「经济学人」Goodbye Gilead

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.

The show had its premiere on Hulu, a streaming service, not long after Donald Trump’s inauguration, when people feared democratic backsliding and the creep of religious fundamentalism into politics. As the president stacked the courts with anti-abortion judges and called for the defunding of Planned Parenthood, a reproductive-health organisation, some exclaimed that Ms Atwood had produced not a work of fiction, but a prophecy.

The handmaids’ costume became a visual metaphor of resistance: protesters dressed in red robes and white caps stood outside statehouses across America. Critics breathlessly described the adaptation as the defining artwork of the Trump era. “The Handmaid’s Tale” went on to win eight Emmy awards for its first season and became the first streaming show to win Outstanding Drama Series.

Six seasons later, it will come to an end on May 27th. The final season began not long after Mr Trump re-entered the White House. Yet the fervour around the show has dissipated; after a peak in 2021, viewership has declined. It no longer dominates the public discussion. Why?

One reason is that “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not, in fact, a mirror of the Trump era. Though there are parallels—an early episode showed an attack on the Capitol, three years before the real one—Mr Trump has not instituted compulsory rape or the death penalty for dissenters.

Another is that the show has suffered by extending the story beyond its source material. After using up the plot of Ms Atwood’s slim novel in the first season, the show’s writers faced the tricky task of keeping the story compelling and the stakes high. June (Elisabeth Moss, pictured), the protagonist, has been trapped in a cycle of capture, escape and recapture that has strained the story’s credibility and tested viewers’ patience.

Resistance fatigue has also played a role. “The draw of the initial season was that it was so apocalyptic,” says Karen Ritzenhoff, an academic. Yet outrage is difficult to sustain, on screen and off it. Mr Trump remains unpopular, but his second term has not seen protests on the same scale as in 2017, when some 4m Americans took part in the Women’s March.

The show’s main problem, however, is that it is unrelentingly bleak. One critic has called it a “hellhole” of “utter despair and soul-destroying misery”. Another said she had an anxiety attack after watching. For those concerned about the future of American democracy, “The Handmaid’s Tale” offers no respite.

Viewers may prefer the forthcoming adaptation of “The Testaments”, its sequel, instead. Watching people struggle under a totalitarian regime does not make for an enjoyable evening. Watching that regime collapse may be rather more thrilling.

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Goodbye Gilead”(May 22nd 2025)

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