Friday, October 13, 2017

Sudden Thought

"The Handmaid's Tale," book and movie, and all the political penetration they had this year, look completely different after this week's revelations, don't they? How many will notice how eerily powerful they have become when the tribal disguises are switched?

13 comments:

james said...

No can do. You can swap sexes (Hamlette), or juggle races (Hamilton), but political identities are immutable--unless an R repents to become a D, and even then you wonder.

Sam L. said...

I don't see it.

Sam L. said...

Of course, I've neither read the book or seen the TV show, and have no interest in ever doing so.

Christopher B said...

In 2001 Atwood claimed the inspiration for the book was a trip to Afghanistan in 1978. You can still find the article published by the Guardian online. It's been my impression that she has been walking that back since
at least 2004.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

It was a condemnation of powerful men who enslaved and oppressed women for their comfort and sexual pleasure. The women embraced this to a large extent and had ritual shamings of each other. It was rather heavy-handedly suggested that this was always about conservative men, but especially about America In The Era Of Trump. This was especially a theme in Hollywood in general, including, I am told, the Academy Awards.

Now it seems a closer match as a description of Hollywood, especially as it came out this very year. Ironic.

David Foster said...

She did say Afghanistan had been one inspiration for the book; it would have been really nice to mention that in a foreword or afterword. No such in the copy I read.

She also said that another inspiration had been the Puritans.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Yes, the Puritans as seen through the eyes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, not the actual ones who led the world in rights for women.

Trimegistus said...

I was thinking about Handmaid's Tale just the other day, and I think everyone including Margaret Atwood is misreading the source of its appeal.

It's not a science fiction novel, or a dystopia, or a political tract.

It's a sex fantasy. Just like Twilight or Fifty Shades of Gray, or any of the millions of paperback romances featuring a woman swooning into Fabio's arms on the cover. It's a fantasy of women being submissive to powerful men.

Who reads The Handmaid's Tale? Who watches the two (two!) film versions? They're not aimed at men. I rather doubt any unaccompanied man has ever watched either voluntarily. Nor are the majority of the book's readers men. No, Handmaid's Tale is a book by a woman, for women. And women love it.

Are there really that many wannabe-activists who have to stoke their outrage with fiction? I don't think so. Are there really that many paranoid feminists who want to validate their misandry with a novel? I doubt it. Millions of normal, ordinary women have read and enjoyed Handmaid's Tale, and seem to be very taken with its depiction of a heroine in sexual slavery. But it's a nice bourgeois kind of sexual slavery, with plenty of material comforts, a nice clean high-status master, plenty of other women to be jealous of how pretty and popular the heroine is, and plenty of modest clothing so she doesn't have to worry about her butt.

In short, for every woman using Handmaid's Tale as a warning about Trump's America, I suspect there are three or four who are fapping madly to it.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Trimegistus - I don't know if that's true, but if it's true, those three or four women aren't very likely to advertise that side of it. So the fact that public discussion is about the Trump's America aspect is what would happen either way.

Sam L. said...

Well, it certainly couldn't be about George W. Bush or his successor. Predecessor, I could see. Trump is merely their nemesis of choice.

jaed said...

Handmaid's Tale as sexual fantasy... eeeuuuuwwwww. (And this is coming from someone who is inclined the way you suggest. Not even a little bit.) If it were a fantasy, it would have a more attractive "Commander" character. And the book would end with the handmaid and the

I do think it fulfills some emotional needs, but not that one. Mainly the dark need to see one's adversaries as awful, to rehearse their evil and stupidity, to tell over their terrible deeds even if you have to make them up, and end up by seeing just how hollow they are, concluding with the Powerful Heroine escaping them, and a portrayal of the New World (featuring Professor Mary Ann Crescent Moon of Canada, forsooth!)

jaed said...

I managed to forget to finish the first paragraph. In the interest of completeness and in deference to my tendency to obsess, I will complete it even though probably no one is reading any more:

"If it were a fantasy, it would have a more attractive "Commander" character. And the book would end with the handmaid and the Commander together—perhaps she convinces him to escape with her (he's always had doubts, you see), or maybe the Wife gets moved out of the way somehow and he marries her, and they proceed to improve their society, or something. But the way it ended? No."

I mean, I read all four volumes of Fifty Shades of Grey. Handmaid's Tale is not a sexual fantasy of female submission.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

@ jaed - We defer to your research and expertise.