Why I Won’t Watch The Handmaid’s Tale
Note: This essay includes spoilers for the book and TV version of The Handmaid’s Tale.
I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale back in the 80s, a few years after its release. I remember not enjoying the book very much. Though I read a few more Atwood novels in subsequent years, my sense of the author would always be as someone that I respected more than liked. But Handmaid’s certainly affected me. In particular, the book’s graphic depiction of the dehumanizing ritualistic three-way sex/rape that the handmaid Offred engages in with her owners remains indelibly seared into my brain. The book was perhaps the first serious novel that I felt like I experienced rather than simply read.
It was that scene, in particular, that made me curious about the TV version of Handmaid’s when it was released on Hulu in 2017. Would the TV show be able to duplicate the power of Atwood’s prose? I tuned in, and discovered that, yes, the show’s creators captured the haunting, dehumanizing terror of that scene in perfect detail.
And it was precisely at this point that I lost interest in Handmaid’s. Despite the critical accolades, the beautiful visuals, the stunning performance by star Elisabeth Moss, and the avalanche of think pieces lauding the show for its relevance to Trump’s America, I only managed to get halfway through the third episode before putting the show aside.
It was, in part, the show’s exquisite depiction of Atwood’s vision that turned me off. Visually, the show is spectacular, each scene meticulously dressed, coordinated and photofiltered for maximum impact. Yet, strip back the droolworthy set design, the clever dialogue, and the award-worthy acting and what’s left is scenes of trapped and brutalized women being subjected to new forms of punishment and humiliation every week.
Why in the hell would I want to watch that?
Watching Handmaid’s feels like watching an Instagram feed of sadomasochistic torture porn. Even worse, the collective critical orgasm over the show as political commentary prompts the exact opposite what our country needs during these perilous times. Watching the show gives one the vicarious thrill of seeming to take a stand against sexual cruelty and oppression without actually having to do anything.
At least in the book, the horror ends. Offred’s fate is unclear, but readers learn that Gilead does not endure. Serialized TV offers no such closure; in fact, it is required that the story must continue to go on.
And so here we are at Season 2.
During the season 1 run, my podcasting partner Vanessa Steck kept texting me about the show, practically begging me to jump back in and finish so that we could discuss it. She finally wore me down enough so that I agreed to watch the opener of Season 2.
I made it through fifteen minutes before turning it off. Because nothing had changed. As the episode opens, Offred and a group of other handmaids are led to a field where they are apparently to be strung up and hanged. For several minutes, the camera provides closeups of the women as nooses are placed around their necks, as they wait for the signal that will result in their deaths. The camera captures their terror for several minutes, stretching the moment past all necessity to convey the tension of their fear and agony. It’s brutal.
And it’s being served up as entertainment.
This is no different than exploitation, just with better lighting and set design. We viewers hope that Gilead will fall, but in the meantime, we must watch its women suffer like animals snared in steel-jawed traps. (Or, as with the character of Aunt Lydia, see women actively leading their own subjugation, gleeful with power derived from the misfortune of others.)
I don’t need to see the everyday indignities of daily life as a woman compounded on TV. There’s quite enough of that in real life to command my attention. I have nothing against violence and horror in entertainment — I count shows like Hannibal and The X-Files amongst my favorites, and BBC’s new drama Killing Eve effectively hits my thrill-seeking buttons while also incorporating a distinctly pro-feminine point of view. But there’s a line between entertainment and exploitation, and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale crosses it. In this era of #MeToo, let’s not continue to revel in women’s oppression — on or offscreen.
