Cultural Citizenship, Popular Culture and Gender: Examining Audience Understandings of The Handmaid’s Tale in Hungary Cover Image

Cultural Citizenship, Popular Culture and Gender: Examining Audience Understandings of The Handmaid’s Tale in Hungary
Cultural Citizenship, Popular Culture and Gender: Examining Audience Understandings of The Handmaid’s Tale in Hungary

Author(s): Agnes Strickland-Pajtok
Subject(s): Anthropology, Social Sciences, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Media studies, Communication studies, Culture and social structure , Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wrocławskiego
Keywords: cultural citizenship;feminism;television entertainment;audience studies;Hungary;

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how audiences engage with popular culture in ways that forge political awareness and civic engagement. Through exploring the various levels of engagement of Hungarian women with the 2017–2020 television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, this study answers questions such as: How do Hungarian female audiences engage with topics raised in The Handmaid’s Tale? How does their engagement with the show encourage cultural citizenship? Based on in-depth interviews with twenty-two Hungarian women, this qualitative empirical research sheds light on the role of television drama series in facilitating the manifestation of cultural citizenship as an arena of identity-construction and community-formation.

  • Issue Year: 14/2021
  • Issue No: 28
  • Page Range: 100-118
  • Page Count: 19
  • Language: English