21 pop culture moments in 2017 that spoke to the zeitgeist

The Handmaid’s Tale

Few works of fiction in 2017 hit a nerve like Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. In the show, the United States government has collapsed, hijacked by a faction of Christian fundamentalists and replaced by a theocratic military dictatorship. Called the Republic of Gilead, the new regime exercises rigid control over women’s lives, prohibiting them from reading and denying them financial independence. Elizabeth Moss’s heroine, Offred (as in, “of Fred”), serves as a handmaid, tasked with bearing children for her assigned master.

The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t prescient. As Margaret Atwood explained in a New York Times essay, her original 1985 book lent its dystopia authenticity by studying the past (it’s no accident that the action takes place in New England, with its Puritan roots) as well as contemporary trends (the ‘80s witnessed a resurgence of conservatism that infiltrated even feminist circles). Misogyny and religious fanaticism are ingrained in the country’s DNA; Offred’s tale simply exposed what’s already there.

That said, I doubt the television series would have roused quite the same level of fervor had it arrived during the Obama administration. In the Trump era, Gilead suddenly seems vivid rather than abstract, familiar rather than nightmarish; it is our reality, maybe not in the particulars of its rules, but in its general culture of paranoia and repression.

The change in medium also helped. Images wield a power that words, no matter how eloquent, lack, closing the distance between the audience and the narrative. There’s a kick to seeing the handmaids assemble on a field in their identical red robes and white bonnets. It’s only natural that protesters used the costume, turning a symbol of modesty into an act of defiance.