response’ by fulfilling the desire to feel, to touch, to smell, and to see the same things as one’s ancestors. Through their construction of the genealogical journey as establishing affective intimacy between the participant and their ancestors, the family history programmes are also part of a wider affective turn in public history, increasingly emphasising ‘affect, individual experience and daily life rather historical events, structures and processes’ since the early 2000s (Agnew 2007, 299). More specifically, this follows a wider trend in popular history programmes to use re-enactments (simulated historical situations) to allow participants (and, in extension, the viewers at home) to connect with historical figures and events through embodied experience (Cook 2004; Agnew 2007; Gray and Bell 2013, 130–157). As Vanessa Agnew (2004, 330) has pointed out, the historical re-enactment is a ‘body-based discourse in which the past is reanimated through physical and psychological experience’ and it is by calling on this idea that genealogy TV asserts that the journeys to significant locations can create a ‘sense of continuity, enabling the development of an emphatic connection as well’ (Holdsworth 2011, 82). The genealogical journey goes further than simply functioning as a re-enactment that establishes an emphatic understanding for historical events; it is presented as an experience that (re)establishes sensorial and emotional proximity and engagement between two people with shared genetic substance. It enables a physical alignment between the relatives by spatialising kinship, figuring geographical locations as concrete and touchable representations of the invisible bond shared between relatives. This is another process of simplification, whereby the expansively dispersed spatiality and temporality of genetic heritage (the infinite geographical places visited by kin across countless generations) is reduced to a handful of identifiable sites that can be visited in one journey. The motif of the journey is only one of many ways in which genealogy TV calls on affective embodiment to make genetic kinship matter. Both Kramer (2011) and Holdsworth (2011) have already identified embodied sensorial and emotional experiences as central to WDYTYA’s staging of genealogy research. Kramer (2011, 437) describes the act of ‘watching the

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celebrities experience the shock and surprise of unexpected findings and their emotional engagement with the past’ as one of the main pleasures offered by WDYTYA and Holdsworth (2011, 69) links the programmes’ predilection for extreme close-ups of the celebrity participants’ faces (displaying their reactions to new information) to a wider tendency in reality programming to emphasise emotional and melodramatic moments of confessional revelation. A reviewer in The Guardian similarly described ‘the soft weeping of the celebrity as they encounter a terrible truth from the past’ as the ‘money shot’ of WDYTYA (McLean 2007). The participants’ emotional reactions are emphasised across genealogy TV. The family reunion shows are, for example, carefully structured to build up emotional tension that eventually erupts during the obligatory scene where the family members are finally reunited. In Long Lost Family the presenters play an important role in encouraging a confessional mode where the participants open up about their feelings of loss and longing, often assuring the participants that ‘it is ok to cry’ and offering intimate acts of emotional support by touching and hugging them. Kramer (2011, 234) has argued that the emotional scenes in WDYTYA are one of several ways in which the programme allows the viewers ‘privileged access into the personal and family life of the celebrity participant’. Whether they are focused on celebrities or ‘ordinary people’, many of these shows are examples of what Misha Kavka (2008) has identified as reality television’s special ability to harness the medium’s wider capacity for ‘affective intimacy’. Engaging with previous writing on television as ‘a technology of intimacy’ that makes viewers experience feelings of spatial, temporal and emotional closeness to the onscreen events and characters (5), Kavka argues that the development of reality formats is a logical extension of the medium’s distinctive capacity ‘to make me feel as if I am there, to make me care about the event, and to draw me into an intimate relation with those in the frame’ (6). According to Kavka, television’s ability to produce feelings of emotional proximity is rooted in our understanding of the medium as, firstly, a domestic apparatus allowing us to peer into the private lives of others from the comfort of our own homes; secondly, a technology of actuality and immediacy that presents us with images of a ‘real’ and ‘simultaneous’ presence; and thirdly, a mode of address that engages with the viewers in a direct and private way (1–25). In the more

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specific case of genealogy TV, the programmes’ affective intimacy is linked to their wider penchant for narratives about ‘family secrets’ and portrayal of the everyday lives of the participants (e.g. allowing us into their family homes, introducing us to their relatives and displaying their private family photographs). It is also the result of their tendency to render historical events current by focusing on how the knowledge about the past affects the present (as personified by the participant), as well as their frequent use of direct-address voice-over, and finally, their narrative and visual emphasis on the emotional reactions of the participants. These elements all encourage the viewers to create an intimate bond with the onscreen participants, which bridges temporal and geographical distance and results in feelings of emotional closeness. But beyond this, their affective intimacy also plays an important role in constructing the bond between the participants and their ancestors as one of privileged proximity. The television apparatus not only makes the participants’ experiences matter to the viewers at home; it also makes kinship matter, both in the sense of making us care about the genealogical information uncovered and in the sense of making us believe that these genetic linkages are substantial. The feelings of emotional proximity that these programmes incite in us become yet another ‘proof’ of the enduring significance of the genetic bond between relatives.

Scripted Emotions The participants in genealogy programmes often express surprise at the strength of the emotions they feel when finding out new information about their ancestors and relatives. For example, when broadcast journalist Jeremy Paxman (who is known for his forthright and decidedly unsentimental interviewing style) becomes emotional in WDYTYA (S02E01) he ruefully exclaims, ‘I wasn’t going to cry on this programme!’ This defence casts his emotional outbursts as all the more instinctive, a natural response supposedly triggered by the powerful essence of Paxman’s relationship to his ancestors. Typically, the uncontrollable nature of the ­ participants’ affective reactions are not only emphasised within the programme itself but are also widely discussed in the promotional discourses that surround the show. For example, an article in the Yorkshire Post publicising actor Brian Blessed’s appearance on WDYTYA highlighted the surprising nature of his emotional reaction. When interviewed about the experience, he explained ‘it was a great surprise’ that his tears flowed. He ‘didn’t make any determined resolution not to cry, [he] thought it just wouldn’t

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happen’, particularly since he had previously ‘been incapable’ of crying on-­ screen (Anon 2014). Directly comparing his behaviour on WDYTYA with his work as an actor on I, Claudius (BBC, 1976)—where the ‘production team had to resort to putting ‘lots of liquid’ in Blessed’s eyes for particularly emotional scenes’—the article further constructs his affective display on WDYTYA as spontaneous and sincere. Declarations like these further contribute to genealogy TV’s overall construction of genetic kinship bonds as essential, material and enduring. By declaring that their affective responses are involuntary, we are encouraged to understand them as a kind of indexical trace proving the enduring substance of shared genetic matter. The emotions can arguably appear extra ‘real’ or ‘raw’ in episodes featuring male celebrity participants with a public or professional persona that usually conforms to traditional ideas about a composed type of masculinity and the British ideal of the ‘stiff upper lip’, which is more true for Paxman than Blessed. When a participant’s response clashes with the viewers’ expectations of how they ‘normally’ act, the affective intimacy is potentially fortified by the suggestion that we are allowed to see a ‘truer’ version of the celebrity, otherwise hidden behind their professional façade. Blessed’s felt need to assert the real (‘un-acted’) nature of his tears in promotional interviews inadvertently indicates that the authenticity of the emotional displays on WDYTYA had already been placed under scrutiny. The scepticism that has indeed characterised the reception of the participants’ affectivity seems to have started in earnest with the airing of the Paxman episode, precisely because his reaction appeared so very out of character. As Fenella Cannell puts it, the scene where Paxman is overcome by emotions ‘became a talking point for British viewers; some thought it must have been rigged by the programme-makers, or even staged by Paxman himself in a shameless (if mysteriously motivated) act of self-­ publicity’ (2011, 466). Holdsworth (2011) has also convincingly argued that the programme’s unsubtle use of cinematography and editing in this sequence is instrumental to this sceptical discourse: The camera quickly and jerkily zooms into an extreme close-up of the obviously ‘chocked-up’ Paxman, as if desperate to record this glimpse of ‘real’ emotion. […] Marking the setting of a precedent and the formulaic expectation of celebrity tears, the intrusive and lingering close-up that accompanies Paxman’s ‘breakdown’ reveals its own strategy of manipulation. At this point the show’s desperate attempts to elicit an emotional response from both Paxman and the viewer undermine its construction of that response as ‘authentic’. (Holdsworth 2011, 69–70)

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The apparent visual staging of emotional reactions as ‘the money shots’ of the programme seems to have undermined the intended construction of the emotions as spontaneous and natural. Instead, they seem premeditated and staged. This conclusion is further supported by Kramer’s (2011, 438–439) analysis of 525 viewer responses to WDYTYA, collected by the Mass Observation archive in 2008, which shows that some viewers perceived the programme’s emotional scenes to be ‘bogus’, ‘fabricated’ and ‘inauthentic’. Kramer points out that one viewer felt the producers were ‘milking the emotion’, while others mainly complained that ‘emotional connectedness with ancestors’ was an ‘expected’ part of the programme, which means that the celebrity participants’ reactions therefore take on a ‘scripted’ quality (438). These are examples of many viewers’ reflexive awareness of television’s generic conventions. A long-running programme such as WDYTYA, which has gone through minimal change over its run, no doubt makes returning viewers particularly conscious of its formulaic structure and style. As Kramer’s study reveals, this can undermine the programme’s claims of affective authenticity, thus making it necessary for participants to assert the veracity of their emotions in promotional material. By extension, the explicitly generic nature of the affective intimacy of WDYTYA and its peers might also inadvertently draw attention to the very process by which these programmes make kinship matter and the work it takes to construct genetic kinship bonds as privileged and enduring. If the emotional displays come across as expected and obligatory, this can reveal the constructed nature of not only the programme itself but also the kinship relationships it portrays. This could potentially cause some viewers to question, at least in passing, whether genetic kinship bonds are really as effortlessly substantial and significant as these programmes would have us think. While essentialist discourses on genetic kinship remains prominent on genealogy TV, some elements of the programmes have a potential to reveal the constructedness of kinship (i.e. the culturally ­constructed codes of conduct associated with biological kinship relationships), which might open up some space for post-genomic perspectives on kinship.

Conflicting Kinship and Post-genomic Forgetfulness In the wider genetic imaginary, the scientific field of epigenetics has played a crucial role in starting to reconfigure our understanding of biological kinship. As Clare Hanson (2015) summarises in her analysis of Jackie Kay’s adoption memoir Red Dust Road (2010), advancements in epigenetics

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have established a new framework of explanation that emphasises the mutability of the genetic matter we are born with: [Epigenetics] stresses the dynamic interaction of all the components of the cell from the first moment of fertilisation. This interaction explains the fact that though every cell of our body has the same DNA, cells diverge remarkably in the process of development as some become liver cells, some become epithelial cells and so on. The differentiation occurs as elements of the surrounding cell act on the genome, modifying the expression of DNA through an array of processes […]. Crucially, epigenetic changes to the genome […] continue to occur throughout life, in response to complex environmental cues. Epigenetics therefore provides a perspective on development in which a model of genetic (pre)determinism is replaced by that of a dynamic system involving an infinitely complex network of pathways and nodes of transfer. (Hanson 2015, 435)

The field of epigenetics provides scientific support to the ‘nurture’ side of the perennial nature versus nurture debate in psychology by producing tangible proof that an individual’s environment and life experiences have a significant impact. New studies suggest that our external environment, social relationships and emotional experience do not simply affect our psyches but alter us at the core of our genetic make-up (Hanson 2015, 434–436). This means that ‘even those who share DNA (i.e. ‘blood’ relations) will develop into markedly different individuals’ (436), thus undermining the ‘scientific’ basis for the construction of genetic kinship as a privileged relationship due to shared biological substance and identity. Epigenetics also opens up a fundamental reconfiguration of other types of kinship bonds. Relationships that previously have been thought of as less significant due to their lack of shared genetic substance now have a potential to achieve a more privileged status as they too could be understood as having a substantial and embodied impact on our (biological) identities. A wider range of social relationships now seems to have an enduring and embodied impact on us. Epigenetics encourages a post-genomic reframing of biological life by highlighting the inherently complex and dynamic nature of genetic ancestry. In genealogy TV, the emergent epigenetic framework for understanding processes of genetic heritage is rarely acknowledged in any explicit way. In some more recent episodes, the influence of new advances in epigenetics can occasionally be glimpsed through subtle changes in how the participants express themselves when talking about genetic heritage. For example, when Gareth Malone expresses the

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idea that he has inherited his singing ability in WDYTYA (S12E05) he says, ‘In my DNA I am sure there is a little switch for singing and it’s on.’ While the basic sentiment is not that different from older episodes where other participants say that their love for a particular type of landscape is ‘in their genes’, Malone’s reference to ‘switches’ in our genes that can be turned on and off is at least acknowledging the epigenetic idea that social experiences can have a profound embodied impact on our identity that can be passed on to future generations. Although genealogy TV is still highly invested in determinist discourses on kinship, there are occasions where the programme anticipates insights from recent research in epigenetics by inadvertently exploring the limits of the explanatory power of essentialist genetics. This can, for example, happen in cases where the genealogical investigations produce results that challenge, rather than affirm, the participant’s sense of self, seemingly disproving what to them was a significant fact about their ancestry and identity. In many cases, the participant simply accepts the new information, typically tying it to some other existing part of her identity. Such internalisation of previously unknown kinship bonds affirms the essentialist idea that if new facts of genetic kinship are recovered ‘then that is what kinship is and was all along’ (Schneider1980, 23). However, on some occasions the participant has a discernibly hard time consolidating her sense of self with her actual ancestry. And the discomfort of such instances has a potential to undermine the determinist genetic discourse because it unintentionally reminds the viewer of the socially constructed nature of kinship identity: who we are is not ultimately dependent on who and where we are from, but who and where we think we are from. Take, for example, the WDYTYA episode on John Hurt (S04E02), which is introduced as following the ‘English-born actor search for his Irish roots’. It opens with a series of romantic shots of what is presumably the Irish countryside, intercut with an interview where Hurt explains that he knows he is the descendant of Irish aristocracy: ‘I have always felt close to Ireland. I had a suspicion that I would find it kind of a haven. And when I first came here 40 years ago I couldn’t have imagined that the feeling would be so immediate and so powerful. Family legend has it that my great-grandmother was the illegitimate daughter of an Irish lord. And there is something beguiling about the colleen from the west of Ireland.’ Hurt initially travels to Ireland together with his brother where they find out more about the Marquis of Sligo, who they believe is the father of their great-great-grandmother Emma Stafford. In a scene familiar from other

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episodes, Hurt compares a photograph of Emma to portraits of the men Hurt believes to be her father and grandfather (the second and first Marquis of Sligo). He confidently asserts that he can see a distinct likeness between Emma and her alleged grandfather, but this conclusion is visually undermined by the use of shallow focus, which renders the photograph unintelligible to the viewers. This unusual refusal to allow us to detect likeness heralds the results of the subsequent genealogical search. Emma’s heritage is proven to be unquestionably English and she has no biological relationship to the Marquis (or to anyone else from Ireland). Hurt is initially able to transfer his hope to Emma’s husband Walter Lord Browne who shared a last name with the Marquis of Sligo, but this is also a dead end. Browne, it turns out, created ‘a fantasy ancestry’ to cover up that his father was deep in debt. When finally resigning to the fact that his Irish heritage was no more than a lie, Hurt reacts with disappointment and even anger. The episode ends with the following exchange between Hurt and an interviewer: Hurt:

I’m not who I believed I was! I’m not going to dance with pleasure to find out that one of the bankers in my life isn’t true, am I? […] One of the bankers in my life was my Irish identity. [It is] very important to me. I had very good reason to believe that there was a connection, […] substantiated by the fact that when I went to Ireland the very first time that I felt that I was where I should be. I felt at home. [But] it isn’t! Interviewer: But that doesn’t alter your feelings? Hurt: Yes it does! It alters my feelings completely. That’s what I feel at the minute. I don’t know, I might laugh about it later, but I’m not laughing now. Here Hurt himself voices a belief in the essentialist tradition. Because he doesn’t share any genetic material with anyone Irish, his feeling of belonging has been invalidated and he feels forced to disavow his Irish identity. But the fact that this identity is clearly still so important to him, which is illustrated by the anger he expresses when seemingly being forced to give it up, also highlights the constructedness of the link between kinship and identity. Even though he feels he must, Hurt seems unable to re-identify as someone who is English ‘through-and-through’, thus revealing that feelings of kinship are more complex than simply being an effect

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of our genetic heritage. John Hurt’s ‘journey’ comes closer to capturing the fact that genealogy research in reality often results in a more complex construction of identity, as ‘genealogical documents often raise more questions than they answer, since inconsistencies, surprises, and scandals are at the core of family history research’ (Lynch 2011, 108). This is admittedly only a very vague gesturing towards a more dynamic understanding of genetic heritage, but across genealogy TV there are a significant number of such passing post-genomic moments that, over time, accumulate. Surprisingly, the tendency to conflate ancestry, national identity and ethnicity/race can also, occasionally, articulate a postgenomic structure of feeling. In a number of programmes, including Faces of Britain and Gene Detectives, mtDNA or Y-DNA tests are used to identify a participant’s DNA as belonging to one single haplogroup, which reductively casts them as possessing a singular essential ethnic identity. In these cases the ethnic identity is solely based on a single maternal or paternal line (i.e. it does not take into account the autosomal DNA, combining genetic material from thousands of ancestors). The programmes that do use autosomal tests (including Finding your Root and 100% English) to determine biogeographical heritage typically present the test results as a percentage breakdown by either ethnicity or region. On the one hand, these diagrams are highly reductive, diminishing something as complexly social as a person’s ethnic identity to a simple pie chart. But on the other hand, the specific ways in which Finding your Roots and 100% English introduce these results has the potential to undermine the essentialist understanding of the results, which actually highlights the inherent complexity of biogeographical ancestry. The articulation of post-genomic complexity is a by-product from a clash between the participant’s sense of (ethnic) identity and the results of the genealogical investigation (in these cases a DNA test). Finding Your Roots, for example, includes a sequence where Gates visits a local barbershop in his hometown to illustrate that most people are unaware of the make-up of their biogeographical heritage. The voice-over explains: Gates: Most black people know they are a mixture of colours, but they are often surprised to discover just how white they actually are. […] Many black people want to believe that we are decedents of ancestors other than African and Europeans. The myth that we all have Native American ancestors is one I encounter everywhere I go. But statistics suggest otherwise. One in three black

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men descend from a white man who impregnated a black slave. […] Now there is a test that will finally put to rest some of these conceptions.’ The final sentence in this voice-over seems to suggest that new DNA technology will put inaccurate family myths to rest and allow people to know the ‘truth’ about their racial identity. Gates initially encourages the men in the barbershop to guess their percentage of ‘White, Black and Native American’ DNA and these suppositions are later compared to the actual test results, which in many cases diverge significantly. All the men express some surprise at their results and Gates’ voice-over concludes, ‘The numbers were […] hard to believe. For all of them the numbers sparked a larger conversation on race and identity.’ This scene attempts to highlight that people’s sense of self is dependent on more complex social factors and not simply rooted in one’s genetic make-up. And furthermore, it also illustrates that in many cases, new information about genetic heritage does not ‘magically’ change our racial identities. As one of the men points out while laughing, ‘I can almost say that I’m white, because I’m 50.6% European, yet society judges you for how you look. The next time I get pulled over by a cop I’m going to tell them, man, I’m actually white.’ Of course, this ironic joke is based in the knowledge that showing a cop his genetic pie-chart will in all likelihood not make any difference whatsoever; the cop will still define him as black. In spite of the programme’s general assertion of the importance of knowing one’s genetic heritage, this one scene at least acknowledges that ideas of race are far more complex than a reductive numerical breakdown of a person’s genetic make-up. Something similar happens in 100% English when a number of nationalist participants are faced with test results revealing that most of them ‘have ancestors originating from as far afield as Turkey, Africa and even China’. Again, this information does little to actually change their sense of self or their political convictions. Rather than readily acknowledging that they are in fact not ‘100% British’, some of them instead redefine what it actually means to be English in an attempt to retain their socially constructed identity. If the ‘actual’ genetic ancestry of these participants has fairly little social significance to them, perhaps genetic kinship is not as substantial and enduring as we might assume. Furthermore, even though the pie-chart definition of ethnic/racial ancestry is obviously highly reductive (in that it only provides a small number of highly gener-

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alising categories) it still begins to acknowledge some of the multiplicity of our genetic ancestry. Gates’ voice-over in African American Lives (S01E04) acknowledges that admixture tests could be understood as coming dangerously close to being a modern-day version of phrenology, but the programme asserts that these tests ultimately avoid the pitfalls of previous pseudo-sciences because they ultimately reveal that we are all ‘mixed race’ and descendants from the same ancestors on the African continent. Any acknowledgement of the complexity of genetic heritage is otherwise rare throughout genealogy TV, but the programmes occasionally feature participants that at least show some passing scepticism against the traditional beliefs that underpin their construction of genetic kinship. For example, when actor and television personality Stephen Fry appeared on WDYTYA (S02E03) he offered a tweaked version of the typical explanation for appearing on the show (i.e. wanting to find out about more about one’s ancestors to better understand oneself): ‘I think of genealogy as this benign form of astrology. It says that out of all these hundreds of thousands of ancestors that you have going into the past they all came down to one point, which was you. You are the sum of a uniquely miraculous conjuncture of different DNAs, different parents meeting.’ Although the episode goes on to focus on a very limited number of Fry’s relatives, this opening statement still encourages the viewers to think about the thousands of ancestors that were not included in the programme. Viewers that have themselves conducted genealogy research are more likely to be aware of the sheer multitude of ancestors and how impossible it is to ever come anywhere close to having a complete knowledge about one’s ancestry. Fry encourages us all to think about the many ancestors that remain unknown and all the stories that never make it onto these programmes. Such awareness of the inherent incompleteness of any family tree have also been increased by the many news stories that have criticised WDYTYA and Finding Your Roots for only airing stories that are deemed interesting enough by the producers or that have been pre-approved by the celebrity participants (Holmwood 2009; Alexander 2014; THR Staff 2015; Oldham 2015). For example, knowing that Ben Affleck keenly wants to forget all about the slave-owning ancestors that the researchers on Finding Your Roots identified (THR Staff 2015) and that Michael Parkinson’s family was ‘too dull’ for WDYTYA (Holmwood 2009) has some potential to make us more aware of the fact that there are many kinship bonds left untraced and unacknowledged.

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As Janet Carsten (2001, 33) points out in her critique of the traditional focus on substance in kinship studies, biological kinship bonds are definitely not forever enduring, at least if we think of them in terms of their social and emotional significance. A vast majority of our kinship bonds are forgotten and some are even consciously severed. This forgetfulness is actually at the very heart of genealogy TV; if it wasn’t for the fact that ancestors are routinely forgotten and family members often become estranged, there would be no need for genealogy research. So, in spite of the programmes’ continuous assertion of the enduring substance of kinship, the genre’s very existence illustrates the opposite—that distance in time and space regularly renders genetic kinship bonds insignificant. Perhaps the inherent forgetfulness of the television medium itself can serve as a further reminder of the general forgetfulness of kinship, thus allowing new and more complex post-genomic discourses on genetic kinship to gradually emerge. Television’s focus on the present day, which encourages its viewers to forget about the intimate bonds they formed with onscreen characters yesterday and instead move on to new ‘TV families’, could be said to mirror the relationship (or lack thereof) we all have to our relatives. In the next chapter I will consider a number of ‘TV families’ that rather than searching for their ancestors seek to extend their families, but that for one reason or another are unable to do so through sexual reproduction.

