Title: Breaking silence, bearing witness, and voicing defiance: the resistant female voice in the transmedia storyworld of The Handmaid's Tale.
Authors: Howell, Amanda
Abstract: With the recent success of HULU's video-on-demand adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale and widespread use of its imagery by political action groups like the Handmaid Coalition, The Handmaid's Tale has become a transmedia property whose dystopian storyworld extends beyond the bounds of any single text. Spanning old and new media, the fictional and real, its storyworld, the Gileadverse, is comprised of authorized entertainment products, as well as fan-produced texts and activist performances. Considering the 1985 novel, 1990 film, HULU's 2017-18 adaptation, as well as fan productions and activism, this paper surveys the transmedia shape of the Gileadverse, focusing on how this storyworld is unified by a thematic concern with the resistant female voice.
Subjects: HANDMAID'S Tale, The (TV program); TRANSMEDIA storytelling; DYSTOPIAS; ACTIVISM; WOMEN in mass media
Publication: Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 2019, Vol 33, Issue 2, p216
ISSN: 1030-4312
Publication type: Academic Journal
DOI: 10.1080/10304312.2019.1569392

Breaking silence, bearing witness, and voicing defiance: the resistant female voice in the transmedia storyworld of The Handmaid's Tale.

Howell, Amanda