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Ampere-turn

The ampere-turn (symbol A⋅t) is the MKS (metre–kilogram–second) unit of magnetomotive force (MMF), represented by a direct current of one ampere flowing in a single-turn loop. Turns refers to the winding number of an electrical conductor composing an electromagnetic coil. For example, a current of $2 A$ flowing through a coil of 10 turns produces an MMF of $20 A⋅t$. The corresponding physical quantity is N⋅I, the product of the number of turns, N, and the current, I; it has been used in industry, specifically, US-based coil-making industries.

By maintaining the same current and increasing the number of loops or turns of the coil, the strength of the magnetic field increases because each loop or turn of the coil sets up its own magnetic field. The magnetic field unites with the fields of the other loops to produce the field around the entire coil, making the total magnetic field stronger.

The strength of the magnetic field is not linearly related to the ampere-turns when a magnetic material is used as a part of the system. Also, the material within the magnet carrying the magnetic flux "saturates" at some point, after which adding more ampere-turns has little effect.

The ampere-turn corresponds to $4π⁄10$ gilberts, the corresponding CGS unit.

In Thomas Edison's laboratory Francis Upton was the lead mathematician. Trained with Helmholtz in Germany, he used weber as the name of the unit of current, modified to ampere later:
 * When conducting his investigations, Upton always noted the Weber turns and with his other data had all that was necessary to put the results of his work in proper form.
 * He discovered that a Weber turn (that is, an ampere turn) was a constant factor, a given number of which always produced the same effect magnetically.

title: Ampere-turn


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Talk:Christian alternative rock

Fountains of Wayne
I've taken out Fountains of Wayne as one of the bands that "dominate" this scene. I don't know if the members are Christian or not, but I've never seen them described as Christian rock or whatever before, and a quick Google doesn't turn up any evidence that they have been. (I might add - I've never listened to them closely, but I've not noticed any Christian element in what I have heard) --Camembert

Modern Alternative CCM
I think its a little incorrect to be calling newsboys, dctalk etc alternative. These bands are plainly considered mainstream 'ccm' for a long time. All the bands mentioned are very firmly on major ccm labels and are massively supported by the ccm industry. Perhaps better suggestions would be The Danielson Familie and Pedro The Lion.

Modern Alternative CCM
Agree with the previous poster, Newsboys might have alternative links via Steve Taylor, but for the most part their music is very mainstream CCM. Ditto for DC Talk. I would be hesitant to say Danielson Familie and Pedro the Lion "dominate" the current scene though because they are still little known among most of the alternative Christian music fanbase. Perhaps Delirious? would qualify here? They are certainly alternative in sound, and have a pretty consistent fanbase. I would also agree that Fountains of Wayne are not "Christian" alternative, although some or all members may claim the faith. Their music doesn't contain or suggest the gospel message, although it is quite good power pop. --GBrady

List
I think the list should be taken out. It dominates the whole page, and it doesn't even link to the Wikipedia pages for any of the artists. --Shippy Mandy

Adding an external link
Thoughts on adding this new CCM resource to the external list? www.ccmnews.net (Jdingman 07:22, 20 January 2006 (UTC))

Alternative rock
Merged this article to alternative rock. Neither is particularly meaty, and this makes disambiguation from Alternative far easier.--MikeJ9919 23:13, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge
Propose a merger or re-direct with Christian rock on the basis that this article is ultimately redundant as there is already a seperate article on Christian rock and Christian hip hop. - Binary TSO ??? 04:01, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

 * Strongly Disagree. OK, so it's not a vote. ACM is sufficiently different from Christian rock that they essentially have two different sets of bands and essentially two distinct fan bases. It's like suggesting that since modern rock and R&B have the same roots that we should merge those articles. ACM tends to have more mainstream followers while Christian rock appeals almost entirely to those who are Christian. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:55, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There are not enough sources to clarify or reinforce "ACM" as a distinctive term. The definition provided in the intro seems to consist of original research and it lacks any real definitive explanation. The only distinction provided is that "emphasizes musical style over lyrical content". That alone is not a sufficient difference, and is practically impossible to determine due to the subjective nature of the definition. - Binary TSO  ??? 12:10, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed; the definition on this page is inaccurate, at least as the Christian music industry tends to use the terms. Generally speaking, "Christian Alternative Rock" is simply alternative rock by a Christian band from a Christian perspective. The single citation to defend the distinction is both relatively old (2006; this is actually quite a while ago, given the changes in the Christian music industry over the past decade) and an undefended original assertion not based on legitimate research. Walter, your case is inherently circular in that any Christian rock (or even rap or hip-hop, according to this page) artist that acquires a decent number of "mainstream" followers somehow becomes an entirely different genre, having once been Christian rock but now being ACM. Take Skillet as an example; are they a former Christian rock band and current "ACM" band because they have acquired a bigger mainstream audience due to greater success the last few years? So what you're saying is that "ACM" is different from Christian rock in that the groups are popular with some non-Christians? I don't buy that as a genre distinction. Christian rap and Christian hip-hop are no more "Christian alternative rock" than secular rap is "alternative rock"; major changes need to be made to this article. I support merging with other articles. Nolewr (talk) 22:14, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think you understand what I was saying. I'm not saying that if an individual band appeals to a mainstream audience (Skillet (band), etc.) that this makes them part of the ACM scene. I'm saying that if you take the groups that make-up the ACM scene as a whole and look at their relative popularity to the mainstream when compared to the bands that make up the Christian rock scene as a whole, you would find that ACM hold more appeal. Individual bands are always an exception. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand exactly what you mean, but the problem is that your definition is circular. You can't say that Alternative Christian Rock is defined by its popularity in the "mainstream" and then point to Christian bands that you would then consider ACR as evidence for this. My point is that the definition you are presenting is entirely flawed and circular. Alternative Christian Rock is Alternative Rock from a Christian perspective. Period. Your attempts to define it based on mainstream popularity rather than genre is illogical and untenable.Nolewr (talk) 21:26, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't think you do understand what I'm saying. I'm not saying that an individual band's inclusion in ACM is defined by their popularity in the mainstream at all. In fact that's exactly what I said. I was relating popularity of ACM as a whole. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:40, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Found more sources
If we're accepting "alternative CCM" as a synonym, AllMusic has a genre page with a brief paragraph about it, and Jars of Clay is said to have been the "breakout band" of the movement in the '90s. I'll keep an eye out for more substantial sources, but for now these might help expand the article a bit, as well as establish notability.--Invisiboy42293 (talk) 16:14, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * As long as that doesn't make Jars of Clay a punk band since you have stated that all alternative music is a direct descendant of punk. --Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:29, 24 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Did I really say that? If so, I hereby modify it to "some are punk-influenced", and Jars of Clay is definitely not one of them. That issue aside, are the references okay?--Invisiboy42293 (talk) 18:49, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Origins
Where would you like the sourced placed? I can think of a few places, but it's not clear what the issue is or where the other influences are listed. Walter Görlitz (talk) 19:23, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:Christian alternative rock


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The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government. Offred is the central character and narrator and one of the "Handmaids": women who are forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", who are the ruling class in Gilead.

The novel explores themes of powerless women in a patriarchal society, loss of female agency and individuality, suppression of women's reproductive rights, and the various means by which women resist and try to gain individuality and independence. The title echoes the component parts of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories (such as "The Merchant's Tale" and "The Parson's Tale"). It also alludes to the tradition of fairy tales where the central character tells her story.

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987; it was also nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. In 2022, The Handmaid's Tale was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II. The book has been adapted into a 1990 film, a 2000 opera, a 2017 television series, and other media. A sequel novel, The Testaments, was published in 2019.

Plot summary
After a staged attack that killed the President of the United States and most of Congress, a radical political group called the "Sons of Jacob" uses theonomic ideology to launch a revolution. The United States Constitution is suspended, newspapers are censored, and what was formerly the United States of America is changed into a military dictatorship known as the Republic of Gilead. The new regime moves quickly to consolidate its power, overtaking all other religious groups, including Christian denominations.

The regime reorganizes society using a peculiar interpretation of some Old Testament ideas, and a new militarized, hierarchical model of social and religious fanaticism among its newly created social classes. One of the most significant changes is the limitation of women's rights. Women become the lowest-ranking class and are not allowed to own money or property, or to read and write. Most significantly, women are deprived of control over their own reproductive functions. Though the regime controls most of the country, there are various rebel groups that are still active.

The story is told in first-person narration by a woman named Offred. In this era of environmental pollution and radiation, she is one of the few remaining fertile women. Therefore, she is forcibly assigned to produce children for the "Commanders", the ruling class of men, and is known as a "Handmaid" based on the biblical story of Rachel and her handmaid Bilhah. She undergoes training to become a handmaid along with other women of her standing at the Rachel and Leah Centre.

Apart from Handmaids, women are classed socially and follow a strict dress code, ranked highest to lowest: the Commanders' Wives in sky blue, the Handmaids in red with large white bonnets to be easily seen, the Aunts (who train and indoctrinate the Handmaids) in brown, the Marthas (cooks and maids, possibly sterile women past child-bearing years) in green, Econowives (the wives of lower-ranking men who handle everything in the domestic sphere) in blue, red and green stripes, and widows in black.

Offred details her life starting with her third assignment as a Handmaid to a Commander. Interspersed with her narratives of her present-day experiences are flashbacks of her life before and during the beginning of the revolution, including her failed attempt to escape to Canada with her husband and child, her indoctrination into life as a Handmaid by the Aunts, and the escape of her friend Moira from the indoctrination facility. At her new home, she is treated poorly by the Commander's wife, Serena Joy, a former Christian media personality who supported women's domesticity and subordinate role well before Gilead was established.

