Grievable Lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic: US-American Television, Melodrama and the Work of Mourning

Nelly Strehlau

doi:10.18778/2083-2931.13.18

Authors

Nelly Strehlau Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7670-7860

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-2931.13.18

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Keywords:

COVID-19 on television, Corona fictions, US-American television, grievable life, This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy, Station 19

Abstract

The present article applies Judith Butler’s notion of “grievable life” to reflect on the manner in which selected US-American television series engaged in the work of mourning and memorializing the loss of life in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of noting which lives were deemed “lose-able or injurable” (Butler, Frames 1), and how precarity of life was reflected by fictional narratives that were conceived and produced during the first waves of the pandemic. The article focuses in particular on the way in which network scripted programming operating within the melodramatic convention, namely This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19, incorporated pandemic storylines and which aspects of pandemic reality were highlighted or, conversely, avoided scrutiny.

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Author Biography

Nelly Strehlau, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Toruń

Nelly Strehlau is employed as Assistant Professor by the Department of Anglophone Literature, Culture and Comparative Studies at the Institute of Literature, Faculty of Humanities of Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. Her PhD analyzed feminist and postfeminist hauntings in American television series about women lawyers. She is the author of multiple articles dedicated to American and British television, published in English and Polish. Her current research encompasses interrogation of popular culture from the perspective of affect studies and hauntology, with a special interest in women’s authorship and (post)feminism.

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