Notes 1. However, the sheer repetition of plotlines about cheating spouses, nonnormative family structures and uncertain genetic heritage, and the fascination and glee with which the daytime talk shows addressed them, also held a potential to inadvertently undermine the basic investment in nature over nurture. 2. Various other methods for determining paternity had been in use for some time, but all were less reliable. These included blood typing, serological testing, Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) typing, and DNA testing via Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP). 3. There is a longer history of television programmes working though cultural anxieties about uncertain paternity. There are, for example, multiple episodes of the early UK forensic crime drama The Expert (BBC, 1968– 1976) that deal with this topic, including ‘Flesh and Blood’ (19/09/1969), ‘Whose Child? Part 1, The Wife’ (31 January 1971) and ‘Whose Child? Part 2, The Husband’ (07 February 1971). Interestingly, in ‘Flesh and Blood’ blood group testing is used to produce scientifically viable proof of kinship and, in line with BBC’s public service aims, the episode is a veri-

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table lesson in the science of blood groups. Initially, it is the possibility of establishing biological paternity that takes centre stage. The plot centres on Albert, a jealous husband who suspects that his wife Jeanette has lied about the parentage of their son Jackie, who was born while Albert was away at war. Albert visits Dr. Hardy and MD Jo Hardy in the hope that a blood test will establish who is Jackie’s father, but the Hardys explain that currently the tests only can exclude paternity. As the plotline develops, the viewer is led to believe this is indeed a case of female infidelity, but in an unexpected twist another blood test reveals Jackie has no biological tie to his mother either. Jeanette is freed from the accusation of adultery, but is instead revealed to be a crazed criminal, their biological child died shortly after birth and she secretly kidnapped a child from an orphanage to replace him. The episode ends with Jackie being returned to the orphanage. This event is fairly straightforwardly depicted as a happy occasion. In the final shot of the episode, the camera lingers on Jackie as he cheerfully plays with the other orphaned children in a lush garden. Biological kinship is portrayed as outweighing the socially constructed kinship bond between Jackie, Janette and Albert. 4. Soap operas and daytime court shows featuring this kind of plotline include General Hospital (ABC, 1963–present), Young and the Restless (CBS, 1973–present), Days of our Lives (NBC, 1965–present), Emmerdale (ITV, 1972–present), EastEnders (1985–present), All my Children (ABC, 1990– 2002), Divorce Court (Syndication, 1999–present) and Judge Hatchett (Syndication, 2000–2008). 5. They are typically completely unaware of their biological ties before the test results, but in some cases the characters have knowingly become sexually intimate after a long period of estrangement, which means they largely lack the ‘appropriate’ social kinship bonds of relatives. These plotlines are often using accidental incest to problematise non-traditional family structures. The characters practising accidental incest are almost always depicted as having grown up in some kind of non-normative family structure (they have been given up for adoption; grown up in single-parent households; or with parents that are polygamous, unfaithful or divorced). Linking accidental incest with the ‘breaking down’ of the nuclear family and a more general increased anonymisation, for example, facilitated by digital technologies such as cell phones and the Internet, is a wider tendency within the popular imagination (see: Sandell 1998, 149–151; Konrad 2003, 353; Stacey 2010, 161; Karaian 2016). 6. In ‘Toxic’ the investigator explains, ‘Our DNA compels us to connect with our genetic tribe. Psychological imprinting and social taboo overwhelm sexual desire when two siblings are raised together, but when two people are unaware of their biological bond they are drawn to each other.’

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7. In ‘Nine Wives’ the mathematician-investigators produce a complex statistical chart to visualise the interconnected networks of kinship and sexual relationships in one family, which appears worryingly confusing in comparison to the relative clarity of the traditional family tree structure. In ‘Genetic Disorder’ the forensic scientists conduct genealogical research into the family of a man suspected to have killed a professional genealogist and the resulting family tree is presented as proof that the murder attempted to cover up an incestuous relationship between a mother and her son. 8. http,//www.channel4.com/programmes/the–last–slave Accessed, 25 Nov 2015. 9. The US version has also subsequently aired in the UK. 10. Kramer borrows this term from a 2007 television review from The Times in which Kevin Maher (2007) critiques what he sees as an ‘increasingly loathsome Reality TV sub-genre, Genealogy TV’. 11. In some cases they decline to take a certain test or the test results of certain participants are left unmentioned (in some cases it is unclear whether they have taken the tests or just asked to not have the results included in the programme). For example, in the Faces of America episode ‘Know Thyself’ (S01E04) Louise Erdrich declines an (autosomal) DNA test with the explanation that she doesn’t want to risk undermining her family’s strong Native American identity, and in the first episode of Finding Your Roots we never find out if Henry Connick, Jr., has taken an autosomal DNA test and if he did we are not presented with the results. 12. The male sex chromosome triggers testis development in the foetus and is only passed down from father to son. 13. The cultural values at play here become even more apparent when considering that, similarly, more upmarket talk show hosts like Opera Winfrey ‘who markets herself as a class act, does not do paternity test shows’ (Stanley 2002). 14. The Nicky Campbell episode was aired in July 2007, roughly two months before Season 4 was broadcast. 15. The symbolic function of blood has been discussed by Schneider (1980, 23–24), but scholars such as Janet Carsten (2001) and Kath Weston (2001) have provided more recent and nuanced discussions on this topic.

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Holmwood, Leigh. 2009. Michael Parkinson: My Family Was Too Dull for Who Do You Think You Are? The Guardian, 21 July. http://www.theguardian. com/media/2009/jul/21/michael–parkinson–who–do–you–think–you–are. Accessed 1 April 2016. Hunt, Tristram. 2006. Reality, Identity and Empathy: The Changing Face of Social History Television. Journal of Social History 39 (3): 843–858. Jermyn, Deborah. 2007. Crime Watching: Investigating Real Crime TV. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Karaian, Lara. 2016. Relative Lust: Accidental Incest’s Affective and Legal Resonances. Law, Culture and the Humanities: 1–20. Kavka, Misha. 2008. Reality Television: Affect and Intimacy, Reality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Konrad, Monica. 2003. From Secrets of Life to the Life of Secrets: Tracing Genetic Knowledge as Genealogical Ethics in Biomedical Britain. Royal Anthropological Institute 9: 339–358. Kramer, Anne-Marie. 2011. Mediatizing Memory: History, Affect and Identity in Who Do You Think You Are? European Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (4): 428–445. Little, Hannah Mary. 2010. Genealogy as Theatre of Self-Identity: A Study of Genealogy as a Cultural Practice within Britain since c. 1850. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow, Glasgow. Lynch, Claire. 2011. Who Do You Think You Are?: Intimate Pasts Made Public. Biography 34 (1): 108–118. Maher, Kevin. 2007. Last night’s TV. The Times, 7 August. http://www.thetimes. co.uk/tto/arts/tv–radio/article2440784.ece. Accessed 25 November 2015. Martin-Jones, David. 2014. Film Tourism as Heritage Tourism: Scotland, Diaspora and The Da Vinci Code (2006). New Review of Film and Television Studies 12 (2): 156–177. Mason, Jennifer. 2008. Tangible Affinities and the Real Life Fascination of Kinship. Sociology 42 (1): 29–45. McLean, Gareth. 2007. Watch This. The Guardian, Thursday, 6 September. http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2007/sep/06/television. Accessed 3 March 2016. Nash, Catherine. 2002. Genealogical Identities. Environment and Planning D, Society and Space 20: 27–52. ———. 2004. Genetic Kinship. Cultural Studies 18 (1): 1–33. ———. 2005. Geographies of Relatedness. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30 (4): 449–462. Nelkin, Dorothy. 2005. Paternity Palaver in the Media: Selling Identity Tests. In Genetic Ties and the Family: The Impact of Paternity Testing on Parents and Children, ed. Mark A. Rothstein, Thomas H. Murray, Gregory E. Kaebnick, and Mary Anderlik Majumder, 3–17. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

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Oldham, Stuart. 2015. Ben Affleck Apologizes for PBS Slavery Censorship: “I Was Embarrassed”. Variety, 21 April. http://variety.com/2015/biz/news/ben– affleck–slavery–pbs–censor–ancestors–1201477075/. Accessed 1 April 2016. Rapping, Elaine. 2003. Law and Justice as Seen on TV. New York and London: New York University Press. Sandell, Jillian. 1998. I’ll Be There for You: Friends and the Fantasy of Alternative Families. American Studies 39: 141–155. Schneider, David M. 1980. American Kinship: A Cultural Account. 2nd ed. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ———. 1984. A Critique of the Study of Kinship. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Scodari, Christine. 2013. Roots, Representation, and Resistance? Family History Media and Culture though a Critical Lens. The Journal of American Culture 36 (3): 206–220. Stacey, Jackie. 2010. Cinematic Life of the Gene. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Stanley, Alessandra. 2002. So, Who’s Your Daddy? In DNA Tests, TV Finds Elixir to Raise Ratings. The New  York Times, 19 March. https://www.nytimes. com/2002/03/19/business/media–business–so–who–s–your–daddy–dna– tests–tv–finds–elixir–raise–ratings.html. Accessed 10 October 2018. THR Staff. 2015. Ben Affleck Requested His Slave–Owner Ancestor Be Censored From PBS’ Finding Your Roots. The Hollywood Reporter, 17 April. http:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ben–affleck–requested–his–slave– 789876. Accessed 1 April 2016. Weissmann, Elke. 2011. Conventionally Beautiful: Contemplative Images in the Personal Reflective Narratives of Who Do You Think You Are?, The Monastery and The Convent. European Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (2): 195–211. Weston, Kath. 2001. Kinship, Controversy, and the Sharing of Substance: The Race/Class Politics of Blood Transfusion. In Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, ed. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon, 147–174. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Television Programmes 100% English (Channel 4, 2006). African American Lives (PBS, 2006–2008). Alias (ABC, 2001–2006). Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–2002). Ancestors (PBS, 1997). Coming Home (BBC, 2007–present). CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012).

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Empire’s Children (Channel 4, 2007). The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976). Face of Britain (Channel 4, 2006). Faces of America (PBS, 2010). Family Ties (BBC, 2004–2006). Find My Family (ABC, 2009). Finding Your Roots (PBS, 2012–present). Gene Detectives (BBC, 2007). The Generations Project (BYU Television, 2010–present). The Great British Bake Off (BBC/Channel 4, 2010–present). House M.D. (Fox, 2004-2012). The Jeremy Kyle Show (ITV, 2005–present). The Last Slave (Channel 4, 2007). Law and Order: Criminal Intent (NBC/USA Network, 2001–2011). Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999–present). Long Lost Family (ITV, 2011–present). Louis and Clark (ABC, 1993–1997). Maury (Syndicated, 1991–2012). Meet the Izzards (BBC, 2013). The Montel Williams Show (Syndication, 1991–2008). My Famous Family (UKTV History, 2007). NCIS (CBS, 2003–present). Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010). Not Forgotten (Channel 4, 2005). Numb3rs (CBS, 2005–2010). Perception (TNT, 2012–2015). Ricki Lake (Syndicated, 1993–2004). Searching For… (OWN, 2011). So You Think You’re Royal? (Sky, 2007). Spoorloos (KRO, 1990–present). Trisha Goddard Show (ITV, 1998–2010). Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC, 2004–present). Who Do You Think You Are? (NBC, 2010–2012/TLC 2013–present). You Don’t Know You’re Born (ITV, 2007).

CHAPTER 5

TV Families: Normalising Assisted Reproduction

Following on from the previous chapter’s discussion about the construction of genetic kinship in genealogy shows, this chapter will investigate how other televisual portrayals of families contribute to the wider genetic imaginary. My emphasis will shift from ancestry to reproduction, in acknowledgement that ‘[r]elatedness not only arises from the past, but […] is also built in the present and looks towards the future. Descent not only implies ancestors, but also descendants’ (Bestard 2008, 24). Whereas Chap. 3 studied two programme types specifically concerned with tracing genetic kinship bonds into the past (and some cases the present), I will now examine a more diverse range of programmes with a future-oriented investment in the family as a site for (or consequence of) procreation. It is not particularly surprising that the family is one of the key thematic constructs within television’s cultural forum on genetics. The ties between television and the concept of the family are close and enduring. On the one hand, the family has long been understood as a crucial cultural context for television reception. Lynn Spigel’s (1988, 1990, 1992, 2001a, b, 2012) extensive historical research has mapped the processes through which US television became associated with family life and domestic ideals after the Second World War, for example showing that the popular press often focused on how the new medium would impact the normative family unit. Recent research shows that the cultural history of UK television has been characterised by similarly close connections between television © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_5

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and domesticity (Wheatley 2016; Nixon 2017; Rees Forthcoming). The concept of ‘family viewing’ has certainly proved persistent on both sides of the Atlantic, and still circulates widely in both popular culture and academia (Bryant 1990; Lull 1990; Mahajan and Luthra 1993; Bryant and Bryant 2001; Douglas 2003). On the other hand, the family has also figured prominently on television, from the 1950s until the present day, and there are numerous studies of the medium’s representation of family structures and familial relationships. Scholars have examined how ideas about kinship are articulated across a range of different television genres and formats, but family-centric fictional programming has received the most attention (Pingree and Thompson 1990; Moore 1992; Leibman 1995; Linné and Hartmann 1986; Taylor 1989; Robinson and Skill 2001; Dates and Stroman 2001; Douglas 2001; Keeler 2010) and there has been a particularly strong interest in the sitcom, a genre sometimes nicknamed ‘the domestic comedy’ (Cantor 1991; Reep and Dambrot 1994; Douglas and Olson 1995; Douglas 1996, 2003; Sandell 1998). More recent scholarship has also turned the spotlight onto family-centric documentary and reality programming as another key site for cultural negotiations of family bonds and family structures (Murray 1990; Rupert and Puckett 2010; Holmes 2010; Edwards 2010; Villarejo 2014; Pramaggiore and Negra 2014; Ouellette 2014; Stephens 2014). This chapter adds a new perspective to this extensive body of work by studying how family-centric sitcoms and reality shows (as well as a few programmes more in line with the educational or investigative documentary traditions of factual television) portray attempts to create a family where sexual intercourse is not a possible route to procreation. Others have already discussed a number of different ways in which the figure of the ‘TV family’ has addressed ‘conflict and anxiety about social change’ (Taylor 1989, 151), but only very little has so far been said about the gradual emergence of familycentric narratives that examine new reproductive practices (NRP) and assisted reproductive technologies (ART) (Osborne-­Thompson 2014; Edge 2014). The development of ART is directly linked to advances in genetic science, which is why televisual representations of such practices inherently contribute to the genetic imaginary. In comparison with genealogy TV, the family-centric sitcoms and reality shows I study in this chapter do not tend to discuss genetic kinship in the same explicit terms: there are no genetic ancestry tests and verbal references to DNA are (surprisingly) scarce. But as my analysis will show, ideas about genetic kinship and genetic heritage are still continuously examined and negotiated, albeit in more implicit ways.

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The portrayal of ART in family-centric programmes articulates post-­ genomic ideas about kinship in far more forceful ways than genealogy TV. This is partly a result of the post-genomic nature of ART; these medico-­ scientific practices inadvertently question essentialist beliefs about genetics through their very existence. Following on from the wider geneticisation of science, the ‘standard conception story […] has been lengthened to include not only the journeys of the egg and sperm, but their genetics and their genesis’, which by extension has aided in a more general ‘technologization, commodification and instrumentalization’ of the process of reproduction (Franklin 1998, 104). A number of different forms of ART have been developed during the twentieth century, including different types of fertility medications, sperm or egg donation, insemination,1 in vitro fertilisation (IVF)2 and surrogacy.3 Most of these treatments circumvent sexual intercourse, thus turning reproduction into a medicalised process aided by bio-technological tools and treatments. Writing about ART in 1998, Helena Ragoné argued that: ‘With the introduction of assisted reproductive technologies, seemingly simple yet nonetheless culturally bound assessments of what constitutes family, motherhood and fatherhood […] can no longer be taken for granted. ARTs have served to defamiliarize what was once understood to be the “natural” basis of human procreation and relatedness’ (118). Since the 1990s, ART has quickly become more routine and television has no doubt helped familiarise these practices, increasingly turning them into normalised ‘facts of life’. However, Franklin (2013, 1) has also rightly argued that while this is the case, assisted reproduction is still becoming ‘curiouser and curiouser’, as ‘neither human reproduction nor reproductive biology look quite the same’. Throughout much of her body of work, Franklin has examined the links between ART and the emergence of biological relativity, the blurring of the boundaries of the biological and technical, and the impact this has on our understanding of the concept of kinship and biological substance (see: Franklin 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2007, 2013; Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Franklin and Roberts 2006). Along with ART’s reconfiguration of reproduction, post-genomic discourses are emerging that complicate the notion of biological kinship, assert the substantial significance of nurture and environment and encourage us to embrace a more fluid understanding of the concept of ‘family’. In this chapter I map television’s role in the cultural process whereby ART has become both more familiar and ‘curiouser’. Studying televisual representations of ART over a period of 30  years (the late 1980s until

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today), I trace the changing nature of the family-centric programmes’ contribution to the genetic imaginary. The chapter has a rough chronological structure and compares the representation of ART in sitcoms and factual programmes from the late 1980s until the present day. I begin by studying some of the first televisual representations of ART on sitcoms from the late 1980s and through the 1990s. In this period sitcoms mainly expressed fascination with one particular type of NRP, namely, cases where working single mothers sought help from sperm banks to have a baby ‘on their own’. The practice that was then widely known as ‘artificial insemination’ was generally treated with scepticism and the programmes expressed cultural anxieties about so-called test-tube babies who would grow up lacking a sense of self. I then move on to consider how, after the turn of the millennium, a number of factual programmes highlighted reproductive risks and fertility problems, while also seeking to normalise the use of ART, by focusing on conventional heterosexual couples with infertility problems. I compare this to the sitcom genre’s tendency to emphasise ART’s potential for creating different types of non-traditional family structures. The chapter ends with a discussion of sitcoms from the 2010s that portray gay characters who seek to start a family.

Single Mothers and Sperm Banks in 1990s Sitcoms US television has a relatively long history of portraying a diverse range of family structures (Moore 1992; Skill and Robinson 1994). Marvin Moore’s (1992) content analysis of primetime ‘family series’4 on American television between 1947 and 1990 shows that while the ‘conventional’ family was dominant throughout the 1950s, subsequent decades have seen a more equal number of conventional and non-conventional families on the small screen.5 He also points out that there have been a significant number of single-parent families on television and that extended families are common (i.e. cases where relatives or other adults are living together with a family) (58). Beyond programmes that focus on a group of people in which some of them share some form of biological kinship bonds, there is also a longrunning tradition on primetime television to portray colleagues as ‘work families’ (Taylor 1989, 110–149; Heintz-Knowles 2001) and friendship groups as ‘families of friends’ (Sandell 1998, 143; Jarvis and Burr 2005). When the use of ART grew more common in the 1980s, television began examining how these practices could be used to produce new types of non-normative families. Initially, the central figurehead of ART within

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the sitcom genre was the unmarried career woman who acquires sperm from an anonymous donor in order to go through an intrauterine insemination (IUI) or IVF procedure at a fertility clinic. The focus on this figure is rooted in the wider emergence of postfeminist primetime programming in the late 1980s and illustrates how the sitcom genre became increasingly preoccupied with a number of neoliberal, postfeminist issues in the 1990s (Dow 1996; McCabe and Akass 2006). The sitcom’s ambivalent depiction of ART as an avenue for voluntary single motherhood, used by women who didn’t want to wait around until they met a suitable man because of worrying about age-related female infertility. This was indicative of wider tendencies at this time to identify singledom as ‘abject’ (Negra 2009, 61) and to reassert sexual difference (Gill 2007, 158), while also expressing growing investments in individualism, personal choice, self-­determination and self-improvement (Gill 2007, 153, 156). The construction of the ‘single mother by choice’ (Renvoize 1985) as a primary representative for new ART did not actually reflect who the main target audience for this fledgling industry was at this time. Throughout the 1990s, US fertility clinics mainly sought to serve white heterosexual upper middle-class couples in committed long-term relationships that were facing infertility issues and it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the industry started to embrace ‘other mothers’ such as single women, lesbians, women of an advanced maternal age, people with disabilities and women from ethnic minority groups (Houston 2004).6 That sitcoms put a spotlight on one of the ‘unintended’ consumer groups tells us more about the cultural anxieties circulating these new practices, than the ART themselves. While some of the programmes might have tried to capture something about the experience of going through an IUI or IVF process, their main concern was clearly the wider cultural implications of the fact that (at least in theory) women were now able to have a baby ‘on their own’. ‘The single mother by choice’ was primarily used to negotiate cultural anxieties about women’s financial and emotional independence, but it also mobilised more specific questions about the medicalisation of sexual reproduction and our understanding of genetic kinship. To further examine the genetic discourses that circulate television’s treatment of ‘the single mother by choice’, I will compare three primary case studies from the sitcoms The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992), Friends (NBC, 1994–2004) and Oh Baby (Lifetime, 1998–2000). The Golden Girls famously focused on a ‘family of friends’ consisting of four co-habiting pensioners, Dorothy (Bea Arthur), Rose (Betty White),

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Blanche (Rue McClanahan) and Sophia (Estelle Getty). It dealt with ART in one single episode that aired in 1989, titled ‘The Accurate Conception’ (S05E03), where Blanche’s daughter Becky (Debra Engle) announces, following a broken-off engagement, that she is going to take a break from her successful modelling career and have a baby on her own. Blanche reacts with disbelief and even disgust, but eventually decides to grudgingly support her daughter. The similarly iconic ‘family of friends’ show Friends— a ‘structuring ur-text of millennial postfeminist media culture’ (Hamad 2018, 694)—dealt with infertility issues in a few different narrative arcs. The show’s very first ART plotline featured in the 1996 episode ‘The One with the Jam’ (S03E03), where restaurant chef Monica Geller (Courtney Cox) attempts to get over her considerably older boyfriend Richard (Tom Selleck), who she left because he did not share her longing for children, by making huge batches of jam and considering artificial insemination. In line with the series’ neo-traditionalist portrayal of Monica (Hamad 2018, 694–696) as a representative of ‘postfeminist retreatism’ (Negra 2009, 16), she here attempts to ‘empower herself through domestic labour’ (Rockler 2006, 253) which Lauren Jade Thompson links to other postfeminist fantasies at this time about professional women downshifting from their demanding jobs to ‘make jam’ (Thompson 2018, 765–766; Hollows 2006, 99). Specifically, the episode references the film Baby Boom (Charles Shyer, 1987) to assert that women could, and should, ‘have it all’. In the end Monica only gets as far as trying to choose a sperm donor before being reminded by her friend Joey Tribbiani (Matt LeBlanc) that what she really wants is a large family in the suburbs together with a man she loves and she gives up on the endeavour.7 At the end of Friends, Monica is happily married to her friend Chandler (Matthew Perry) and about to move into their dream house outside the city together with their newly adopted twins. The final case study, Oh Baby, ran for two seasons and followed Tracy Calloway (Cynthia Stevenson), a career-focused woman in her mid-30s who seeks out the services of a sperm bank and fertility clinic after breaking up with her long-term partner because he fails to propose on their three-year anniversary. Surrounded by her best friend, brother and mother, Tracy falls pregnant and gives birth to a son, while simultaneously trying to date and manage her job. In this case, Tracy never does ‘get it all’; she continuously struggles to combine work and motherhood, but her longing to find a partner and a substitute father for her child is never successful.

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All three shows portray successful career women who turn to ART after failed relationships (in two of the cases, with men who are uninterested in having children). Responding to cultural anxieties that women might now be successfully single and happy without men, they specify that Becky, Monica and Tracy would all have preferred to start a family together with a man in a committed relationship and that they have only come to this choice out of fear that they are nearing ‘the end of their childbearing years’. Notably, all three women are only in their early-to-mid-30s, illustrating the heightened sense of ‘time crisis’ enveloping women’s bodies in postfeminist culture (Negra 2009, 47–48). Hence, while the sitcoms of this period portray ART as enabling non-normative family building, their overall construction of these practices is largely conservative and still heavily invested in essentialist ideas about gender, ‘family values’ and kinship. This follows a more general tendency in the way single-parent families have been dealt with in popular culture. Moore’s (1992, 58) study of the ‘family series’ shows that a vast majority of the single parents featured on television before the 1990s were actually widowed men and Hannah Hamad’s (2013, 2018) work on ‘postfeminist fatherhood’ has traced this trope’s intensified existence across US popular culture in the 1990s and the early twenty-first century. Rather than helping to normalise divorce and stepfamilies, single parenthood has generally been portrayed as an unfortunate and involuntary result of tragic loss, thus retaining the normative nuclear family as a foundational ideal. This is also generally true for the portrayal of the ‘single mothers of (not-so-much) choice’ in The Golden Girls, Friends and Oh Baby.