To Offred's surprise, the Commander requests to see her outside of the "Ceremony", which is a ritualised rape conducted during the Handmaids’ likely fertile period each month (conducted in the presence of the wives), intended to result in conception. The Commander's request to see Offred in the library is an illegal activity in Gilead, but they meet nevertheless. They mostly play Scrabble and Offred is allowed to ask favours of him, either in terms of information or material items. The Commander asks Offred to kiss him "as if she meant it" and tells her about his strained relationship with his wife. Finally, he gives her lingerie and takes her to a covert, government-run brothel called Jezebel's. Offred unexpectedly encounters Moira there, with Moira's will broken, and learns from Moira that those who are found breaking the law are sent to the Colonies to clean up toxic waste or are allowed to work at Jezebel's as punishment.

In the days between her visits to the Commander, Offred also learns from her shopping partner, a woman called Ofglen, of the Mayday resistance, an underground network working to overthrow the Republic of Gilead. Not knowing of Offred's criminal acts with her husband, Serena begins to suspect that the Commander is infertile, and arranges for Offred to have a covert sexual encounter with Nick, the Commander's personal servant. Serena offers Offred information about her daughter in exchange. She later brings her a photograph of Offred's daughter which leaves Offred feeling dejected because she senses she has been erased from her daughter's life.

Nick had earlier tried to talk to Offred and had shown interest in her. After their initial sexual encounter, Offred and Nick begin to meet on their own initiative as well, with Offred discovering that she enjoys these intimate moments despite memories of her husband, and shares potentially dangerous information about her past with him. Offred tells Nick that she thinks she is pregnant.

Offred hears from a new walking partner that Ofglen has disappeared (reported as a suicide). Serena finds evidence of the relationship between Offred and the Commander, which results in Offred contemplating suicide. Shortly afterward, men arrive at the house wearing the uniform of the secret police, the Eyes of God, known informally as "the Eyes", to take her away. As she is led to a waiting van, Nick tells her to trust him and go with the men. It is unclear whether the men are actually Eyes or members of the Mayday resistance.

Offred is still unsure if Nick is a member of Mayday or an Eye posing as one, and does not know if leaving will result in her escape or her capture. Ultimately, she enters the van with her future uncertain while Commander Fred and Serena are left bereft in the house, each thinking of repercussions of Offred's capture on their lives.

The novel concludes with a metafictional epilogue, described as a partial transcript of an international historical association conference taking place in the year 2195. The keynote speaker explains that Offred's account of the events of the novel was recorded onto cassette tapes later found and transcribed by historians studying what is then called "the Gilead Period".

Background
Fitting with her statements that The Handmaid's Tale is a work of speculative fiction, not science fiction, Atwood's novel offers a satirical view of various social, political, and religious trends of the United States in the 1980s. Her motivation for writing the novel was her belief that in the 1980s, the religious right was discussing what they would do with/to women if they took power, including the Moral Majority, the Christian Coalition, and the Ronald Reagan administration. Atwood questions what would happen if these trends, and especially "casually held attitudes about women" were taken to their logical end.

Atwood argues that all of the scenarios offered in The Handmaid's Tale have actually occurred in real life—in an interview she gave regarding her later novel Oryx and Crake, Atwood maintains that "As with The Handmaid's Tale, I didn't put in anything that we haven't already done, we're not already doing, we're seriously trying to do, coupled with trends that are already in progress... So all of those things are real, and therefore the amount of pure invention is close to nil." Atwood was known to carry around newspaper clippings to her various interviews to support her fiction's basis in reality. Atwood has explained that The Handmaid's Tale is a response to those who say the oppressive, totalitarian, and religious governments that have taken hold in other countries throughout the years "can't happen here"—but in this work, she has tried to show how such a takeover might play out.

Atwood was also inspired by the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1978–79 that saw a theocracy established that drastically reduced the rights of women and imposed a strict dress code on Iranian women, very much like that of Gilead. In The Handmaid's Tale, a reference is made to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the form of the history book Iran and Gilead: Two Late Twentieth Century Monotheocracies mentioned in the endnotes describing the historians' convention in 2195. Atwood's picture of a society ruled by men who professed high moral principles, but are in fact self-interested and selfish was inspired by observing Canadian politicians in action, especially in her hometown of Toronto, who frequently profess in a very sanctimonious manner to be acting from the highest principles of morality while in reality the opposite is the case.

During the Second World War, Canadian women took on jobs in the place of men serving in the military that they were expected to yield to men once the war was over. After 1945, not all women wanted to return to their traditional roles as housewives and mothers, leading to a male backlash. Atwood was born in 1939, and while growing up in the 1950s she saw first-hand the complaints against women who continued to work after 1945 and of women who unhappily gave up their jobs, which she incorporated into her novel. The way in which the narrator is forced into becoming an unhappy housewife after she loses her job, in common with all the other women of Gilead, was inspired by Atwood's memories of the 1950s.

Atwood's inspiration for the Republic of Gilead came from her study of early American Puritans while at Harvard, which she attended on a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship. Atwood argues that the modern view of the Puritans—that they came to America to flee religious persecution in England and set up a religiously tolerant society—is misleading, and that instead, these Puritan leaders wanted to establish a monolithic theonomy where religious dissent would not be tolerated.

Atwood has a personal connection to the Puritans, and she dedicates the novel to her own ancestor Mary Webster, who was accused of witchcraft in Puritan New England but survived her hanging. Due to the totalitarian nature of Gileadean society, Atwood, in creating the setting, drew from the "utopian idealism" present in 20th-century régimes, such as Cambodia and Romania, as well as earlier New England Puritanism. Atwood has argued that a coup, such as the one depicted in The Handmaid's Tale, would misuse religion in order to achieve its own ends.

Atwood, in regards to those leading Gilead, further stated: "I don't consider these people to be Christians because they do not have at the core of their behaviour and ideologies what I, in my feeble Canadian way, would consider to be the core of Christianity ... and that would be not only love your neighbours but love your enemies. That would also be 'I was sick and you visited me not' and such and such ...And that would include also concern for the environment, because you can't love your neighbour or even your enemy, unless you love your neighbour's oxygen, food, and water. You can't love your neighbour or your enemy if you're presuming policies that are going to cause those people to die. ... Of course faith can be a force for good and often has been. So faith is a force for good particularly when people are feeling beleaguered and in need of hope. So you can have bad iterations and you can also have the iteration in which people have got too much power and then start abusing it. But that is human behaviour, so you can't lay it down to religion. You can find the same in any power situation, such as politics or ideologies that purport to be atheist. Need I mention the former Soviet Union? So it is not a question of religion making people behave badly. It is a question of human beings getting power and then wanting more of it."

In the same vein, Atwood also declared that "In the real world today, some religious groups are leading movements for the protection of vulnerable groups, including women." Atwood draws connections between the ways in which Gilead's leaders maintain their power and other examples of actual totalitarian governments. In her interviews, Atwood offers up Afghanistan as an example of a religious theocracy forcing women out of the public sphere and into their homes, as in Gilead.

The "state-sanctioned murder of dissidents" was inspired by the Philippines under President Ferdinand Marcos, and the last General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Nicolae Ceaușescu's obsession with increasing the birth rate (Decree 770) led to the strict policing of pregnant women and the outlawing of birth control and abortion. However, Atwood clearly explains that many of these actions were not just present in other cultures and countries, "but within Western society, and within the 'Christian' tradition itself".

The Republic of Gilead struggles with infertility, making Offred's services as a Handmaid vital to producing children and thus reproducing the society. Handmaids themselves are "untouchable", but their ability to signify status is equated to that of slaves or servants throughout history. Atwood connects their concerns with infertility to real-life problems our world faces, such as radiation, chemical pollution, and sexually transmitted disease (HIV/AIDS is specifically mentioned in the "Historical Notes" section at the end of the novel, which was a relatively new disease at the time of Atwood's writing whose long-term impact was still unknown). Atwood's strong stance on environmental issues and their negative consequences for our society has presented itself in other works such as her MaddAddam trilogy, and refers back to her growing up with biologists and her own scientific curiosity.

Offred
Offred is the protagonist and narrator who takes the readers through life in Gilead. She was labelled a "wanton woman" when Gilead was established because she had married a man who was divorced. All divorces were nullified by the new government, meaning her husband was now considered still married to his first wife, making Offred an adulteress. In trying to escape Gilead, she was separated from her husband and daughter.

She is part of the first generation of Gilead's women, those who remember pre-Gilead times. Proved fertile, she is considered an important commodity and has been placed as a "Handmaid" in the home of "the Commander" and his wife Serena Joy, to bear a child for them (Serena Joy is believed to be infertile). Readers are able to see Offred's resistance to the Republic of Gilead on the inside through her thoughts.

Offred is a slave name that describes her function: she is "of Fred" (i.e., she belongs to Fred – presumed to be the name of the Commander – and is considered a concubine). In the novel, Offred says that she is not a concubine, but a tool; a "two-legged womb". The Handmaids' names say nothing about who the women really are; their only identity is as the Commander's property. "Offred" is also a pun on the word "offered", as in "offered as a sacrifice", and "of red" because the red dress assigned for the Handmaids in Gilead.

In Atwood's original novel, Offred's real name is never revealed. In Volker Schlöndorff's 1990 film adaptation Offred was given the real name Kate, while the television series gave her the real name June.

The women in training to be Handmaids whisper names across their beds at night. The names are "Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June", and all are later accounted for except June. In addition, one of the Aunts tells the Handmaids-in-training to stop "mooning and June-ing". From this and other references, some readers have inferred that her birth name could be "June". Academic Madonne Miner suggests that "June" is a pseudonym. As "Mayday" is the name of the Gilead resistance, June could be an invention by the protagonist. The Nunavut conference covered in the epilogue takes place in June.

When the Hulu TV series chose to state outright that Offred's real name is June, Atwood wrote that it was not her original intention to imply that Offred's real name is June "but it fits, so readers are welcome to it if they wish". The revelation of Offred's real name serves only to humanize her in the presence of the other Handmaids.

