Articulating Feminism(s): Voicelessness, (In)Visibility and Agency in Top of the Lake

In Top of the Lake (2013), Campion’s first return to television since 1990, each of the female characters experiences some form of male violence, and each struggles to articulate her subjectivity within patriarchy. Although Campion has previously stated that her ‘orientation isn’t political or doesn’t come out of modern politics’ (Cantwell 1999, 158), it is argued here that Top of the Lake represents a marked shift from this assertion, with feminism used as the organising (politicised) framework within which the narrative functions. Reading Top of the Lake as representative of a discursive movement in Campion’s oeuvre, the chapter sees the series as a direct response to the cultural landscape of the first two decades of the 2000s, culminating in the #MeToo ‘moment’. Using varying feminist lenses to read the series – from the ‘second wave’ to Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic work to #MeToo – this chapter heralds Campion’s television work as a turn towards a more feminist sensibility.