The Artificiality and Anonymity of the Gene Pool The sitcoms make abundantly clear that childrearing through artificial insemination, particularly by a single woman, breaks social conventions. For example, much of the humour in Oh Baby is derived from Tracy’s unsuccessful attempts to find a man once she is already pregnant and the difficulties of subsequently being a single working mother. She does have an on-and-off relationship with Rick (Jack Coleman), a man she meets when she is already pregnant. But he ends up marrying another woman at the end of Season 2, leaving Trish to raise her child alone and continuing to worry that she will never find a man. The ‘single mother by choice’ is generally portrayed as socially stigmatised, constantly facing prejudice and suspicion. This not only reinforces the idea that artificial insemination is an

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unconventional route to parenthood but also contributes to a more specific construction of ART as ‘unnatural’. The sitcom emphasises the artificial in ‘artificial insemination’. The nowadays rarely-used term test-tube baby is thrown around in abundance, reminding the viewer of the medicalised nature of this reproduction process. A number of generic scenes underline that ART is ‘replacing’ the social conventions of heterosexual romance and sexual intercourse. Rather than going on passionate dates, men and women are diegetically separated. Shifty-looking men surreptitiously enter sperm banks to make ‘a deposit’ and anxious women look through massive binders of donor profiles in intimate domestic spaces. Later we see the women dressing in hospital gowns and waiting in stirrups to be impregnated in dull impersonal hospital rooms by slightly unconventional doctors. Furthermore, a considerable amount of the comedic power resides in the assumption that NRP will induce adverse gut reactions. For example, in The Golden Girls Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia all respond with a communal shudder of disgust every time the artificial insemination comes up in conversation. While this invites any progressive viewers to laugh at the older women’s reactionary reactions, the joke is also clearly meant to have an empathic potential where laughter can also be based on recognition and identification with the characters’ feelings of unease. The 1990s sitcoms are generally underpinned by an assumption that most people will find it odd that single women can now get impregnated in a lab after picking an anonymous sperm donor. In Oh Baby, Tracey tries to identify her sperm donor and stalks a potential ‘suspect’ as he leaves the sperm bank in the hope of ‘meeting him in person’. Implicit to such plotlines is an essentialist investment in the importance of knowing one’s genetic heritage and a belief that social and biological kinship roles should be aligned. The sitcoms inadvertently express anxieties about NRP’s ability to undermine the enduring nature of genetic heritage by reconfiguring the forward drive of descent, which is a prominent feature of the traditional Darwinian framework for understanding genealogy as a substantial trace between generations. Franklin has argued that ART’s general redefinition of kinship is dependent on the wider post-genomic reconfiguring of life as a code, or a ‘sequence of letters’, that can be recombined freely and endlessly through newly developed biomedical interventions (Franklin 2000, 218–219). As a result, the classic linear and vertical spatial structure of Darwinian genealogy is increasingly becoming re-imagined and replaced with the notion

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of ‘the gene pool’, from which genetic codes from different individuals, ­generations and even species can be recombined, in accordance with an artefactual ‘mix and match’ sensibility: Recombination need no longer operate intergenerationally, through the downward (as if gravitational) linear flow of descent. Selection need no longer operate like a weir across the river of life. Indeed the river need no longer ‘flow’ at all since its mere width becomes at any given moment a source of greater horizontal variation than it ever was constrained within narrow, lineal, canal-like passages of gene transfer, tapering to their narrowest width at the point of recombination. As sexual reproduction is above all else the mechanism for genetic recombination under Darwin’s scheme, so it is as definitely rendered insignificant by the advent of assisted heredity, cloned transgenics and the entire millennial menagerie of unfamiliar kinds. (Franklin 2000, 218)

By re-spatialising and de-sexualising genealogy, the Darwinian ‘bloodline’ can be replaced with constructed kinship ties (both biological and social) that are fundamentally different in structure and significance. Furthermore, they could potentially be organised along a horizontal axis rather than vertical, produced in a laboratory and under human control. Donna Haraway (1997, 134) has described this process as one whereby the traditional concept of blood-ties is being replaced with ‘streams of [genetic] information’. Rather than seeing the creative and freeing potential in this shift, the 1990s sitcoms tended to emphasise the uncertainties of medicalised reproduction. The way the anonymity of sperm bank donations is continuously fretted over, for example, reveals a fear that the ‘gene pool’ might be less than desirable. The characters often question if the sperm donor profiles can be trusted, suggesting that the unknown nature of the genetic substance on offer might lead to undesirable, or even unhealthy, traits in the offspring (as if this wasn’t also a considerable risk in conventional cases of sexual reproduction). This is further underlined by their generic portrayal of the sperm donor as a somewhat unkempt, hunched, raincoat wearing man, decidedly similar to the stereotypical patron of porn cinemas or sex shops. In Friends, Monica comes by a donor profile that clearly describes her friend Joey, who readily admits that he has indeed donated sperm. The practice of sperm donation is here linked to promiscuity through the ongoing portrayal of Joey as a habitual singleton with multiple casual partners (in other words, as being too ‘free’ with his sperm),

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which stands in contrast with the show’s general investment in monogamous romantic love (Dhaenens and Van Bauwel 2018). Furthermore, Monica’s initial enthusiasm about the profile turns into disgust when she realises it belongs to someone she practically thinks of as family— one of many recurring jokes about incest among the group in Friends that indicates its ambiguous relationship to the concept of ‘alternative family’ (Sandell 1998, 149–151). This moment of recognition shows how the more general cultural anxieties about accidental incest that I discussed briefly in Chap. 4 are intensified around ART. Incest and ART have been widely interlinked in popular imagination (Edwards 2000, 234–235; Konrad 2003, 353; Taylor 2005, 194; Stacey 2010, 161) and Friends is one of many cultural texts that construct ART as one of several anonymising practices and technologies in modern society that have increased the risk of accidental incest (Karaian 2016). Monica’s moment of recognition captures personal fears that your anonymous sperm donor might actually be someone you know, perhaps even a family member, which could lead to ‘incest in a petri dish’ (Edwards 2000, 234). But the implicit reference to Joey’s promiscuity also hints at a more generalised cultural anxiety that sperm donors might father a worryingly high amount of children and that these anonymous siblings might unknowingly end up in sexual relationships with each other. This fear of future incest (Edwards 2000, 234–235) has been dramatised more explicitly elsewhere, for example, in the recent Australian sitcom Sisters (Network Ten, 2017–present) where the main character Julia Bechly (Maria Angelico) finds out that her dying father has used his own sperm to impregnate hundreds of clients while working as a fertility specialist. In the first episode, Julia invites all her potential siblings to a ‘family gathering’ and to her horror one of them happens to be a man she has just had a one-night stand with. These worries are founded on the idea that the ‘natural’ continuous, linear and vertical nature of Darwinian descent needs to be upheld, and that we need to know who we procreate with, in order to keep a ‘healthy’ population and maintain a pure genealogical line undisturbed by cross-generational or interfamilial mixing of genetic substance. This belief also implicitly saturates the longer Friends plotline about Monica’s love affair with Richard. As a family friend of the Gellers, Richard has the status of a father figure and the ‘weirdness’ of this cross-generational relationship is continuously presented as a problem. It is also a key factor in their eventual breakup, because Richard already has children who are Monica’s age and he has no desire to have more.

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The post-genomic idea of the ‘gene pool’ is also further problematised through discussions about the ethics of being able to interfere in the human reproduction process in more specific ways. The ‘designer baby’ is one of the ‘most infamous offspring’ of the post-genomic era, alongside its precursors, the test-tube baby and the clone (Franklin and Roberts 2006, 2), and while these programmes do not portray this figure as such, they do anticipate the cultural debates surrounding it. As Sarah Franklin and Celia Roberts (2006, 2) have explained, ‘the “designer baby” signifies a disturbing mixture of newfound biogenetic control, consumer demand and parental desire. An ambivalent figure, the designer baby is at once celebrated as a medical-scientific breakthrough and described as an example of “science gone too far”’. In the case of these sitcoms, they pose bioethical questions about whether we might now have ‘too much choice and control over reproduction’ (Franklin and Roberts 2006, 2) through repeated jokes about the ridiculously specific requirements that the characters express when choosing a sperm donor. In Friends and Oh Baby respectively, Monica and Tracy are so picky about their donors that they (initially) give up on the idea of becoming mothers.8 In Friends, Monica’s fussy approach to the selection process ties in with the show’s wider postfeminist portrayal of her as highly competitive and obsessive-compulsive in her attention to domesticity, which is continuously marked as excessive (Thompson 2018, 759, 766; Hamad 2018, 696). The humour of all the sperm selection scenes are rooted in the assumption that the viewers should consider the idea of trying to find genetically perfect sperm both absurd and unreasonable.9 Hence, when problematising NRP as ‘unnaturally’ medicalised, these sitcoms are interestingly worrying that ART offspring could end up with a genetic constitution that is either problematically imperfect or ‘too’ perfect. The figure of the ‘single mother by choice’ in 1990s sitcoms is therefore yet another telling example of the multiplicity of television’s genetic imaginary. These programmes stage a cultural forum that prominently acknowledges ART’s post-genomic potential to redefine reproduction practices, kinship bonds and family structures, but they are still saturated by essentialist investments in sexual reproduction, Darwinist genealogy, genetic kinship and the nuclear family. That said, the complexities of their comic tone also tend to open up the narratives to oppositional readings. For example, while characters’ suspicious attitudes towards artificial insemination in The Golden Girls prominently voice the belief that sexual reproduction is ‘a natural fact of life’, this is already undermined by the title of the episode, asking viewers if

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this really is an ‘accurate conception’. In a key scene towards the end of the episode, the four pensioners compare Betty’s choice to the circumstances under which they themselves fell pregnant. Rose and her husband had sex while dressed up as sandwiches during a ‘holiday of wheat’ and Sophia got knocked up on the street behind a hot dog stand. Worst of all, Dorothy nonchalantly mentions that she conceived after having been drugged (and, presumably, raped) by her husband. Blanche’s punch line, ‘At least what we all did was natural!’ is followed by a particularly loud round of laughter from the studio audience, responding to the jarring opposition between the women’s rather nostalgic reminiscing about sexual reproduction and the fact that none of these stories are at all ‘romantic’ or affirmative. In comparison to Becky’s carefully planned and medicalised pregnancy, these accounts certainly cast sexual reproduction as messy and unplanned, but hardly ‘natural’ in any positive sense. While the main characters remain sceptical throughout the episode, at least this individual scene should leave most viewers with the feeling that artificial insemination is actually preferable (at least to being drugged and raped). In the 2000s, the figure of ‘the single mother by choice’ became far less common in sitcoms. It has occasionally reappeared, but the issues it is used to debate (or poke fun at) tend to be slightly different. For example, in Season 3 of the musical comedy series Glee (Fox, 2009–2015) the ruthless cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) uncharacteristically announces that she is going to have a baby. At 52 years old, this is a feat that she will achieve by taking ‘bovine hormones’ and defrosting eggs that she herself harvested and froze in the 1970s (‘DIY style’). The medicalisation of reproduction practices is clearly still a central topic here, but the plotline is more specifically focused on the notion of ‘retirement pregnancies’ (van Dijck 1995, 182). Cultural anxieties about ART allowing women to become mothers at an increasingly advanced age were already circulating in the 1990s but grew more widespread in the twenty-first century following several widely publicised cases of women giving birth in their late 60s and early 70s (Shaw and Giles 2009; Hall 2006). Unlike the characters in The Golden Girls and Oh Baby, who were still portrayed as worrying about finding a man, Sue has no intention or desire for a conventional nuclear family in the future. This indicates how the genre’s overall investment in the nuclear family has been scaled back, at least in cases where it portrays ART, something I will examine in more detail later in this chapter. However, this does not mean that the nuclear family has altogether

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stopped figuring in televisual representations of ART. In the next section I will show how the conventional nuclear family construct looms even larger in reality programmes and documentaries in the twenty-first century, playing a key role in a wider normalisation of ART.

Infertility and Reproductive Risks on Twenty-First Century Factual TV Television documentaries that investigate human infertility and the emergence of new ART have been around since at least the 1960s. On UK television alone, the topic has been brought up with some regularity and discussed from numerous angles.10 BBC’s long-running science documentary Horizon (BBC, 1964–present) and current affairs programme Panorama (BBC, 1953–present) have both dedicated multiple episodes to infertility issues. But one of the first programmes that asked if new methods that ‘make it possible to select and modify human “breeding stock”’ might not ‘present a number of new problems to doctors, psychologists and the church’ was the religious panel discussion programme Meeting Point (BBC, 1956–1968), which featured an episode on ‘Test-­Tube Babies’ in 1962, 16 years before the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first test-tube baby in 1978. As Katharine Dow (2019) makes clear in her in-depth analysis of the ITV documentary To Mrs Brown … a Daughter (ITV, 1978), which was recorded just six weeks after Louise Brown’s birth and focused on both her parents and the doctors that helped them conceive, there is a long history of television documentaries trying to capture the first-hand affective experience of what it is like to struggle with infertility and go though IVF procedures and other fertility treatments. The second half of the 2000s has been characterised by a notable peak in the amount of factual programmes that engaged with questions of (in) fertility, reproduction and childbirth. This can partly be explained by the rising popularity of reality TV formats and their general tendency towards ‘affective intimacy’ (Kavka 2008), but it is also a clear response to an intense period of sensationalist reports about an ‘infertility epidemic’ in Western society (Faludi 1991, 21–65; Inhorn and van Balen 2002, 33–51) and a general increase in the amount of couples able to access fertility treatments. A large portion of this wave of programmes followed the longer tradition of focusing on the personal journey of couples who struggle to conceive, including the UK programmes A Child Against all Odds (BBC, 2006), Make Me a Baby (BBC, 2007), Tonight: Too Old to Be a Mum? (ITV, 2010), Having a Baby to Save My Child (BBC, 2010), The

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Baby Makers (BBC, 2012) and the US series A Conception Story (TLC online, 2010–present). But there are also programmes such as Baby Makers: The Fertility Clinic (BBC, 2013), which approach the topic from the perspective of scientist, doctors and medical personnel. The tone and address varies, but most programmes draw on the generic traditions of ‘medical reality TV’ more generally. UK iterations of this subgenre often retain more of an educational address derived from the prominent history of public service programming about the human body and medical advances. But across both sides of the Atlantic, the contemporary medical reality genre has also been influenced by the aesthetic and narrative conventions of the new hospital dramas in the 1990s (Jacobs 2003, 55; Turow 2013, 351–352), as well as emergency-services ‘infotainment’ shows such as Rescue 911 (CSN, 1989–1996) or Trauma, Life in the E.R. (TLC, 1997–2002) (Bonner 2003, 23; Hill 2005, 46). Drawing on both factual and fictional traditions has meant that alongside their didactic aims, these programmes are almost always characterised by an intimate focus on personal stories and emotional experience. Series such as The Baby Makers and A Conception Story are clearly working in the tradition of docusoaps when following couples closely through the ‘ups and downs’ in their ‘fertility journeys’. A number of more mainstream docusoaps have also featured reproduction and infertility plotlines that touch on ART. Following in the footsteps of the landmark documentary series An American Family (PBS, 1973) and The Family (BBC, 1974), many prolific docusoaps have focused on family life.11 This includes shows focused on celebrity families, such as The Osbournes (MTV, 2001–2005), Hogan Knows Best (VH1, 2005–2007), Run’s House (MTV, 2005–2009) and Keeping up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–present), and (more or less) ‘ordinary’ families like in Jon and Kate Plus Eight (Discovery Health/TLC, 2007–present), 19 Kids and Counting (TLC, 2008–2015), Sister Wives (TLC, 2010–present) and Duck Dynasty (A&E, 2012–present).12 That issues of reproduction and fertility are brought up in family-centric reality programmes is not particularly surprising. After all, these practices and issues are key to the construction and continuation of the family. Furthermore, the fact that these topics have traditionally been seen as ‘private’ and closely linked to sex means that they also adhere to reality TV’s wider commitment to ‘affective intimacy’ (Kavka 2008) as a key narrative strategy and audience address. The Little Couple (TLC, 2009–present), Ice Loves Coco (E!, 2011–2013) and Tia and Tamara (Style Network/E!, 2011–2013) have all included

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shorter plotlines about fertility and ART, but it has been a more lasting concern for Giuliana and Bill (Style Network/E!, 2009–2014) and several of the shows following the Kardashian/Jenner family, in particular Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kourtney and Kim Take Miami (E!, 2009–2013) and Khloé and Lamar (E!, 2011–2012). As Brooke Weihe Edge (2014) notes, ‘infertility lends itself to the reality show format, involving heightened emotions and personal drama’ and it also adds to the general confessional tone of these shows (875). Giuliana and Bill not only gives the viewers insight into multiple IVF attempts, but also a miscarriage, Giuliana’s breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment, as well as their eventual use of a surrogate to conceive a child. Similarly, the Kardashian franchise has covered the fertility struggles, pregnancies and labours of the Kardashian sisters Kourtney, Kim and Khloé, and the pregnancy of their half-sister Kylie Jenner. The respective infertility struggles of Khloé and Kim are discussed in multiple episodes and recent seasons have followed the process whereby Kim decides to have her third baby with the help of a surrogate (due to medical complications in her previous pregnancies). Interestingly, the fertility and reproduction narratives on Keeping up with the Kardashians is part of a wider fascination with genetic heritage in this programme; on numerous occasions throughout its 15 seasons we see the family members take a range of different DNA tests and then discuss the results.13 The portrayal of childbirth on Giuliana and Bill and Keeping Up with the Kardashians in the early 2010s follows a longer tradition of medical reality shows focused on childbirth. ART also occasionally features in some of these specialised ‘birthing shows’, although they generally tend to focus solely on the delivery itself and spend very little time on the longer conception processes and pregnancies of their participants. In the USA, reality shows focused on childbirth first emerged in the late 1990s and the genre has been particularly prominent on the cable channels TLC and Discovery Health.14 Two of the longest running programmes, A Baby Story (TLC, 1998–present) and Birth Day (Discovery Health, 2000–2010), set a precedent for a majority of the subsequent US programmes with their strong tendency towards dramatisation of the birthing process. To ensure added drama, many US birthing shows have focused exclusively on emotionally difficult pregnancies or so-called high-risk deliveries.15 By comparison UK midwifery shows such as One Born Every Minute (Channel 4, 2010–present) and The Midwives (BBC, 2012–2013) have generally tended to be somewhat more low-key. Rather than constructing childbirth as a medical

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emergency, they portray it as a universal and natural experience, yet emotionally significant. The general construction of childbirth as ‘natural’ becomes particularly significant in episodes that feature couples that have initially struggled to conceive, as it helps the eventual birth of a much longed-for child seem ‘meant to be’. Across all these factual genres, ART is not only linked to infertility but also a wide range of reproductive risks, including complications during pregnancy and childbirth, miscarriage, infant deaths and genetic disorders. According to Franklin (1997, 147, 1998, 104), developments in ART have directly resulted in an increased cultural focus on all the things that can go wrong in the human reproduction process. While the ‘spectre of overfertility’ has a longer history (Franklin 1998, 104), the growing wave of programmes focusing on infertility in the 2000s indicates how conception models post ARTs are increasingly defined in terms of ‘reproductive risk, dysfunction and failure’ (Franklin 1997, 3).16 Some of the programmes inadvertently end up overemphasising infertility when actually aiming to cover a diverse range of conception stories. Make Me a Baby, for example, makes claims of being statistically representative by following 100 British couples that are trying to conceive. Based on this premise and the fact that it is not really highlighted that the programme only follows the couples for a limited amount of time, it is easy for viewers to misinterpret the programme’s concluding statement that only 62 couples managed to get pregnant (even after receiving professional help) as meaning that 38% of all people in Britain are condemned to be childless.17 Over the course of the programme’s four episodes we are only introduced to a very limited number of these individual narratives and the fact that Make Me a Baby places particular emphasis on the couples that ‘need extra help’ plays a crucial role in its overall construction of conception as a rather elusive event. A Conception Story similarly enforces its participants’ frequent claim that a successfully completed pregnancy is ‘a miracle’ through a conscious casting of participants that in a majority of the cases have already been struggling with fertility issues even before going on the programme. Out of the 18 couples that A Conception Story has featured (at the time of writing), nine fall pregnant, but out of these five have miscarriages, two are prescribed bed-rest due to complications and we only see one actually give birth to a child during the course of filming. Many of the programmes specifically suggest that this is an escalating issue (that more and more people are having difficulties conceiving) and the spotlight is typically directed on the female body as the main root of

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the problem. In Kourtney and Kim take Miami Kim exclaims, ‘I swear, there must be something in our food! Why are so many women my age having infertility problems? So many of my friends are going to clinics and fertility specialists.’ The most prominently featured explanation to this question on television is definitely that ‘women are waiting too long’. This notion is discussed at particular length in the A Child Against all Odds episode ‘Cheating Time’ and the stand-alone programme Tonight, Too Old to Be a Mum? Considering the onslaught of recent news reports that low sperm counts in men is a significant contributor to what is described as an ongoing ‘infertility crisis’ in Western nations (Sifferlin 2017; McKie 2017; Kehoe 2018; Walsh 2017), it is noticeable that very few programmes up until this point have dealt with male fertility problems.18 Make Me a Baby is one exception; it features one couple where the man is found to have 0% sperm morphology and another where the prospective father tests positive for Hepatitis C, forcing him to instantly stop trying to become a biological father. Beyond infertility problems, the factual programmes also link ART to a number of other reproductive risks and ideas about genetics are often articulated more explicitly in these cases. One illustrative example is the anxietyinducing programme Having a Baby to Save My Child, which debates the ethics of ‘saviour siblings’ (Spriggs and Savulescu 2002; Taylor-Sands 2013) by following two families who are using a combination of IVF and foetal screening techniques to conceive a child that will be a perfect tissue match for an older siblings in need of bone marrow transplants in order to survive. When this programme aired in 2010, saviour siblings was a much discussed topic across popular culture in the wake of Jodi Picoult’s bestselling novel My Sister’s Keeper (2004) and the premiere of its film adaptation by Nick Cassavetes in 2009. The concept had also already been examined in several television dramas, including CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015) and Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010).19 In the case of Having a Baby to Save My Child the viewers are not only made aware of the risk that parents might unknowingly be carriers of deadly genetic diseases that are passed onto the children but also of the poor odds for successfully conceiving with IVF, let alone producing a viable embryo with the desired qualities. At the end of the programme none of the families have fallen pregnant and the viewers are left with a feeling of despair despite the parents’ continued assertions of feeling hopeful about the future. Explaining how statistically small their chances are, the voice-over makes apparent how apt it is to describe IVF as a ‘technology of hope’ (Franklin 1997).

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Crucially, the treatment of the figure of the ‘designer baby’ in Having a Baby to Save my Child is more positive than that in the 1990s sitcoms. Rather than constructing new medical procedures for selecting and manipulating the genetic constitution of a future child as an unreasonable and overindulgent wish for a perfect offspring, this programme presents these medical advances as altruistic and life-saving. Even so, the programme does grapple with the complex bioethical issues that such procedures give rise to and it is ultimately ambivalent. On the one hand, Having a Baby to Save my Child captures the desperate situation that the participants find themselves in, their only chance of saving their children from certain death is going through physically and psychologically demanding fertility treatments in order to maybe conceive a healthy child that could later donate bone marrow to their older siblings. The affective narration of the programme encourages the viewers to identify with the parents and hope for their success. Footage of the parents and their sick children are almost exclusively shot in green outdoor spaces—locations that function to further construct their choices as ‘natural’. However, on the other hand, the sequences showing children playing happily in gardens are also contrasted with clinical shots of medical personnel working in labs, riddled with inserts of medical equipment. Throughout, the programme also emphasises the medical and artificial nature of the IVF treatments and the controversial nature of doctors ‘creating spare-part babies’ is repeatedly acknowledged, as well as the fact that much money, emotions and effort are put into an experimental endeavour with a highly uncertain outcome. Even though the factual programmes focus on people that have turned to ART as a means to overcome difficulties to conceive, sustain a problem-­ free pregnancy and produce a healthy offspring, this does not necessarily construct these NRPs as clear-cut examples of medico-scientific ‘progress’. In many cases, the viewers are left with the insight that there are no simple solutions and are ultimately given the impression that advances in genetic science have primarily given us more of a sense of all the things that can go wrong. Whereas human sexual reproduction and fertility were previously seen as ‘natural facts of life’ that provided grounds for certainty, the recent attention to ‘reproductive risk, dysfunction and failure has generated increasing uncertainty’ (Franklin 1997, 3), which feeds the wider emergence of a post-genomic discourse whereby human biology appears increasingly complex and dependent on happenstance. Beyond articulating a post-genomic structure of feeling by simply asserting that genetic

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science has afforded us more control over the reproduction process, many of these programmes are saturated by a more radical, and far more uncomfortable, post-genomic sensibility that emphasises the inherent complexity of human procreation. The sense of reproductive uncertainty is articulated particularly strongly through the factual programmes’ frequent inclusions of childless couples that seek help from fertility experts, but never receive a clear explanation as to why they remain infertile. For example, in one of their videos from the second season of A Conception Story, the exhausted couple Vicki and Tom explain to the viewers that, in the last month alone, Vicki has gone through ‘a hysteroscopy, checked the fallopian tubes, […] three ultrasounds, […] a clomid challenge, a HcG trigger shot and [she is] going for progesterone testing this Tuesday’, but the doctors have been ‘surprised’ to find that there is nothing ‘wrong’. The medical community is simply unable to explain why she is not getting pregnant. Smiling wearily, Vicki concludes, ‘It’s a lot of testing to find out nothing is wrong.’ The more tests they have, the more elusive the body becomes.