Commander
The Commander says that he was a scientist and was previously involved in something similar to market research before Gilead's inception. Later, it is hypothesized, but not confirmed, that he might have been one of the architects of the Republic and its laws. Presumably, his first name is "Fred", though that, too, may be a pseudonym. He engages in forbidden intellectual pursuits with Offred, such as playing Scrabble, and introduces her to a secret club that serves as a brothel for high-ranking officers.

He shows his softer side to Offred during their covert meetings and confesses of being "misunderstood" by his wife. Offred learns that the Commander carried on a similar relationship with his previous Handmaid, who later killed herself when his wife found out.

In the epilogue, Professor Pieixoto speculates that one of two figures, both instrumental in the establishment of Gilead, may have been the Commander, based on the name "Fred". It is his belief that the Commander was a man named Frederick R. Waterford who was killed in a purge shortly after Offred was taken away, charged with harbouring an enemy agent.

Serena Joy
Serena Joy is a former televangelist and the Commander's Wife in the fundamentalist theonomy. Her real name is Pam and she is fond of gardening and knitting. The state took away her power and public recognition, and she tries to hide her past as a television figure. Offred identifies Serena Joy by recalling seeing her on TV when she was a little girl early on Saturday mornings while waiting for the cartoons to air.

Believed to be sterile (although the suggestion is made that the Commander is sterile, Gileadean laws attribute sterility only to women), she is forced to accept that he has use of a Handmaid. She resents having to take part in "The Ceremony", a monthly fertility ritual. She strikes a deal with Offred to arrange for her to have sex with Nick in order to become pregnant. According to Professor Pieixoto in the epilogue, "Serena Joy" or "Pam" are pseudonyms. The character's real name is implied to be Thelma.

Ofglen
Ofglen is a neighbour of Offred's and a fellow Handmaid. She is partnered with Offred to do the daily shopping. Handmaids are never alone and are expected to police each other's behaviour. Ofglen is a secret member of the Mayday resistance. In contrast to Offred, she is daring. She knocks out a Mayday spy who is to be tortured and killed in order to save him the pain of a violent death. Offred is told that when Ofglen vanishes, it is because she has committed suicide before the government can take her into custody due to her membership in the resistance, possibly to avoid giving away any information.

A new Handmaid, also called Ofglen, takes Ofglen's place, and is assigned as Offred's shopping partner. She threatens Offred against any thought of resistance. In addition, she breaks protocol by telling her what happened to the previous Ofglen.

Nick
Nick is the Commander's chauffeur, who lives above the garage. Right from the start, Nick comes across as a daring character as he smokes and tries to engage with Offred, both forbidden activities. By Serena Joy's arrangement, he and Offred start a sexual relationship to increase her chance of getting pregnant. If she were unable to bear the Commander a child, she would be declared sterile and shipped to the ecological wastelands of the Colonies. Offred begins to develop feelings for him. Nick is an ambiguous character, and Offred does not know if he is a party loyalist or part of the resistance, though he identifies himself as the latter. The epilogue suggests that he really was part of the resistance, and aided Offred in escaping the Commander's house.

Moira
Moira has been a close friend of Offred's since college. In the novel, their relationship represents a female friendship that the Republic of Gilead tries to block. A lesbian, she has resisted the homophobia of Gileadean society. Moira is taken to be a Handmaid soon after Offred. She finds the life of a Handmaid unbearably oppressive and risks engaging with the guards just to defy the system. She escapes by stealing an Aunt's pass and clothes, but Offred later finds her working as a prostitute in a party-run brothel. She was caught and chose the brothel rather than to be sent to the Colonies. Moira exemplifies defiance against Gilead by rejecting every value that is forced onto the citizens.

Luke
Luke was Offred's husband before the formation of Gilead. He was married when he first started a relationship with Offred and divorced his first wife to marry her. Under Gilead, all divorces were retroactively nullified, resulting in Offred being considered an adulteress and their daughter illegitimate. Offred was forced to become a Handmaid and her daughter was given to a loyalist family. Since their attempt to escape to Canada, Offred has heard nothing of Luke. She wavers between believing him dead or imprisoned.

Professor Pieixoto
Pieixoto is the "co-discoverer [with Professor Knotly Wade] of Offred's tapes". In his presentation at an academic conference set in 2195, he talks about "the 'Problems of Authentication in Reference to The Handmaid's Tale. Pieixoto is the person who is retelling Offred's story, and so makes the narration even more unreliable than it was originally.

Aunt Lydia
Aunt Lydia appears in flashbacks where her instructions frequently haunt Offred. Aunt Lydia works at the 'Red Center' where women receive instructions for a life as a Handmaid. Throughout the narrative, Aunt Lydia's pithy pronouncements on code of conduct for the Handmaids shed light on the philosophy of subjugation of women practised in Gilead. Aunt Lydia appears to be a true believer of Gilead's religious philosophy and seems to take her job as a genuine calling.

Cora
A Martha (female domestic servants are called Marthas) who works at the Commander's house because she is infertile. She hopes that Offred will get pregnant as she desires to help raise a child. She is friendly towards Offred and even covers up for her when she finds her lying on the floor one morning—a suspicious occurrence by Gilead's standards, worthy of being reported.

Rita
Rita is a Martha at the Commander's house. Her job is cooking and housekeeping and she is one of the members of the "household". At the start of the novel, Rita has a contempt for Offred and though she is responsible for keeping Offred well fed, she believes a Handmaid should prefer going to the Colonies over working as a sexual slave.

Setting
The novel is set in an indeterminate dystopian future, speculated to be around the year 2005, with a fundamentalist theonomy ruling the territory of what had been the United States but is now the Republic of Gilead. The fertility rates in Gilead have diminished due to environmental toxicity and fertile women are a valuable commodity owned and enslaved by the powerful elite. Individuals are segregated by categories and dressed according to their social functions. Complex dress codes play a key role in imposing social control within the new society and serve to distinguish people by sex, occupation, and caste.

The action takes place in what once was the Harvard Square neighbourhood of Cambridge, Massachusetts; Atwood studied at Radcliffe College, located in this area. As a researcher, Atwood spent a lot of time in the Widener Library at Harvard which in the novel serves as a setting for the headquarters of the Gilead Secret Service.

Religion
Bruce Miller, the creator and executive producer of The Handmaid's Tale television serial, declared with regard to Atwood's book, as well as his series, that Gilead is "a society that's based kind of in a perverse misreading of Old Testament laws and codes". The author explains that Gilead tries to embody the "utopian idealism" present in 20th-century regimes, as well as earlier New England Puritanism. Both Atwood and Miller stated that the people running Gilead are "not genuinely Christian".

The group running Gilead, according to Atwood, is "not really interested in religion; they're interested in power". In her prayers to God, Offred reflects on Gilead and prays "I don't believe for an instant that what's going on out there is what You meant... I suppose I should say I forgive whoever did this, and whatever they're doing now. I'll try, but it isn't easy." Margaret Atwood, writing on this, says that "Offred herself has a private version of the Lord's Prayer and refuses to believe that this regime has been mandated by a just and merciful God."

Christian churches that do not support the actions of the Sons of Jacob are systematically demolished, and the people living in Gilead are never seen attending church. Christian denominations, including Quakers, Baptists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Roman Catholics, are specifically named as enemies of the Sons of Jacob. Nuns who refuse conversion are considered "unwomen" and banished to the Colonies, owing to their reluctance to marry and refusal (or inability) to bear children. Priests unwilling to convert are executed and hanged from the Wall. Atwood pits Quaker Christians against the regime by having them help the oppressed, something she feels they would do in reality: "The Quakers have gone underground, and are running an escape route to Canada, as—I suspect—they would."

Jews are named an exception and classified Sons of Jacob. Offred observes that Jews refusing to convert are allowed to emigrate from Gilead to Israel, and most choose to leave. However, in the epilogue, Professor Pieixoto reveals that many of the emigrating Jews ended up being dumped into the sea while on the ships ostensibly tasked with transporting them to Israel, due to privatization of the "repatriation program" and capitalists' effort to maximize profits. Offred mentions that many Jews who chose to stay were caught secretly practising Judaism and executed.

Women

 * Wives: The top social level permitted to women, achieved by marriage to higher-ranking officers. Wives always wear blue dresses and cloaks, suggesting traditional depictions of the Virgin Mary in historic Christian art. When a Commander dies, his wife becomes a Widow and must dress in black.

 * Daughters: The natural or adopted children of the ruling class. They wear white until marriage, which is arranged by the government. The narrator's daughter may have been adopted by an infertile wife and Commander, and she is shown in a photograph wearing a long white dress.

 * Handmaids
 * Fertile women whose social function is to bear children for infertile wives. Handmaids dress in ankle-length red dresses, white caps, and heavy boots. In summer, they change into lighter-weight (but still ankle-length) dresses and slatted shoes. When in public, in winter, they wear ankle-length red cloaks, red gloves, and heavy white bonnets, which they call "wings". The sides of the bonnets stick out like wings, blocking their peripheral vision and shielding their faces from view. Handmaids are women of proven fertility who have broken the law. The law includes both gender crimes, such as lesbianism, and religious crimes, such as adultery (redefined to include sexual relationships with divorced partners since divorce is no longer legal). The Republic of Gilead justifies the use of the Handmaids for procreation by referring to two biblical stories: Genesis 30:1–13 and Genesis 16:1–4. In the first story, Jacob's infertile wife Rachel offers up her handmaid Bilhah to be a surrogate mother on her behalf, and then her sister Leah does the same with her own handmaid Zilpah (even though Leah has already given Jacob many sons). In the other story, which appears earlier in Genesis but is cited less frequently, Abraham has sex with his wife's handmaid, Hagar. Handmaids are assigned to Commanders and live in their houses. When unassigned, they live at training centres. Handmaids who successfully bear children continue to live at their Commander's house until their children are weaned, at which point they are sent to a new assignment to a new Commander. Those who produce children will never be declared "unwomen" or sent to the Colonies, even if they never have another baby.

