What We Talk About When We Talk About Clone Club

What is the real-world history and science of human cloning, and does Orphan Black get it right? Can you "own" a person—even a cloned one? How can Sarah Manning be straight, Cosima gay, and Tony trans? Cult hit sci-fi show Orphan Black doesn't just entertain—it also raises fascinating questions about human cloning, its ethics, and its impact on personal identity. In What We Talk About When We Talk About Clone Club: Bioethics and Philosophy in Orphan Black, prominent bioethicist Gregory E. Pence violates Clone Club's first rule to take us deeper into the show and its connections to the real world, including: Widespread myths about human clones (and Orphan Black's rejection of them) Our ugly history of eugenics The ethics of human experimentation, by way of Projects Castor and Leda What we can learn about clones and identity from twin studies and tensions among Orphan Black's clone "sisters" Kendall Malone and other genetic anomalies The brave new world of genetic enhancement and clonal dynasties, and how Helena and Kira Manning fit in In the process, What We Talk About When We Talk About Clone Club reveals why Orphan Black is some of today's most engaging and thought-provoking television.

This volume provides an overview of the landscape of mediated female agencies and subjectivities in the last decade. In three sections, the book covers the films of women directors, television shows featuring women in lead roles, and the representational struggles of women in cultural context, with a special focus on changes in the transformative power of narratives and images across genres and platforms. This collection derives from the editors’ multi-year experiences as scholars and practitioners in the field of film and television. It is an effort that aims to describe and understand female agencies and subjectivities across screen narratives, gather scholars from around the world to generate timely discussions, and inspire fellow researchers and practitioners of film and television.

The BBC America series Orphan Black (2013-2017) won acclaim for its compelling writing, resonant themes and innovative special effects. And for the bravura acting of Tatiana Maslany, who plays an ever-growing number of clones drawn into an increasingly dangerous world of cutting-edge science, corporate espionage, military secrets and religious fanaticism. Heir to pioneering shows centered on strong female characters, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse, Lost and Xena: Warrior Princess, Orphan Black models the current Golden Age of serial-form storytelling, with themes of identity, bodily autonomy, gender and sexuality playing against corporate greed and its co-opting of science. This collection of new essays analyzes the diverse clone characters and the series, covering topics including motherhood, surveillance culture, mythology, eugenics, and special effects, as well as the science behind cloning.

A fascinating deep-dive into how shows from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to The Equalizer have changed the way women are portrayed on television. The last three decades of television have been a formative and progressive time for female characters, as stronger, more independent women have appeared on screen to guide a new generation of viewers into their own era of power. These characters battle vampires, demons, corrupt government officials, and scientific programs all while dealing with the same real-world concerns their audiences face every day. In Fierce Females on Television: A Cultural History, Nicole Evelina examines ten shows from the past thirty years to unveil the enormous impact they have had on the way women are portrayed on television. She reveals how Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Alias, Nikita, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones, Homeland, House of Cards, Orphan Black, and The Equalizer feature extraordinary lead characters who are at the same time utterly relatable, facing surprisingly familiar questions in their everyday lives regarding sexuality, gender, and how to fight back in a patriarchal world. Fierce Females on Television shows how, even with their captivating mix of melodrama, mystery, magic, and martial arts, these shows nevertheless represent the audience’s own desires and fears. Finally, viewers of science fiction, fantasy, spy, and political shows have strong, modern women to watch, admire, and emulate.

Technologies like CRISPR and gene drives are ushering in a new era of genetic engineering, wherein the technical means to modify DNA are cheaper, faster, more accurate, more widely accessible, and with more far-reaching effects than ever before. These cutting-edge technologies raise legal, ethical, cultural, and ecological questions that are so broad and consequential for both human and other-than-human life that they can be difficult to grasp. What is clear, however, is that the power to directly alter not just a singular form of life but also the genetics of entire species and thus the composition of ecosystems is currently both inadequately regulated and undertheorized. In Gene Editing, Law, and the Environment, distinguished scholars from law, the life sciences, philosophy, environmental studies, science and technology studies, animal health, and religious studies examine what is at stake with these new biotechnologies for life and law, both human and beyond.

In Orphan Black, several apparently unconnected women discover that they are exact physical doubles, that there are more of them out there, that they are all illegally produced clones, and that someone is having them killed. They find themselves in the midst of a secret and violent struggle between a fundamentalist religious group, a fanatical cult of superhuman biological enhancement, a clandestine department of the military, and a giant biotech corporation. Law enforcement is powerless and easily manipulated by these sinister forces. The clones are forced to form their own Clone Club, led by the resourceful Sarah Manning, to defend themselves against their numerous enemies and to find out exactly where they came from and why. Orphan Black continually raises philosophical issues, as well as ethical and policy questions deserving philosophical analysis. What makes a person a unique individual? Why is it so important for us to know where we came from? Should we have a say in whether a clone is made of us? Is it immoral to generate clones with built-in health problems or personality defects — and if so, does that mean that producers of clones must practice eugenic selection? What light does the behavior of members of the Clone Club shed on the nature-nurture debate? Is it relevant that most are heterosexual, one is a lesbian, and one is a transgendered male? This TV show shows us problems of biotechnology which will soon be vital everyday issues. But what kind of a future faces us when human clones are commonplace? Will groups of human clones have a tight bond of solidarity making them a threat to democracy? If the world is going to be taken over by an evil conspiracy, would it better be a scientific cult like Neolution or a religious cult like the Prolethians? Should biotech corporations be able to own the copyright on human DNA sequences? What rules of morality apply when you can’t trust the police and powerful groups are ready to murder you?

An official guide to the crazy science of Orphan Black Delve deeper into the scientific terms and theories at the core of the Peabody-winning, cult favourite show. With exclusive insights from the show’s co-creator Graeme Manson and science consultant Cosima Herter, The Science of Orphan Black takes you behind the closed doors of the Dyad Institute and inside Neolution. Authors Casey Griffin and Nina Nesseth decode the mysteries of Orphan Black — from the history of cloning, epigenetics, synthetic biology, chimerism, the real diseases on which the clone disease is based, and the transhumanist philosophies of Neolution, to what exactly happens when a projectile pencil is shot through a person’s eye and into their brain.