Personal Thoughts Post-The Handmaid’s Tale
*This post contains spoilers
I started watching Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale because my friend gave me his account password and said I had till August to watch anything on it. And because I am prone to voraciously devouring TV shows, even when my initial interest in them is minimal, I picked the one that has showed up the most on my Facebook news feed. Call me a millennial, but I’m sure the producers would be totally fine with the way I learned about The Handmaid’s Tale.
I wasn’t convinced after the first episode. True, my fingers were frozen on the keyboard as Offred, real name June, (Elizabeth Moss of Mad Men) and her five-year-old daughter Hannah hid behind the rocks from their Gileadean pursuers. I was shocked when Janine (Madeline Brewer of Orange is the New Black) was dragged back to her dorm bed in the Red Center with her right eye masked in bloody bandages. And I was taken and heartbroken by Alexis Bledel’s performance as Ofglen, real name Emily, as I’ve, thus far, only known Bledel from her work as teens Rory Gilmore (Gilmore Girls) and Lena Kaligaris (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). But I was angry, too, though I didn’t realize at first that it was because so many focal points struck home. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to get into a show that involved regularly seeing women raped, beaten, tortured, degraded, and overlooked. At first, I kept watching because it felt like another world. I wanted escapism, but I quickly realized that The Handmaid’s Tale was, for me, anything but. It didn’t upset me because it was far from my world — it was because it was too near.
At first, it was the handmaids’ stories — being reduced to one body part with one purpose: childbearing by way of rape, once a month, every month. Then, it was Serena’s story — a strong, intelligent woman with the not-so-horrible idea of “domestic feminism.” (In some ways, I think it’s a view we need to hear more about today. But that’s a different story.) Her ideas are taken away from her, and they are warped by a committee of men, and she is eventually excluded completely from her own work. And, of course, there’s Aunt Lydia (exquisitely portrayed by Ann Dowd), who is totally blinded by extremist ideals and the power the new government allows her. It’s the formation of this government that enables the stories of these three different classes of women — so it’s the formation that I worried most about. How did nobody see it coming?
The show touches very briefly on the subject. June mentions that it was a series of small changes that, individually, didn’t cause any worry. However, for the most part, the topic is overlooked. We see all of the women in the country suddenly being fired and locked out of their own bank accounts. We see them discriminated. We see them protest. We see them shot and killed. Does any of this sound familiar?
I would’ve liked to see that gradual revolution in more detail, to understand how a country could go from a mostly functioning democracy to theocratic dystopia without notice. There were mentions of how slowly the takeover happened, how there were lots of signs, but through the show’s flashbacks portraying the formation of Gilead, it occurred in snap fashion. (Edit: my husband recommended a book called Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1 by Saul Friedländer to learn about possibly the most infamous gradual takeover.)
Do we, as inhabitants of the U.S., need to worry about a hostile government takeover that leads to an oppressive regime led by religious extremists? Maybe not quite. But we do have to realize that the fictional reality in the show is, in some ways, an actual reality for countries around the world. They might seem far away geographically, culturally, politically — but think of the Syrian refugees who have made it here to the States. In Handmaid, Moira (Samira Wiley, also of OITNB) found a way to cross into Canada, but here, today, there are Syrians who have found their way from a country two continents and an ocean away. Think of Yusra Mardini, who pulled an overcrowded boat for three hours through the Aegean Sea. The Handmaid’s Tale feels all too familiar, because it’s a story heard every day.
The creators of the show must be proud of how effectively, beautifully, and almost subtly they have incorporated today’s most prominent, most heartbreaking, most immediate issues into a story that was published over thirty years ago. I’ve only briefly touched on three — I’m sure others have made different (…and more thorough) connections. And the creators haven’t even come near to exhausting their source material! I hear there’s more to come, and I don’t doubt there’s a lot left to tell.