 * Aunts: Trainers of the Handmaids. They dress in brown. Aunts promote the role of Handmaid as an honourable way for a sinful woman to redeem herself. They police the Handmaids, beating some and ordering the maiming of others. The Aunts have an unusual amount of autonomy, compared to other women of Gilead. They are the only class of women permitted to read, although this is only to fulfil the administrative aspect of their role.

 * Marthas: They are older, infertile women who have domestic skills and are compliant, making them suitable as servants within the households of the Commanders and their families. They dress in green. The title of "Martha" is based on the account of Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary (Gospel of Luke 10:38–42), in which Mary listens to Jesus while her sister Martha works at "all the preparations that had to be made". The duties of Marthas may be tasked to Guardians of the Faith, paramilitary officers who police Gilead's civilian population and guard the Commanders, wherever conflict with Gilead's laws may arise, such as with cleaning a Commander's study where Marthas could obtain literature.

 * Econowives: Women married to men of lower-rank, not members of the elite. They are expected to perform all the female functions: domestic duties, companionship, and child-bearing. Their dress is multicoloured red, blue, and green to reflect these multiple roles, and is made of notably cheaper material.

The division of labour among the women generates some resentment. Marthas, Wives and Econowives perceive Handmaids as promiscuous and are taught to scorn them. Offred mourns that the women of the various groups have lost their ability to empathize with each other.

The Ceremony
"The Ceremony" is a non-marital sexual act sanctioned for reproduction. The ritual requires the Handmaid to lie on her back between the legs of the Wife during the sex act as if they were one person. The Wife has to invite the Handmaid to share her power this way; many Wives consider this both humiliating and offensive. Offred describes the ceremony:

"My red skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher. Below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, because this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate because it would imply two people and only one is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I haven't signed up for."

Critical reception
The Handmaid's Tale received critical acclaim, helping to cement Atwood's status as a prominent writer of the 20th century. Not only was the book deemed well-written and compelling, but Atwood's work was notable for sparking intense debates both in and out of academia. Atwood maintains that the Republic of Gilead is only an extrapolation of trends already seen in the United States at the time of her writing, a view supported by other scholars studying The Handmaid's Tale. Many have placed The Handmaid's Tale in the same category of dystopian fiction as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, a categorization that Atwood has accepted and reiterated in many articles and interviews.

Even today, many reviewers hold that Atwood's novel remains as foreboding and powerful as ever, largely because of its basis in historical fact. Yet when her book was first published in 1985, not all reviewers were convinced of the "cautionary tale" Atwood presented. For example, Mary McCarthy's 1986 New York Times review argued that The Handmaid's Tale lacked the "surprised recognition" necessary for readers to see "our present selves in a distorting mirror, of what we may be turning into if current trends are allowed to continue".

Genre classification
The Handmaid's Tale is a feminist dystopian novel, combining the characteristics of dystopian fiction: "a genre that projects an imaginary society that differs from the author's own, first, by being significantly worse in important respects and second by being worse because it attempts to reify some utopian ideal", with the feminist utopian ideal which: "sees men or masculine systems as the major cause of social and political problems (e.g. war), and presents women as not only at least the equals of men but also as the sole arbiters of their reproductive functions".

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction notes that dystopian images are almost invariably images of future society, "pointing fearfully at the way the world is supposedly going in order to provide urgent propaganda for a change in direction". Atwood's stated intent was indeed to dramatize potential consequences of current trends.

In 1985, reviewers hailed the book as a "feminist 1984", citing similarities between the totalitarian regimes under which both protagonists live, and "the distinctively modern sense of nightmare come true, the initial paralyzed powerlessness of the victim unable to act". Scholarly studies have expanded on the place of The Handmaid's Tale in the dystopian and feminist traditions.

The classification of utopian and dystopian fiction as a sub-genre of the collective term, speculative fiction, alongside science fiction, fantasy, and horror is a relatively recent convention. Dystopian novels have long been discussed as a type of science fiction; however, with publication of The Handmaid's Tale, Atwood distinguished the terms science fiction and speculative fiction quite intentionally. In interviews and essays, she has discussed why, observing:

"I like to make a distinction between science fiction proper and speculative fiction. For me, the science fiction label belongs on books with things in them that we can't yet do, such as going through a wormhole in space to another universe; and speculative fiction means a work that employs the means already to hand, such as DNA identification and credit cards, and that takes place on Planet Earth. But the terms are fluid."

Atwood acknowledges that others may use the terms interchangeably, but she notes her interest in this type of work is to explore themes in ways that "realistic fiction" cannot do.

Among a few science fiction aficionados, however, Atwood's comments were considered petty and contemptuous. (The term speculative fiction was indeed employed that way by certain New Wave writers in the 1960s and early 1970s to express their dissatisfaction with traditional or establishment science fiction.) Hugo-winning science fiction critic David Langford observed in a column: "The Handmaid's Tale won the very first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987. She's been trying to live this down ever since."

Reception in schools
Atwood's novels, and especially her works of speculative fiction, The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake, are frequently offered as examples for the final, open-ended question on the American Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition exam each year. As such, her books are often assigned in high-school classrooms to students taking this Advanced Placement course, despite the mature themes the work presents. Atwood herself has expressed surprise that her books are being assigned to high-school audiences, largely due to her own censored education in the 1950s, but she has assured readers that this increased attention from high-school students has not altered the material she has chosen to write about since.

Censorship in the United States
The American Library Association lists The Handmaid's Tale as number 37 on the "100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000". In 2019, The Handmaid's Tale is still listed as the seventh-most challenged book because of profanity, vulgarity, and sexual overtones. Atwood participated in discussing The Handmaid's Tale as the subject of an ALA discussion series titled "One Book, One Conference".
 * In 2009 a parent in Toronto accused the book of being anti-Christian and anti-Islamic because the women are veiled and polygamy is allowed. Rushowy reports that "The Canadian Library Association says there is 'no known instance of a challenge to this novel in Canada' but says the book was called anti-Christian and pornographic by parents after being placed on a reading list for secondary students in Texas in the 1990s."
 * A 2012 challenge as required reading for a Page High School International Baccalaureate class and as optional reading for Advanced Placement reading courses at Grimsley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina because the book is "sexually explicit, violently graphic and morally corrupt". Some parents thought the book is "detrimental to Christian values".
 * In November 2012, two parents protested against the inclusion of the book on a required reading list in Guilford County, North Carolina. The parents presented the school board with a petition signed by 2,300 people, prompting a review of the book by the school's media advisory committee. According to local news reports, one of the parents said "she felt Christian students are bullied in society, in that they're made to feel uncomfortable about their beliefs by non-believers. She said including books like The Handmaid's Tale contributes to that discomfort, because of its negative view on religion and its anti-biblical attitudes toward sex."
 * In November 2021 in Goddard, Kansas, "The Goddard school district has removed more than two dozen books from circulation in the district's school libraries, citing national attention and challenges to the books elsewhere."

In May 2022, Atwood announced that, in a joint project undertaken with Penguin Random House, an "unburnable" copy of the book would be produced and auctioned off, the project intended to "stand as a powerful symbol against censorship". On 7 June 2022, the unique, "unburnable" copy was sold through Sotheby's in New York for $130,000.

In higher education
In institutions of higher education, professors have found The Handmaid's Tale to be useful, largely because of its historical and religious basis and Atwood's captivating delivery. The novel's teaching points include: introducing politics and the social sciences to students in a more concrete way; demonstrating the importance of reading to our freedom, both intellectual and political; and acknowledging the "most insidious and violent manifestations of power in Western history" in a compelling manner.

The chapter entitled "Historical Notes" at the end of the novel also represents a warning to academics who run the risk of misreading and misunderstanding historical texts, pointing to the satirized Professor Pieixoto as an example of a male scholar who has taken over and overpowered Offred's narrative with his own interpretation.

Feminist analysis
Much of the discussion about The Handmaid's Tale has centred on its categorization as feminist literature. Atwood does not see the Republic of Gilead as a purely feminist dystopia, as not all men have greater rights than women. Instead, this society presents a typical dictatorship: "shaped like a pyramid, with the powerful of both sexes at the apex, the men generally outranking the women at the same level; then descending levels of power and status with men and women in each, all the way down to the bottom, where the unmarried men must serve in the ranks before being awarded an Econowife".

Econowives are women expected to carry out child-bearing, domestic duties, and traditional companionship; they are married to men that don't belong to the elite. When asked about whether her book was feminist, Atwood stated that the presence of women and what happens to them are important to the structure and theme of the book. This aisle of feminism, by default, would make a lot of books feminist. However, she is adamant in her stance that her book did not represent the brand of feminism that victimizes or strips women of moral choice.

Atwood has argued that while some of the observations that informed the content of The Handmaid's Tale may be feminist, her novel is not meant to say "one thing to one person" or serve as a political message—instead, The Handmaid's Tale is "a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime".

Some scholars have offered a feminist interpretation, connecting Atwood's use of religious fundamentalism in the pages of The Handmaid's Tale to a condemnation of its presence in current American society. Atwood goes on to describe her book as not a critique of religion, but a critique of the use of religion as a "front for tyranny". Others have argued that The Handmaid's Tale critiques typical notions of feminism, as Atwood's novel appears to subvert the traditional "women helping women" ideals of the movement and turns toward the possibility of "the matriarchal network ... and a new form of misogyny: women's hatred of women".

Scholars have analyzed and made connections to patriarchal oppression in The Handmaid's Tale and oppression of women today. Aisha Matthews tackles the effects of institutional structures that oppress woman and womanhood and connects those to the themes present in The Handmaid's Tale. She first asserts that structures and social frameworks, such as the patriarchy and societal role of traditional Christian values, are inherently detrimental to the liberation of womanhood. She then makes the connection to the relationship between Offred, Serena Joy, and the Commander, explaining that through this "perversion of traditional marriage, the Biblical story of Rachel, Jacob, and Bilhah is taken too literally". Their relationship and other similar relationships in The Handmaid's Tale mirror the effects of patriarchal standards of womanliness.

