Handmaid's Tale

[herewegogc]

Anyone watching latest series? Have sobbed through the first 3 series and the parallel to the trans coerced speech hurts. Did appreciate bowies's suffragette city in so4episode 3. In fact the music throughout has been great. Meanwhile I wish it didn't seem like a documentary.

Hard to believe that Margaret Atwood is full-on Be Kind TWAW.

I was most disappointed to read about that the other day @JellySlice What the hell! How can she have written handmaids tale and believe sex is fluid??

@Terrazzo I wonder whether she really does believe it, or is saying what she needs to say to survive professionally in Canada.

I don't watch it. It's entertainment predicated on the coercion, abuse and rape of women. Yes, all the situations in the book were based on things that really happened to women, but there was a polemical point to it.
The TV adaptation serves to visually titillate, it does not challenge the current real life situations where women are coerced, abused and raped, and, as has been pointed out, Atwood is full on TWAW.

As far as I'm concerned, she is exploiting the historical and current abuse of women for her own gain.

I can't watch. She has sold out and it is so far from the book and her usual style I can only assume its for the money
It's all for the shock factor
MA being down with the kids, cool girl TWAW has put me right off her
I read the original years ago when she said that everything in the book was actually happening to women somewhere in the world. The ending was very typical of her and I don't believe she ever intended a second book. Even though her writing is more dystopian fiction than feminist I can't understand how she can go from THT to TWAW

The finale is to be The Handmaid's Tail

That's an interesting perspective, Floral. There's certainly something about it that makes me feel on edge so maybe it's that- in the back of my mind I know it's not really fiction as similar things happen to women globally every day.
I have read both books and find the 'add ons' in the show stray far from the novel. In the book the husband is very clearly dead so it's much more bleak. I initially liked that they picked a very normal looking actress for the lead too. Have got annoyed with the annoying amount of plot armour they've given her.

Ironic she wrote about handmaidens and then became one really.

Margaret Atwood is old and has been very successful in Canada for decades. She won’t need to bleat TWAW to survive professionally - either she believes it or doesn’t want to “be on the wrong side of history”.

She may be lovely in private, but being Canadian I’ve had to see her interviewers a lot on telly. She comes across as very full of herself and smug. Her nasal voice is also annoying as fuck (sorry, been wanting to get my Atwood irritation off my chest for a long time).

I take your point Floral but I have watched the series so far and the first season absolutely solidified my position against surrogacy. As the series has continued the direction to me seems quite genuinely feminist. I have thought that the more brutal scenes were managed so as to keep the woman’s perspective rather than the man’s and to minimise titillating but I may be mistaken. There is plenty of scenes where women take revenge on the men. The exploration of motherhood has been something we rarely see on screen. Motherhood is central to the series I think and the suffering of mother and child when they are separated. It brings to mind the suffering inflicted by the Irish mother and baby homes scandal also.

One question I don’t know the answer to yet in the show, what happens to wives in Gilead when their husbands die? I find it hard to imagine that they are allowed to live on as mistress of their own home and to keep charge of their children, their own or those they have kidnapped. Are wives able to inherit their husband’s property? Maybe that will be revealed in the next series.

It always surprises me when surprise is expressed about Margaret Atwood.

Margaret Atwood so obviously enjoys heaping misery on her female characters. She's never struck me as being supportive of women.

@Ritascornershop

Margaret Atwood is old and has been very successful in Canada for decades. She won’t need to bleat TWAW to survive professionally - either she believes it or doesn’t want to “be on the wrong side of history”.

She may be lovely in private, but being Canadian I’ve had to see her interviewers a lot on telly. She comes across as very full of herself and smug. Her nasal voice is also annoying as fuck (sorry, been wanting to get my Atwood irritation off my chest for a long time).

Agreed on all points. She's always struck me as very dismissive of people who aren't as clever as her.

I always thought Attwood was a misgnyist, Mad Adam, in fact the whole trilogy is also quite racist and classist. The working class male characters are little more than animals but the posh ones are described in contrastingly human ways. She has zero black charectors in any of her books that Iv read.

Ritascornershop are you from CB?

Margaret Atwood so obviously enjoys heaping misery on her female characters. She's never struck me as being supportive of women.

This is a fucking good point. Never thought of it that way

@FloralBunting

I don't watch it. It's entertainment predicated on the coercion, abuse and rape of women. Yes, all the situations in the book were based on things that really happened to women, but there was a polemical point to it. The TV adaptation serves to visually titillate, it does not challenge the current real life situations where women are coerced, abused and raped, and, as has been pointed out, Atwood is full on TWAW.

As far as I'm concerned, she is exploiting the historical and current abuse of women for her own gain.

I entirely agree with this, and for the same reason have not watched the TV series, either. I read the book years ago, and reread it when the first TV series came out. The book and the series (also the book and the original film) have totally different qualities. One is a story for those who will read it, a thought-provoking story about an appalling regime, which leaves the images to the reader. The series sells sex - no, rape - misogyny and brutality in order to build ratings.

I wonder how much input Elizabeth Moss has into the show and what her opinions are on women…

Isn't EM a Scientologist?

I think Margaret Atwood has been 're-educated'. A few years ago she got accused of transphobia on Instagram, can't remember exactly what she'd said but there was quite a pile on, then her account went quiet for a while.

Ramonaquimby - sorry, what is CB?

I think the series serves as a horrible warning.

CB is Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. There is a cafe there called Rita’s Tea Room….!
I guess if you’re asking, you’re not 😂

Ah. No, other side of the country.

I wonder how much input Elizabeth Moss has into the show and what her opinions are on women…

She directed tonight's episode and had this to say about feminist activists in 2017

I'm very disappointed by Atwood's TWAW stance - unless she's making an attempt at being subversive (which I doubt). I don't forgive her for it. Nevertheless, I continue to find something of value in most of her writing and The Handmaid's Tale is a book I go back to time and time again. I think the TV series has left Atwood behind somewhat, even though she's one of the executive producers, and The Testaments was an obvious cash-in on the success of the dramatisation.

Motherhood is central to the series I think and the suffering of mother and child when they are separated. It brings to mind the suffering inflicted by the Irish mother and baby homes scandal also

Yes. And interesting that in tonight's episode the handmaids were being sent to "work" at a "Magdalene colony".

Personally, while I find The Handmaid's Tale difficult viewing, I find myself willing the women to succeed in overthrowing the brutal regime that keeps them all trapped, one way or another. The parallels with today's real world are quite stark for me.

Interesting posts. I read the book at school and it had a profound impact on me. I worry more and more about a cashless society amount other things.

Couldn’t watch past the first few episodes of s2, I was pregnant and the woman chained to a pole walking endless circles was the final step - by no means the most horrible thing it showed but it was just too harrowing, in a brutal sort of day to day way.

I’d be interested to fill in some of the plot points but can’t watch it.

The biological horror of the tv show isn’t something you have to think about in the book, or it didn’t seem as viscerally unavoidable. There are scenes from the show I’ll never forget. There’s an argument that it has to be as ugly and harrowing as it is to make its point but it started feeling very gratuitous.

Sorry for rambling.

Me too, Anne. Made me a feminist.