Exceptional Ordinariness The factual programmes’ portrayals of ART draw, somewhat contradictorily, on both ideas about exceptionality and ordinariness. On the one hand, families that struggle with infertility have been chosen as a subject matter because they are understood to guarantee more emotional drama than other reproductive narratives, and as such they are identified as being ‘exceptional’ cases. Medical reality TV has a wider tendency to favour extraordinary bodies and this is just one example of a wide range of pregnancies and births featured on reality TV that are constructed as ‘non-­ normative’ in one way or another (including, for example, teen pregnancies, multiple pregnancies, unusually large families, premature births, and children born with birth defects or diseases). However, on the other hand, many of the individual programmes have clearly aimed to portray reproductive risks, infertility issues and the use of ART as everyday occurrences, experienced by many ‘ordinary’ people. Furthermore, a programme such as Having a Baby to Save My Child also clearly attempts to argue that while the couples might find themselves under exceptional circumstances, they are still ordinary people, ‘just like you and me’. The contradictory construction of ART as both exceptional and ordinary mirrors a wider tendency in reality TV that Hugh Curnutt (2011) has described as a tendency to favour participants that can expertly demonstrate an extraordinary skill

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while still successfully asserting their own ordinariness. Studying programmes such as The Real World (MTV, 1992–present), Top Chef (Bravo, 2006–present) and Jersey Shore (MTV, 2009–2012), Curnutt questions the older assumption that reality TV participants are always expendable because of their status as ‘ordinary’ people and argues that since the 1990s the genre has increasingly become dependent on participants that have a range of exceptional performative abilities—typically people that are either able to perform their ordinariness in exceptional ways, or that appear ­ordinary while showing off exceptional skills. Although Curnutt does not discuss medical reality TV, his assertion that ‘reality TV relies on a behind-the-scenes aesthetic in order to achieve the related, but opposite, goals of elevating the ordinary and demystifying the extraordinary’ (Curnutt 2011, 1069) can be used to explain some of aspects of the factual programmes about infertility. Depending on the viewers’ own knowledge and experience of reproduction, infertility and ART, medical reality shows could either be seen as elevating what to some is an everyday experience (rendering the act of conception exceptional by televising and dramatising it) or demystifying what to others might seem extraordinary (by allowing us to empathise with other people who are struggling with infertility). There are a number of ways in which reproductive risks, infertility and ART have been rendered ‘exceptionally ordinary’ on factual television. For example, the fact that A Conception Story almost exclusively features couples with fertility issues, and who turn to ART for help, not only results in a general emphasis on reproductive risk but also serves to normalise this experience and make it seem more commonplace. A Conception Story is produced by Clearblue (the pregnancy test manufacturer) and this explains a lot about its casting strategies. The decision to focus on committed heterosexual couples that are keen to conceive, but are finding it difficult, is a particularly attractive market segment for the pregnancy test industry. In her study of the rise of the home pregnancy tests in the USA, Sarah A. Leavitt (2006) has traced a number of shifts in the marketing strategies used by various drug companies. When home pregnancy tests first appeared on the market in the 1970s, they were initially met with suspicion as something that only ‘immoral’ women would need (326–327) and early advertisements tended to ambiguously address ‘the women who did not want to be pregnant as well as those who were looking for a positive result’ (331). During the 1980s, however, the single women were largely replaced with couples, firmly linking the tests with ‘family values’. Clearblue’s use of the

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reality show format as a marketing avenue clearly follows in the footsteps of EPT’s iconic ‘These Are Not Actors’ TV ad campaign which started in the 1990s, but A Conception Story crucially reflects how the increased access to fertility treatments in the 2000s has provided a new and very lucrative market for home pregnancy tests. Leavitt mentions that women who really want to conceive, and particularly those using IVF or other fertility treatments, have elevated the pregnancy test to ‘a symbol of hope’ and typically buy test sticks in bulk (336). By featuring participants that go through multiple rounds of exceptionally expensive and emotionally draining IVF procedures, the producers of A Conception Story are not only able to construct longer and more suspenseful narrative arcs but also to create opportunities for product placements.20 The scenes where they participants take a Clearblue test are also automatically imbued with even more narrative tension and significance. A Conception Story also specifically addresses viewers who are also actively trying to conceive, or who at least have a strong wish to become pregnant, and it makes its participants easily available for identification through a number of narrative and aesthetic conventions. This is a web series with relatively low production values. Only occasional episodes (typically the season finales) feature more professionally staged interviews in studio spaces and an overwhelming majority of the content is filmed by the participants themselves, using relatively cheap digital cameras. The most commonly featured shot shows one or two participants as static, mid-sized ‘talking heads’, looking into the camera and addressing the viewers directly. Their basic framing and narrative content is reminiscent of the generic confessional interview on reality TV, but because of their grainy digital quality and bad lighting they tend to more closely resemble a web-camera aesthetic familiar from video chat applications such as Skype or FaceTime. This produces a strong sense of intimacy, which is further enhanced by the fact that viewers are likely to watch the programme on a computer, which is effectively creating the illusion of being in a private and candid webcam conversation with the participants. Some episodes also feature sequences filmed outside the participant’s homes, most commonly filming them in cars while driving to doctor’s appointments or accompanying them into the medical spaces of fertility clinics. In these cases one spouse is usually filming the other, resulting in a hand-held digital aesthetic associated with home videos. The intimate domesticity of both these visual styles (the talking head webcam interviews and the hand-­ held home videos) further casts the participants and their experiences as

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everyday and distinctly ordinary. The viewers are left with a distinct feeling that these people could be their friends, or even, that what is happening to the participants could equally happen to them. Another show that normalises ART is One Born Every Minute, but unlike A Conception Story this is a programme that relatively rarely features couples that have conceived with the help of ART. In this case, the few participants that have struggled with infertility are not rendered ordinary through extra attention but conversely through a process whereby ‘difference’ between different forms of conception is minimised. Partly because One Born Every Minute focuses so closely on the affective experience of childbirth, little distinction is made between IVF or IUI couples and those who have conceived through sexual intercourse. Overall, this is a birthing show that stands out through its portrayal of childbirth as an everyday occurrence (Bull 2015). Whereas US birthing shows tend to portray childbirth as an ‘abnormal event’ (Sears and Godderis 2011, 185) or medical emergency that requires multiple technological aids and interventions in order to be safe and successful (Sears and Godderis 2011, 189–190; Morris and McInerney 2010, 137; Rooks 1997, 462), One Born Every Minute instead produces a more unhurried portrayal of childbirth that constructs it as mundane rather than exceptional. And this wider tendency includes the births of children who have been conceived with the help of ART. The fixed rig filming technique of One Born Every Minute helps to produce a more leisurely version of childbirth that at least captures some of the tedium of the process, which further casts it as everyday. The fixed rig technique uses remotely controlled cameras that have been installed on the walls across the hospital ward, which results in a static and repetitive visual language. As opposed to the urgent and speedy visual style of the US birthing shows, the fixed rig camerawork generally has a calming effect that provides a sense of lucidity, predictability and stillness among the hustle and bustle of the hospital (Bull 2015). This is partly the result of the fixed rig technique’s own cultural associations with objectivity and authenticity. Helen Littleboy has shown that both the promotion and reception of Channel 4’s fixed rig documentaries, including One Born Every Minute and the medical reality show 24 Hours in A&E (Channel 4, 2011–present) discussed the remote controlled filming process as suitable for capturing the ‘mundane, universal truths about human life’ because it completely removes the camera crew from the events (Littleboy 2013, 134). One Born Every Minute has a kind of universalising effect, which makes a wide variety of conception and birth experiences seem familiar.

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By reducing difference between sexual reproduction and NRP, One Born Every Minute inadvertently contributes to the genetic imaginary in interestingly complex ways. This can be understood as asserting that the emotional and physical experience of giving birth is the same no matter the genetic relationship between the parents and the child, which supports a post-genomic reconfiguration of kinship as primarily dependent on shared experience and social commitment. But the generically intimate display of the birthing body can also be understood as still emphasising the importance of shared biological substance between mother and child, even in cases where they do not share the same genetic set-up. Charis Thompson (2001) shows how many individuals who are going through fertility treatments feel the need to construct their kinship bonds to their future children in terms of biology even when no genetic link exists. In these cases, the physical process of pregnancy and the biological act of childbirth are called upon to naturalise the social kinship bond between the child and the parent. Mothers that have conceived through egg donation might, for example, emphasise that they have shared their body and blood with the baby, thus establishing a substantial biological bond despite the lack of genetic kinship (Thompson 2001, 176). In One Born Every Minute, the repeated shots of the child’s head crowning and entering the world covered in the mother’s blood could be seen as ‘proof’ of the mother’s status as biological origin, even in cases when she does not share a genetic bond with the baby. When a genetic framework for understanding kinship is not available, older discourses on biological kinship can thus be activated to construct a new type of ‘blood tie’. Furthermore, epigenetic ideas about how environmental factors in the womb might imprint on the foetal genome can similarly redefine what we mean by a ‘genetic bond’ between mother and child. Hence, while biological kinship is still an enduring notion, developments in genetic science and ART are producing a more fluid understanding of the concept of biogenetic substance, which is now increasingly split into at least two different parts, genetic and gestational (Bestard 2004, 255). In the process of normalising (and more specifically, naturalising) ART, factual television programmes stage a cultural forum by articulating multiple, contradictory ideas about genetic kinship and shared biological substance. One Born Every Minute suggests that the act of childbirth is crucial for creating a substantial bond between the birth mother and the offspring, but when the reality shows Giuliana and Bill and Keeping Up with the Kardashians portray family creation through surrogacy they articulate

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a very different perspective. The shows’ respective celebrity couples decide to enlist the services of a gestational surrogate (via domestic agencies) after the women experience health issues that makes them doubt their physical ability to carry a child. Early on, it is made very clear that in each case the surrogate will be undergoing a frozen embryo transfer, a procedure where she is implanted with an embryo that has been created earlier through IVF using eggs and sperm belonging to the celebrity couples. In addition to such medical exposition, much narrative effort is spent on emphasising that the offspring is genetically related to the celebrity couples. This does not mean that the shows completely avoid the fact that gestational surrogacy gives rise to particularly complicated questions about kinship. Both programmes spend a considerable amount of time exploring the women’s worries that they might not connect with the baby and Giuliana and Bill dedicates an entire episode, titled ‘Babies Hate Me!’ (S05E14) to Giuliana’s anxieties that she is not a ‘natural’ mother. Yet the programmes also make exceptionally clear that these fears are groundless. Probably as a response to the felt need to refute the assumption that surrogacy puts the status of the ‘genetic mother’ into question, Giuliana and Kim repeatedly declare their strong feelings of ownership and connection with both their future babies and their gestation, continually using possessive turns of phrase such as ‘my child’, ‘our ultrasound’ and ‘we are pregnant’. Asserting control over their surrogates’ pregnancies (and by extension, the physical environment of their unborn babies), both Giuliana and Kim repeatedly emphasise that they require their surrogates to keep to strict ‘clean’ diets and healthy living. The surrogates remain relatively invisible throughout these narrative arcs, which significantly downplay their role (and relationships to the babies they carry). Initially, both programmes keep the surrogates completely off-screen, referring to them rather stiffly as ‘the gestational carrier’ or ‘the third party’—a dehumanised and anonymous ‘vessel’ that is only figured as an absence. Keeping Up with the Kardashians never shows us the surrogate’s face (which Kim explains is a precaution for her own ‘safety’), but as the birth grows closer her name is mentioned and she is featured in one scene (with her face blurred) where she is given gifts from the Kardashian family in an ‘expression of their gratitude’. Giuliana and Bill’s surrogate Delphine is portrayed somewhat more prominently, particularly towards the end of her pregnancy. Interestingly, her very presence inadvertently threatens to destabilise the programme’s general assertion that Giuliana and Bill are the ‘only’ parents of this baby. There are a number of

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‘awkward’ moments in the show where the surrogate’s potential status as another ‘mother’ surfaces more explicitly. For example, in a scene where Giuliana and Bill attend her first ultrasound, Bill turns away from Giuliana towards Delphine (who is lying in stirrups off-screen) and beamingly calls her ‘Our new baby mama!’ Giuliana reacts instantly with nervous laughter and jokingly scolds her husband that surely she is the baby mama, a sentiment she later reasserts in a more serious tone during a confessional interview. This uncertainty about who the ‘baby mama’ really is also resurfaces in the episode ‘She’s Having a Baby’ (S05E18), in which Delphine finally gives birth (which begs us to wonder who the ‘she’ in the title is actually referring to). The narrative focus is strictly fixed on Giuliana and Bill’s experience of becoming parents, but there are multiple poignant moments where this otherwise neatly scripted account of an uncomplicated surrogacy transaction coming to its ‘happy’ completion is disrupted. For example, shortly after the baby’s birth Giuliana and Bill are intently looking for physical similarities between themselves and the baby, but neither can find any, exclaiming, ‘He doesn’t look like either of us! Who’s baby is this?!’ Furthermore, signs of Delphine’s emotional bond to the baby undermine the otherwise jubilant tone of the scene where the new family is about to leave the hospital. Giuliana dresses the baby surrounded by a large group of people who are all joking and laughing about how positive this experience has been. Amongst them is Delphine, who laughs along, but she is also simultaneously crying and we inadvertently become aware that from her perspective this is a less joyful moment. In the confessional interview that narrates the scene, Giuliana breezily explains that Delphine was feeling a bit ‘emotional’, but as viewers we can’t help feeling that her tears probably go deeper than ‘mere’ post-partum hormones. Such moments of post-genomic uncertainty do act as significant counterpoints to the otherwise quite overwhelming investment in genetic kinship saturating these surrogate narratives. Giuliana and Bill and Keeping Up with the Kardashians can be criticised for failing to consciously address most of the very serious ethical issues that current surrogacy practices give rise to (Ber 2000; Wilkinson 2003; van den Akker 2010; Amour 2012).21 Surrogacy is ultimately normalised and this is achieved by summoning a combination of essentialist ideas about genetic kinship and conservative investments in the nuclear family.22 As is the case with other forms of ART on factual television, surrogacy is presented as yet another new method for creating ‘exceptionally ordinary’ nuclear families

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consisting of a married couple and children who share their genetic substance (although in the cases of the Rancics and the Wests they are admittedly more exceptional than ordinary). Factual television has undoubtedly played a significant role in the wider normalisation of ART, but it is important to acknowledge that this naturalisation process tends to be at the expense of NRP’s more radical potential for redefining kinship being downplayed. While the 1990s sitcoms treated ART with suspicion, they did at least acknowledge that these medico-scientific developments could be used to create different kinds of families. Conversely, ‘other mothers’ (and other fathers too) have been almost completely omitted from reality TV, where the heterosexual couple has reigned supreme. With the factual programmes’ heteronormativity and focus on reproductive risks in mind, I will now return to the sitcom genre and continue considering its long-standing tendency to portray ART as a safe method for creating a range of non-normative families.

The Nuclear Family as Structuring Absence In the late 1990s and early 2000s, some sitcoms that portrayed ART started shifting focus from the ‘single mother by choice’ to a wider range of NRP. This did include some heterosexual couples, most famously so in Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004), which introduced a long-running narrative arc in its third season (which aired in 2000) following the fertility struggles of Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) spanning over two marriages. Detailing Charlotte’s intense longing for a child, the devastation she feels when finding out the problem resides in her, her feelings of envy as one of her friends fall pregnant ‘by mistake’ and the emotional strain that the IVF procedure has on her relationship with her first husband, Sex and the City treats the topic with some gravitas and helped establish a number of narrative tropes that many of the factual programmes have kept repeating since. In the early 2000s, Friends also tackled heterosexual infertility when portraying Monica and Chandler’s efforts to conceive throughout Seasons 9 and 10 (airing between 2000 and 2004). In line with the wider postfeminist gender politics of Friends, both spouses are diagnosed with issues that reflect how infertility often can be perceived by the individual as a failure to live up to expected (and distinctly different) gender roles. Chandler (who is continuously portrayed as lacking in masculine physicality) has low sperm mobility and Monica (who always tries ‘to be a good hostess’) has an ‘inhospitable environment’. In both these programmes, the

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‘solution’ to heterosexual infertility is ultimately adoption, but to counteract this potential disavowal of the importance of genetic kinship, both Sex and the City and Friends ultimately construct these adoptive families as forcefully (hetero)normative. In the first movie sequel Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008) Charlotte unexpectedly falls pregnant ‘naturally’ and the series finale of Friends ends with Monica and Chandler moving to the suburbs with their twins. As Thompson (2018) points out, while Friends initially avoided endorsing ‘marriage-and-kids’ as a life goal, by the finale ‘this is pushed aside in favour of settled, suburban, coupled domesticity’ (771).23 The nuclear family also figured as a kind of structuring absence in Friend’s other long-running ART-related plotline bridging Seasons 4 and 5 (airing between 1998 and 1999). While it focused on a less conventional example of family building—Phoebe Buffay (Lisa Kudrow) agreeing to act as an altruistic surrogate for her half-brother Frank Jr. and his new wife Alice—the persistent idealised norm of nuclear domesticity implicitly underpinned the show’s humorous portrayal of this unconventional arrangement. Here, ART is contextualised within the wider portrayal of Phoebe as an eccentric with a highly ‘unusual’ family; it is the unspoken norm that makes the Buffay family appear amusingly alternative by breaking with such conventions in a number of ways.24 Although Frank Jr. and Alice’s relationship is constructed as non-normative (she is considerably older than him and used to be his teacher), they are still a heterosexual couple that turn to Phoebe for help because they want biological children. This plotline also articulates some traditional essentialist ideas about genetic kinship. It is made clear that Frank and Alice are the ‘natural’ parents of the resulting triplets because of their genetic bonds to the children and Phoebe’s genetic ties to Frank Jr. are also called upon to naturalise her future relationship with the children; rather than having to completely give them up, she will ‘always be their favourite Aunt’. Yet, in spite of all this, it would be reductive to simply describe Friend’s portrayal of Phoebe’s surrogacy as conservative, heteronormative and essentialist. The viewers are likely to have already embraced Phoebe’s kooky persona and non-­normative family and this plotline ultimately feeds into the programme’s wider tendency to denaturalise biological kinship and celebrate social (friendship) bonds as stronger and more important than blood ties. Friends’s recurring ART plotlines illustrate how the sitcom genre since the late 1990s has grown increasingly willing to at least explore ART’s progressive potential to engender more fluid post-genomic definitions of kinship and create a wider range

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of family structures. But it is also an example of the contradictory nature of many sitcoms’ treatment of non-normative ART families, which are often riddled with stereotypes and characterised by a willingness to make jokes at everyone’s expense. The genre’s contribution to the genetic imaginary is therefore particularly multifaceted and often quite hard to pin down.

Gay Parenthood in Twenty-First-Century Sitcoms Since the early 2000s, a number of US sitcoms have specifically highlighted that ART can enable gay parenthood. One of the first examples of this was the Season 4 finale of Will and Grace (NBC, 1998–2006), which aired in 2002.25 In this episode the homosexual bachelor Will and his heterosexual flatmate Grace decide to have a baby together through insemination. As suggested by the episode title ‘A.I.  Artificial Insemination’ (S04E25), this form of non-normative family building was still approached with some hesitation at this point.26 Will and Grace’s plan to conceive never actually succeeds. Their initial attempt at insemination is thwarted when Will accidentally loses his sperm sample, leading to a series of droll mix-ups. Because Grace is still ovulating, they then consider to actually have sex, but they don’t get far before realising that ‘sex would ruin their friendship’. The next day they have a final attempt at insemination, but en-route to the fertility clinic Grace runs into a lamppost in Central Park and passes out. When she wakes up, she is helped up by a dashing man with a white horse, a sequence that recalls an earlier admission that Grace’s decision to conceive with Will is her ‘Plan B’, in an effort to stop waiting for ‘Mr Right’. Her experience in the park suggests to Grace’s that her ‘Plan A’ might still be possible and the episode ends with a reassertion that a traditional nuclear family still is more attractive (at least to Grace).27 A few years later, several US sitcoms seemed to more fully embrace gay parenthood, such as the prolific Modern Family (ABC, 2009–present), and the somewhat less successful The New Normal (NBC, 2012–2013) and One Big Happy (NBC, 2015). Modern Family portrays an extended family that includes a gay couple with an adopted daughter, but The New Normal and One Big Happy share a focus on gay characters that attempt to start a family with the help of ART. The New Normal follows Bryan and David, who become dads by fertilising a donor egg with David’s sperm and contracting the single mother Goldie as a surrogate. As the series progresses, Bryan and David’s expanding family extends to not only their future child but also incorporates Goldie, who moves into their garden

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house with her daughter Shania, as well as Goldie’s grandmother Jane, Bryan’s colleague Rocky, and her adopted daughter Nikki.28 In turn, the basic premise of One Big Happy reverses the premise of the Will and Grace episode. Lizzy, a lesbian, is inseminated using her heterosexual flatmate Luke’s sperm. On the day they find out that Lizzy is indeed pregnant, Luke meets the love of his life, an English illegal immigrant called Prudence who is also incorporated into the family. Modern Family has been criticised for its stereotypical portrayal of its gay characters and general inability to live up to its title (Pugh 2018, 161–189) and something similar can be said about The New Normal and One Big Happy too. Both programmes often end up addressing non-normative family building in ways that seriously undermine their progressive potential. For example, the creators of The New Normal and One Big Happy have clearly felt a strong need to validate their non-normative families and this is most forcefully attempted by conventionally turning to the deeply conservative institution of marriage for narrative closure. In One Big Happy’s final episode ‘Wedlocked’ (S01E06), Luke and Prudence find out that their earlier impulsive marriage in Las Vegas never was legally binding; so Lizzy decides to organise a ‘proper wedding’ to ensure Prudence is not deported. When Luke is held up and fails to make it to the wedding in time, Lizzy actually ends up marrying Prudence ‘for him’, thus assuring Prudence’s continued presence in their family, while also suitably formalising her relationship to Lizzy and the unborn baby. In turn, Bryan and David finally get married in ‘The Big Day’ (S01E22), after the birth of their child interrupts their lavish wedding ceremony in the penultimate episode. They organise an intimate ceremony on a beach, attended only by their closest ‘family’ (i.e. Goldie, Shania, Rocky and Nikki), not ‘relatives’ and ‘friends’. It is officiated by Bryan’s catholic priest (making ‘an exception’ from his church’s view on gay marriage) and after the vows have been exchanged he exclaims, ‘By the power vested in me as a child of God, I now pronounce you … A FAMILY.’ The use of weddings in these shows to normalise their families comes across as so desperate and excessively ­on-­the-­nose that it poses a definite risk to the progressive redefinition of kinship they clearly wish to promote. Similarly, Andre Cavalcante (2014, 2) has criticised The New Normal for its attempts to normalise gay parenthood through ‘anxious displacement’, namely, ‘the overloading of negatively codified social differences and symbolic excess onto figures and relationships that surround LGBT […] characters’. Bryan and David are portrayed as rational and responsible

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parents by reflecting social difference, anxiety and excess away from the LGBT characters and onto their (heterosexual) friends and family members. As relatively poor Midwesterners, Goldie, Shania and Jane are, for example, identified as lacking not just the affluence but the ‘sophistication, culture and cosmopolitanism that define Bryan and David’s lifestyle’ (8). Furthermore, in comparison with the ‘loud, outspoken and abrasive’ Rocky, a black female character who displays numerous racial stereotypes, ‘Bryan and David are constructed as worthy parents and humanized via whiteness’ (9–10). Although it is not discussed by Cavalcante, I would argue that this process of anxious displacement is played out most explicitly in a scene from the very first episode of The New Normal. In this scene, Bryan and David compare themselves to other families at a playground, including an older woman who has conceived triplets on her own with the help of IVF, a deaf heterosexual couple with hearing children, and a female dwarf with a regular sized husband and daughter. Littered with stereotypes, the scene serves to identify all these families as ‘abnormal’, which allows Bryan and David to conclude, ‘Abnormal is the new normal.’ A charitable reading of this scene could see it as trying to ‘reveal’ that there is no such thing as a ‘normal’ family and that gay parenthood therefore is just as conventional (or unconventional) as any other family structure. However, it is hard to shake the feeling that the playground scene ultimately normalises gay parenthood by instead displacing ideas about ‘abnormality’ onto ‘single mothers by choice’ and families with disabilities.

