Pleasure, power, and pathology—between two worlds: Killing Eve’s queer/feminist post-Cold War appraisal

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since a resurgence on the world stage by a post-Soviet capitalist Russian state, fictional media representations of Russians in the U.S. and Britain have become increasingly commonplace. In order to examine both U.S.–Russia relations and the crime genre in television through a queer and feminist lens, I engage with the BBC America series Killing Eve (2018-), which presents viewers with a powerful and confusing narrative of antiquated clashing ideals, unrequited eternal love, and palpable antipathy to hetero-patriarchal values. Methods join textual analysis of the show with discourse analysis of its themes at their intersection with the current political moment. As a critical voice, Killing Eve sets out to deconstruct the spy thriller subgenre from within, consistently presenting strong and complicated female characters who are not only uniquely entertaining, but catalyze timely conversations around difficult topics tied to gender, sexuality, and geopolitics. The work I present here expands on those conversations in light of conservative backlash against queer and feminist political progress, and at a time—three decades after the end of the Cold War—when the relationship between the U.S. and Russia seems no longer to have any discernible set of rules.