Kinflix: Adoption and Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Film (Formations: Adoption, Kinship, and Culture)

In Kinflix, Marina Fedosik analyzes cinematic representations of adoption and technologically assisted reproduction to identify the intersecting paradigms through which Western cultures understand these ways of making families. Looking at diverse genres—films include The Omen,Raising Arizona,Losing Isaiah,Blade Runner, and more—Fedosik finds that the heterocoital family remains a hegemonic metaphor for representing and structuring all other methods of reproduction. This potentially precludes understanding adoption and ARTs on their own terms and requires those involved in nontraditional family formation to negotiate kinship connections and identities against the cultural demands of this model. Resisting simple ideological readings of film genres, Fedosik unsettles cultural scripts around adoption and reproduction and scrutinizes moments where formulaic genre logic may be troubled by representations of lived experience that transcend common tropes of family formation. She argues that adoption as a reproductive technology is uniquely situated to expose cultural tensions around nontraditional methods of reproduction that are rapidly developing in the post-IVF biocultural landscape. Rapidly changing reproductive technologies, Fedosik asserts, demand a cultural response—and require more expansive reflection on reproductive futurities.