Screening women’s trauma: constructing trauma for television in <i>Westworld</i> and <i>The Handmaid’s Tale</i>

Boyle, Amy

doi:10.1080/14680777.2022.2032790

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In this fashion, the series' drama relies on essentialized conceptions of what Adrienne Rich ([1986] 1995) describes as the "pull" or "magnetic field" between mother and child, which is socially imposed to naturalize women as self-negating mothers and caregivers (p. 23). June and the Handmaids take their revenge as "mama bears" (Paulson 2005) and while the series does grant testimony to women's experiences of violence and oppression (see Boyle 2022), it exhibits a reluctance to portray women as angry on their own behalf. As Linda Alcoff and Laura Gray (1993) write, "women's anger is generally sanctioned only when it is on behalf of others-primarily children and other family members" (p. 286).…”

Section: This (White) Woman's Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Domestic Feminism”: The Politics of Reproduction and Motherhood in Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Boyle

2023

Television & New Media

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Popularized by Hulu’s television adaptation, the allegories and iconography of The Handmaid’s Tale have been used in women’s reproductive rights activism around the world. However, at the same time, the series has been recognized and critiqued as offering white, conservative feminism. This article explores how Hulu’s adaptation often works to domesticate Margaret Atwood’s novel and the series’ feminist implications in regard to reproduction and motherhood. While The Handmaid’s Tale has become spectacularly visible as a popular feminist television series, its reproductive politics and representations of women, family and motherhood are largely conservative: waging a limited resistance on behalf of neotraditional white Anglo-western mothers. In light of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, this article is motivated by the conviction that it is increasingly important to hold sociocultural representations of reproduction and motherhood to account.

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Section: This (White) Woman's Workmentioning

confidence: 99%