The Handmaid's Tale Vol 3

[CruCru]

Hi all

As the last thread has all but totally filled up, I've started this new one.

Bit shallow - but do you think the Wives are allowed cosmetics? I got the impression that make up is banned but they do all look very polished.

My dh is watching it with me and is enjoying it as much as me (feels weird to say "enjoy" for a series as bleak as this but you know what I mean ). I'm really glad cos I often moan that all the programmes we watch together are focused around men!

Excellent programme, brilliant thread.

Elizabeth Moss deserves every award going for her portrayal of June/Offred. The agony on her face when The C took her straight to the room at Jezebel's this week was palpable.

Saw this..

Sperm counts are half of what they used to be 40 years ago

The study

Sorry - Elisabeth

I was reading about that study on BBC this morning. It makes THT that bit more plausible - I can see how someone might think it was a good idea to round up the fertile women & force them to submit to being raped by the remaining fertile men to save the human race. A little misogyny added, & powerful men's fragile egos, & we're just a step away from Gilead!

Fx the scientists figure out how to improve sperm counts before we get to that point!

I read that article this morning, then one on the Guardian's website about the privatisation of public spaces and how that affects things like the right to protest and it all made me think about THT. It feels like a perfect storm of little things could so easily tip society towards something awful.

Maybe the plummeting sperm counts are Earth's way of trying to save us from ourselves? After all, there are 7 billion humans now, all wanting that better life...and Earth isn't coping well with what we're doing to it. Let's hope the governments of the world realize that to save ourselves we need to change our lifestyles, reproduce less and have less impact on the world, rather then try to force reproduction. Maybe then our fertility would improve naturally. Maybe the Earth can only support a certain number of humans and this is just another example of a species being limited by its environment. It's very common in evolution - why should we be exempt? Especially when we are the ones who've created that toxic environment.

I wonder in Gilead times whether the poorer countries of the world, where people live more simply, are experiencing similar fertility problems to the US or if they're still having children and are just as ignored as now, still struggling to feed their people... (after all, Mexico, the other country were told about is also hugely overcrowded). Maybe the leaders of Gilead are just worried about their own first-world infertility, and are unwilling to change their own lifestyles to improve things? I can certainly see how that could happen, given how entitled the richer governments of the world feel...

It's that big question - it's not so much about what individuals or families would do to survive - when threatened, what would your country be prepared to do to survive? I suspect that Gilead or something like it would certainly become a stark possibility. And guns are very persuasive :(

Excellent points, Sophie.

It's all about you reap what you sow I feel, to use a biblical phrase. Environment, equality, rights, and treatment.

I hope we get Lydia's backstory though I'm disappointed that June's mum hasn't been mentioned.

It's the last episode next week?

(I'm basically placemarking, because I love to read the threads on this).

Can't believe it's going to end next week! There's so many loose ends, there's a lot of great material for a second series.

Thanks for the new thread, I've been following since the series started, last episode was harrowing I thought, and I agree with others who said about Lydia and Janine, she was a success and Lydia wanted the credit, god knows what has been done to Janine now and Lydia will be awful to her because she has let her down.

That's if Janine wakes up of course.

I hope Janine doesn't wake up - much though I like her and feel desperately sorry for her, nothing good lies ahead for her, and she's too broken a soul now to be tamed like Gilead wants and demands :(

I have a horrible suspicion that she will survive though, so that we can be shown what happens to the total failures. I don't want to watch that. I don't want to see her any more traumatized than she already is... 😥

this is just another example of a species being limited by its environment. It's very common in evolution

Could be like bats and have a new species to each environment - a 5th of all mammal species is a bat species - that's what you get when you can fly from place to place. Us humans do the adaptation without waiting for those pesky mutant genes. What a species !

Are the marriages between the commanders and the wives ones of convenience? (asked upthread)

I'd say if they were married before the coup then they're alright. In the book though, there was a ceremony that everyone attended where several couples were married via arrangement. And Offred pondered the fact that the newly marrieds may well have a handmaid between them in the near future if they don't reproduce. No mention of that in the TV series though.

