Female Characters: Annotated Bibliography Annotated Bibliography

Atwood, Margaret. “Margaret Atwood on What ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Means in the Age of Trump.”The New York Times, 2017. NYTimes.com.

In this review, the author of the original book The Handmaid’s Tale that the eponymous TV show is based on discusses the modern contextualization of the narrative from the 1980s. Atwood shares the initial message of the narrative and how it has been transformed by the time it was adapted to the shape of a modern film. One of the aspects of the dystopian representation that Atwood touches on is that the motive of women deprived of their position of power is “too much like way too much history.” Furthermore, Atwood reflects on the three major topics: feminism, religion, and prediction. In discussing the distribution of power, Atwood notes that reproductive control has always been one of the features of oppressive regimes. Next, in the tyranny-governed societies, the dominant religion is used to supplant and eradicate any pre-existing alternative beliefs; thus, Atwood argues that religion is a ‘symptom,’ not a cause of the societal change. Lastly, Atwood notes that the literary essence of the narrative is the “literature of witness” rather than an attempt at an accurate prediction of the future. Overall, the author’s analysis helps identify some of the focal points for the TV show’s subsequent interpretation.

Boyle, Amy. “‘They Should Have Never Given Us Uniforms If They Didn’t Want Us to Be an Army’: The Handmaid’s Tale as Transmedia Feminism.”Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 45, no. 4, 2020, pp. 845–870. journals.uchicago.edu (Atypon).

Crawley, Karen. “Reproducing Whiteness: Feminist Genres, Legal Subjectivity and the Post-Racial Dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale (2017-).”Law and Critique, vol. 29, no. 3, 2018, pp. 333–358. ProQuest.

Hendershot, Heather. “The Handmaid’s Tale as Ustopian Allegory: ‘Stars and Stripes Forever, Baby.’”Film Quarterly, vol. 72, no. 1, 2018, pp. 13–25. online.ucpress.edu.

Hinders, Katherine E. Reproducing Patriarchy: Dystopian (In)Fertility Onscreen – ProQuest. Southern Illinois University, 2019.

In this research, Hinders critically examines the role of female characters in the cinematic narrative with a particular focus on women’s fertility and the “anxiety” surrounding it. By investigating the cultural underlining of the increasing tendency to depict fertility and infertility issues, Hinders finds references to the political sentiments of modern days. Hinders investigates several movies and TV shows, among which is The Handmaid’s Tale, and argues that despite appearing superficially critical of reproductive control, they unconsciously perpetuate the view of women as reduced to their fertility.

1. This work’s intended audience is scholars with intersecting interests in media theory and feminist research. The published research in question is based on a graduate school of mass communication and media arts dissertation. This fact allows one to infer that the author and the potential readers are deeply invested in approaching the topic from a scholarly perspective. However, the results of this research may be appealing to a sufficiently curious and less research-oriented public as well since it addresses contemporary political issues in the US, such as white supremacy.
2. Hinders contends that at the core of the dystopian overtone of The Handmaid’s Tale lies the “cultural anxiety about growing infertility, especially ‘white’ infertility” (1). The idea of basing the collapse of the society and return to fundamentalism around mass infertility, according to Hinders, must come from its culture of origin and reflect the predominant societal concerns. While I agree with Hinders that “dystopia as a genre is a space to explore our communal fears,” I do not necessarily believe that The Handmaid’s Tale reinforces or supports the idea of reducing women to their reproductive function (3). Instead, the messaging of the show subverts the reductionist rhetoric by highlighting and ridiculing antagonists’ actions. Lastly, Hinders makes an excellent point about blurring the lines between womanhood and motherhood, which provides a fruitful basis for further analysis.
3. The author produces a solid and comprehensive analysis of dystopian feminism as a genre and introduces various supporting studies on reproductive autonomy, which provides a much-needed context for future discussion. Hinders references three major cinematic works in her analysis to support different arguments: Blade Runner 2049, Children of Men, and The Handmaid’s Tale (9). In addition, Hinders provides statistics on fertility in the US, discusses Roe v. Wade, and examines other film pieces to provide a background of racial undertones for reproductive anxiety.
4. Hinders situates the argument in the context of Marxism, stating that “the sexual, manual, and reproductive labor performed by women” has been upturned by the needs of the capitalist society (12). Ultimately, Hinders argues against the fact that dystopian narratives like The Handmaid’s Tale reject capitalism – rather, she contends, they reinforce depictions of women as means of reproduction. Moreover, the primary theory that Hinders applies is feminist film theory, which she uses to address the issues like men directing most of the films about female bodily autonomy.
5. How would a feminist dystopia be different if a woman directed a similar genre? Where is the line between adapting and subverting the rhetoric that the dystopian world intends to criticize?

Howell, Amanda. “Breaking Silence, Bearing Witness, and Voicing Defiance: The Resistant Female Voice in the Transmedia Storyworld of The Handmaid’s Tale.”Continuum, vol. 33, no. 2, 2019, pp. 216–229. Taylor and Francis+NEJM.

Jacobo, Veronica Martinez. The Female Nature: Representations of Motherhood and Nature in Dystopian Films. The University of Texas, 2019. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Klonowska, Barbara. “On Desire, Failure and Fear: Utopia and Dystopia in Contemporary Cinema.”New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 11–28. IngentaConnect.

In this work, Klonowska approaches the topic of dystopian and utopian depictions of reality in modern cinematography. She notes contemporary film’s characteristic features, themes, and tropes and provides several examples from the 21^st-century works. Klonowska observes a gradual shift in films that leaned on the utopian side to an increasingly dystopian portrayal of the future at the start of the century. Moreover, Klonowska notes that much of contemporary work focuses on the individuals rather than on the larger political systems, which redefines the messaging that the viewers receive. The overview of contemporary cinematic trends in the portrayal of dystopian societies helps analyze the society in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Lahl, Jennifer. “Surrogacy, the Handmaid’s Tale, and Reproductive Ethics: Egg Donation, Sperm Donation and Surrogacy.” Issues in Law & Medicine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2017, pp. 241–243. ProQuest. Web.

In the discussion centered around ethical and legal issues of reproductive control, Lahl covers the issues that modern women face in regaining bodily autonomy. One of the topics highlights how modern society perceives surrogacy – “consumerism and commodification of a woman’s body.” Moreover, Lahl addresses the issues of oppression that surrogate mothers go through: threats to give up the children they bond with, exploitation of financially vulnerable women, and health consequences. This resource allows one to better understand the question of fertility in oppressive societies by comparing it with a real-life perspective.