The Handmaid's Tale

[prometheus110]

So the first three episode of Hulu's original series, The Handmaid's Tale, have been released and god damn. God Damn. God Damn.

Seriously though, it's a brilliant TV show and it's already turned me into a ball of stress in a way that two seasons of The Man in the High Castle haven't due to the work of its actors —lead by a great Elizabeth Moss— and the fact that the show feels, for lack of a better term, more real. The atmosphere of the show is as oppressive as the state of Gilead, and the horrors of the near-future world are examined in a pretty stark light at a level of quality that means my defensive nitpicks of choices made by the showrunners get torn apart about 5 seconds after I make them. That the show is being released now —in light of growing online misogyny and racism, a sexual predator for US president, and things like the Ferguson protests— makes it easy to feel as if some of the stuff that occurs could happen in reality with not too much of a push.

TL; DR

[STRESSED SCHREECHING]

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

I find it kind of funny how every singe blurb about this show makes point about talking about how Gilead is a "Christian Fundamentalist" state, but the show itself is virtually bereft of anything "christian." Aside from a brief glimpse of a book that is apparently a bible and a single bible verse read, there's basically nothing. The phrases people use sound vaguely religious but don't actually come out of scripture, and there's not a cross to be seen anywhere. The only church in evidence is the catholic cathedral being torn down - Gilead apparently considering catholicism too far from it's new Orthodoxy to allow.

Then again, this does seem to be pretty true to the book, which aside from one bit about a creepy scripture reading machine used by a 'dial-a-prayer' service, is also largely unconcerned with religion. Atwood wants to explore power structure, ideology is largely incidental.

It's also arguably true to reality - most christian spin off groups idealize a societal model grounded more in their own reaction to their contemporary culture than in anything out of the actual bible. The bible has several admonitions for prophets contacted by God to take off their sandals on holy ground, while most american conservative christian congregations insist people keep their shoes on in the sanctuary - a small thing, to be sure, but illustrative of the fact that these folks are oriented towards idealization of behavior that comes from their own social mores rather than scripture's.

 

[Mortis Nuntius]

One concern I have (stolen from a feminist who made a good point) is that there may be a temptation to make Offred a resistance fighter rather than a victim who largely just tries to get by. Like she's an interesting character but she's rather passive as a survival mechanism/out of shock initially at just how quickly the world changed and her active subversions are pretty mundane. An affair, keeping a secret, fleeing etc.

It kind of misses the point if Offred starts blowing secret police headquarters or something.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

So, I dropped this after about four episodes because i felt a lack of investment in the plot. Did it get better? I am considering revisiting this series.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

I found an interesting article about this series, which articulates something that probably did factor into my less that positive reception of it, but which i never really thought about explicitly until this article put it into words:

The Handmaid's Tale doesn't quite get modern American misogyny

The Handmaiden's tale was a response tow hat Atwood saw as women's issues in the 1980's. Today's issues have shifted somewhat, and the series sometimes falls rather flat in addressing that.

 

[Synthesis]

I found an interesting article about this series, which articulates something that probably did factor into my less that positive reception of it, but which i never really thought about explicitly until this article put it into words:

The Handmaid's Tale doesn't quite get modern American misogyny

The Handmaiden's tale was a response tow hat Atwood saw as women's issues in the 1980's. Today's issues have shifted somewhat, and the series sometimes falls rather flat in addressing that.

Click to shrink...

By coincidence, I read a article with a comparable complaint--that the series (unlike the novel, however) fails in the area of racial relations in postwar theocratic state of sorts. Atwood talked about the rise of an apartheid state in her book, or at least apartheid-like tactics such as mass relocation of the black population, but I hadn't seen any evidence of that in the series (I was up to episode 6, I think--I actually enjoy it so far, but I don't have Hulu so watching it is irregular at best for me). Likewise, if TV Gilead's is, in fact, no so racially defined, why are there no Asian handmaidens (or even any Asian women at all)? In any case, it was something of a stumbling block compared to the obviously direct approach to sexual segregation and undoing women's emancipation.

I think the complaints were at least somewhat valid, but I do want to watch more of the show.