The exhaustion of liberal feminism on screen
I watched The Handmaid's Tale Like being slapped in the face. Violent, prolonged, necessary. The first seasons left me glued to my seat, torn between admiration and horror. The saturated red of the dresses, the immaculate white of the headdresses, the camera glued to June's face like a mirror too close. Everything screamed, "Look." Look at what this world can become if we let our guard down. Look at what others are already experiencing, in other countries, in other silences. The narrative was both a warning and an exorcism. But after these six seasons, the intensity wanes, the pain becomes saturated. One question remains: what do we do with all this? What's left once the slap has been received, digested, integrated?
What surfaces, in me as in so many others, is a kind of exhaustion. A weariness of discourse, of slogans, of displays. Liberal feminism, the kind that parades on the catwalks, is sold on mugs, is expressed in hashtags… seems suddenly to have run out of steam. As if, by trying so hard to please everyone, it no longer speaks to anyone. But film and television don't have that luxury: they reach where discourse fails. For the past few years, another generation of fiction has emerged, taking up the torch after The Handmaid's Talenot to celebrate emancipation, but to probe its dead ends.
Take the series The PowerReleased in 2023 on Prime Video, the premise had all the hallmarks of a post-MeToo dream: teenage girls discover an electric power, literally, that makes them physically dominant. The reversal is exhilarating, and there's a thrill in seeing women finally take control. And yet, very quickly, vertigo replaces euphoria: power shifts, but the violence remains. What's being challenged isn't inequality itself, but the system that perpetuates it, regardless of who wields it. Liberal feminism, here, is unmasked in its most persistent illusion: believing that access to power liberates, when it often only reproduces old patterns under a new veneer.
The series Y: The Last ManThe series, released in 2021, takes this reflection even further. All the men die, except one. The world becomes almost exclusively female. But instead of transforming into a gentle and supportive utopia, it falls apart. Tensions erupt, hierarchies are re-established, and old ways of thinking resurface. The narrative doesn't fantasize about a society without men: it reveals that patriarchy isn't simply a matter of gender, but a deeply ingrained mental structure. It's not male bodies alone that perpetuate oppression, but a system of reflexes, fears, and wounds that is difficult to eradicate, even in a world that claims to be reinventing itself.
And then there is Saint Omer By Alice Diop. A film without dystopia, without apocalypse, without spectacular fiction. Only a courtroom, a woman accused of infanticide, and another woman, silent, observing her. No preachy moral lessons. No tear-jerking violins. Just glances, silences, a lingering unease. The film says a great deal, without a rallying cry. It shows how our societies continue to judge women according to a narrow, white, bourgeois standard. It shows how media feminism still fails to include those who lack the codes and the privileges. It's not a pamphlet: it's a mirror. And perhaps that's even worse.
Even BarbieIn its pink and glittery splendor, it fits into this ebb. Greta Gerwig could have been content with a joyfully feminist, caricatured, and triumphant film. But she chooses something else. Her heroine discovers that the freedom she was sold is another form of alienation. She wavers, doubts, even cries. The girl power unravels into an existential crisis. What good is freedom if it's just a slogan? What is the value of...women empowerment if it only leads to solitude, permanent objectification, and inescapable contradictions? Gerwig turns the mirror around, and what we see is not the promised utopia, but immense weariness.
These works do not form a manifesto. They do not all say the same thing, nor do they propose a single doctrine. But they share a common rejection: that of forced optimism. They do not seek to reassure; they disturb. They reveal that feminism, far from being a miracle solution, is a slow, painful, and fragmented process. And that liberalism, in trying to simplify it, to make it appealing, has sometimes drained it of its subversive power.
Today, June, the handmaid's tale, is no longer alone. Other figures have emerged, ambiguous, imperfect. They don't carry banners. They don't recite slogans. They fall, they get back up, they doubt. And in these faltering moments, something essential takes shape: a less glorious, but more human feminism. More radical too, because it no longer seeks to convince, but to understand.
