A colleague mentioned that she wanted to binge watch ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and I had to advise her that it wasn’t the best approach to watching this series. As gut wrenching and traumatic as it is, I do advise people, particularly women, that they MUST watch it. Just not watch more than one episode at a time.
Margaret Atwood’s dystopic novel written in 1984 has been adapted into a movie before, but this Television series has gone much further than the source material, and filled in the very many blanks between Offred’s departure in the novel to the epilogue of the scholars’ study of the rise and fall of Gilead. Needless to say, the blanks are filled with horrifying details that seem almost designed to shock or manipulate the viewers’ emotions. From the legalised rape, to the forced illiteracy of women, to the subjugation of the wombs of the handmaids and the horror of the colonies, none of the women in this story escape unscathed in the state of Gilead. Yet, as Atwood has repeated in many of her interviews, none of these atrocities are of her imaginings alone. She just had to look at History and the various forms of torture against women in various ages and various nations, and bring it all together under the umbrella of Gilead.
To those who are unfamiliar with the premise of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’, simply put, it is the rising of a theocratic state within the United States of America. In a land where population levels have fallen to scarily low levels, a Christian group referring to the Bible as their saviour, plot and overthrow the government, establishing the Commanders as the supreme rulers of the land. The Commanders are all male, their wives the blue robed aristocracy reduced to playing the role of consorts, yearning for the fulfilment of the biological destiny that has been denied to their wombs. The handmaids are the fertile women indentured to the different commanders and raped in a ritual ceremony, held down by the wives and penetrated by the husbands. All other women are either Marthas (cooks/cleaners/general dogsbodies) or eco wives, married to the men in the lower echelons of power.
Why, you might ask me, should one watch something this horrifying or depressing? Well, aside of the fact that it is brilliant television- the writing, the casting, the acting- it also serves as a cautionary tale to those of us who are complacent in the face of all that is wrong today.
Only a hundred years ago, women suffragettes were fighting for votes in Britain. Over two hundred years ago, women in the West were still considered mens’ chattel and had no rights to their own lands or property. Women in Saudi Arabia have only just begun to drive legally, and women and children in Afghanistan are still denied an education. Child marriage is rampant in many parts of the world and human trafficking, particularly of young women and girls is at epidemic proportions.
Can we, as women, really take our freedoms for granted?
The inherent irony within ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is that one of the visionaries at the helm, a lead architect of Gilead is herself a woman. A woman who is so convinced of her mission, so immersed in the teachings of the Bible that she constructs the downfall of a state that has enabled her education and her sedition. As soon as Gilead comes into being, she pales into insignificance and gets relegated to the background. Her intelligence is forgotten and/or deliberately ignored. She is a prisoner of her own making.
It is hard not to see the parallels in today’s world. Governments and leaders that are openly misogynistic are propped up by women who feel they are doing the right and moral thing. Women eroding other women’s rights, supporting laws and lawmakers that are threatened by a woman’s civil liberties, her intelligence, her rights over her womb. But to what end?
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ might be fiction, but it is fiction rooted in reality. The best kind of fiction always is. It also serves as a warning to those of us who are passive in the face of the misery of others, secure in our belief that none of it will touch us. We are safe and we are protected. But for how long?
Watch ‘The Handmaids Tale’ and learn how quickly everything can be lost. Watch and learn and absorb the messages within. Watch and learn to fight for not just your own, but others’ rights as well. Or else, in the words of the German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemoller, there will be no one left to speak for you….
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