In the world of The Handmaid's Tale, the sexes are strictly divided. Gilead's society values white women's reproductive commodities over those of other ethnicities. Women are categorized "hierarchically according to class status and reproductive capacity" as well as "metonymically colour-coded according to their function and their labour". The Commander expresses his personal opinion that women are considered inferior to men, as the men are in a position where they have power to control society.
 * Sex and occupation

Women are segregated by clothing, as are men. With rare exceptions, men wear military or paramilitary uniforms. All classes of men and women are defined by the colours they wear, drawing on colour symbolism and psychology. All lower-status individuals are regulated by this dress code. All "non-persons" are banished to the "Colonies". Sterile, unmarried women are considered to be non-persons. Both men and women sent there wear grey dresses.

The women, particularly the Handmaids, are stripped of their individual identities as they lack formal names, taking on their assigned Commander's first name in most cases.

Sterile women, the unmarried, some widows, feminists, lesbians, nuns, and politically dissident women: all women who are incapable of social integration within the Republic's strict gender divisions. Gilead exiles Unwomen to "the Colonies", areas both of agricultural production and deadly pollution. Joining them are Handmaids who fail to bear a child after three two-year assignments.
 * Unwomen

Jezebels are women who are forced to become prostitutes and entertainers. They are available only to the Commanders and to their guests. Offred portrays Jezebels as attractive and educated; they may be unsuitable as Handmaids due to temperament. They have been sterilized, a surgery that is forbidden to other women. They operate in unofficial but state-sanctioned brothels, unknown to most women.
 * Jezebels

Jezebels, whose title comes from Jezebel in the Bible, dress in the remnants of sexualized costumes from "the time before", such as cheerleaders' costumes, school uniforms, and Playboy Bunny costumes. Jezebels can wear make-up, drink alcohol and socialize with men, but are tightly controlled by the Aunts. When they pass their sexual prime or their looks fade, they are discarded without any precision as to whether they are killed or sent to the Colonies.

Philosophical analysis
Many elements of Gilead recall details from Plato's Republic. Gilead's social hierarchy of commanders, guardians, Marthas and handmaids, for example, has similarities to Plato's social hierarchy of philosopher-guardians, auxiliary-guardians and producers. Both societies are also home to a state-based eugenics program, and see gymnasiums used as educational spaces in which women are socialized into new gender roles. The powers that be in Gilead legitimize their rule through the extensive use of propaganda, much as Plato's rulers ensure co-operation on the part of the public by propagating a noble lie.

According to philosopher Andy Lamey, rather than straightforward allusions, the similarities to Plato are combined with features that differ, at times dramatically, from Plato's original. As Lamey writes, "the result is that Atwood’s dystopia deliberately calls to mind a distorted version of Platonism, one that differs in ways large and small from the original." In the case of gymnasiums, for example, In Plato they see women socialized into roles that make them the equal of men, while in Gilead they are where handmaids are first taught their duties.

Vernon Provençal has suggested that the novel is a satire of Platonism. Lamey, however, argues that this interpretation cannot explain why the book contains distorted references to philosophies beyond Platonism. Two such references are evident in mottos that handmaids are forced to repeat during their training. "Pen is envy" is a corrupt rendering of Freud's notion of penis envy, while "From each according to her ability; to each according to his needs," is a garbled version of Marx's slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." Lamey argues that such allusions, rather than satirizing the philosophies in question, see Gilead employ a practice frequently used by actual dictatorships, that of seeking to bolster their prestige and legitimacy by twisting ideas already in circulation to suit their own ends.

Race analysis
African Americans, the main non-White ethnic group in this society, are called the Children of Ham. A state TV broadcast mentions they have been relocated "en masse" to "National Homelands" in North Dakota, which are suggestive of the apartheid-era homelands (Bantustans) set up by South Africa or forced death marches. Ana Cottle characterized The Handmaid's Tale as "White feminism", noting that Atwood does away with Black people in a few lines by relocating the "Children of Ham" while borrowing heavily from the African-American experience and applying it to White women, specifically Gilead's explicit anti-literacy laws, which was borrowed from real life anti-literacy campaigns in the United States, alongside the removal of surnames among handmaids, an ode to how enslaved Africans were not given last names until Emancipation.

It is implied that a total genocide has been committed against Native Americans living in territories under the rule of Gilead. Jews were given a choice between converting to the state religion or being "repatriated" to Israel. Converts who were subsequently discovered with any symbolic representations or artifacts of Judaism were executed, and the repatriation scheme was privatized, with the result that many Jews died en route to Israel.

Awards

 * 1985 – Governor General's Award for English-language fiction (winner)
 * 1986 – Booker Prize (nominated)
 * 1986 – Nebula Award (nominated)
 * 1986 – Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction (winner)
 * 1987 – Arthur C. Clarke Award (winner)
 * 1987 – Prometheus Award (nominated)
 * 1987 – Commonwealth Writers' Prize: Best Book (winner of the Canada and the Caribbean region)

Audio

 * An audiobook of the unabridged text, read by Claire Danes (ISBN 9781491519110), won the 2013 Audie Award for fiction.
 * In 2014, Canadian band Lakes of Canada released their album Transgressions, which is intended to be a concept album inspired by The Handmaid's Tale.
 * On his album Shady Lights from 2017, Snax references the novel and film adaption, specifically the character of Serena Joy, in the song "Make Me Disappear". The first verse reads, "You can call me Serena Joy. Drink in hand, in front of the TV, I'm teary-eyed, adjusting my CC."
 * A full cast audiobook entitled The Handmaid's Tale: Special Edition was released in 2017, read by Claire Danes, Margaret Atwood, Tim Gerard Reynolds, and others.
 * An audiobook of the unabridged text, read by Betty Harris, was released in 2019 by Recorded Books, Inc.

Film

 * The 1990 film The Handmaid's Tale was based on a screenplay by Harold Pinter and directed by Volker Schlöndorff. It stars Natasha Richardson as Offred, Faye Dunaway as Serena Joy, and Robert Duvall as the Commander (Fred).

Radio

 * A dramatic adaptation of the novel for radio was produced for BBC Radio 4 by John Dryden in 2000.
 * In 2002 CBC Radio commissioned Michael O'Brien to adapt Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale for radio.

Theatre

 * A stage adaptation written and directed by Bruce Shapiro played at Tufts University in 1989.
 * An operatic adaptation, The Handmaid's Tale, by Poul Ruders, premiered in Copenhagen on 6 March 2000, and was performed by the English National Opera, in London, in 2003. It was the opening production of the 2004–2005 season of the Canadian Opera Company. Boston Lyric Opera mounted a production in May 2019.
 * A stage adaptation of the novel, by Brendon Burns, for the Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke, England, toured the UK in 2002.
 * A ballet adaptation choreographed by Lila York and produced by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet premiered on 16 October 2013. Amanda Green appeared as Offred and Alexander Gamayunov as the Commander.
 * A one-woman stage show, adapted from the novel, by Joseph Stollenwerk premiered in the U.S. in January 2015.

Television

 * MGM Television has produced a television series based on the novel for Hulu, starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred. The first three episodes were released on 26 April 2017, with subsequent episodes following on a weekly basis. Margaret Atwood served as consulting producer. The series won eight Primetime Emmy Awards in 2017, including Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series (Moss). The series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on 25 April 2018, and in May 2018, Hulu announced renewal for a third season. The third season premiered on 5 June 2019. Hulu announced season 4, consisting of 10 episodes, with production set to start in March 2020. This was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Season 4 premiered on 28 April 2021; season 5, on September 14, 2022. Season 6 was to premier at the end of 2023, but production was delayed due to the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike and is now expected to be released in 2024, though no date has been announced.

Comics

 * On March 26, 2019, The Handmaid's Tale was adapted into an authorized graphic novel illustrated by Canadian artist Renée Nault, and published by Doubleday.

Sequel
In November 2018, Atwood announced the sequel, titled The Testaments, which was published in September 2019. The novel is set fifteen years after Offred's final scene, with the testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

title: The Handmaid's Tale


text:
Surf Life Saving

Surf Life Saving may refer to:

 * Surf lifesaving, voluntary lifeguard services and competitive surf sport
 * Surf Life Saving Australia, a not-for-profit community organisation
 * Surf Life Saving New Zealand, a national association
 * Surf Life Saving Association of Wales

title: Surf Life Saving


text:
Dan Curtis

Daniel Mayer Cherkoss (August 12, 1927 – March 27, 2006 ), known by his pen name Dan Curtis, was an American television and film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was best known as the creator of the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows (1966–71), and for directing the epic World War II miniseries The Winds of War (1983) and War and Remembrance (1988).

Curtis’ is also known to horror film fans for his work on several horror-themed television series and films, including The Night Stalker (1972) and its sequel The Night Strangler (1973), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1974) and Trilogy of Terror (1975). He also directed three feature films – the Dark Shadows spinoffs House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), and the supernatural horror Burnt Offerings (1976).

Curtis was nominated for five Primetime Emmy Awards, winning Outstanding Limited Series for War and Remembrance, for which he also won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Dramatic Specials.

Career
Curtis's series of macabre films include House of Dark Shadows, Night of Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker (for many years holding the record ratings of the most-watched TV movie—and inspired the series Kolchak: The Night Stalker), Intruders, The Night Strangler, Burnt Offerings, Trilogy of Terror and its belated sequel Trilogy of Terror II, The Norliss Tapes (a 1973 pilot for an unproduced series starring Roy Thinnes), Curse of the Black Widow, Dead of Night, and Scream of the Wolf. He worked frequently with sci-fi/horror writers Richard Matheson and William F. Nolan. Curtis was producer and/or director of several television adaptations of classic horror texts including The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1968), Frankenstein (1973), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1973), Dracula (1974), and The Turn of the Screw (1974).

In 1978, Curtis made a departure from his usual macabre offerings, when he wrote, produced, and directed the sentimental NBC television film When Every Day Was the Fourth of July. Although fictionalized, the film was semi-autobiographical, based on his childhood growing up in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the 1930s. The film was originally intended to be a pilot for a potential series, but when the series was not picked up by the NBC network, Curtis produced and directed the 1980 television movie sequel The Long Days of Summer, this time airing on the ABC network.

