“The Handmaid’s Tale” reveals the limits of dystopian television
Six seasons of suffering is more than enough
IN THE SPRING of 2017 a troubling vision of America arrived on television screens. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of 1985, “The Handmaid’s Tale” depicted a country that had been transformed into Gilead, a theocratic dictatorship. Women were stripped of their civil rights. Those who were fertile were enslaved as “handmaids”: childbearing vessels for the ruling class.
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This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Goodbye Gilead”
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