2 The phenomenon of “genetic families” who bond over their newly discovered genetic relationship, is dramatized with equal prominence in the show.
Consequently, the show’s queer allegiances transgress more than heterosexual norms. As Hamner puts it, “ Orphan Black treats all of its clones as figuratively queer” (“Sterility” 413, italics in original). The series features a range of same-gender sexual relationships, prominent in several storylines, as well as surrogate, adoptive, and voluntary families that cross national, linguistic, educational, generational, class, and lifestyle boundaries. The importance of LGBTQIA+ families is foregrounded by the prominence of queer sexuality in the show itself. Orphan Black is unprecedented in setting both of these alternative family structures in dialogue with one another. This article explores the relationship between the alternative kinship networks in Orphan Black and these two real-world phenomena, concentrating on the privacy issues emerging almost weekly in news and other media accounts of individuals discovering new – often unexpected – kin. Nelson in Random Families: Genetic Strangers, Sperm Donor Siblings, and the Creation of New Kin (2018). The show’s reconceptualization of the nuclear family, as it has been traditionally conceived in Western society, evokes phenomena that are already becoming common in today’s world – both the “families of choice” described by Kath Weston in her book Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship (1991) and the genetic kin who are brought together via ancestry web sites, genetic testing services, and social media networks of donor-siblings 1 described by Rosanna Hertz and Margaret K. As the show progresses, the network of relations they forge – facetiously christened the “Clone Club” – ends up offering viewers an alternative vision of kinship and sociality.
But equally plausible in social terms are the bonds that begin to develop among the beleaguered figures, who are initially being hunted down by one of their own and later learn that they are under constant surveillance by an unethical corporation that is using them as experimental research subjects. From a scientific point of view, the clones’ differentiation into distinct identities is the most accurate aspect of the show’s premise (Hamner, Editing 95). The acclaimed Canadian television series Orphan Black (2013–2017) poses a question straight out of the pages of science fiction: What would it be like to encounter multiple versions of yourself in the form of clones that you never knew you had? Reared in completely different environments, each clone develops a unique personality, astonishingly portrayed by the actress Tatiana Maslany, who performs twelve different roles (often several in the same scene) over the course of the show’s five seasons.
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