Extended Families, Extended Kinship That said, The New Normal and One Big Happy are not really trying to normalise gay parenthood alone but rather extend the idea of the family in ways that make it a more inclusive category and which downplay the importance of genetic kinship. Ultimately, they do not portray ART as a means to construct same-sex versions of a conventional nuclear family (i.e. one with two same-sex parents and their children) but as one of several methods for creating extended family structures that bind together individuals from different generations, different races, different social backgrounds and, crucially, that do not necessarily need to share genetic substance. The specific ways in which both programmes enact the longestablished cultural construction of family photographs as an archival ­ inscription of familial and affiliative memory (Kuhn 2007; Hirsch 2008, 115–117) point to their attempts to promote a post-genomic idea of an

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extended family. In The New Normal, diegetic family photographs and home videos function as ritualistic symbols for kinship that not only assert David and Bryan’s roles as parents but also serve as proof of the other characters’ status as family members. Furthermore, the visual style of both The New Normal and One Big Happy repeatedly draws on aesthetic conventions of family photographs to convey the idea of extended family structures to the viewers. Characters are often identified as ‘family’ through a highly conscious use of blocking, where they are spatially grouped in close proximity, often touching each other or sharing half-hugs, and organised in constellations that distinctly resemble the traditional staging in formal family photographs. This tendency is particularly prominent in scenes constructed as ‘pregnancy milestones’ (receiving a ‘positive’ on a pregnancy test, attending the first ultrasound and the moments after the child is finally born), where we might expect just the parents to be present. Hence, rather than just depicting the characters as ritualistically taking family photographs, the cinematography and blocking modify the conventions of the family photo in ways that convey the idea of an affective bond that extends beyond just the characters sharing genetic substance. US television has a long and rich history of depicting socially constructed kinship bonds as important for the happiness and identity of the individual. These recent programmes are by no means alone in celebrating ‘chosen families’ (Weston 1997) where mutual affective life, cohabitation and shared resources serve as significant and enduring bases of kinship (Simpson 1994; Modell 1994; Weston 1997). But they portray ART as a key tool in the construction of more complex family structures that incorporate both ‘chosen kin’ and multiple forms of biological bonds. Although these shows are clearly flawed, they do play a significant role in the wider articulation of a post-genomic structure of feeling on television because they do this in far more overt ways than, for example, the genealogy shows I discussed in the previous chapter. In these sitcoms essentialist ideas still linger, but the post-genomic framework has been allowed to bloom more fully. These shows are actively and forcefully trying to ­reconstruct our understanding of genealogy and reproduction, which becomes apparent not least from their knowing modification of the family tree iconography that has been so crucial for the family history programmes’ construction of kinship as rooted in genetic substance. When Lizzy convinces Prudence to become part of her and Luke’s new family she asserts that, ‘A family tree can have a lot of branches. […] Prudence, come be a branch and make the father of my unborn branch the happiest branch alive!’

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Similarly, the title sequence of The New Normal also uses family tree imagery (animated shoes that represent the different characters on the show are visually linked together in a family tree structure) in a way that implicitly redefines the substance of the branches. Love and commitment links these individuals together across time and space in the same way as biogenetic matter. One Big Happy and The New Normal openly embrace the idea that ART encourages us to identify multiple kinds of fathers, mothers and other kin who can share different types of biological substances, emotional bonds and legal rights with a child. To conclude, the sitcom genre has gone from initially expressing some unease about ART and single motherhood to more fully embracing ART as a facilitator of gay parenthood and extended non-normative family structures, but television’s cultural forum on ART during the last 30 years is not a simple case of linear ‘progress’. Factual television of the twenty-­first century has largely refused to acknowledge that NRP has a potential to redefine the concepts of kinship and family, instead attempting to normalise ART by portraying it as a solution to heterosexual infertility and as a means for creating ‘exceptionally ordinary’ nuclear families. Furthermore, recent sitcoms focused on gay parenthood have also enlisted traditional and stereotypical tropes in order to figure the extended family as ‘the new normal’. But despite their conservative tendencies, both factual television and the sitcom genre have articulated post-genomic ideas when portraying ART.  Whereas factual television typically contributes to the genetic imaginary by highlighting that advances in genetic science have made us more aware of the complexity and uncertainties of human reproduction, the sitcom genre has repeatedly downplayed the importance of genetic kinship for the benefit of complexly interlinked ‘chosen families’.

Notes 1. Sperm is placed into the vagina or uterus using an instrument. This procedure could be conducted at home without the aid of medical professionals, but in the cases where it is performed in a fertility clinic it usually goes by the name IUI (intrauterine insemination) and the sperm could either be defrosted donor sperm or a sperm sample provided by the man in a couple who are trying to conceive. The sperm is then ‘washed’, in order to remove dead and slow-moving sperm, before being deposited into the womb.

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2. In the case of IVF the fertalisation of male and female gametes take place in a petri dish (located in a lab), and any resulting embryos are subsequently implanted (directly) into the uterus. The egg could have been harvested from the same woman that then carries the child, or it could have been donated by another woman. 3. When it comes to surrogacy, a woman typically agrees to be a gestational carrier for an embryo that has no genetic link to her and the resulting child will legally belong to other parents. However, a surrogate could also agree to be an egg donor, which means that she would share some genetic matter with the child, but still give up any parental rights. 4. Moore (1992, 45) borrows his definition of ‘the family series’ from Glennon and Butsch (1982), identifying it as ‘prime time, network shows in which the main characters in each of the episodes are members of a family and in which the major proportion of interactions is among family members, usually in a home setting’ (Moore 1992, 246). Moore only included shows that aired during prime time and that aired for more than one season (45–46). 5. Moore’s (1992, 46–47) definition of the ‘conventional family’ includes married heterosexual couples either living alone or with their biological children, or with one or more members of their extended family, while the term ‘non-conventional family’ is used for single parents with children, married couples with adopted children or adults living with children for which they have assumed guardianship. 6. One could also add surrogates and women who are part of a wider range of so-called rainbow families—that is, where one or more of the parents are homosexual, bisexual, transgendered or queer (Eggert and Engeli 2015). 7. In Baby Boom the highly career driven management consultant J.C. Wiatt (Diane Keaton) ‘inherits’ a six-month-old baby from a diseased cousin and is eventually forced to give up her job and move to a house in rural Vermont. After a series of mishaps, she eventually becomes a successful jam-making entrepreneur, starts a relationship with the local veterinarian and learns that she loves being a mother. 8. Designer-baby jokes are even more prominent in later sitcoms that deal with ART. For example, Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) in Glee refuses to use a sperm bank because she can’t find any ‘viable samples’ and instead tries to convince her male colleague and some of her male students to donate instead, but she is only interested in those she feels have desirable genetic traits, such as ‘good hair’. Similarly, The New Normal (NBC, 2012–2013) makes humorous points about how its central gay couple successfully ‘create the perfect baby’ by finding an egg donor that is both intelligent and ‘looks like Gwyneth Paltrow’ (Paltrow appears in a cameo as the egg donor). Their carefully planned route to parenthood is juxtaposed with the

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‘natural’ reproduction practices of their surrogate’s family, which has a history of unplanned teenage pregnancies and unhappy marriages. Although the surrogate’s grandmother is initially outraged by the decision to become a surrogate to a gay couple, she changes her mind fairly quickly and is also keen to educate her great-granddaughter about safe sex. She concludes that ‘three generations of babies raising babies’ is enough and by comparison NRP appear far more ‘healthy’ and ‘responsible’. 9. This is also more apparent in the later sitcoms. For example, in spite her efforts to create a perfect baby, Sue Sylvester ends up with a daughter with Down’s Syndrome and the show is forceful in its assertion that this is something positive. In most sitcoms, attempts to create any type of ‘designer baby’ are ultimately deemed futile and unethical. 10. Some UK documentaries dealing with these topics include Meeting Point: Test-Tube Babies (BBC, 1962), Matters of Life and Death (BBC, 1969), Horizon: A Much Wanted Child (BBC, 1970), Horizon: A Child of Our Own (BBC, 1976), To Mrs Brown … a Daughter (ITV, 1978), Your Life in their Hands (BBC, 1980), Panorama: Experimenting with Life (BBC, 1981), The Gift of Life with Nicholas Woolley (BBC 1986), Making Babies (BBC, 1996) and The Baby Business (BBC, 1998). 11. An American Family and The Family are widely understood as significant forerunners to the reality TV phenomenon of the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first (Ruoff 2002, xi–xii; Rupert and Puckett 2010, 83; Holmes 2010, 99). In her study of how American reality television is reframing ideas of the family, Leigh E. Edwards (2010, 123) points out that ‘family values’ have been negotiated in a diverse set of reality formats about ‘wife swapping, spouse shopping, and date hopping’, as well as ‘home and family improvement’. 12. Although it is typically ‘ordinary’ families that have some claim towards the exceptional that have been particularly popular with audiences. 13. In ‘Cinderella Story’ (S03E06) Khloé takes a DNA test to see if Kris is her real mother and in ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’ (S07E01) Kris tries to convince Khloé to take a paternity test. In ‘Fear of the Unknown’ (S11E09) Kris, Kim, Khloé and Kourtney all take a DNA test to see if they are at risk for genetically inherited cancer and in ‘Let’s Play Ball’ (S15E10) they all receive biogeographical ancestry analysis from the company ‘23 and me’. 14. Discovery Health was discontinued in 2010, at which point several of its programmes were moved to either OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) or Discovery Fit and Health 15. For example, Maternity Ward (TLC, 2000–2004) regularly featured babies in need of special care after birth; Babies, Special Delivery (Discovery Health, 2002–2006) centred on particularly traumatic deliveries; Deliver Me (Discovery Health, 2008–2011) was set at an ob-gyn practice specialis-

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ing in high-risk deliveries; I’m Pregnant and… (Discovery Health, 2009– present) followed women who experienced serious emotional, physical or mental issues during their pregnancies; 16 and Pregnant (MTV, 2009– present), Teen Mom (MTV, 2009–present), Teen Mom 2 (MTV, 2011– present), Teen Mom 3 (MTV, 2013), Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant (MTV, 2018–present), and High School Moms (TLC, 2012–present) are all focused on teenage mothers; I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant (Discovery Fit and Health/TLC, 2009–2011) worried at the dangers of women going into labour before even realising they were pregnant and Born in the Wild (Lifetime, 2015) highlights the dangers of deciding to give birth outside the hospital. 16. The long-running cultural anxiety about overfertility still haunts shows such as 16 and Pregnant, I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant and 19 Kids and Counting (TLC, 2008–2015). 17. According to the NHS website (2018), one in seven couples in the UK may have difficulty conceiving and approximately 85% of couples will conceive naturally within a year if they have regular unprotected sex. 18. For a detailed analysis of cultural discourses on male infertility see Liberty Walther Barnes’s book Conceiving Masculinity: Male Infertility, Medicine and Identity (2014). 19. In the CSI episode ‘Harvest’ (S05E03), which first aired in 2004, the criminalists investigate a case where a young girl, conceived as a saviour sibling, has been killed by her older brother in order to ‘save’ her from the many painful and life-restricting medical procedures she is forced to go through on his account. The Heroes episode ‘The Hard Part’ (S01E21), which premiered in 2007, reveals that the blood of Mohinder Suresh (Sendhil Ramamurthy) contains antibodies to the Shanti virus and that his conception was an attempt by his geneticist father to cure his older sister of the disease. 20. Jesse Olszynko-Gryn’s (2017) study of pregnancy tests in British cinema and television sets out how product placement grew to become an important marketing strategy for the home pregnancy test industry during the 1980s and 1990s, and that Clearblue has been particularly successful at this approach. 21. Some of these inadvertently surface, but they are typically supressed rather than explored. For example, the scenes where the celebrity couples shower their surrogates with expensive gifts clearly expose the class and financial divides between them, but these scenes are obviously intended to express the celebrities’ deep feelings of gratitude to the ‘favour’ the surrogates have bestowed on them. 22. I would, however, like to acknowledge that Keeping up with the Kardashians generally stages a far more interestingly complex examination of the con-

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cept of the family than Giuliana and Bill. Both shows are invested in the importance of ‘family’ Whereas Giuliana and Bill strictly defines the family as encompassing a married heterosexual couple and their biological child, as well as grandparents and aunts/uncles, Keeping up with the Kardashians presents a much more fluid network of familial bonds. The Kardashians is a sprawling group of people that not only encompasses the matriarch Kris Jenner, her children (from two different marriages) and their respective children, but numerous stepsiblings, friends, boyfriends, spouses and even exes. Who ‘counts’ as family on Keeping up with the Kardashians generally has more to do with social bonds than genetics. 23. There are also other examples of sitcoms featuring heterosexual infertility. For example, the UK shows Cold Feet (ITV, 1998–2003) and Shameless (Channel 4, 2004–2013) have used heterosexual infertility struggles as a basis for comedy, and more recently, when OB/GYN Dr. Mindy Lahiri opens a fertility clinic in the third season of The Mindy Project (Fox/Hulu, 2012–present) some of her clients are heterosexual couples. 24. At this point Phoebe and Frank Jr. have only recently got to know each other. Phoebe and her diametrically different identical twin Ursula spent their early years with their parents Frank and Lily, but Frank soon abandoned the family and Lily committed suicide when the twins were 13. Phoebe later finds that her biological mother was Lily’s best friend Phoebe, with whom Frank had had an affair. She also learns that Frank later had another child, Frank Jr., with another woman. 25. However, at this point ART had already featured on Will and Grace as a means for homosexual characters to procreate. In Season 3, Will’s best friend Jack (who is also gay) finds out he has a biological son named Elliot, conceived from a donation that Jack made to a sperm bank as a teenager. 26. It seems to characterise artificial insemination as a technology not far removed from the ‘science fiction’ of artificial intelligence. 27. However, the episode also presents Will and Grace’s friendship as more important than any biological kinship bond and the conclusion that it is more important to preserve their friendship than having sex in order to conceive must be acknowledged as undermining traditional ‘family values’ in its own way. 28. Sitcoms that portray surrogacy, like Friends and The New Normal, tend to completely avoid the ethical issues that both commercial and altruistic surrogacy poses by incorporating the surrogate into the family in one way or another. Unlike in the factual programmes’ treatment of surrogacy, the sitcoms naturalise surrogacy by underlining that the surrogate will—and perhaps should—develop an emotional bond to the baby they are carrying. While this avoidance is clearly highly problematic, the portrayal of the surrogate as part of the family has at least the benefit of suggesting a more fluid post-genomic understanding of kinship.

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Jarvis, Christine, and Viv Burr. 2005. “Friends Are the Family We Choose for Ourselves”: Young People and Families in the TV Series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Young 13: 269–283. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308805054213. Karaian, Lara. 2016. Relative Lust: Accidental Incest’s Affective and Legal Resonances. Law, Culture and the Humanities: 1–20. Kavka, Misha. 2008. Reality Television: Affect and Intimacy. In Reality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Keeler, Amanda R. 2010. Branding the Family Drama: Genre Formations and Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls. In Screwball Television: Critical Perspectives on Gilmore Girls, ed. David Scott Diffrient and David Lavery, 19–35. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press. Kehoe, Lucy. 2018. The Male Fertility Crisis: Six Things that Are Harming Your Sperm Count. The Telegraph, 9 January. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/ fatherhood/male–fertility–crisis–six–things–harming–sperm–count/. Accessed 25 October 2018. Konrad, Monica. 2003. From Secrets of Life to the Life of Secrets: Tracing Genetic Knowledge as Genealogical Ethics in Biomedical Britain. Royal Anthropological Institute 9: 339–358. Kuhn, Annette. 2007. Photography and Cultural Memory: A Methodological Exploration. Visual Studies 22 (3): 283–292. Leavitt, Sarah A. 2006. “A Private Little Revolution”: The Home Pregnancy Test in American Culture. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80 (2): 317–345. Leibman, Nina C. 1995. Living Room Lectures: The Fifties Family in Film and Television. Austin: University of Texas Press. Linné, Olga, and Paul Hartmann. 1986. Family Differences on Television. European Journal of Communication 1 (4): 407–420. Littleboy, Helen. 2013. Rigged: Ethics, Authenticity and Documentary’s New Big Brother. Journal of Media Practice 14 (2): 129–146. Lull, James. 1990. Inside Family Viewing: Ethnographic Research on Television’s Audiences. London and New York: Routledge. Mahajan, Amar Jit, and Nirupama Luthra. 1993. Family and Television. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House. McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. 2006. Feminist Television Criticism: Notes and Queries. Critical Studies in Television 1 (1): 108–120. McKie, Robin. 2017. The Infertility Crisis Is Beyond Doubt: Now Scientists Must Find the Cause. The Observer, Sunday, 30 July. https://www.theguardian. com/science/2017/jul/29/infertility–crisis–sperm–counts–halved. Accessed 25 October 2018. Modell, Judith S. 1994. Kinship with Strangers: Adoption and Interpretations of Kinship in American Culture. Berkley: University of California Press. Moore, Marvin. 1992. The Family as Portrayed on Prime–Time Television, 1947–1990: Structure and Characteristics. Sex Roles 26 (1/2): 41–61.

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Morris, R., and K.  McInerney. 2010. Media Representations of Pregnancy and Childbirth: An Analysis of Reality Television Programs in the United States. Birth 37 (2): 134–140. Murray, M.D. 1990. A Real-Life Family in Prime Time. In Television and the American Family, ed. Jennings Bryant, 185–192. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Negra, Diane. 2009. What a Girl Wants? Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. Abingdon: Routledge. NHS Website. 2018. Overview: Infertility. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/ infertility/. Accessed 25 October 2018. Nixon, Sean. 2017. Life in the Kitchen: Television Advertising, the Housewife and Domestic Modernity in Britain, 1955–1969. Contemporary British History 31 (1): 69–90. Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse. 2017. Thin Blue Lines: Product Placement and the Drama of Pregnancy Testing in British Cinema and Television. British Journal for the History of Science 50 (3): 495–520. Osborne-Thompson, Heather. 2014. Seriality and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Celebrity Reality Television. Feminist Media Studies 14 (5): 877–889. Ouellette, L. 2014. It’s Not TV, It’s Birth Control: Reality Television and the “Problem” of Teenage Pregnancy. In Reality Gendervision: Sexuality and Gender on Transatlantic Reality Television, ed. B.R. Weber, 235–258. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Picoult, Jodi. 2004. My Sister’s Keeper. New York: Pocket Books. Pingree, S., and M.E.  Thompson. 1990. The Family in Daytime Serials. In Television and the American Family, ed. Jennings Bryant, 113–128. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Pramaggiore, M., and D.  Negra. 2014. Keeping up with the Aspirations: Commercial Family Values and the Kardashian Brand. In Reality Gendervision: Sexuality and Gender on Transatlantic Reality Television, ed. B.R.  Weber, 76–96. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Pugh, Tison. 2018. The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom. New Brunswick and Newark: Rutgers University Press. Ragoné, Helena. 1998. Incontestable Motivations. In Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation, ed. Sarah Franklin and Helena Ragoné, 118–131. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Reep, Diana C., and Faye H.  Dambrot. 1994. TV Parents: Fathers (and Now Mothers) Know Best. The Journal of Popular Culture 28 (2): 13–23. Rees, Emily. Forthcoming. Television, Gas and Electricity: Consuming Comfort and Leisure in the British Home 1946–65. Journal of Popular Television. Renvoize, Jean. 1985. Going Solo: Single Mothers by Choice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

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———. 2012. Television in the Family Circle. In Major Problems in American Popular Culture: Documents and Essays, ed. Kathleen Franz and Susan Smulyan, 359–370. Boston: Wandsworth. Spriggs, M., and J.  Savulescu. 2002. Saviour Siblings. Journal of Medical Ethics 28: 289. Stacey, Jackie. 2010. Cinematic Life of the Gene. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Stephens, R. 2014. Supersizing the Family: Nation, Gender and Recession on Reality TV.  In Reality Gendervision: Sexuality and Gender on Transatlantic Reality Television, ed. Brendan Weber, 170–191. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Taylor, Ella. 1989. Prime–Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkeley: University of California Press. Taylor, Bridget. 2005. Whose Baby Is It? The Impact of Reproductive Technologies on Kinship. Human Fertility 8 (3): 189–195. Taylor-Sands, Michelle. 2013. Saviour Siblings: A Relational Approach to the Welfare of the Child in Selective Reproduction. London and New  York: Routledge. Thompson, Charis. 2001. Strategic Naturalizing: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic. In Relative Values, Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, ed. Sarah Franklin and Susan McKinnon. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Thompson, Lauren Jade. 2018. “It’s Like a Guy Never Lived Here!” Reading the Gendered Domestic Spaces of Friends. Television and New Media 19 (8): 758–774. Turow, J. 2013. Playing Doctor: Television, Storytelling, and Medical Power. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press. van den Akker, Olga. 2010. Surrogate Motherhood: A Critical Perspective. Expert Review of Obstetrics and Gynecology 5 (1): 5–7. van Dijck, José. 1995. Manufacturing Babies and Public Consent: Debating the New Reproductive Technologies. New York: New York University Press. Villarejo, Amy. 2014. Ethereal Queer: Television, Historicity, Desire. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Walsh, Bryan. 2017. Male Infertility Crisis in the U.S.  Has Experts Baffled. Newsweek Magazine, 9 December. https://www.newsweek.com/2017/09/ 22/male–infertility–crisis–experts–663074.html. Accessed 25 October 2018. Weston, Kath. 1997. Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press. Wheatley, Helen. 2016. Television in the Ideal Home. In Television for Women: New Directions, ed. Rachel Moseley, Helen Wheatley, and Helen Wood. London and New York: Routledge. Wilkinson, Stephen. 2003. Bodies for Sale: Ethics and Exploitation in the Human Body Trade. London: Routledge.

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Television Programmes 16 and Pregnant (MTV, 2009–present). 19 Kids and Counting (TLC, 2008–2015). A Baby Story (TLC, 1998–present). A Child Against all Odds (BBC, 2006). A Conception Story (TLC Online, 2010–present). An American Family (PBS, 1973). Babies, Special Delivery (Discovery Health, 2002–2006). The Baby Business (BBC, 1998). The Baby Makers (BBC, 2012). Baby Makers, The Fertility Clinic (BBC, 2013). Birth Day (Discovery Health, 2000–2010). Born in the Wild (Lifetime, 2015). CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). Cold Feet (ITV, 1998–2003). Deliver Me (Discovery Health, 2008–2011). Duck Dynasty (A&E, 2012–present). The Family (BBC, 1974). Friends (NBC, 1994–2004). The Gift of Life with Nicholas Woolley (BBC, 1986). Giuliana and Bill (Style Network/E!, 2009–2014). Glee (Fox, 2009–2015). The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992). Having a Baby to Save My Child (BBC, 2010). Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010). High School Moms (TLC, 2012–present). Hogan Knows Best (VH1, 2005–2007). Horizon (BBC, 1964–present). Horizon: A Child of Our Own (BBC, 1976). Horizon: A Much Wanted Child (BBC, 1970). I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant (Discovery Fit and Health/TLC, 2009–2011). I’m Pregnant and… (Discovery Health, 2009–present). Ice Loves Coco (E!, 2011–2013). Jersey Shore (MTV, 2009–2012). Jon and Kate Plus Eight (Discovery Health/TLC, 2007–present). Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–present). Khloé and Lamar (E!, 2011–2012). Kourtney and Kim Take Miami (E!, 2009–2013). The Little Couple (TLC, 2009–present). Make Me a Baby (BBC, 2007). Making Babies (BBC, 1996).

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Maternity Ward (TLC, 2000–2004). Matters of Life and Death (BBC, 1969). Meeting Point (BBC, 1956–1968). Meeting Point: Test-Tube Babies (BBC, 1962). The Midwives (BBC, 2012–2013). The Mindy Project (Fox/Hulu, 2012–present). Modern Family (ABC, 2009–present). The New Normal (NBC, 2012–2013). Oh Baby (Lifetime, 1998–2000). One Big Happy (NBC, 2015). One Born Every Minute (Channel 4, 2010–present). The Osbournes (MTV, 2001–2005). Panorama (BBC, 1953–present). Panorama: Experimenting with Life (BBC, 1981). The Real World (MTV, 1992–present). Rescue 911 (CSN, 1989–1996). Run’s House (MTV, 2005–2009). Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004). Shameless (Channel 4, 2004–2013). Sister Wives (TLC, 2010–present). Sisters (Network Ten, 2017–present). Teen Mom (MTV, 2009–present). Teen Mom 2 (MTV, 2011–present). Teen Mom 3 (MTV, 2013). Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant (MTV, 2018–present). Tia and Tamara (Style Network/E!, 2011–2013). To Mrs Brown … a Daughter (ITV, 1978). Tonight: Too Old to Be a Mum? (ITV, 2010). Top Chef (Bravo, 2006–present). Trauma, Life in the E.R. (TLC, 1997–2002). Will and Grace (NBC, 1998–2006). Your Life in their Hands (BBC, 1980).

Films Baby Boom (Charles Shyer, 1987). My Sister’s Keeper (Nick Cassavetes, 2009). Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008).

