GENDER VIOLENCE AND GENDERED AGENCY WITHIN THE ACTANTIAL PARADIGM OF PERSON OF INTEREST

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks CBS premiered Person of Interest. It introduced the inventor of a surveillance system commanded by the government trying to find a ―back door to his creation: devised to prevent terrorism, it was programmed to distinguish ―relevant from ―irrelevant threats, and he feels that many potential victims are being neglected. Focusing on the topicalization of gender violence, we read the show through: 1) Furedi‘s analyses of the post-9/11 culture of fear; 2) McNay‘s neo-Foucauldian discussion of gender and agency. We argue that Nolan transplants ideas about the War on Terror onto everyday threats including gender terrorism. We also approach agency, which fluctuates between presenting the (super)hero as the savior of the damsel in distress and portraying women as agents who can protect themselves and others. Although the former dominates, the weight of gender violence within a Greimasian dramaturgical model makes Person of Interest different from other post-9/11 series; the clearest one in the vindication of this problem as ―relevant within a media discourse dominated by allegedly more important, macro-level fears of our time.