“The basic human form is female. Maleness is a kind of birth defect”: positive discrimination in "The Fall"

Abstract

This paper aims to hermeneutically analyse some of the social imaginaries present in the first two seasons of the British TV series The Fall. We do so by focusing on its two main characters: the police officer Stella Gibson and the serial killer Paul Spector. While the former is a woman emancipated from certain old-fashioned female roles, the latter is a sociopath who tries to reconcile both his driving need to kill in order to sublimate his desire before successful women with his family life. The interplay between these two protagonists is the setting for the fight taking place in our society between traditional female roles and new ones.