The Handmaids tale

[DumbledoresArmy]

Anyone else planning on watching this at 9pm on channel 4?

Kinder, Kirche, Kuche?

Fucking hell. The Daily Mail make it sound like Fifty Shades of Grey.

But every scene is beautiful, composed in palettes of pastel drenched in blurred light. There may never have been a prettier TV show. Schlock it certainly is, but it’s gorgeous schlock

And that's all the reviewer got from it.

Meanwhile on the DM front page, women are being policed.

Schlock? Were we watching the same programme?

No sentient woman would have written that trite crap.

Fuck the DM!

This link is interesting. Although women were encouraged to work in America during WWII, there was a big push to get women back into the home when all the men came back from war. Lots of women didn't want to do this and so there was lots of propaganda idealising motherhood and being a good housewife...

www.plosin.com/beatbegins/projects/hchunt/main.htm

In the mornings she goes shopping, at night she is powerless to resist his wanton demands. But while her cruel slavemaster is slowly losing his heart to her, our brave little maid is flirting dangerously with the sexy chauffeur. It’s like Barbara Cartland with a degree in English Lit.

It’s like Barbara Cartland with a degree in English Lit.

You have to be fucking kidding me. Way to miss the point spectacularly. Only a completely clueless man could have written a review like that. What a complete dick.

Wow, what the hell? Have they missed the part where she was abducted, enslaved, tortured, had her child and husband forcibly taken from her, and was then subjected to repeated rape for the rest of her life? But she gets to walk to the shop to buy chicken, so I guess thats ok then. #Rage

i actually didnt think the daily mail could sink any lower but this is beyond awful....the only thing i can agree with is the beautiful cinematography...it is indeed beautiful...beautifully chilling...shclock ...omg ..it is seminal text and studied at a level and higher....they are really thick aren't they ?

powerless to resist his wanton demands
Really? Is that what the DM calls rape now? Ffs!

they make it sound like a bodice ripping bad mills and boon..i can only hope they have a really thick journo writing the reviews or they are paid so much they are happy to sacrifice and professional integrity to write such appalling drivel.

I want to share it & rip it apart. But I don't want to give them the clicks.

Jesus-The DM would probably start the whole regime off in real life given half the chance.

I never thought I'd say that, but in defence of The Commander, he does not particularly look like he is enjoying The Ceremony either - It shows that extreme versions of religion and patriarchy are damaging to all sexes IMO.

What I find most frightening is the fact the book is set in the USA. A western society.
I think we are well advised to remind ourselves that no society is immune from losing hard won rights and civil liberties. 'Othering' culturally different parts of the word to feel better oneself about how it 'could not happen here' might be reassuring (falsely so), but is part of dangerous complacency.

DM? ODFOD and when you get there FOSM

I wonder how the redneck gun-toting libertarian survivalists have adapted to Gilead? Or are they all dead?

I reckon they've been beaten or joined them, peuk.

One thing I've learned about "libertarian" types on Twitter is that they are not too hot on women's rights - libertarian only seems to refer to them doing what they want to do - so they might be up for a bit of Gilead rule.

In fact, they're probably the gun-toting militia escorting women from workplaces.

Btw - a plague on the Daily Fail for that review. They're tossers aren't they? Almost like they're getting off on the thought of it

I assumed the gun toting libertarians were Gilead. It would suit many of them quite well. A self sufficient homestead, meek wife, plenty of children (if poss) and a big shiny gun to stroke.

Mind you, I couldn't help but be reminded of this when those Congressmen were shot at today....

Those Who Have Read The Book

Is there a socially explained reason why the handmaidens can't/don't become wives?

Given that it seemed that the existence of fertility was random, it on the face of it made no sense to me to deem all the handmaidens sluts. Even if some of them weren't of the "social status" of commander/commander wives - surely some of them would have been - it fertility was a random thing.

And even if it weren't, what was so socially wrong about letting a commander marry a handmaiden and have children with his actual wife? Or was it a need to share the fertility around?

I think the handmaids were women who had socially transgressed, such as being lesbians or divorced. June was married to a divorced man so according to gilead they were adulterers.

I always assumed it was to do with age. Not all men have handmaids - only the important ones, and they are often older, as are their wives. Handmaids are younger as they are more likely to be fertile. This is where the TV adaptation differs as the commander and Serena are too young.

I like the updates though - harrowing as the Emily/ofglen thing was in epidsode 3. I think Margaret Atwood included as much as she could in the book about the horrendous things women face, but when she wrote it, FGM wasn't as "known" (IYSWIM) and gay marriage wasn't possible. It's chilling.

at mansplaining election coverage to a politics graduate!

I think the handmaids were women who had socially transgressed, such as being lesbians or divorced. June was married to a divorced man so according to gilead they were adulterers.

Yes, that's what I thought.

If you've on your first marriage to a Commander, you get to be a Wife. If the pair of you don;t have children, you get a Handmaid. I don't know if you'd get a Handmaid if you have kids already though.

Otherwise, if you're on your first marriage to just a normal guy, you're an econowife.

Marthas - I reckon they're older or infertile single women (widowed/divorced/never married) who haven't caused trouble for the regime. The Aunts are recruited from this pool too. If you're older/infertile and you've protested against the regime, or you're a "gender traitor", or a CEO, or a professor of biology, or a doctor - you're either killed outright or sent to the Colonies to clean up radioactive waste. If you're a young and fertile trouble maker, you get to be a Handmaid.