THE FUTURE OF THE PAST: SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION IN THE HANDMAID’S TALE AND ITS PRESENT INTERACTION
Dystopia; Sociology of Image; Sociology of Culture; Cultural Studies; Feminism.
In 2017, the streaming platform Hulu premiered the first season of the series The Handmaid’s Tale, an adaptation of the eponymous book by Margaret Atwood. The context portrays an alternative reality, in which the United States suffered a political coup and the implementation of Gilead’s theocratic regime. The series quickly won over critics and audiences, bringing a dystopian plot full of symbolism and visual elements that dialogue with the unstable socio-political moment faced by countries like Brazil and the United States in the same period. The production gained prominence through shares and discussions on digital social media, becoming part of the series culture, which has been developing over the past few years, mainly with digital audiovisual platforms. Faced with this, this study defends the hypothesis that there are close and possible links between the series and the current reality, which reveal a symbolic clash between the advance of the struggle of feminism and the current conservative governments, grounded in the chauvinism embedded in the culture of contemporary societies. To highlight these aspects, the film analysis methodology was used (VANOYE; GOLIOT-LÉTÉ, 2002; SORLIN, 1985), to understand the intentionality of diegetic and visual elements present in the first season of the series, with greater emphasis on the episode Offred. In addition, it used Cultural Studies (WILLIAMS, 1979) in dialogue with other authors (ELIAS, 2011; FOUCAULT, 2014; ADORNO, 2002; JENKINS, 2008; JOST, 2012; MORIN, 2002; BAUMAN, 2017), to exercise the understanding about the materiality of culture and its current social relations through streaming media. This enabled the realization of a deeper sociological reading that revealed themes such as the rescue of "values", fears, surveillance, control, and possibilities of domination in contemporary society.