As others have said, there are still so many unanswered questions! Even having read there book, there's so much more I'd love to know. I'm quite unclear on the timeline of it all. There's not much detail on the fertility problems, nothing about Hannah being born (the attempted abduction in the hospital on screen didn't happen in the book, that took place in a supermarket) But if we are to understand that fertility was a huge problem and that babies were being miscarried, being born sleeping or being born with deformities/abnormalities ('shredders' ) then how long after all that started was Hannah born? She was only 5 when taken away. Was she a scare commodity at that stage? There's no mention of it in the book, maybe she was born and then a couple of years later the birth problems appeared?

I'd love a second series, to flesh out the background of the characters a bit more and let us see more of the setup of society and the colonies etc. I will be gutted when it's over this week, it has been absolutely riveting to watch.

I want to know if there are any 'normal' families in Gilead. Like do the Aunts and the Marthas have families at home? They might be too old to have children now but they might have at one point and Rita did say that she had a son who had died at the age of 19. So do they still have a home where they go to at night and family lives or what? Hope that makes sense.

*scarce commodity, sorry, not scare. By that I mean was she one of a very few babies that had been born and survived?

Elendon think June's mum will feature in the new series www.digitalspy.com/tv/the-handmaids-tale/news/a831007/the-handmaids-tale-season-2-will-feature-offred-mother/

Spoiler alert ahead!!!!

Thanks Crinkle. I think I know how this season will end. June's mum's story as a radfem needs to be told.

Sorry for the mail link but...... scary stuff

Why is it scary stuff?

Women have been told for millennia that they are the gatekeepers to infertility. After 35 your eggs deplete?

It's possible that if Janine does wake up, she will be disabled and may not be of as much use as a Handmaid.

I think the Marthas live in the houses and the aunts live in the red centres. Don't think they have families. Women who were already married before regime become econowives.

The Mail article was fascinating - not just because of the subject but because it barely mentions women at all... Just men, western men, oh my god western men's fertility is decreasing! Whatever will we do?! Sod the women, what about the poor men?!

Interesting that they said about sperm count not being affected in poorer countries with healthier, more basic lifestyles...

I was talking to a man about it earlier (not DH, and who shall remain nameless) and he said 'if we don't look out there'll be an uprising of immigrants from those countries and then we'll all be in trouble.' Now I should point out that the man in question is very old and of a different generation...

But it makes you think. Western countries invaded these poorer nations years ago (and still now) by excessive force, committing terrible acts of brutality and murdering many thousands, then built huge wealth, invented technology and ultimately improved their own lives on the back of that pillage and now rule the world... If these poorer countries DID now have something over western culture, and did demand that we change our greedy ways...how would we react to that? We'd probably be encouraged to see it as unreasonable, greedy, dangerous, suspicious...it would be labelled terrorism and we'd be encouraged to hate them. And they'd probably be attacked again.

What is is with humans? So many of the world's problems ARE obvious and simple to fix. Not easy, but simple. Your ecosystem is chock full of antibiotics and hormones from the intensive farming industry, and that's affecting sperm counts. Okay, so stop all intensive farming and introduce hard rules about feeding and vet care. Make people understand through awareness campaigns that their meat can no longer be cheap, so they must just eat less of it and value it more, fill up on veg not meat. Make it normal to treat farm animals well and to value the meat they give us. Stop people binging on cheap, unhealthy, processed to fuck meat. Encourage growing your own and make it easier. Give grants to people who DON'T hard landscape their gardens! Lots of stuff they could do....but governments choose not to. Because there's so much dirty dealing going on with businesses and manufacturers behind the political scene...

I guess that with the last episode being this week we may need to create our own alternative series two. Or some spin offs.

Tricky though that. Fun though.

Actually scrub the fun bit. It's never going to be fun is it?

At first I was a bit disappointed that the screenplay has deviated from the novel, however, I think it's an incredible adaptation and I love the fact that June's husband is still alive.