ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the television program The Fall. Despite featuring a female protagonist as a police superintendent, in line with a postfeminist perspective of women’s power as proof of achieved equality, the show questions this idea by placing women in contexts of direct, structural, and cultural violence against women. The Fall dismantles the postfeminist view of what female empowerment means. The limiting social expectations about women—that they are primarily nurturers and aspire to make others happy—have been replaced by women’s own goals and realization. Overall The Fall problematizes female empowerment by unfolding the myriad faces of gender-based violence permeating our postfeminist everyday life and dismantling traditional narrative discourses about violence against women in several ways. The Fall is a valuable text to explore in this regard, because it makes apparent the chiaroscuros of the celebratory discourse of female empowerment. Contrary to the romantically driven female subjectivity constructed by heteronormative society, Gibson does not look for commitment and domesticity.
