Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

OMG Zuleyka excellent point re: Dystopian Fiction. Yeah you are right, I am getting really annoyed with how POC characters are usually sidelined. With #HandmaidsTale, I think that the inclusion of POC secondary/minor characters is their way of 'addressing race' in the TV series

Yes. Inclusion of Black queer woman was sloppily handled, even though she's potentially the best character.And Mexican diplomats buying White kids is an insidious and wilful twist on reality. That White people would take kids of colour without enforcing racial categories is ridic

...That means, actually, that Indigenous people will overlook centuries of dispossession, that Indigenous & other Black folk will forget slavery, that Brown folk will overlook imperial wars... to fight alongside White people. It's the perfect illustration of White supremacy

Yeah I see what you mean. I thought that maybe these were opportunities to look at issues of refugees/gender discrimination via different lens. But it encapsulates white supremacy via dystopian fiction. Now that explains the absence of 'race'

It's the exploitation of refugee stories, the appropriation of colonial history In the post apocalyptic world, Whiteness wins POC are somehow inexplicably extinct White people are enslaved White people rebel, survive & win the world As if slavery is so easy to unshackle

Yes, and I think the series speaks volumes of how this takes place with the use of WOC actors to play significant roles (in this case, the daughter, the husband, the BF, the 'martha')

TV show has made many changes to the book, modernising much. It was an opportunity to deal with racial inequality in a nuanced way. But instead, it is simply a celebration of White feminism - gender politics that whitewashes racial justice & extols the interests of White women

Yes, universalising the experiences of white women in this dystopia in ways that try to equate it with other women, while normalising the idea of 'I have a black friend/daughter/husband' - and that is what has been insidiously irking me about this show.

Thanks for pointing me to this exchange - interested as a viewer of the show but also anthropologist off air. The 'culture' of Gilead and social relations are interesting because there is extreme nuance about some things and completely missed opportunities with others.