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PART III

Epilogue

CHAPTER 6

Televisual Clones

On occasions when I have told people about this book, many have assumed that the science fiction thriller Orphan Black (Space/CTV, 2013–2017) must be one of the key programmes I discuss. My usual answer—that as a Canadian cloning narrative it technically fell outside the parameters I had set for the project—always felt a bit weak. Orphan Black has aired on both US and UK television and it embraces a post-genomic framework on life itself more fully than most of the programmes I have considered in this book so far. In fact, several scholars have already noted its cutting-edge contribution to the genetic imaginary. For example, Everett Hamner (2017) has called Orphan Black ‘one of the most thorough explications of the epigenetic tension between genes and environment ever to appear on screen or page’ and Rebecca Wilbanks (2018, 396) has similarly pointed out that its portrayal of genetic causation is ‘consistent with the growing post-genomic recognition that the relationship between genotype and phenotype is rarely a straight line, and that environment can impinge on genes in ways that challenge the linear causation of molecular biology’s central dogma’. In this concluding discussion I will consider Orphan Black’s more radically post-genomic take on the generic cloning narrative by briefly analysing its treatment of the two post-genomic issues that I have already traced across the wider US and UK television landscapes: (1) the complexity of molecular life and (2) the construction of kinship. As Hamner (2017, 2018) © The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4_6

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and Wilbanks (2018) have already implied, Orphan Black makes evident that post-genomic discourses have become more prominently articulated and widely accepted since the 1990s. However, this epilogue does not intend to cast Orphan Black as some kind of post-genomic end-point for the ongoing cultural negotiations of life itself. This discussion simply adds another piece of the puzzle to this book’s wider mapping of the cultural forum’s multiple, competing perspectives on DNA and, in the process, reiterates some of my overarching conclusions. In this book, I have attempted to shine a spotlight on television’s specific contribution to the wider genetic imaginary and I hope this concluding consideration of Orphan Black as a distinctly televisual text will further highlight how some of the medium’s formal and thematic characteristics have helped pave the way for the gradual articulation of a post-genomic structure of feeling. Orphan Black’s post-genomic credence is already signalled in the opening titles. The digitally animated titles are modelled on time-lapse photography of slime moulds, the computer-generated sequence in Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999) where the camera seemingly moves through the main character’s brain and the Rorschach test–esque music video for Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy (Robert Hales, 2006) (Albinson and Perkins 2015). The titles begin with split-screen mirror imagery of the cosmos that then morphs into strange florae, interior biological spaces, DNA strings and, eventually, the lead character’s face. Some of these visual elements clearly resemble the spectacular forms of microscopic CGI that I discussed in Chap. 2, but this sequence transforms generic images of double helix structures and dividing zygotes into a more overtly post-genomic rendition of the molecular world. For example, in one segment two DNA strings twistingly snake their way across the screen until they collide and shatter into microscopic fragments that disperse in every direction: a literal visualisation of the deconstruction of the genome as a fixed system into partible bits that can be endlessly recombined and modified. Ian Albinson and Will Perkins (2015) have described Orphan Black’s titles as revealing the biological make-up of the programme’s clones through its imagery of ‘manipulated genetic material [that] grows, divides, morphs and mutates’. But this sequence not only presents Orphan Black as a narrative about manipulation through genetic engineering but also genetic mutation. Its mirroring effects are symmetrical enough to remind us of the idea of the clone as a perfect copy, but they are also full of subtle irregularities suggestive of nature’s inherent tendency towards spontaneous transmutation. The clone has a relatively long history as a popular symbol for advances in genetic engineering, but it is a curious post-genomic figure in that it can

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both be used to assert and undermine essentialist views about genetic identity.1 In popular culture, clones have often been constructed as copies that come in multiples: endless, identical, mass-produced replicas of an original body (Haran et al. 2008, 35–36; Macintosh 2013, 82). The clone’s status as an identical copy is based on a determinist understanding of DNA as a blueprint that, once reproduced, will produce an indistinguishable duplicate. The labelling of bodies as ‘originals’ and ‘replicas’ also points to the enduring cultural investment in genetic exceptionality. Tellingly, the visual and conceptual fascination with the clone has a lot in common with the figure of the identical twin as another type of body that (at least in the popular imagination) lacks a unique set of DNA (Haran et al. 2008, 35–36). Jackie Stacey (2010, 95) has argued that the clone and the identical twin both ‘embod[y] an uncanny synthesis of sameness and difference, defying the conventional demarcations around the singularity of the human body’. Stacey suggests that cloning has been seen as a form of ‘biomimicry’ that not only casts the clone as a copy but also ultimately undermines the status of the original, thus identifying any human body as ‘always already a copy’ (96). Much like the idea of identical twins, the clone can destabilise the essentialist understanding of the gene as a unique foundation of individual identity. Stacey (2010, 270) has identified the clone as a ‘profoundly cinematic figure’ due to the inherent similarities between the genetic technology of cloning and the visual technology of film. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s theory of aura, she proposes an analogy between the replication of biological information in cloning and the reproduction of the filmstrip as an art object. Films about cloning articulate a cultural fear that by disconnecting sexuality from human reproduction the cloned body represents a loss of ‘bio-aura’ (181), which Stacey discusses as being similar to the sense of loss experienced when traditional forms of visual representation (such as painting) were joined by mechanical technologies of visual reproduction (such as cinema). The birth of cinema put the singular authenticity of the image into question, so it is, Stacey asserts, the logical medium to investigate ‘the fading sense of the body’s singularity, nonrepeatability, uniqueness, integrity, and authenticity’ produced by recent developments in genetics (182). Crucially, this analogy between cinema and cloning still identifies the clone as an identical copy that is only post-genomic insomuch that it can pass as the original and as a result makes it impossible to tell ‘which is which’. Stacey’s interest in how cloning narratives from the 1990s and early 2000s deal with ‘sameness’ is, crucially, tied to her overarching focus on the queer associations of scientific interference in human

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biology. As a radical form of assisted reproductive technology cloning has given rise to cultural fears about ‘unregulated excessive sameness’ resulting from these practices’ assumed devolution of sexual difference and sexual reproduction (29). Stacey convincingly argues that the emphasis on sameness in films about genetic engineering from the 1990s and early 2000s therefore has a queer potential for redefining kinship, and in this sense these texts can indeed be seen as harbouring a post-genomic structure of feeling. However, I want to point out that their generic construction of the clone as a copy also inadvertently reinforces the essentialist understanding of the genetic code as a blueprint with a determinist influence over the body and identity of all ‘copies’.

Complexity Notably, Orphan Black departs from ‘the trope of the “carbon copy clone”’ (Wilbanks 2018, 369) in several crucial ways. For example, while the generic question of who might be the ‘original’ initially functions as a catalyst, the series presents a novel answer in Season 3, which manages to avoid the labelling of the clones as ‘copies’ in the usual sense. Both the female and male clones in the show are, we are told, the result of cell lines taken from one person: a human ‘chimera’ called Kendall Malone (Alison Steadman) who absorbed her twin brother in the womb and therefore has two sets of DNA in her cells, which was separated by the genetic scientists that ran the two cloning projects. The ‘Project Castor’ clones were produced from the cell line of the male twin, while the ‘Project Leda’ clones are based on the female counterpart. The programme asserts that Kendall’s own doubled genetic set-up makes her distinct from both the Castor and the Leda clones (they do not look visibly ‘alike’), and the ‘original’ label is thus swiftly rejected in favour for the term ‘sister’ (which the clones also use to describe their own kinship status). Here Orphan Black follows in the footsteps of other television programmes that have similarly used human genetic chimerism as a narrative trope to question assumptions about the ‘uniqueness’ of DNA, including the CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015) episode ‘Bloodlines’ (S04E23) and the House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012) episode ‘Cane and Able’ (S03E02). Orphan Black does contain numerous scenes that at first glance seem to express the traditional fascination with the clones’ ability to pass as each other when needed. However, the spectacle of seeing one character ­‘disguise’ herself as one of her ‘sisters’ is absolutely dependent on the ­programme’s

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otherwise exceptionally strict distinction between the clones. The characters are emphatically differentiated though widely diverse body languages, dialects, hair, make-up and fashion choices, professions, sexualities and gender identities. As Rebekah Sheldon (2018) has argued, the show’s introduction of a gay trans clone in Season 2 provided yet another example of ‘the animacy and mutability of biology’ (386) that added to its general ‘proliferation of differences within putative sameness’ (389). Crucially, the main spectacle that Orphan Black offers its viewers is actually the ability of the lead actress Tatiana Maslany (with help of the special effects team) to produce over a dozen different believable characters, which Wilbanks (2018) describes as ‘a pleasurable demonstration of the endless permutations of personhood that can be drawn from the raw material of Maslany’s body’ (369). The rave reviews that Maslany has received for her versatility on the show (O’Neill 2014; Lepore 2015) suggests that the scenes when one clone has to adopt the personality of another clone are not so much dramatisations of genetic sameness but a fascinating display of one individual’s (Maslany’s) layered performance and physical malleability. While the diegetic assertion of the clones’ dissimilarity can be understood as illustrating the importance of nurture over nature, the experience of watching Orphan Black produces an even more radically post-genomic statement about the body’s profound malleability. This is also further supported by the programme’s general interest in spontaneous genetic mutations and the indeterminate elements of experiments in human engineering. The clones are different because they have grown up in different families, countries and cultural contexts, but their bodies also refuse to adhere to the commands ascribed into their genome in a more fundamental way. Sarah and Helena (both played by Tatiana Maslany) are fertile, although the Ledas were created barren; many of the clones have a genetic respiratory disease, but not all; and the Lin28a gene mutation that was placed in their genome to enable tissue regeneration did not express as intended, but this ability was instead unforeseeably passed down to Sarah’s daughter Kira (Skyler Wexler). In other words, these are bodies that keep changing and reacting in complex and unexpected ways, thus pointing to the inherent uncontrollable malleability of the molecular world, even in the age of biological control. That these drastically post-genomic clones have materialised on television is not a coincidence; they are, I would argue, profoundly televisual. The first part of this book, ‘Complexity’, has shown that the medium’s inherent and increasing drive towards visual and narrative complexity has engendered an emergent portrayal of post-genomic complexity across science documentaries, procedurals and science fiction shows. As a long-­form

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serial featuring plenty of spectacular visual effects, Orphan Black is clearly cast from the same mould, but its malleable clones can also be seen as transgenic offspring of the endless makeover narratives that invaded the US and UK television landscapes in the early 2000s (Heller 2006, 2007; Weber 2009; Lewis 2009; Bull 2015). Makeover TV (and in extension the malleable clones in Orphan Black) are expressions of the wider cultural ‘paradigm of plasticity’ that first emerged in the late twentieth century (Bordo 1991, 106–107, 117), rendering human freedom from bodily determinations a desirable prospect for posthumanist, feminists and capitalists alike. But the bodies in Orphan Black are, crucially, more radically plastic than the ones in makeover shows; their bodies have mutated and been manipulated on a molecular level (rather than remodelled on a molar level with knives, exercise and new clothes), which has engendered indeterminate transformations far beyond the normalised ideas of acceptable change that govern the generic makeover narratives. Orphan Black’s clones have more in common with other genetically modified bodies from science fiction shows such as The X-Files (1993–2002, 2016–present), Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002) and Helix (SyFy, 2014–2015). These futuristic bodies have not been created in the search of conventional beauty, conformity and (hyper)normalisation (Heller 2006, 1; Kavka 2006, 222; Steinhoff 2015, 10), but instead they are transgressive hybrid bodies (mixing human, animal and alien DNA) that never reach a static ‘after’ state and keep changing in complex and unexpected ways. On a more general level, the television medium’s inherent plasticity has rendered it a particularly suitable site for imagining such radically malleable bodies. Television shares a project of constant reinvention with genetic science in the era of biological control, as well as the postgenomic molecular world itself. In Chap. 2, I discussed how the logic of ‘televisuality’ encourages constant reinvention in the form of everchanging innovative aesthetics (Caldwell 1995) and Chap. 3 outlined the ways in which seriality, as television’s key narrative form, produces television texts in a constant state of development, continually undermining any sense of final resolution and embracing variation (Geraghty 1981; Feuer 1984; Mittell 2006; Bull 2015). Hence, both in terms of visual style and narrative structure, television favours novelty and perpetual innovation. In addition, the medium’s long-standing association with the concept of ‘liveness’ is another reason why constant change has become one of its core characteristics. When Jane Feuer (1983) discussed the concept of television ‘liveness’ she not only outlined how live

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television broadcasts became understood as conveying feelings of vitality, spontaneity and uncertainty due to their supposedly unscripted and unpredictable nature, but also how the very television apparatus has been characterised by continual movement and development at its technological core (Feuer 1983). Comparing (analogue) television to (non-digital) cinema, writers such as Herbert Zettl (1978) and Andrzej Gwóźdź (1999) have argued that because the moving images of television are created through constantly changing dots of lights powered by magnetic fields (rather than a strip of static photographic shots that creates an illusion of movement when projected by the help of flickering lights), they are more inherently plastic than cinema, and exist in a constant state of becoming. As television has been digitised and live broadcasts have become rare events, liveness has mainly lived on through aesthetic elements and reception practices that in different ways encourage feelings of simultaneity and actuality (Feuer 1983; White 2004; Couldry 2004; Levine 2008), but this longer history still lingers prominently in the discourses surrounding television, and if the ‘carbon copy clone’ is a ‘profoundly cinematic figure’ (Stacey 2010, 270) then the endlessly malleable genetically engineered body is, I would argue, a profoundly televisual figure.

Kinship Orphan Black is also a distinctly televisual text in terms of its intimate focus on kinship, genealogy and reproduction. In the second part of this book, ‘Kinship’, I argued that recent family history programmes, family reunion shows, and family-centric sitcoms and reality shows are examples of television’s perennial interest in familial bonds. At the beginning of Chap. 4, I also discussed the portrayal of paternity tests in talk shows and crime dramas, and Orphan Black is yet another indication of the expansive nature of the cultural forum on genetic kinship. In this part I proposed that television’s capacity for ‘affective intimacy’ (Kavka 2008) and close associations with the concept of the family (Spigel 1992; Taylor 1989) are preconditions that have facilitated these televisual debates about essentialist ideas about genetic kinship as well as post-genomic redefinitions of reproduction and genealogy. Interestingly, Orphan Black’s centrally staged discussions on issues surrounding kinship and reproduction in the age of biological control reiterates many of the contradictory ideas that I have already traced across the wider television landscape in the twentyfirst century.

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In line with its forceful portrayal of bodies (and the molecular world within them) as complex and malleable, the show also embraces post-­ genomic ideas about reproduction and family. Alongside cloning, other types of assisted reproductive technologies figure prominently in the programme’s narrative, including IVF, surrogacy, embryo screening and germline modification techniques. In comparison with the sitcoms and factual programmes I discussed in Chap. 5, Orphan Black spends far more time considering the genetic, medical and bioethical implications of such practices than on trying to capture the emotional experience of going through infertility treatments. As Jennifer Lieberman (2018) has argued, Orphan Black can be criticised for eschewing the struggles of would-be parents and reducing fertility science to eugenics, but this ‘omission allows the showrunners to focus on forms of kinship that exceed, and indeed, defy the nuclear family’ (p. 405). In the same vein as the more recent family-centric sitcoms I analysed in Chap. 5, Orphan Black links new reproductive practices such as cloning, IVF and surrogacy to queer sexualities and ‘families we choose’ (Weston 1997). And whereas the cinematic cloning narratives of the 1990s and early 2000s only hinted at queer possibilities (Stacey 2010), Orphan Black features multiple openly gay characters and their sexualities are treated in a markedly effortless manner. Rather than using the figure of the clone to dramatise cultural anxieties about the potential devolution of sexual difference and sexual reproduction, Orphan Black’s post-genomic take on the cloning narrative celebrates all types of boundary crossing and ‘treats all of its clones as figuratively queer. They are all cyborgs in Haraway’s sense: evolving hybrids in a world that would prefer to package and immobilise them’ (Hamner 2018, 413). Furthermore, while the clones are initially drawn together by their shared genetic substance, the show spends much time emphasising that in the end it is their emotional ties and shared experiences that bind the four women in the ‘clone club’ together as a family. Notably, the other clones they come across are not automatically incorporated in their family unit simply based on genetic kinship; their extended family instead consists of a diverse affective network that incorporate partners, spouses, biological children, adoptive children, non-biological siblings and parent-figures, colleagues and friends alike. Orphan Black also places much narrative emphasis on how new advances in genetic science have replaced the classic linear and vertical

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structure of Darwinian genealogy with the horizontal configuration of the ‘gene pool’ (Franklin 2000, 218). However, this preoccupation with the technicalities of ART, and the resulting genomes and genetic bonds, does not necessarily articulate a strictly post-genomic understanding of kinship and heritage. Taking a cue from the family history programmes and family reunion shows I discussed in Chap. 4, genetic genealogy research is continuously at the centre of Orphan Black’s narrative. Alongside the clones’ attempts to identify and locate their sisters, one subplot even more explicitly comments on the growing popularity of genetic genealogy searches by following what happens when Felix (Jordan Gavaris) finds a biological sister though ‘Gene Connexion’ (a company modelled on actual genealogy businesses such as 23andMe and Ancestry. com). Analysing the episode ‘Human Raw Material’ (S04E05) where Felix’s adoptive sister Sarah has a fraught encounter with his newly discovered half-sister Adele (Lauren Hammersley), Kirsten Dillender (2018) has argued that this plotline contributes to a nuanced portrayal of kinship where both genetically based bonds and ‘interpersonal relationships’ (406) have equal potential to be rewarding or toxic. She concludes that the programme ‘neither condemns nor applauds genetically foundational relationships, but instead displays them across their full spectrum from good to bad, from fulfilling to unsatisfying’ (410). Beyond the programme’s depiction of different types of familial relationships, it is deeply significant that one of its long-running plotlines constructs knowledge of one’s genetic heritage as an absolute necessity: not simply a prerequisite for personal identity but a requirement for staying alive. From Season 2 onwards, once the clone club has found out that many of the Ledas suffer from a lethal genetic disease, the search for their genetic source material and the identities of all the clones becomes a central narrative catalyst. In fact, in the very last episode ‘To Right the Wrongs of the Many’ (S05E10), narrative closure is not ultimately provided by the deaths of the scientists that have sought to control and study the clones, but rather by finally acquiring the full list of the Leda clones and the ability to cure them all. Inadvertently, this plotline interweaves a fundamental essentialist thread through the show’s post-genomic tapestry and it is further solidified though its general preoccupation with female infertility. Jill Lepore (2015) has described Orphan Black as a programme ‘obsessed with female reproductive organs’ and its emphasis on Sarah and Helena’s ability to bear children, as well as the exceptionality of Sarah’s ‘naturally’

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conceived daughter Kira, further clashes with its otherwise deliberate assertion that affective co-dependency is more important than shared genetic substance. Although being the most radically post-genomic programme I have considered in this book, Orphan Black ultimately contributes conflicting ideas about genetic kinship to television’s cultural forum and the genetic imaginary more widely. By adding Orphan Black to the diverse set of programmes discussed in this book, I hope to have further illustrated the multiplicity of television’s negotiation of ideas about the genome in the early twenty-first century while also making it even clearer why television has emerged as a key site for the articulation of the post-genomic structure of feeling in this period. Although essentialist perspectives have remained prominent on television, particularly across forensic crime procedurals, genealogy TV and family-­ centric reality shows, throughout this book I have tried to show how distinctive elements of television’s visual form, narrative structure, production, distribution and reception has made it a key site for gradually imagining a more complex and indeterminate (molecular) world. It is still unclear if the post-genomic understanding of DNA, as an experience still ‘in solution’ (Williams 1977, 133), will indeed proceed to replace the traditional determinist framework more fully in the future, but if this happens television will have undoubtedly played an important role in this discursive shift.

Note 1. The word ‘clone’ was initially coined at the beginning of the twentieth century to describe a group of biological organisms created asexually from a single ancestor and up until the late 1960s it was mainly applied to plants that all descended from a single individual (Silver 1997, 93; Macintosh 2013, 77). However, an etymological shift became apparent in the 1970s, when the term was increasingly used to discuss whether recent developments in molecular biology could allow ‘man’ to make ‘biological carbon copies of himself’ (Toffler 1971, 197). Alvin Toffler’s bestselling non-fiction book Future Shock (1970) was instrumental in popularising the idea of the human clone as a copy of an original set of genetic characteristics (Silver 1997, 97), but fictional accounts in novels, film and television were also crucial for establishing the clone as a key figurehead for the post-genomic age of biological control (Maio 2006; Macintosh 2013, 78–81).

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Bibliography Albinson, Ian, and Will Perkins. 2015. Orphan Black, 21 April. http://www. artofthetitle.com/title/orphan-black/. Accessed 15 November 2018. Bordo, Susan. 1991. “Material Girl”: The Effacements of Postmodern Culture. In The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, ed. Laurence Goldstein, 106–130. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bull, Sofia. 2015. Extreme Makeover CSI Edition: Tracing the Forensic Crime Drama’s Engagement with Identity Crimes, Plastic Bodies and Self-­ Transformation Narratives. Critical Studies in Television 10 (1): 38–53. Caldwell, John Thornton. 1995. Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Couldry, Nick. 2004. Liveness, ‘Reality’ and the Mediated Habitus from Television to the Mobile Phone. Communication Review 7: 353–361. Dillender, Kirsten. 2018. Not Your Average Ancestry: Genetic Testing and Family Identities in Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 406–410. Feuer, Jane. 1983. The Concept of Live Television: Ontology as Ideology. In Regarding Television: Critical Approaches – An Anthology, ed. E. Ann Kaplan, 12–22. Los Angeles: AFI, University Publications of America, Inc. ———. 1984. Melodrama, Serial Film and Television Today. Screen 25 (1): 4–16. Franklin, Sarah. 2000. Global Nature and the Genetic Imaginary. In Global Nature, Global Culture, ed. Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, and Jackie Stacey, 188– 227. London: Sage Publications. Geraghty, Christine. 1981. Continuous Serial – A Definition. In Coronation Street, ed. Richard Dyer, 9–26. London: BFI Publishing. Gwóźdź, Andrzej. 1999. On Some Aspects of Television Temporality. Kinema: A Journal for Film and Audiovisual Media (Fall). http://www.arts.uwaterloo. ca/FINE/juhde/gwoz992.htm. Accessed 19 August 2006. Hamner, Everett. 2017. Epigenetic Television: The Penetrating Love of “Orphan Black”. Los Angeles Review of Books, 9 June. https://lareviewofbooks.org/ article/epigenetic-television-the-penetrating-love-of-orphan-black/#!. Accessed 20 November 2018. ———. 2018. Sterility, Abominations and the Optical Illusions of Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 411–415. Haran, Joan, Jenny Kitzinger, Maureen McNeil, and Kate O’Riordan. 2008. Human Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice. London and New York: Routledge. Heller, Dana. 2006. Before: “Things Just Keep Getting Better…”. In The Great American Makeover: Television, History, Nation, ed. Dana Heller, 1–10. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2007. Introduction: Reading the Makeover. In Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled, ed. Dana Heller, 1–5. London and New York: I.B. Tauris.

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Kavka, Misha. 2006. Changing Properties: The Makeover Show Crosses the Atlantic. In The Great American Makeover: Television, History, Nation, ed. Dana Heller, 211–230. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2008. Reality Television, Affect and Intimacy: Reality Matters. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Lepore, Jill. 2015. The History Lurking Behind “Orphan Black”. The New Yorker, 16 April. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-history-lurking-behind-orphan-black?src=longreads. Accessed 20 November 2018. Levine, Elana. 2008. Distinguishing Television: The Changing Meanings of Television Liveness. Media, Culture & Society 30 (3): 393–409. Lewis, Tania. 2009. Introduction: Revealing the Makeover Show. In TV Transformations: Revealing the Makeover Show, ed. Tania Lewis, 1–6. Oxon: Routledge. Lieberman, Jennifer L. 2018. Infertility and Parenthood in Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 401–405. Macintosh, Kerry Lynn. 2013. Human Cloning: Four Fallacies and Their Legal Consequences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maio, Giovanni. 2006. Cloning in the Media and Popular Culture. EMBO Reports 7 (3): 214–245. Mittell, Jason. 2006. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. The Velvet Light Trap 58: 29–40. O’Neill, Phelim. 2014. Orphan Black Review: Tatiana Maslany Is Dazzlingly Impressive to Watch. The Guardian, 17 April. https://www.theguardian.com/ tv-and-radio/2014/apr/17/orphan-black-review-tatiana-maslany. Accessed 21 November 2018. Sheldon, Rebekah. 2018. Trans-embodiment and the Biopolitics of Reproduction in Orphan Black. Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (3): 385–390. Silver, Lee M. 1997. Remaking Eden: Cloning and Beyond in a Brave New World. New York: Avon Books. Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make Room for TV: Television and the Family Ideal in Postwar America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stacey, Jackie. 2010. The Cinematic Life of the Gene. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Steinhoff, Heike. 2015. Transforming Bodies: Makeovers and Monstrosities in American Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Taylor, Ella. 1989. Prime-Time Families: Television Culture in Postwar America. Berkley: University of California Press. Toffler, Alvin. 1971 [1970]. Future Shock: The Third Wave Powershift. New York: Bantam Books. Weber, Brenda. 2009. Makeover TV: Selfhood, Citizenship, and Celebrity. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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Television Programmes CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015). Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002). Helix (SyFy, 2014–2015). House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012). Orphan Black (Space/CTV, 2013–2017). The X-Files (Fox 1993–2002, 2016–present).

Films Crazy (Robert Hales, 2006). Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999).

