Horrors of the female body probably aren’t something you want to read about while chilling nearly-nude on a beach — but if you haven’t yet devoured Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, it’s time to see what the intersectional feminist hype is about. And you have, loan your copy to a friend. According to Vulture, Machado’s debut short story collection is being made into an anthology series à la Charlie Booker’s techno-paranoia juggernaut Black Mirror. Think a psychological thriller series about fighting (and being fucked by) the patriarchy, with bariatric surgery procedures and murders by microaggression instead of VR implants and killer drone honeybees. SIGN. US. UP.
Machado has teamed up with production company Imagine Television to bring her stories to screens. In an email to Vulture, Imagine’s president Kim Falvey praised Machado’s ability to “capture the intense, unspoken psychology of inhabiting a woman’s body today” predicting that the series will “undoubtedly be a force in the conversation about gender.” Judging by the intense fanfare caused Black Mirror’s queer, feminist “San Junipero” episode, there’s definitely a potential audience for such content. Machado — who herself identifies as queer and is an unapologetic #MeToo tea-spiller — has previously spoken about the importance of who’s writing women’s stories. “I feel like the people who write the most sex scenes are straight white dudes,” she told The Guardian last year. Here’s to a brave new world of diverse, terrifying television.