The Role of Dystopia in Contemporary Audiovisual Serial Production

Abstract

Dystopian narratives are the core of contemporary storytelling, as they draw on imaginaries that captures fears and anxieties widely spread in the social perception. This work is focused on audiovisual serial production, which has witnessed a recent proliferation of dystopian tales. These narratives take several different conformations throughout the serial format. The first aim of this paper was to understand how dystopian traits have developed within the contemporary American production, considered its articulation in broadcast television, basic cable, premium cable and OTT. Among the dystopian narratives, we considered those that constitute original stories and those that are adapted from literature, comic or film. Finally, the television series The Handmaid's Tale (Hulu, 2017-) was analyzed as a case study, focusing on two important themes at the core of the dystopian narrative: political-religious fundamentalism and childless dystopia.