Index1

A Abbott, Stacey, 39, 40, 67n10 Adoption, 140, 145, 153n5, 185 The Affair (Showtime, 2014–present), 77 Affect, 17, 19, 44, 55, 120, 128, 140–146, 171–172, 176, 180, 189, 214, 216 See also Affective intimacy; Closeness; Emotions Affective intimacy, 17–19, 122, 140–145, 171–172, 176, 189, 213 See also Affect; Closeness; Emotions Affleck, Ben, 151 African American Lives (PBS, 2006–2008), 123, 125–128, 133, 151 Agnew, Vanessa, 141 Albinson, Ian, 208 Alias (ABC, 2001–2006), 107, 120 Alien the body as, 39, 54, 58, 174

DNA, 95, 212 landscapes, 54, 59, 64 the molecular world as, 18 Alien Planet (Discovery 2005), 69n18 Ally McBeal (Fox, 1997–2002), 120 Ambiguity, 48, 93, 105, 107, 108n4, 168, 178 American Crime Story (FX, 2016– present), 77 An American Family (PBS, 1973), 172, 192n11 Ames, Melissa, 83, 94, 103 Analepses, 106 See also Complex narrative devices Ancestors, 122, 123, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134, 136, 139–141, 143, 145, 149–152, 159, 216n1 Ancestors (PBS, 1997), 123 Animated, 35, 40, 49, 51, 52, 57, 138, 190 See also Animation

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s) 2019 S. Bull, Television and the Genetic Imaginary, Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54847-4

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222 

INDEX

Animation, 38 computer-generated/digital, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52, 59, 62, 67n11, 68n14, 69n18 hand-drawn/traditional, 38, 39, 45, 50 2D, 39, 42, 45 3D, 42, 45, 54, 69n17, 138 See also Animated; Microscopic CGI Artificial insemination, see Insemination Ascent of Man (BBC, 1973), 42, 45, 62 Assisted reproductive technologies (ART), 19, 22n17, 119, 160–190, 190n1, 191n2, 191n3, 191n6, 191n8, 192n9, 192n10, 193n17, 193n19, 193n21, 194n23, 194n25, 194n26, 194n28, 210, 214–215 See also New reproductive practices (NRP); Reproduction Atoms, 39, 46, 57, 59 Attanasio, Paul, 43 B Babies, Special Delivery (Discovery Health, 2002–2006), 192n15 Baby Boom (Charles Shyer, 1987), 164, 191n7 The Baby Business (BBC, 1998), 192n10 The Baby Makers (BBC, 2012), 172 Baby Makers: The Fertility Clinic (BBC, 2013), 171–172 A Baby Story (TLC, 1998–present), 173 Bacteria, 46 Barkley, Gnarls, 208 Barnes, Barry, 84 Battlestar Galactica (Sci Fi, 2004–2009), 20n1 Beeler, Stan, 100 Ben Casey (ABC, 1961–1966), 66n7

Benjamin, Walter, 209 Berman, Josh, 53 Berry, Mary, 131 Big Little Lies (HBO, 2017–present), 77 Biogenetic kinship/substance, see Kinship Biogeographical heritage, 123, 128–129, 149–150 Biological kinship (bond; substance) (see Kinship) material (entities; matter), 34, 35, 46, 57, 59, 67n11, 122, 132 processes, 15, 22n17 relativity, 121, 139, 161 spaces, 35, 45, 54, 208 See also Control; Relatives Biology, 1, 3, 4, 13, 16, 22n14, 22n16, 36, 48, 50, 62, 70n22, 84, 136, 161, 176, 181, 207, 210, 216n1 Biomedical technologies, 3, 15, 22n17, 166 Birth, 2, 107, 123, 133, 153n3, 164, 170, 171, 174, 177, 180–183, 187, 192–193n15, 209 See also Childbirth Birth Day (Discovery Health, 2000–2010), 173 Birthing shows, 173, 180–181, 192n15, 193n16 Blade: Trinity (David S. Goyer, 2004), 67n10 Blessed, Brian, 143 Bliss (ITV, 1995, 1997), 66n6 Blood, 43, 45, 47, 49, 50, 54, 57, 67n10, 70n22, 78, 100, 126, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 146, 152n2, 152–153n3, 154n15, 181, 185, 193n19 Bodies (BBC, 2004–2006), 66n7 Bodmer, Walter, 129

 INDEX 

Body cloned, 209–211 dead, 43, 87, 92 human, 13, 18, 22n16, 34–36, 39, 45, 50, 54, 56, 58, 61, 63, 65, 67n10, 69n17, 70n22, 95, 99, 172, 209 hybrid bodies, 99, 212 inside the, 34–65, 68n16, 69n21 Body Story (Channel 4, 1998), 53 The Bold Ones: The New Doctors (NBC, 1969–1973), 66n7 Bones (Fox, 2005–2017), 53, 66n6 Boone, Daniel, 131 Born in the Wild (Lifetime, 2015), 193n15 Bouquet, Mary, 135, 136 Bourdaa, Mélanie, 83, 97 Bradbury, Ray, 101, 102 Brave New Babies? (BBC, 1982), 62, 64 Brewer, Paul R., 48 Bronowski, Jacob, 62 Brown, Louise, 171 The butterfly effect, 79, 86, 101–103 See also Chaos theory; Complexity theory; Network theory The Butterfly Effect (Eric Bress/J. Mackey Gruber, 2004), 85 C Caldwell, John T., 17, 35, 52, 55–57, 212 Campbell, Nicky, 132, 154n14 Campbell, Vincent, 41, 42, 68n16, 69n18 Canada, 3 Canguilhem, Georges, 13, 14, 22n13, 22n15 Cannell, Fenella, 125, 140, 144 Carsten, Janet, 152, 154n15 Casualty (BBC, 1986–present), 66n7 Cause-and-effect, see Linearity

223

Cavalcante, Andre, 187, 188 Celebrity, 3, 122, 123, 127, 128, 130, 131, 136, 140, 142, 144, 145, 151, 172, 182, 193n21 Cell, 2, 18, 34–36, 38–40, 45, 46, 48, 50–52, 57, 59–61, 64, 65, 67n8, 70n22, 78, 127, 133, 146, 153n5, 210 See also Cellular The Cell (BBC, 2011), 66n3 Cellular, 40, 50, 57, 59–61, 70n22, 109n8 See also Cell Certainty, 48, 52, 54, 77, 88, 89, 96, 106, 122, 137, 176 CGI, see Computer-generated imagery Channel 4, 53, 54, 123, 131 Chaos theory, 78, 79, 85, 86, 89, 101–103 See also The butterfly effect; Complexity theory; Network theory Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC, 2009), 66n4 Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (McG, 2003), 67n10 Chicago Hope (CBS, 1994–2000), 66n7 A Child Against all Odds (BBC, 2006), 171, 175 Childbirth, 171, 173, 174, 180, 181 See also Birth; Medical Chimera, 210 Chimerism, see Chimera Christie, Agatha, 87 Cinema, 2, 3, 6, 20n2, 35, 38–42, 44, 51, 53, 54, 56, 60–61, 67n10, 67n12, 68n13, 68n16, 69n21, 85, 87, 98, 106, 107, 109n7, 109n9, 110n14, 164, 167, 175, 193n20, 209–210, 212–214 See also Hollywood Cinematic, 2, 3, 6, 85, 209, 213–214

224 

INDEX

City Hospital (BBC, 1952–1953), 66n7 Clarity, 49–52, 58, 92, 135, 136, 154n7 Clearblue, see Pregnancy test Cliff-hanger, 96 See also Narration; Narrative Cloning, 2, 3, 6, 20n1, 100, 169, 207–216 The Cloning of Joanna May (ITV, 1992), 20n1 Closeness, 18, 142, 143 Close-up shots, 35, 39–42, 45, 46, 53, 137, 142, 144 Code digital, 62–65 genetic, 62–65, 94, 167, 210 re-combinable/reprogrammable, 59, 60, 63 Cold Case (CBC, 2003–2010), 66n6 Cold Feet (ITV, 1998–2003), 194n23 Coleite, Aron Eli, 97 Coming Home (2007–present, BBC), 123 Complexity, 7, 19, 33, 61, 70 spatial, 57, 59, 61, 80 of systems/networks, 61, 70n22, 84, 95, 97, 100–102, 105, 146 temporal, 57, 59, 61 visual, 33, 51, 57–61 See also The butterfly effect; Complexity theory; Complex narrative devices; Complex TV; Dynamic; Indeterminacy; Interconnectedness; Network theory; Nonlinearity, Uncertainty Complexity theory, 18, 79, 81, 83–86, 99, 101, 106 See also The butterfly effect; Chaos theory; Network theory Complex narrative devices, 18, 77–108 See also Narration; Narrative; Under individual names

Complex TV, 18, 77–108 See also Narration; Narrative Computer-generated imagery (CGI), 18, 33–45, 47, 49–54, 57–66, 67n10, 67n12, 67n13–17, 79, 138, 208 See also Animation; Microscopic CGI Computer(s)/computer screens, 40, 62, 63, 69n17, 138, 179 Conception/conceiving, see Reproduction A Conception Story (TLC online, 2010–present), 19, 172, 174, 177–180 Connolly, Billy, 131 Connor, J.D., 85, 86 Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011), 40, 68n13 Corner, John, 11 Coronation Street (ITV, 1960– present), 82 Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (BBC/PBS, 1980), 36, 42, 45, 62 Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (Fox/ National Geographic, 2014), 66n2 Craig Kennedy: Criminologist (Weiss Productions, 1952), 37, 45, 88 Crazy (Albinson and Perkins, 2015), 208 Credit sequence, see Opening titles Crick, Francis, 1, 42, 45, 59, 67n12 Crime drama, 4, 21n7, 37, 38, 43, 46–48, 66n5, 77, 78, 86–90, 101, 104, 105, 120, 122, 152n3, 213 See also Procedural Crime genre, 90 Criminalists, 37, 43, 46, 47, 49, 78–80, 87, 89, 90, 92, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109n11, 193n19 See also Evidence; Forensic science

 INDEX 

Crossing Jordan (NBC, 2001–2007), 66n6 CSI, see CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (CBS, 2000–2015), 9, 18, 21n6, 21n7, 37, 42–44, 47–49, 51, 53–55, 59, 67n10, 68n14, 69n21, 78–81, 86–92, 94, 96, 98, 100–108, 109n10, 109n11, 121, 175, 193n19, 210 CSI franchise, 18, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 55, 68n16, 70n22 CSI: Miami (CBS, 2002–2012), 18, 43, 66n6, 105, 121 CSI: NY (CBS, 2004–2013), 18, 43, 66n6, 105 CSI shot, 42, 43, 53, 68n14 Cultural forum, 1–20, 60, 65, 79, 99, 122, 159, 169, 181, 190, 208, 213, 216 Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, 2000–present), 100 Curnutt, Hugh, 177, 178 Curtis, Scott, 60 Cyborg, 214 D Dangerfield (BBC, 1995–1999), 66n6 Dark Angel (Fox, 2000–2002), 20n1, 80, 95, 212 Deliver Me (Discovery Health, 2008–2011), 192n15 Descendants, 123, 132, 147, 151, 159 Descent, see Genealogy Designer baby, 169, 176, 191n8, 192n9 Determinism, see Genetic determinism Diagnosis: Unknown (CBS, 1960), 66n6 Didactic, see Pedagogical

225

Diegetic, 46, 100, 107, 189, 211 Digital, 35, 37 aesthetic/imagery, 56, 58, 59, 61–65, 68n16, 179 cameras, 18, 39, 43, 54, 56, 58, 68n13, 68n14, 179 technology, 35, 39, 40, 56, 62, 63, 69n17, 69n18, 84, 153n5 See also Animation; Code; Computer-generated imagery (CGI); Microscopic CGI; Special effects Dillender, Kirsten, 3, 215 Discovery Health, 172, 173, 192n14, 192–193n15 DNA, 1, 5, 7, 14, 37, 42, 45, 50, 59, 62, 67n12, 84, 86, 95, 96, 136, 181, 208, 211, 215, 216 barcode, 37, 39 as a blueprint (of life), 14, 33, 52, 59, 63, 64, 67n8, 96, 139, 146, 209, 210 strings, 34, 40, 45, 46, 57, 208 See also Alien; Code; Evidence DNA (PBS, 2003), 66n2 DNA test (genetic testing), 128 ancestry, 122, 123, 125–130, 133, 146, 150, 151, 160 autosomal (admixture), 127–130, 149, 154n11 biogeographical, 127–129, 149, 192n13 identity/profiling, 107, 120, 126, 128, 137, 139, 149, 209 mitochondrial (MtDNA), 127–130, 149 parentage, 120, 153n3 paternity, 120, 128, 152n2, 153n3, 154n13, 213 Y chromosome (Y-DNA), 127–130, 149 See also DNA; Gel electrophoresis (DNA fingerprint)

226 

INDEX

DNA: Threads of Life (BBC, 2002), 66n2 Doctors, 37, 49, 53, 80, 87–89, 102, 166, 171, 172, 176, 177, 179 Documentary, 1, 3, 4, 18, 22n11, 34–42, 44, 45, 48, 49, 53–56, 61–64, 68n16, 68n17, 69n18, 77, 122–124, 160, 171, 172, 180, 192n10, 211 Dolly the sheep, 2 Domesticity domestic ideals, 159, 164, 166, 169, 185 family life, 142, 159, 172 the sitcoms as domestic comedy, 4, 19, 22n11, 86, 119, 132, 160, 162–167, 169, 170, 176, 184, 186–190, 191n8, 192n9, 194n23, 194n28, 213, 214 television and the domestic, 16, 43, 86, 122, 159–160, 179–180 See also Affective intimacy; Family; Intimacy Double helix, 1, 14, 38, 42, 44, 52, 59, 63, 67n12, 95, 136, 208 Dow, Katherine, 163, 171 Darwinian, 167, 168 Darwinist genealogy, 169 Dr. Finlay’s Casebook (BBC, 1962–1971), 66n7 Dr. Kildre (NBC, 1961–1966), 66n7 Duck Dynasty (A&E, 2012–present), 172 Dupré, John, 84 Dynamic, 33, 34 imagery, 18, 136 qualities of the molecular world, 33, 52, 61, 65, 84, 91, 106, 146, 149 See also Complexity

E Educational, see Pedagogical Edutainment, see Infotainment Egg donation, 161, 181, 191n3, 191n8 Ellis, John, 5, 6, 20n4, 20–21n5, 21n9 Embryo, 38, 175, 191n3 screening, 214 transfer, 182, 191n2 Emotions, 130, 143–145, 173, 176 See also Affect; Affective intimacy; Closeness; Intimacy Empire’s Children (Channel 4, 2007), 123 Endoscopic, 39, 54, 56, 68n14, 68n16 Epigenetic(s), 70n22, 84, 145–147, 181, 207 ER (NBC, 1994–2009), 66n7 Essentialism, 185, 209, 213, 215, 216 See also Genetic essentialism Ethnic descent, see Biogeographical heritage; DNA test (genetic testing); Genealogy; Kinship Evidence, 37 DNA/genetic, 46, 48, 77–79, 88, 89, 91, 92 forensic, 37, 46, 78, 88, 89 physical, 38, 45, 46, 48, 77, 88–91 See also Criminalists; Forensic science Evolution, 35, 36, 135 Exceptional ordinariness, 177–184 The Expert (BBC, 1968–1976), 37, 46, 88, 152n3 Eye on Life (BBC, 1969), 66n3 Eye on Research (BBC, 1959), 66n2 F Faces of Britain (Channel 4, 2006), 123, 125, 129, 138, 149 Faces of America (PBS, 2010), 123, 125–128, 136, 154n11

 INDEX 

Factual programmes, 19, 44, 49, 53, 162, 171, 175–178, 184, 194n28, 214 Families we choose, 189, 214 See also Family; Kinship Family estranged, 124, 128, 134, 138, 140 familial relationships, 119–121, 134, 160, 215 of friends, 162–164 history programmes, 4, 19, 119, 122, 124, 128, 132, 135, 137, 141, 189, 213, 215 non-normative, 19, 152n1, 153n5, 162, 165, 168, 184–187, 190 nuclear, 120, 153n5, 165, 169–171, 183–186, 188, 190, 214 photos (photographs), 134, 138, 143, 188, 189 reunion shows, 4, 19, 108, 119, 122, 125, 134, 137, 138, 142, 213, 215 secrets, 120, 143 structure, 160, 162, 186, 188, 189 television viewing, 18, 122, 152, 159, 162, 165, 213 tree(s), 121, 122, 127, 135–137, 151, 154n7, 189, 190 values, 120, 165, 178, 192n11, 194n27 See also Domesticity; Kinship The Family (BBC, 1974), 172, 192n11 Family-centric programmes, 19, 119, 153–190, 214, 216 See also Documentary; Factual programmes; Family, history programmes; Family, reunion shows; Reality TV; Sitcom Family Ties (BBC, 2004–2006), 123 Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), 67n10

227

Father Knows Best (NBC/CBS, 1954–1960), 7, 9 Fertility clinic, 163, 164, 179, 186, 190n1, 194n23 overfertility, 193n16 science, 214 treatments, 161, 171, 176, 179, 181 See also Infertility Feuer, Jane, 18, 33, 64, 82, 86, 87, 108–109n4, 212, 213 Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), 40, 57, 60, 208 Film, see Cinema Finding your Roots (PBS, 2012–present), 19, 123, 125–128, 136, 149, 151, 154n11 Find My Family (ABC, 2009), 124, 125, 134, 140 Fixed rig, 180 Flashbacks, 90, 91, 94, 108n1 See also Complex narrative devices Flexi-narrative, 80, 81, 93 See also Narrative; Serial; Series Flow, 5, 7, 10, 47, 64, 167 Forensic crime drama, see Procedural Forensic science, 37, 48, 68n16, 88, 104, 105 See also Criminalists; Evidence; Gaze Forgetfulness, 145–152 Fortier, Anne-Marie, 129 Foucault, Michel, 13, 22n13, 22n14, 37, 47 Fox, Emilia, 132 Fox Keller, Evelyn, 14, 84 Franklin, Sarah, 2–4, 13–16, 22n13, 22n15, 22n16, 22n17, 44, 59, 94, 161, 166, 167, 169, 174–176, 215 Freud, Sigmund, 6 Friends (NBC, 1994–2004), 19, 163–165, 167–169, 184, 185, 194n28

228 

INDEX

Fringe (Fox, 2008–2013), 18, 80, 81, 86, 93–99, 102, 103, 106–108 Fry, Stephen, 151 G Gates Jr., Henry Louis, 123, 127–129 Gattaca (Andrew Niccol, 1997), 39, 67n11 Gay parenthood, 186–190 Gaze forensic, 46 medical, 37, 47, 67n9 molecular, 47, 52 Gel electrophoresis (DNA fingerprint), 37, 120, 128 See also DNA; DNA test (genetic testing) The Gene, see DNA Genealogical journeys, 140–141, 149 research /searches / investigations, 19, 119–152, 154n7, 154n11, 215 tourism/heritage tourism, 140 Genealogist, 121, 136, 154n7 Genealogy Darwinian/vertical, 166, 215 horizontal, 215 websites, 125, 192n13, 215 See also Genealogical; Kinship Genealogy TV, 122–151, 154n10, 160, 161, 216 The Gene Code (BBC, 2011), 52, 59 Gene Detectives (BBC, 2007), 124, 125, 128, 134, 138, 149 Gene pool, 165–171, 215 The Generations Project (BYU Television, 2010–present), 124 Genetic discourses, 1, 15, 19, 119, 133, 139, 147, 163

disease, 3, 92, 94, 102, 121, 132, 175, 211, 215 engineering/manipulation/ modification, 2, 6, 15, 39, 62–65, 70, 80, 93–96, 100, 146, 171, 208, 210–214 fetishism, 14 mutation, 38, 40, 80, 94, 95, 127, 208, 211 science, 1, 2, 4, 17, 18, 34, 60, 62, 65, 77–110, 122, 133, 136, 160, 176–177, 181, 190, 212, 214 sexual attraction, 121 See also Code; DNA; DNA test (genetic testing); Malleability; Multiplicity; Sameness; Substance Genetic determinism, 13–15, 18, 49–53, 58–60, 64–65, 84, 87, 102, 107–108, 119, 122, 130, 132, 139, 146–147, 209–210, 216 Genetic essentialism, 1, 5, 14, 17, 19, 33, 36, 49, 52, 59, 61, 64, 65, 79, 92, 96, 99, 106–108, 120, 122, 127–135, 139, 144–145, 147–149, 161, 165–166, 169, 183, 185, 189, 208–210, 213, 215–216 Genetic heritage, 173 The genetic imaginary, 1–7, 10–18, 20, 21n10, 35, 40, 44, 49, 52, 57, 61, 65, 79, 81, 86, 96, 99, 119, 122, 130, 139, 145, 159, 160, 162, 169, 181, 186, 190, 207, 208, 216 Geneticist, 52, 63, 100, 193n19 Geneticisation, 14, 16, 35, 44–49, 139, 161 Genetic modification, 176 The genome, see DNA Genre, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 12, 18–20, 37, 40, 43, 45, 48, 58, 65, 66n5,

 INDEX 

77, 80–82, 87, 100, 108, 109n5, 119, 120, 122, 124, 128, 135, 152, 160, 162, 163, 170, 172–174, 178, 184–186, 190 Geraghty, Christine, 18, 33, 82, 86, 93, 96, 109n5, 212 Gestational carrier, see Surrogate Gever, Martha, 37, 91 The Ghost in Your Genes (BBC, 2005), 66n3 Gideon’s Crossing (ABC, 2000–2001), 66n7 The Gift of Life with Nicholas Woolley (BBC 1986), 192n10 Giuliana and Bill (Style Network/E!, 2009–2014), 19, 173, 181–183, 194n22 Glee (Fox, 2009–2015), 170, 191n8 Gleick, James, 84–86 The Golden Girls (NBC, 1985–1992), 19, 163, 165, 166, 169, 170 The Great British Bake Off (BBC/ Channel 4, 2010–present), 131 The Great Sperm Race (Channel 4, 2009), 38, 58, 66n4 Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993), 85 Gunsmoke (CBS, 1955–1975), 21n7 Gwóźdź, Andrzej, 64, 213 H Hall, Jerry, 131 Hamad, Hannah, 164, 165, 169 Hamner, Everett, 2, 3, 207, 214 Hanson, Clare, 3, 15, 136, 145, 146 Haplogroups, 127, 128, 130, 149 Happy ending, 96–99, 121 See also Narration; Narrative; Serial; Series Haran, Joan, 2, 3, 209 Haraway, Donna, 3, 14, 16, 167, 214

229

Harrington, Ellen Burton, 9, 87 Having a Baby to Save My Child (BBC, 2010), 171, 175–177 Helix (SyFy, 2014–2015), 212 Heritage, see Genealogy Heroes (NBC, 2006–2010), 18, 80, 81, 86, 93–100, 102, 103, 106–108, 175, 193n19 Heteronormativity anxious displacement in sitcoms, 187, 188 focus on heterosexual couples in infertility narratives, 19, 162, 171–186 High School Moms (TLC, 2012– present), 193n15 Hight, Craig, 39, 40, 67n9 Hirsch, Paul M., 5–10, 12, 21n5 Hislop, Ian, 130 Hogan Knows Best (VH1, 2005–2007), 172 Holdsworth, Amy, 123–125, 137, 140–142, 144 Hollow Man (Paul Verhoeven, 2000), 67n10 Hollywood, 34, 60, 86, 98 See also Cinema Horizon (BBC, 1964–present), 3, 36, 39, 62, 63, 171 Horizon: A Child of Our Own (BBC, 1976), 192n10 Horizon: A Much Wanted Child (BBC, 1970), 192n10 Hospital drama (see Procedural) as a location, 63, 92, 166, 179, 180, 183, 193n15 House M.D. (Fox, 2004–2012), 18, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47, 49, 53, 55, 58, 80, 81, 86–92, 94, 96, 98, 102, 106–108, 108n1, 109n10, 120, 210

230 

INDEX

How Your Body Works (BBC, 1958), 55 The Hulk (Ang Lee, 2003), 39, 60, 70n22 The Human Body (BBC/TLC, 1998), 42, 53, 54, 69n17 The Human Genome Project, 1, 14–16, 64, 100 127 Hours (Danny Boyle, 2011), 40 100% English (Channel 4, 2006), 123, 125, 128, 133, 149, 150 Hurt, John, 147, 148 I Ice Loves Coco (E!, 2011–2013), 172 Identity, 15, 48, 52, 94, 119, 126–130, 133, 136–139, 146, 147, 149, 150, 154n11, 189, 209–211, 215 Identity (ITV, 2010), 38, 193n18 I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant (Discovery Fit and Health/TLC, 2009–2011), 193n15, 193n16 If…Cloning Could Cure Us (BBC, 2004), 3 IMAX, 42 I’m Pregnant and… (Discovery Health, 2009–present), 193n15 Incest accidental, 121, 153n5, 168 voluntary, 121 Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 1975), 38, 54, 56, 66n2 Incredible Human Machine (National Geographic, 2007), 54, 66n2 Indeterminate, 7, 17, 35, 59, 61, 83, 85, 91, 93, 211, 212, 216 Infertility, 19, 119, 121, 162–164, 171–185, 190, 193n18, 194n23, 214, 215

