As the fourth season airs from Thursday on OCS, the series "The Handmaid's Tale" has become, since 2017, one of the most political dramas on the small screen.

To the point that certain feminist movements have taken over the codes, in particular reusing the red and white costumes of the characters.

In 2017, the arrival on the small screen of a new series had the effect of a bomb.

Aesthetics neat and chilling dystopian scenario,

The Handmaid's Tale

(

The Handmaid Scarlet

VF) imagine replacing the United States by a dictatorship after a military coup led by extremist Christians.

In this Republic of Gilead, women are Wives, Marthas devoted to household chores, or Servants, reduced to the state of sexual objects in an attempt to repopulate the country, paralyzed by a drastic drop in the birth rate.

Behind the fiction, the reality of threats to women's rights

Adapted from a novel written in 1985 by Margaret Atwood, the series exposes, under the guise of fiction, the reality of threats to women's rights.

Impossible not to see in these religious of Gilead who swear by motherhood a mirror of the anti-abortions, particularly virulent in the United States.

The fact that women are prohibited, regardless of their status, from reading or writing, will bring back other countries further afield.

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The strong political charge of

The Handmaid's Tale

 largely explains its success. In 2017, Donald Trump, the president who "grabs women by the pussy" and cuts the subsidies for the American equivalent of family planning, has just come to power. "Perennial concerns were then focused on the right to abortion in the United States," recalls teacher-researcher Anne Besson, author of the essay

Les Pouvoirs de l'Enchantement

(Vendémiaire), which analyzes the political uses of fictions. "It is obvious that the impact of 

The Handmaid's Tale 

on the public is linked to this capacity of political reading, of application (of the series) to a lived situation."

The evocative power of dystopia

For the teacher, it's no surprise that a dystopian series has so much political force.

Being interested in a fictitious future introduces a welcome distance from reality, even though the sub-texts are clear.

"Works that realistically depict current issues will have less reach with the public because they may be perceived as propaganda, and therefore rejected."

According to Anne Besson, the public "wants to be able to decipher messages, not to be hit with them".

This happens often.

"Interpreting a political message in imaginary works of fiction is very old," continues Anne Besson.

"We always did it, for example, for the zombie films or Carpenter, which were seen as denunciations of the

American way of life

."

What is new, however, is the reverse process: when fiction feeds real politics.

And that's what happened with

The Handmaid's Tale

.

When feminists appropriate the codes of the series

From January 2017, in the United States, demonstrators marched dressed in the long red dress and the white cap worn by the Servants of the series.

They then protest against Donald Trump and his anti-abortion policy.

Marches that will continue throughout the term of the Republican president.

The Handmaid's Tale has arrived here at the Hyannis Women's March pic.twitter.com/nIGD1DfBOK

- Ethan Genter (@EthanGenterCCT) January 20, 2018

In February 2018, in Croatia, others demanded in the same costume the ratification of a European text aimed at preventing and combating gender-based and sexual violence.

Powerful 'Handmaid's Tale' feminist demonstration in Zagreb, Croatia, in support of the ratification of the Istanbul Convention on violence against women (contested in the country by conservative groups due to its alleged 'gender ideology').

Photos: Mirela Pinđak.

pic.twitter.com/M84RPv0S1T

- Women's Studies, UCC (@uccwomenstudies) February 11, 2018

In Ireland and Argentina, two countries in which the fight for the right to abortion has recently borne fruit, activists have also adopted the codes of

The Handmaid's Tale 

to demand the opening of this right. 

“The costume created for the series has been appropriated by demonstrators around the world,” summarizes Anne Besson.

"So indeed, one of the things that makes this series so popular is this political appropriation, that is to say the way in which the Handmaids came off the screen to find themselves in the courts or in the courts. streets in the face of attacks on women's rights. "

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Effective communication

And it works.

Each time, the images go around the world.

Anne Besson notes that "by wearing this costume, the activists arouse in the mind all the emotions that the spectators will have felt" by seeing

The Handmaid's Tale

.

A "powerful" vector for their political message.

Visually, this red and this white stand out easily, catch the eye.

"This allows for effective communication for battles that would otherwise be invisible to us."

The evocative force of these outfits is appreciated all the more since the series produced by Hulu does not have the record audience, for example, of

Game of Thrones

. "In reality, because it is tough and available on small platforms,

The Handmaid's Tale

remains relatively confidential," notes Anne Besson. "However, all those who are a little informed have a vague idea of ​​what the series is about, and it is on this minimum common knowledge that activist appropriation is based." But it is a virtuous circle. It is also these very real costumes which, by taking over the public space, "gave the series a new spotlight".