Michael Schneider, executive editor for Variety's TV section, claimed in an article published Friday that the imaginary fascist worlds of Amazon Prime's "The Boys" and Hulu's "The Handmaid's Tale" are becoming reality.
Schneider argued the fictitious worlds created in the TV series "don't seem so far-fetched anymore" in President Donald Trump's America.
"The Boys," a TV series based on a group of superheroes who cause more chaos than they do good, recently rolled out a marketing campaign jokingly referring to the show as a documentary. In a 2022 interview with Rolling Stone, showrunner Eric Kripke confirmed the series' "evil-Superman-style character," Homelander, was created as a "direct Trump analogue."
The Variety editor wrote that the superhero series "feels a lot less fictional every season it's on the air."
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"That's why the cheeky 'The Boys' ads tout its campaign for 'Best Documentary Series.'" he wrote. "Sure, the 'documentary' is crossed out, and 'drama' is hastily written above it, like it was a last-minute mistake. But we've been making that joke for years."
Schneider then shifted his focus to "The Handmaid's Tale," claiming the frightening events that take place in the series "don't seem so far-fetched anymore."
He featured quotes from the show's creators to reinforce his point that the authoritarian dystopia featured in the series is now becoming reality.
The show's executive producer, Eric Tuchman, recalled that some writers for the show were concerned about the possibility of Roe v. Wade being overturned when Trump won the presidency in 2016. He felt that it sounded "kind of alarmist and extremist … I could not have been more wrong, obviously."
Tuchman claimed the show's creators weren't focused on calling attention to "the political situation in the country," but said "it was just uncanny how much it ended up being a mirror of what was happening in the real world."
Another showrunner, Yahlin Chang, said before she joined the production, she "did all this research into what happens when parents and children are separated in conflict zones." She conducted this research in preparation for a scene in which one of the characters is allowed to visit her estranged daughter for only 10 minutes under government supervision.
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"My research focused on conflict zones like Liberia, Cambodia, Bosnia. I never imagined that that would happen in our own country. But by the time I wrote this scene in 2017, and by the time it aired in 2018, it aired the week that we were separating parents and children at the border," Chang said.
She claimed "by doing research on what authoritarian regimes do," the show's creators "somehow predicted what would happen" in the real world.
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Schneider noted that, "Ironically, just as things get even worse here in the United States," the imaginary land of Gilead in the series is poised for a revolution.
In closing, the Variety editor left readers with his hopes for the future.
"A revolution and a happy ending for 'The Handmaid's Tale?' Here's hoping the real world can imitate art in this way, too," Schneider concluded.
