Reproductive conscription and eugenic horror in Hulu's adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale.

This article analyzes Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel *The Handmaid's Tale* and its Hulu television adaptation (2017–present) through the lens of eugenics, focusing on how both works depict reproductive conscription within a dystopian theocracy called the Republic of Gilead. It argues that Atwood's novel functions as a speculative eugenic demodystopia, reflecting early twentieth-century eugenic ideologies that reduce women, especially fertile Handmaids, to reproductive vessels controlled by a classist and patriarchal regime. The television adaptation intensifies these themes by visually literalizing botanical and agricultural metaphors—most notably transforming the novel's subtle tattoos into prominent ear tags that symbolize the Handmaids' dehumanization as breeding stock—and employs horror tropes to emphasize the physical and psychological violence of reproductive slavery. The series further reframes the protagonist June as a "Final Girl," a horror genre figure who survives and resists her oppression, marking a shift from victimhood to empowered rebellion within the narrative.