Infotainment, 68–69n17, 172 Inorganic, 63, 99 Insemination, 161, 164–166, 169, 170, 186, 187, 190n1, 194n26 Inserts, 38 diagnostic, 53 of medical equipment, 176 of physical evidence, 38, 46 symptomatic, 53 See also Microscopic CGI Inside the Human Body (BBC, 2011), 18, 36, 54, 55, 58, 69n17 Inside the Living Body (National Geographic, 2007), 55, 66n2 Interconnectedness, 78, 81–85, 94, 97, 99–105, 107, 108 Interlinked, see Interconnectedness Intimacy, 17–19, 42, 119–152, 166, 171, 172, 179, 181, 187, 213 See also Affect; Affective intimacy; Closeness; Domesticity; Emotions Intrauterine insemination, see Insemination Invisible, 18, 34, 35, 37, 39, 46, 88, 137, 141, 182 In vitro fertilisation (IVF), 161, 163, 171, 173, 175, 176, 179, 180, 182, 184, 188, 191n2, 214 Is GM Safe? (BBC, 2000), 39, 66n3 Iterative episodic structure, 19, 89–92, 103 See also Narrative; Series ITV, 56, 82, 88, 120, 123, 124, 153n4, 171, 194n23 J Jacobs, Jason, 11, 41, 172 Jankowski, Nathalie, 48 Jenkins, Henry, 96, 97, 110n14 Jenner, Kris, 182n13, 192n13, 194n22

 INDEX 

Jenner, Kylie, 173 The Jeremy Kyle Show (ITV, 2005– present), 120 Jersey Shore (MTV, 2009–2012), 178 The Jinx (HBO, 2015), 77 Jon and Kate Plus Eight (Discovery Health/TLC, 2007–present), 172 Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993), 2, 3, 85 K Kardashian, Khloé, 173, 192n13 Kardashian, Kim, 173, 175, 182, 184, 192n13 Kardashian, Kourtney, 173, 192n13 Kavka, Misha, 18, 122, 142, 171, 172, 212, 213 Kay, Jackie, 145 Keeping Up with the Kardashians (E!, 2007–present), 19, 172, 173, 181–183, 193–194n22 Kelty, Christopher, 57, 60 Khloé and Lamar (E!, 2011–2012), 173 A Killer In Me (ITV, 2007), 3 Kinship, 15–17, 19, 22n17, 119–190, 213–216 genetic/biological, 19, 107, 108, 119–152, 159–190, 213–216 post-genomic, 19, 119, 159–190, 194n28, 213–226 socially constructed, 19, 120, 132, 145–152, 153n3, 186–190, 213–226 See also Family; Genealogy Kirby, David, 2, 15, 37, 48, 53 Kitzinger, Jenny, 3 Kompare, Derek, 37, 87 Kourtney and Kim Take Miami (E!, 2009–2013), 173, 175

231

Kramer, Anne-Marie, 124, 125, 140–142, 145, 154n10 Kyle XY (ABC, 2006–2009), 20n1 L Landecker, Hannah, 57, 60, 61, 70n22 The Last Slave (Channel 4, 2007), 123 Law and Order: Criminal Intent (NBC/USA Network, 2001–2011), 121 Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (NBC, 1999–present), 121 Leavitt, Sarah A., 178, 179 Lewin, Roger, 84, 101, 102 Ley, Barbara, 48 Lieberman, Jennifer, 3, 214 Life itself, 2, 5, 13–17, 22n13, 22n14, 22n17, 33, 44, 47, 52, 60, 65, 207, 208 Life on Earth (BBC, 1979), 38, 56, 66n2 Life sciences, 14, 62 Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001), 66n3 Life Story (Mick Jackson, BBC, 1987), 3 Likeness, 107, 122, 132, 137–138 Lindee, Susan M., 2, 3, 14, 15, 52 Lineage, see Genealogy Linearity, 15, 17, 79, 82–83, 88, 90–92, 105 Lithgow, John, 50 The Little Couple (TLC, 2009– present), 172 Little, Hannah, 140, 141 Littleboy, Helen, 180 Liveness, 64, 152, 212–213 Llewelyn-Bowen, Laurence, 131 Long Lost Family (ITV, 2011–present), 19, 124–126, 133, 134, 138, 140, 142

232 

INDEX

Lorentz, Edward, 101 Lotz, Amanda D., 8–10, 20–21n5, 21n7, 89, 92, 108n1 Louis and Clark (ABC, 1993–1997), 120 Lury, Karen, 37, 41–43, 54, 55 Lyle, Doug, 48 M MacDowell, James, 98 Magnification, 18, 39–47, 54, 66n1 Make Me a Baby (BBC, 2007), 171, 174, 175 Makeover TV, 212 Making a Murderer (Netfix, 2015), 77 Making Babies (BBC, 1996), 192n10 Malleability, 56, 61, 64, 94–96, 110n12, 211–214 Malone, Gareth, 131, 146, 147 Manhunt: Unabomber (Discovery Channel, 2017), 77 Marcus Welby M.D. (ABC, 1969–1976), 66n7 Maslany, Tatiana, 211 Materialisation (making kinship matter), 19, 119–152 See also Proof of kinship Materiality, 17, 47, 133 Maternity Ward (TLC, 2000–2004), 192n15 The Matrix (the Wachowskis, 1999), 63 Matters of Life and Death (BBC, 1969), 192n10 Maury (Syndicated, 1991–2012), 119, 120 McCallum (ITV, 1995–1998), 38, 46, 66n6, 88 McNeil, Maureen, 3 Media platforms, 81, 96, 110n14 Medic (NBC, 1954–1956), 37

Medical cases/processes/diagnostics/ treatments, 44, 64, 69n17, 87, 176, 214 childbirth as a medical emergency, 173, 180 doctors/personnel/professionals, 80, 88, 172, 176, 190n1 films, 20n2, 38, 51, 54, 55, 60 humanities, 5, 20n3 reality TV, 172, 177, 178 technology/equipment, 20n3, 69n17, 176 See also Biomedical technologies; Gaze; Inserts; Procedural Medicalisation, 161, 163, 166–167, 169–170 Medicine, 4, 20n2, 20n3, 36, 61, 69n17, 84, 88, 94 Medico-scientific practices, 2, 4, 161 Meeting Point (BBC, 1956–1968), 171 Meeting Point: Test-Tube Babies (BBC, 1962), 192n10 Meet the Izzards (BBC, 2013), 123 Mendelsohn, Carol, 42 Messiness, 59, 79, 81, 104–106, 170 Microcinematography, 34, 38, 51, 54, 55, 60, 61, 67n11 See also Microscope Microphotography, 34, 38, 51 See also Microscope Microscope electron, 34, 38, 45–47, 54, 56, 70n22 light, 46, 47, 51, 69n20 Microscopic entities, 34, 59, 102 images/imagery, 18, 33–65, 79, 208 See also Animation; Microscopic CGI

 INDEX 

Microscopic CGI, 18, 33–70, 79, 208 See also Animation; Microscopic CGI The Midwives (BBC, 2012–2013), 173 Miescher, Friedrich, 78 Mindhunter (Netflix, 2017–present), 77 The Mindy Project (Fox/Hulu, 2012–present), 194n23 Miniature, 34, 39, 47 Miracle Cure? A Decade of the Human Genome (BBC, 2010), 66n3 Miracle of Life (PBS/SVT/BBC, 1982), 66n3 Miracles in the Womb (Channel 4, 2007), 54 Miscarriage, 173, 174 Mitochondria, 34, 127 See also DNA; DNA test (genetic testing) Mittell, Jason, 18, 20, 33, 82–87, 90, 97, 98, 100, 106, 109n7, 212 Modern Family (ABC, 2009–present), 186, 187 Molecular biology, 1, 3, 4, 13, 48, 84, 207, 216n1 science, 15, 50, 106 world/universe, 1, 2, 17, 18, 33–65, 79, 84, 208, 211, 212, 214, 216 See also Gaze Molecularisation, 14, 44, 47 Molecules, 1, 15, 18, 36, 39, 42–44, 46–48, 52, 59, 61, 62, 65, 80, 84 Montage, 34, 53, 54, 134, 136 The Montel Williams Show (Syndication, 1991–2008), 119 Moore, Marvin, 160, 162, 165, 191n4, 191n5 Motherhood, 161, 163, 164, 190 See also Family; Kinship

233

Multiplicity of genetic heritage, 135–136, 151 of television, 5, 7, 10, 16, 98, 169, 216 My Famous Family (UKTV History, 2007), 123 My Sister’s Keeper (Nick Cassavetes, 2009), 175 N Narration complex, 17, 19, 77–108, 109n4, 212–213 episodic, 18, 80–82, 86–93, 96, 98, 100, 101, 104, 105, 108n2 serial, 10, 17–18, 33, 65, 77, 79–86, 93–108, 108n2–4, 109n5, 109n7, 212 unreliable, 106 Narrative catalyst, 18, 39, 77, 80, 94, 215 closure/resolution/conclusion, 80, 83, 87, 92, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 108n4, 187, 215 equilibrium, 87, 88, 92 open-ended/openness, 93–94, 98, 108n4, 135, 168 structure, 4, 18, 37, 79–81, 86, 87, 91–93, 96, 108, 132, 212, 216 See also Complex narrative devices; Complex TV; Iterative episodic structure; Plotlines; Serial; Seriality; Series; Spectacle Nature, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15–17, 19, 21n10, 22n16, 36, 53, 58, 60–65, 79, 93, 94, 97–100, 104, 106, 107, 121, 131–133, 137, 143–147, 152n1, 161, 162, 166, 167, 176, 186, 208, 211, 213 NCIS (CBS, 2003–present), 66n6, 121

234 

INDEX

Ndalianis, Angela, 82 Nelkin, Dorothy, 2, 3, 14, 15, 52, 120 Nelson, Robin, 80, 82 Network theory, 85 See also The butterfly effect; Chaos theory; Complexity theory Newcomb, Horace M., 5–10, 12, 21n5, 81, 108n2, 108n3 New genetics, 13, 59, 64, 70n22, 84, 99 See also Post-genomic The New Normal (NBC, 2012–2013), 19, 186–190, 191n8, 194n28 New reproductive practices (NRP), 19, 160, 162, 166, 169, 176, 181, 184, 190, 192n8, 214 See also Assisted reproductive technologies (ART) Newsnight (BBC, 1980–present), 3 19 Kids and Counting (TLC, 2008–2015), 172, 193n16 Nip/Tuck (FX, 2003–2010), 66n7, 120 Non-linearity, 79, 80, 83, 85, 91, 94, 99–105, 107, 108 See also Complexity North America, 15, 21n5 Not Forgotten (Channel 4, 2005), 123 Nova (PBS, 1974–present), 36 Nova: Life’s Greatest Miracle (PBS, 2001), 18, 50, 58 Novelty, 17–18, 41, 47, 54, 56–57, 63, 212 Numb3rs (CBS, 2005–2010), 66n6, 121 Nurture, 132, 146, 152n1, 161, 211 O O’Connor, Alan, 11, 22n12 Oddie, Bill, 137

Oh Baby (Lifetime, 1998–2000), 19, 164–166, 169, 170 One Big Happy (NBC, 2015), 19, 186–190 One Born Every Minute (Channel 4, 2010–present), 173, 180, 181 Opening titles, 39, 67n12, 92, 136, 208 Organic, 63, 102 O’Riordan, Kate, 2, 3, 15 Orphan Black (Space/CTV, 2013–2017), 2, 3, 207, 208, 210–216 The Osbournes (MTV, 2001–2005), 172 Ostherr, Kirsten, 38, 50 Our Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell (BBC, 2012), 18, 34–36, 64, 65 P Panorama (BBC, 1953–present), 171 Panorama: Experimenting with Life (BBC, 1981), 192n10 Parentage, see Family; Kinship Parikka, Jussi, 62, 64 Parkinson, Michael, 151 Paxman, Jeremy, 143, 144 PBS, 49, 123 Pedagogical, 136 drive/address, 3, 35, 41, 49–53, 58, 61, 103, 160, 172 imagery, 39, 49–53, 57, 59, 136 Perception (TNT, 2012–2015), 121 Perkins, Will, 208 Photographic, 45, 50, 58, 69n18, 70n22, 213 Photorealism, 50, 51, 58, 63 Picoult, Jodi, 175 Plastic, see Plasticity

 INDEX 

Plasticity bodily, 94–95, 110n12, 212 of the molecular world, 15, 65, 212 plastic pluralism, 94 of television, 212–213 Plotlines interlinked, 81–83, 100, 101, 215 long-running, 80, 82, 99, 185, 215 multiple/parallel, 81–83, 94, 99, 100 See also Narration, Narrative Pokaski, Joe, 97 Police Surgeon (ITV, 1960), 66n6 Postfeminism, 163–165, 169, 184, 212 Post-genomic, 1, 5, 13–15, 17–19, 33, 36, 52, 57, 59–65, 70n22, 79–81, 84, 92, 94–96, 99, 106, 108, 110n12, 119, 122, 136, 145–146, 149, 152, 161, 166, 169, 176–177, 181, 183, 185, 188–190, 194n28, 207–216, 216n1 Posthumanism, 212 Post-network-era television, 8–10, 17, 20n5, 85 Pregnancy, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 181, 182, 192n8, 193n15 Pregnancy test, 178, 179, 189, 193n20 Primetime, 120, 162, 163 Procedural dramas, 18, 35, 37, 42–44, 46–49, 52, 55, 59, 68n16, 77–81, 86–92, 96, 98, 100–108, 211, 216 Procreation, see Reproduction Prometheus (Ridley Scott, 2012), 39 Proof of kinship, 126, 128, 137–138, 143, 152n3, 181 See also Materialisation (making kinship matter) Proximity, see Closeness

235

Public service, 41, 49, 56, 152n3, 172 Pure Genius (CBS, 2016–2017), 66n7 Q Quality TV, 77, 82 Quincy M.E. (NBC, 1976–1983), 37, 38, 46, 88 R Ragoné, Helena, 161 Rancic, Bill, 19, 28, 173, 182–183, 194n22, 202 Rancic, Giuliana, 19, 28, 173, 182–184, 194n22, 202 Randomness of life itself/the molecular world, 100, 104, 105 random events in procedurals, 78, 79, 100, 103, 104 See also Complexity; Narration; Narrative Rashomon effect, 106 See also Complex narrative devices Reality TV, 4, 18, 40, 119–152, 154n10, 160–162, 171–184, 192n11, 213, 216 The Real World (MTV, 1992–present), 178 Red herrings, 78, 89 See also Complex narrative devices Re-enactments, 122, 141 Reeves, Vic, 131 ReGenesis (TMN, 2004–2008), 3, 68n15 Relatives, 121 biological, 121, 135, 139, 148 by blood, 132, 133, 135, 139, 146 by marriage, 133 See also Family; Kinship

236 

INDEX

Repetitive time loops, 106 See also Complex narrative devices Reproduction, 38, 60, 120, 159–190, 209, 213–214 assisted, 17, 19, 22n17, 62, 63, 119, 160–190, 190n1, 191n2, 191n3, 191n6, 191n8, 192n9, 193n17–19, 193n21, 193n25, 193n26, 193n28, 194n23, 210, 214–215 sexual, 152, 163, 167, 169, 170, 176, 181, 210, 214 Reproductive risk, 162, 171–178, 184 Rescue 911 (CSN, 1989–1996), 172 Resemblance, see Likeness Ricki Lake (Syndicated, 1993–2004), 119 Roberts, Celia, 161, 169 Roe, Annabelle Honess, 38, 49, 69n18 Rose, Nikolas, 13, 15, 22n15, 22n16, 22n17, 44, 46, 47, 63, 94, 166, 170 Run Lola Run (Tom Tykwer, 1998), 85 Run’s House (MTV, 2005–2009), 172 Rutherford, Adam, 52 S Sagan, Carl, 42, 45 St. Elsewhere (NBC, 1982–1988), 66n7 Sameness of clones, 209, 211 of digital codes and genetic codes, 62–65 of twins, 209 Saviour siblings, 175, 193n19 Scale, 16, 34, 41, 46–48 Schneider, David, 133, 135, 139, 147, 154n15

Science, 1–4, 17, 18, 20n2, 20n3, 22n11, 22n13, 34–38, 41, 44, 45, 48–50, 53–56, 60–63, 65, 68n16, 69n17, 69n18, 70n22, 77–108, 122, 133, 134, 136, 153n3, 160, 161, 171, 176–177, 181, 190, 211, 212, 214 Science fiction, 1–4, 18, 35, 39, 63, 65, 67n10, 68n15, 80, 95, 194n26, 207, 211, 212 Science International (BBC, 1959), 38 The Science of Man (BBC, 1963–1965), 56, 66n2 Science on Saturday: Human Biology (BBC, 1961), 56 Scientific imaging technologies, 20n2, 35, 36, 39, 44, 45, 47, 50, 51, 56, 60 Sconce, Jeffrey, 33, 82, 83 Searching For… (OWN, 2011), 19, 124 Seinfeld (NBC, 1989–1998), 100 Self-reflexivity, 47, 78, 82, 83, 109n5 Serial, 4, 10, 17, 18, 33, 47, 77, 79–83, 85–87, 93–96, 98, 108n2, 108n3, 109n4, 109n5, 212 See also Narration; Narrative; Seriality Seriality, 77–108, 212 See also Narration; Narrative; Serial Series, 8, 10, 34, 36, 42, 45, 54, 55, 60, 67n12, 68n14, 78, 81, 87, 89, 92, 96–98, 100, 102, 103, 108n2, 123, 124, 138, 147, 164, 170, 172, 179, 185, 186, 191n7, 210 See also Narration; Narrative Sex and the City (HBO, 1998–2004), 184, 185 Sex and the City (Michael Patrick King, 2008), 185 Shameless (Channel 4, 2004–2013), 194n23 Sheldon, Rebekah, 3, 211

 INDEX 

Silent Evidence (BBC, 1962), 46, 66n6, 88 Silent Witness (BBC, 1996–present), 37, 46, 88 Similarity, see Likeness Simplicity, 33, 35, 49–52, 59, 62–65, 83, 88, 135, 149, 190 Single mother(s), 162–165, 186 See also Family; Kinship; Motherhood Single mother(s) by choice, 163, 165, 169, 170, 184, 188 See also Family; Kinship, Motherhood Single-parent families, 162, 165 See also Family; Kinship Sisters (Brian de Palma, 1973), 67n12 Sisters (Network Ten, 2017–present), 168 Sister Wives (TLC, 2010–present), 172 Sitcom, 4, 7, 19, 22n11, 86, 100, 119, 132, 160, 162–170, 176, 184–190, 191n8, 192n9, 194n23, 194n28, 213, 214 16 and Pregnant (MTV, 2009– present), 193n15, 193n16 Size, 9, 34, 45–47, 67n8, 69n19 Sliding Doors (Peter Howitt, 1998), 85 Smallness, 18, 34, 46 See also Microscopic Smit, Alexia, 55 Soap opera, 7, 18, 81–83, 86, 96, 108n3, 109n6, 120, 153n4 So You Think You’re Royal? (Sky, 2007), 123 Special effects, 18, 33–35, 39, 40, 44, 55, 57, 63, 65, 66n1, 67n9, 67n10, 83, 211 See also Animation; Digital; Microscopic CGI Spectacle

237

scientific, 53–56 visual, 53, 55–57 Sperm bank, 162–167, 191n8, 194n25 donation, 161, 167 donor, 164, 166–169 Spoorloos (KRO, 1990–present), 124 Stacey, Jackie, 2, 6, 15, 16, 153n5, 168, 209, 210, 213, 214 Stepfamilies, 165 Structure of feeling, 11–14, 17, 18, 22n12, 33, 36, 57, 60, 64, 65, 70n22, 83, 84, 99, 149, 176, 189, 208, 210, 216 Substance, 17, 104, 120, 132, 134–139, 141, 144, 146, 152, 161, 167, 168, 181, 184, 188–190, 214, 216 See also Biological; Genealogy; Kinship Superhuman (BBC, 2001), 66n2 Surrogacy, 161, 181–183, 185, 191n3, 194n28, 214 See also Surrogate Surrogate, 173, 182, 183, 185, 186, 191n3, 191n6, 192n8, 193n21, 194n28 See also Surrogacy Surveillance cultures of, 41 footage, 38 mode of CGI, 39, 40 technologies, 38 T Technocratic revolution, 46 Technofuturist aesthetic, 63, 65 Technology, 3, 6, 20n3, 22n11, 22n16, 22n17, 39–41, 44–46, 51, 56, 60–63, 69n17, 69n18, 84, 94, 119, 142, 150, 153n5, 168, 194n26, 209

238 

INDEX

Teen Mom (MTV, 2009–present), 193n15 Teen Mom 2 (MTV, 2011–present), 193n15 Teen Mom 3 (MTV, 2013), 193n15 Teen Mom: Young and Pregnant (MTV, 2018–present), 193n15 Tele-affectivity, 55 See also Affect Televisuality, 17, 18, 35, 52, 55–57, 212 Temporal jumps, 90 See also Complex narrative devices Test-tube baby, 162, 166, 169, 171 The Theory of Everything (James Marsh, 2014), 40 Thompson, Charis, 181 Thorndyke (BBC, 1964), 46, 66n6, 88 The Thread of Life (NBC, 1960), 36, 38 Three Kings (David O. Russell, 1999), 67n10 Tia and Tamara (Style Network/E!, 2011–2013), 172 Time travel, 94, 98, 102, 140 See also Complex narrative devices Time-lapse, 40, 60, 61, 208 Title sequence, see Opening titles TLC, 19, 42, 66n2 To Mrs Brown… a Daughter (ITV, 1978), 171, 192n10 Todorov, Tzvetan, 87 Tonight: Too Old to Be a Mum? (ITV, 2010), 171, 175 Top Chef (Bravo, 2006–present), 178 Transmedia storytelling, 96, 97, 110n14 See also Narration; Narrative Transparency, 36–37, 52 Trauma, Life in the E.R (TLC, 1997–2002), 172 The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011), 40 Trisha Goddard Show (ITV, 1998–2010), 120

True Detective (HBO, 2014–present), 77 TV families, 152, 159–190 Twins, 67n12, 107, 110n15, 120, 164, 185, 194n24, 209, 210 Twisted Nerve (Roy Boulting 1968), 67n12 U UK (Britain), 1, 9, 15, 16, 21n5, 46, 48, 55, 66n5, 119, 120, 122, 123, 139, 152n3, 154n9, 159, 171–174, 192n10, 193n17, 194n23, 207, 212 Uncertainty, see Indeterminacy Underworld (Len Wiseman, 2003), 67n10 Unpredictability, 7, 18, 36, 59–60, 64–65, 78–81, 86, 91–94, 99–100, 103–104, 106–107, 213 US (USA), 1, 3, 9, 15, 16, 21n5, 21n7, 43, 48, 66n5, 97, 98, 108n4, 119, 122–124, 126, 154n9, 159, 162, 163, 165, 172, 173, 178, 180, 186, 189, 207, 212 V Viewing strip, 7–11, 65 Viruses, 34, 35, 46, 57, 64, 68n13, 193n19 Voice-over, 34, 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 65, 67n8, 105, 127, 130, 134, 138, 143, 149–151, 175 See also Narration W Waking the Dead (BBC, 2000–2011), 66n6 Waldrop, M. Mitchell, 84, 99, 105

 INDEX 

Walking with Cavemen (Discover 2003), 69n18 Walking With Dinosaurs (Discovery 1999), 69n18 Watson, James, 1, 20n2, 42, 45, 59, 67n12 Weissmann, Elke, 16, 43, 68n16, 87, 104, 124 What is Life? (BBC, 1968), 66n2 Wheatley, Helen, 6, 11, 53–55, 160 Whissel, Kristen, 34, 44 White, Mimi, 55, 213 Who Do You Think You Are? (BBC, 2004–present), 9, 122 Who Do You Think You Are? (NBC, 2010–2012; TLC 2013–present), 124 Who’s Afraid of Designer Babies? (BBC, 2005), 63, 64, 66n3 Wilbanks, Rebecca, 3, 207, 208, 210, 211 Will and Grace (NBC, 1998–2006), 186, 187, 194n25 Williams, Raymond, 7, 11, 12, 22n12, 61, 81, 108n2, 108n3, 216

239

Without a Trace (CBS, 2002–2009), 66n6 The Wonder of Man (ATV, 1960), 56 Work families, 162 See also Family; Kinship Working through, 6 Wynne, Brian, 65, 106 X The X-Files (Fox 1993–2002, 2016– present), 20n1, 80, 212 X–Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner, 2006), 39 X-ray, 34, 35, 37, 55, 68n17 Y You Don’t Know You’re Born (ITV, 2007), 123 Your Life in their Hands (BBC, 1980), 192n10 Your Living Body (ATV, 1969), 56 Z Zettl, Herbert, 64, 213