His 1983 miniseries The Winds of War, the most watched miniseries in American television history, was nominated for four Emmy Awards.

Curtis also directed the War and Remembrance miniseries, which was the continuation of The Winds of War. The program was 30 hours in length, split into two segments. Chapters I-VII aired in November 1988. The remaining five parts, Chapters VIII-XII, were billed as "The Final Chapter", and aired in May 1989. The miniseries received 15 Emmy Award nominations, including for best actor (John Gielgud), actress (Jane Seymour), supporting actor (Barry Bostwick), and supporting actress (Polly Bergen). The show won Emmys for best miniseries, special effects, and single-camera production editing.

The New York Times profiled Curtis while in post-production on War and Remembrance.

Curtis's rights to Dark Shadows remain with his estate, which signed a deal with Warner Bros. for a new Dark Shadows movie. The film stars Johnny Depp as Barnabas Collins, was directed by Tim Burton, and was released in May 2012. After the film's end credits, there is a dedication to Dan Curtis.

In 2023, he was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.

Personal life
Born Daniel Cherkoss in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Curtis attended Syracuse University before becoming a syndicated television show salesman.

Curtis died on March 27, 2006, at his home in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, twenty days after the death of his wife Norma. He was survived by two daughters.

title: Dan Curtis


text:
Talk:Loss of supply

Rewroted section on Australia. The Senate didn't actually vote against supply, they refused to vote on the subject.

Thanks for clarifying that. JTD 02:48 Jan 4, 2003 (UTC)

Supply has a capital letter because it is a formal constitutional term in a definition. Supply with a small 's' means something different. A 'Motion of Confidence', for example, would also have capitals, as a formal term. JTD 22:52 Jan 4, 2003 (UTC)

-
 * "In the wake of World War II, in Japan" I wrote but I am not sure about the details. Sorry for confusing. Taku 01:18 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)

 * No problem, Tak. I look forward to reading the full info when you have it. JTD 02:02 Jan 5, 2003 (UTC)

Is this vandalism or just poorly worded?
I just removed the following from the article:

 * Fierce opposition to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's controversial 2014 Australian federal budget resulted in supply blocked by a hostile Senate composed of a large number of crossbench senators, including members of the Australian Greens and Palmer United Party who rejected several spending measures of the budget twice, causing a trigger for Abbott to call for the dissolution of Parliament. Senator Nick Xenophon described the budget as "mean, nasty and dumb". Independent MP Andrew Wilkie implored the opposition and crossbench MPs to go so far as to block supply in his opposition to the budget.

Obviously the Senate didn't actually block supply, so if its not vandalism what's it trying to say? Colonial Overlord (talk) 15:22, 2 November 2014 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Loss of supply


text:
Dark Shadows

Dark Shadows is an American gothic soap opera that aired weekdays on the ABC television network from June 27, 1966, to April 2, 1971. The show depicted the lives, loves, trials, and tribulations of the wealthy Collins family of Collinsport, Maine, where a number of supernatural occurrences take place.

The series became popular when vampire Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) was introduced ten months into its run. It would also feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, warlocks, time travel, and a parallel universe. A small company of actors each played many roles; as actors came and went, some characters were played by more than one actor. The show was distinguished by its melodramatic performances, atmospheric interiors, numerous dramatic plot twists, broad cosmos of characters, and heroic adventures. Unusual among the soap operas of its time, which were aimed primarily at adults, Dark Shadows developed a large teenage audience and a dedicated cult following. By 1969, it had become ABC's highest-rated daytime series.

The original network run of the show amassed 1,225 episodes. The success of the series spawned a media franchise that has included two feature films (House of Dark Shadows in 1970 and Night of Dark Shadows in 1971), a 1991 TV remake, an unsprouted 2004 remake pilot, a 2012 film reboot directed by Tim Burton, and numerous spin-off novels and comics. Since 2006, the series has continued as a range of audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, featuring members of the original cast including David Selby, Lara Parker, and Kathryn Leigh Scott.

TV Guide's list of all-time Top Cult Shows ranked the series #19 in 2004, and #23 in 2007.

History
Creator Dan Curtis claimed he had a dream in 1965 of a mysterious young woman on a train. The following day Curtis told his wife of the dream and pitched the idea as a TV series to ABC. Network officials greenlit production and Curtis began hiring crew members.

Art Wallace was hired to create a story from Curtis's dream sequence. Wallace wrote the story bible Shadows on the Wall, the proposed title for the show, later changed to Dark Shadows. Robert Costello was added as a line producer, and Curtis took on the creator and executive producer roles. Lela Swift, John Sedwick, and Henry Kaplan all agreed to be directors for the new series. Robert Cobert created the musical score and Sy Tomashoff designed the set.

Broadcast history
Perhaps one of ABC's first truly popular daytime series, along with the game show Let's Make a Deal (which had moved from its original home NBC in 1968), Dark Shadows found its demographic niche in teenagers coming home from school in time to watch the show at 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central, where it aired for almost all of its network run, the exception being a 15-month stretch between April 1967 and July 1968, when it aired a half-hour earlier. Originally, it was aired in black-and-white, but the show went into color starting with the episode broadcast on August 11, 1967. It became one of ABC's first daytime shows to actually win the rating for its timeslot, leading to the demise of NBC's original Match Game and Art Linkletter's long-running House Party on CBS, both in 1969.

Dark Shadows began with a 4.1 rating in the 1965–66 TV season, tying for thirteenth place out of eighteen daytime dramas. The audience figures only improved slightly, to 4.3, in 1966–67. 1966 was a volatile year for soaps, and many ended their runs between the premiere date of Dark Shadows in June and the month of December. By that time, six months had passed, and Dark Shadows had failed to gain major traction. In June, it ranked #13 out of 18 soaps, and by December, the lower-rated offerings were gone and the show officially ranked #13 out of 13 soaps. "The show was limping along, really limping", head writer Sam Hall remembered, "and ABC said, 'We're canceling it. Unless you pick up in 26 weeks, you're finished.' [Series creator Dan Curtis] had always wanted to do a vampire picture, so he decided to bring a vampire — Barnabas Collins — to the series."

Barnabas was introduced in April 1967 and the fan response was swift and immediate. Coupled with a time slot change to 3:30 Eastern/2:30 Central, the fortunes of Dark Shadows rebounded, as many more teenagers found the program after tuning out the other offerings that may have been too "boring" to them. By May 1968, the series was still in last place (out of 12 offerings), but rose to a 7.3 rating, the rough equivalent (at that time) of gaining the viewership of three million households in the span of one year. Dark Shadows would return to its 4 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Central time slot in July 1968, without losing much of its audience at all. One Life to Live, which was launched by ABC in July 1968 in the 3:30 slot, also sought to reach the newfound young demographic.

The series reached its peak in popularity during a storyline set in the year 1897, broadcast from March 1969. By the end of May, Dark Shadows was ABC's most popular soap opera, and by late 1969 it was reaching between 7 and 9 million viewers on any given day, and ranking 11th out of a total 15 daytime dramas in that time period.

In November 1969, after nine months of some of Dark Shadows' most intricate, intelligent storylines, the 1897 storyline came to an end. With ratings at an all-time high, the writers were under pressure to hold the audience. Their next storyline, known as "The Leviathans", proved to be a thematic misstep for the show and one from which it never recovered. Fans tended to dislike the portrayal of Barnabas as the pawn of some greater power. They were more interested in the archetypes of classic horror—the vampire, the witch, the werewolf—than in off-camera suggestion. The launch of Somerset in March 1970, a much-publicized spin-off of NBC's Another World, also hurt the series considerably.

The release of the film House of Dark Shadows in September of that year is also thought to have caused TV ratings to fall, possibly due to parents, attending the film with their children, discouraging their choice of television viewing material due to the amount of blood spilled on screen. Beginning in the fall of 1970, several ABC stations across the country dropped the show due to falling viewership. Within six months, ratings dropped from 7.3 to 5.3., though the ratings improved in its final weeks. The series was canceled on April 2, 1971, and replaced the following Monday with a new version of the game show Password. The last minute of the final episode included a voiceover by actor Thayer David wrapping up many of the plotlines on the show.

The original cast reunited in 2003 for a special reunion play recorded for MPI, and in 2006 resumed production of Dark Shadows audio dramas for Big Finish (see below). These dramas have been ongoing for 10 seasons.

1966/7

 * Victoria Winters' Parentage, episode 1 to 92
 * Victoria Winters and her role as governess is inspired by title character in Charlotte Brontë's gothic novel Jane Eyre.

 * Burke Devlin's Revenge For His Manslaughter Conviction, episode 1 to 201
 * Burke Devlin and his motivation for returning is reminiscent of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

 * Roger Collins' Mysterious Car Crash, episode 13 to 32

 * The Murder of Bill Malloy, episode 46 to 126

 * Laura Collins the Phoenix, episode 123 to 192

 * Jason McGuire Blackmails Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, episode 193 to 275

 * The Arrival of the Vampire Barnabas Collins, episode 211 to 220
 * Elements of this storyline are inspired by the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.

 * The Kidnapping of Maggie Evans, episode 221 to 261

 * Julia Hoffman's Attempt to Cure Barnabas, episode 265 to 351

 * Barnabas Terrorizing Julia Hoffman, episode 352 to 365

1795

 * Angelique Bouchard's Vampire Curse on Barnabas, episode 366 to 426

 * Victoria Winters's Witchcraft Trial, episode 400 to 461
 * The witchcraft trial involving Victoria Winters is inspired by Arthur Miller's play The Crucible. Reverend Trask's fate is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado."

 * Nathan Forbes' Manipulation of Millicent Collins, episode 419 to 460
 * Nathan's manipulation of Millicent is reminiscent of the 1938 play and the 1944 film Gaslight.

