A lot of television drama these days has been made redundant by the Trump administration. Why watch House of Cards when you can see the real thing rolling 24/7 on CNN? But the recent MGM-Hulu adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1984 dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale has me mesmerised. I’ve been binge watching it lately, not because I think that Trump’s America is about to become a religious autocracy in which fertile females are forced into child-bearing servitude, but because Atwood was so prescient about how political extremism of any kind, coupled with a loss of trust in existing institutions, can quickly result in political milieus that one never thought possible.
由于特朗普政府的存在，眼下很多电视剧都变得多余了。既然现实版政治剧在有线新闻网(CNN) 24小时不间断播出，何必看《纸牌屋》(House of Cards)呢？但最近MGM-Hulu根据玛格丽特•阿特伍德(Margaret Atwood) 1985年发表的“敌托邦”（dystopian）小说《使女的故事》(The Handmaid’s Tale)改编的电视剧让我入迷。我近来一直在追这部剧，不是因为我觉得特朗普领导的美国很快会变成那种有生育能力的女性被迫提供生孩子苦役的宗教专制主义国家，而是因为阿特伍德的先见之明：任何类型的政治极端主义，再加上人们对现有制度失去信任，都可能迅速导致人们原以为不可能的政治环境。