1968/9

 * The Mystery of Jeff Clark, episode 461 to 665

 * The Creation of Adam, episode 466 to 636
 * The character of Adam is inspired by Mary Shelley's horror novel Frankenstein.

 * The Dream Curse, episode 477 to 548

 * Elizabeth's Fear of Being Buried Alive, episode 513 to 672
 * This storyline is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Premature Burial."

 * Nicholas Blair's Scheme to Create A Master Race, episode 549 to 633/634

 * Chris Jennings' Werewolf Curse, episode 627 to 700

 * The Ghosts of Quentin Collins and Beth Chavez Haunt Collinwood, episode 639 to 700
 * The character of Quentin Collins and his role is inspired by Peter Quint in Henry James's gothic novel The Turn of the Screw.

1897

 * Barnabas’ Mission to Save David Collins, episode 700 to 839
 * The heartbeat that tortures Quentin is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart."

 * Jenny Collins, the Mad Woman in the Attic, episode 707 to 748
 * Jenny Collins is inspired by the character of Bertha from Charlotte Brontë's gothic novel Jane Eyre.

 * Laura Collins the Phoenix, episode 728 to 761
 * Worthington Hall and Gregory Trask's running of it is inspired by Charles Dickens's novel Nicholas Nickleby.

 * Magda Rakosi's Werewolf Curse on Quentin, episode 749 to 834
 * The portrait of Quentin Collins is inspired by Oscar Wilde's gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray.

 * Gregory Trask's Manipulation of Judith Collins, episode 762 to 884
 * Gregory Trask's fate is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado".
 * Mrs. Trask's murder is inspired by "The Manchurian Candidate"

 * The Hand of Count Petofi, episode 778 to 814
 * The hand of Count Petofi is inspired by William Fryer Harvey's short story "The Beast with Five Fingers". Quentin's torture is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story "The Pit and the Pendulum."

 * The Creation of Amanda Harris, episode 812 to 850
 * The theme of an artist's falling in love with his own creation who is brought to life by supernatural forces is reminiscent of the classic Greek myth of Pygmalion.

 * Josette's Return, episode 844 to 885

 * Count Petofi Body Swaps with Quentin, episode 849 to 883
 * The character of Count Petofi is based on the real-world Count of St. Germain, a Georgian-era courtier and man of science who claimed to be, and possibly was, the son of Francis II Rákóczi. In the 19th century, Theosophist legends claimed that he attained the secret of immortality.

1969/70

 * Barnabas Falls Under the Control of the Leviathans, episode 886 to 950
 * This storyline is inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s shared universe known as "The Cthulhu Mythos," and particularly by the short story "The Dunwich Horror".

 * The Mystery of Grant Douglas and Olivia Corey, episode 888 to 934
 * This storyline is inspired by the Greek mythological tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.

 * Chris Jennings' Werewolf Curse, episode 889 to 978

 * The Leviathan Child, episode 891 to 929

 * Jeb Hawkes the Leviathan Leader, episode 935 to 980

 * The Ghosts of Gerard Stiles and Daphne Harridge Haunt Collinwood, episode 1071 to 1109
 * This storyline is inspired by Henry James's gothic novel The Turn of the Screw.

1970 Parallel Time

 * The Death of Angelique Collins, episode 969 to 1060
 * This storyline is inspired by Daphne du Maurier's gothic novel Rebecca.

 * Cyrus Longworth's Experiment, episode 978 to 1035
 * This storyline is inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's "chilling shocker" short novel Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

1995

 * The Destruction of Collinwood, episode 1061 to 1070

1840

 * Barnabas' Infatuation with Roxanne Drew, episode 1081 to 1150

 * The Head of Judah Zachery, episode 1117 to 1138

 * Judah Zachery's Possession of Gerard Stiles, episode 1139 to 1197

 * Quentin Collins' Witchcraft Trial, episode 1162 to 1197

1841 Parallel Time

 * Bramwell Collins' and Catherine Harridge's Love Affair, episode 1186 to 1245
 * This storyline is inspired by Emily Brontë's gothic novel Wuthering Heights.

 * The Cursed Room Lottery, episode 1194 to 1245
 * This storyline is inspired by Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery."

Casting
Curtis set out to find the actress to play the girl on the train. Alexandra Isles (then Alexandra Moltke), a young actress with little experience, was discovered and cast in the role of Victoria Winters, an orphan who journeys to the mysterious, fictional town of Collinsport, Maine, to unravel the mysteries of her past.

Veteran film star Joan Bennett was soon cast as Victoria's employer Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, a woman who had not left her home in over eighteen years. Stage actor Louis Edmonds was cast as Elizabeth's brother, a widower, Roger Collins. Another stage actress, Nancy Barrett, was then cast as Elizabeth's headstrong daughter Carolyn Stoddard, and child actor David Henesy was cast as Roger's troubled son David Collins.

As production on the series continued, many new and mysterious characters, played by unfamiliar actors and actresses, were introduced, but two early cast changes brought stage actors David Ford and Thayer David into the ensemble. Thayer David would go on to play several formidable villains over the course of the series. Michael Currie, as Constable Jonas Carter, was shortly replaced by veteran actor Dana Elcar, as Sheriff George Patterson. Most of the actors played multiple characters, and those characters often returned through flashbacks, the use of parallel timelines, or as ghosts.

Main cast
Character names noted with * indicates appearance of a counterpart in an alternate reality known as Parallel Time during episodes 969 to 1060 or 1186 to 1245.

Locations
Both theatrical films, House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), were shot primarily on location at the Lyndhurst estate in Tarrytown, New York. For the TV series, Essex, Connecticut was the locale used for the town of Collinsport. Among the locations sited there are the Collinsport Wharf, Main Street, and the Evans Cottage. The Griswold Inn in Essex was used for the Collinsport Inn, and the town post office was used for the Collinsport Police Station. The Collinwood stand-in mansion used for the TV series is the Carey Mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, until August 2009 used by Salve Regina University. The exteriors for the "Old House," aka Collins House (the original Collinwood mansion) were filmed at Spratt Mansion, which was also located on the Lyndhurst estate; this mansion was destroyed by fire in 1969. The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion in South Norwalk, Connecticut, was also used for some scenes in House of Dark Shadows. Some outdoors shots for the series were filmed in the famous Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, not far from the Lyndhurst Mansion.

All of the interiors of the TV series were shot on sound stages at various ABC-owned studios in Manhattan. The early episodes were shot at ABC Studio TV-2 at 24 West 67th Street, and the rest of the episodes were shot at the smaller ABC Studio TV-16 at 433 West 53rd Street, now demolished; as of 2022, it is the site of a six-story, 60-unit apartment building.

Special effects
Working within the constraints of the live-to-tape format—with almost every scene done in one take—Dark Shadows displayed an unusually inventive use of costume, make-up, and in particular, special effects. Both time travel and ghosts allowed characters killed in earlier sequences to return, often in period clothing. Séances held in the old mansion were often visited by ghostly apparitions of quivering ectoplasm. Dream sequences included colorful psychedelic spectacles superimposed over ethereal, fog-filled fantasies. Individuals of normal appearance were transformed into hideous creatures of the netherworld. One episode was carefully edited so that a closeup of a clock on the set showed the exact time viewers in the Central time zone saw the clock.

Music
Of particular note is Robert Cobert's music score, which broke new ground for a television program. In September 1969, the original soundtrack to Dark Shadows, credited to the Robert Cobert Orchestra and featuring 16 tracks written or co-written by Cobert, reached no. 18 on Billboard's Top 200 album chart. The song "Quentin's Theme" earned Cobert a Grammy nomination for Best Instrumental Theme, but lost to John Barry's theme for Midnight Cowboy. A recording of "Quentin's Theme" by the Charles Randolph Grean Sounde was released as a single, and in August 1969, when the TV series was something of a phenomenon, it peaked at no. 13 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, no. 3 on its Easy Listening chart, and no. 5 for 3 weeks in Canada.

Critical response
Dark Shadows had a rocky beginning. Critics were quick to deem the series boring for its heavy use of unknown actress Isles and the slow pace. Variety, in its review on June 29, 1966, of the first episode of Dark Shadows: "Writer Art Wallace took so much time getting into his story that the first episode of the Neo Gothic soaper added up to one big contemporary yawn." The earliest episodes concerned menacing but unfulfilled conflicts, threatened revenge, then an attempted murder, and, finally, a murder. The supernatural elements that later made the show a hit, were slow to appear and only hinted at until episodes 52 and 70 in which the audience finally sees compelling evidence of a ghost.

1965–1966 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (13.9)
 * 13. Dark Shadows (4.1)
 * 16. Never Too Young (3.9)

1966–1967 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (12.7)
 * 12. Dark Shadows (4.3)
 * 13. A Flame in the Wind (4.0)

1967–1968 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (13.6)
 * 12. Dark Shadows (7.3)
 * 13. One Life to Live (4.3)

1968–1969 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (13.8)
 * 11. Dark Shadows (8.4)
 * 14. Hidden Faces (3.3)

1969–1970 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (13.6)
 * 12. Dark Shadows (7.3)
 * 19. The Best of Everything (1.8)

1970–1971 season

 * 1. As the World Turns (12.4)
 * 16. Dark Shadows (5.3)
 * 18. A World Apart (3.4)

Home media
Unlike some other soap operas of its era, the episodes of Dark Shadows all were preserved in some format, although one episode exists only as an audio recording and several color episodes only have black and white kinescopes available.

MPI Home Video currently holds the home media rights to the series. All episodes were issued on VHS from 1989 through 1995. Episodes 210–1245 (Barnabas' arrival through to the end of the series) have been released on DVD in 26 Collections from 2002 through 2006. Episodes 1–209 were released in 2007 under the title of Dark Shadows: The Beginning. On April 3, 2012, MPI re-released the 32 Collections. The first (and sometimes, the second) collection (from Barnabas's introduction) has been released internationally, but due to generally low sales, this has been the extent of the international release of the series.

On April 10, 2012, MPI released a "Limited Edition Complete Series" box set in the shape of a coffin. The 131 DVDs are housed in 22 individual plastic cases, with the spines looking upward to show the entire body of Barnabas lying asleep in his coffin. Only 2,500 numbered copies of these were made, with each set including a limited edition card signed by original series star Jonathan Frid. A similar but unlimited "Deluxe Edition" set was subsequently released on July 10, 2012, without the limited edition card signed by Jonathan Frid and without the serial limitation number plate on the bottom of the box.

Films
MGM released a feature film titled House of Dark Shadows in 1970. Dan Curtis directed it, and Sam Hall and Gordon Russell wrote the screenplay. Many cast members from the soap opera, including Jonathan Frid, Grayson Hall, Roger Davis, and Kathryn Leigh Scott, reprised their roles. 1971 saw the release of Night of Dark Shadows, also directed by Dan Curtis and written by Curtis and Sam Hall. Actors included David Selby, Grayson Hall, Kate Jackson, and Lara Parker, among others.

During the filming of House of Dark Shadows in 1970, several actors were written out of the TV series so that they would be available to shoot the movie. Kathryn Leigh Scott was absent from 30 episodes (986 to 1015); Jonathan Frid was absent from 28 episodes (983 to 1010); Grayson Hall was absent from 21 episodes (986 to 1006); John Karlen was absent from 21 episodes (990 to 1010); Nancy Barrett was absent from 20 episodes (991 to 1010): Louis Edmonds was absent from 17 episodes (991 to 1008); Don Briscoe was absent from 15 episodes (986 to 1000); Joan Bennett was absent from 15 episodes (991 to 1006); and David Henesy was absent from 9 episodes (993 to 1001).

Novels
There have been two series of Dark Shadows novels. The first, released during the show's original run, were all penned by romance writer Marilyn Ross, a pseudonym for author Dan Ross, and were published by Paperback Library. Ross also wrote a novelization of the theatrical film House of Dark Shadows.

The second series of novels were written by Lara Parker, Stephen Mark Rainey, and Elizabeth Massie.

Magazines
During its original run, Dark Shadows was featured in many magazines, including Afternoon TV, Castle of Frankenstein, Daytime TV, and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Even after the show ended, it received coverage in genre magazines of the 1970s, like Monsters of the Movies.

In 2003, a two-part article titled "Collecting Dark Shadows: Return to Collinwood", written by Rod Labbe, appeared in Autograph Collector magazine; it was the first major article to chronicle the show in years. In 2005, Scary Monsters Magazine devoted an entire issue (#55) to Dark Shadows. Included were full-length interviews with cast members Marie Wallace, David Selby, and Kathryn Leigh-Scott, as well as "Don't Open That Coffin! A Baby Boomer's Adventures in the Land of Dark Shadows!" Both the Autograph Collector and Scary Monsters articles were penned by freelance writer Rod Labbe, who once ran a fan club for Dennis Patrick (Jason McGuire, Paul Stoddard) in 1969–70.

Labbe also contributes to Fangoria magazine and is currently doing a series of full-length interviews with surviving original cast members, leading up to the release of Burton's film. Labbe's interview with Jerry Lacy, who played the nefarious Reverend Trask, appeared in issue #296. His second, with Kathryn Leigh-Scott, was in issue #304. The latest, a Chris Pennock (Jeb Hawkes, a.k.a. "The Leviathan") profile, is scheduled to run in issue #310. He has already interviewed Marie Wallace (Eve and Jenny Collins) for a future issue, with more to come. A lengthier version of Kathryn's interview can be found on her website.

Comics
From March 14, 1971, to March 11, 1972, the Newspaper Enterprise Association syndicated a Dark Shadows comic strip by illustrator Kenneth Bruce Bald (credited as "K. Bruce" because of contractual obligations) to dozens of newspapers across the United States. In 1996, Pomegranate Press, Ltd. published Dark Shadows: The Comic Strip Book (ISBN 0-938817-39-6), which collected the entire 52-week run of the daily and Sunday strip.

Gold Key Comics released 35 issues of a regular Dark Shadows comic book, mostly written by John Warner, which ran for years after the cancellation of the series on ABC (1969–1976); and in 1991, Innovation Publishing released a short-lived comic book series based on the NBC-TV revival show. Hermes Press has released a five-volume archive reprint series of the Gold Key series in 2010–2011. Additionally, Dynamite Entertainment launched a new monthly series of Dark Shadows comic books in October 2011.

Other media
There have also been two board games, a few coloring books, two jigsaw puzzles, and a View-Master reel.

Syndication
Due to an FCC rule prohibiting networks from keeping their syndication holdings, it wasn't until 1975 that the ABC-spun Worldvision Enterprises released 130 episodes to syndication. Eventually, all but the pre-Barnabas and approximately the last year's episodes were part of the package. During the 1980s, PBS was heavily involved in rebroadcasting the series. In 1992, the cable network the Sci-Fi Channel (now Syfy) acquired the entire run of episodes. The channel stopped airing Dark Shadows in 2003.

Online streaming site Netflix carried the series previous to 2012, but then dropped all but 160 episodes. The series was completely removed in early 2014. In June 2012, episodes 210-249 of Dark Shadows, covering the introduction of Barnabas Collins, were made available for streaming online video on Hulu, then a free service like YouTube. In October 2013, 200 episodes were offered on Hulu Plus, the new Hulu subscription service. As of April 2015, the non-subscription part of the service was discontinued and some of it was merged into the subscription side, dropping the Hulu Plus title and going by simply Hulu. After several years, the series was removed as of the summer of 2020.

Both the original soap opera and prime-time versions have aired on the Decades TV Network. Decades was known for its Halloween marathons of the show throughout the late 2010s that the network called The Binge. In 2018, 260 episodes of the program started airing at 12AM ET/11PM Central on weeknights. The MPI Media Group, who has the rights to the show's distribution, started a pay streaming service dedicated specifically to the program in October 2017. In January 2018, Amazon Prime was the first streaming service to carry every episode at once. However, in late 2019 it moved to the site's IMDb TV Channel accompanied by commercials. The free ad-supported Tubi TV acquired rights to all 1,225 episodes in January 2020 and in September, the similar Pluto TV added a Dark Shadows channel.

Audio drama
Based on a 2003 stage play performed at a Dark Shadows convention, Return to Collinwood is an audio drama written by Jamison Selby and Jim Pierson, and starring David Selby, Kathryn Leigh Scott, John Karlen, Nancy Barrett, Lara Parker, Roger Davis, Marie Wallace, Christopher Pennock, Donna Wandrey, James Storm, and Terry Crawford. The show is available on CD.

Big Finish Productions
In 2006, Big Finish Productions continued the Dark Shadows saga with an original series of audio dramas, starring the original cast. The first season featured David Selby (Quentin Collins), Lara Parker (Angelique), Kathryn Leigh Scott (Maggie Evans), and John Karlen (Willie Loomis). Robert Rodan, who played Adam in the original series, also appears in the fourth story, playing a new character. Barnabas Collins is played by Andrew Collins. A second series was released in 2010. In addition to the cast's returning from Series One, Kingdom of the Dead also featured Lysette Anthony, Alec Newman, Lizzie Hopley, Jerry Lacy, and David Warner. Big Finish has also produced a series of dramatic story readings based on the series, with arguably the most notable being the 2010 release The Night Whispers, in which Jonathan Frid reprised the role of Barnabas.

In January 2015, Big Finish began releasing the full-cast Dark Shadows serial Bloodlust in twice-weekly installments, as to emulate the initial soap opera format of the show.

1991 TV series
In 1991, MGM Television produced a short-lived prime-time remake that aired on NBC from January 13 to March 22. The revival was a lavish, big-budget, weekly serial combining Gothic romance and stylistic horror. Although it was a huge hit at its introduction (watched by almost 1 in 4 households, according to official ratings during that time period), the onset of the Gulf War caused NBC to continually preempt or reschedule the episodes, resulting in declining ratings. It was canceled after the first season. The final episode ended with a cliffhanger: Victoria Winters (Joanna Going)'s learning that Barnabas Collins (Ben Cross) was a 200-year-old vampire.

It also starred veterans Jean Simmons (as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard) and Roy Thinnes (as Roger Collins), British character actress Lysette Anthony (as Angelique Collins), Barbara Steele (as Julia Hoffman), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as David Collins).

2004 TV pilot
Plans for another revival series (or film) have been discussed off and on since the 1991 series' demise, including a TV miniseries to wrap up the plotlines of the canceled NBC series and a feature film, co-written by Dan Curtis and Barbara Steele, utilizing the 1991 cast. In 2004, a pilot for a new WB network Dark Shadows series, starring Marley Shelton as Victoria Winters and Alec Newman as Barnabas Collins, was written and shot, but never picked up. The pilot has been screened at the Dark Shadows Festival conventions with Dan Curtis Productions' blessing, and it can now be found online. This pilot was produced by Warner Bros. Television.

2012 film
In 2012, Warner Bros. produced a film adaptation of the soap opera. Tim Burton directed the film, and Johnny Depp, finally realizing one of his childhood fantasies, starred as Barnabas Collins. However, the film treated the stories comedically, and was not the hoped-for major success.

Reincarnation
In September 2019, it was announced that The CW and Warner Bros. Television were developing a continuation of the original series called Dark Shadows: Reincarnation, written by Mark B. Perry. Perry would also serve as executive producer along with Amasia Entertainment's Michael Helfant, Bradley Gallo and Tracy Mercer, as well as Tracy and Cathy Curtis. Perry said, "As a first-generation fan, it's been a dream of mine to give Dark Shadows the Star Trek treatment since way back in the '80s when Next Generation was announced, so I'm beyond thrilled and humbled to be entrusted with this resurrection." In November 2020, TVLine reported that the series was no longer in development. In August 2021, Perry revealed that the project was retooled with the intention to shop it to networks again.

title: Dark Shadows