“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.”
April 26, 2017 9:12 AM   Subscribe

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Creates a Chilling Man’s World [The New York Times] “In Hulu’s spectacular “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Ms. Moss is Offred, a baby-making slave in the Republic of Gilead, which is what part of the United States (New England, roughly) has become after a fertility crisis and a theocratic coup. It’s set in a near future that looks like the 1600s. “Mad Men” may have resonated with today, but it gave viewers the comfortable vantage of history, the reassurance that we had come a long way, baby. “The Handmaid’s Tale” argues — with an assist from current events — that progress is neither automatic nor irreversible. “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood novel, is a cautionary tale, a story of resistance and a work of impeccable world-building. It is unflinching, vital and scary as hell.”

• The Handmaid’s Tale will not become ordinary [A.V. Club]
“Still, as both the title and the episode make clear, this is Offred’s story, and the only factor more key to the outing’s success than Moss’s performance is, of course, Atwood’s story (and Miller’s adaptation). We’re with Offred from moment one, jumping back and forth between her past (on the run with husband and child, smoking weed with friend Moira (Wiley), encountering same friend at the Red Center and cowering from the Aunt there (Dowd)) and her nightmarish present, where she’s just entered into “service” for the Commander (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife, Serena Joy (Strahovski, excellent). Moss’s face tells us about the world—how much control she must have, the revulsion she feels, the struggle to “keep your shit together,” the paranoia necessary for survival—while her narration tells us about who she is, or was.”
• ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and the power of dystopian fiction in the Trump era [The Washington Post]
“Dystopian fiction — and any fiction, really — shouldn’t be judged by the extent to which it serves as a bulwark against actual, radical changes to American society. It is enough to ask that a story be entertaining and well-executed, and that its characters be rich and memorable. Fiction can’t save the world, but it can describe important forces at work in our politics and culture that may not be captured in polling data and conventional political reporting. The question is whether we recognize these salient descriptions when we see them, and what we do in response. During the 2016 presidential election, critics — myself very much included — turned out piece after piece about art that had diagnosed or described the very forces that helped propel Trump to the presidency, many of them made in the years in between Trump’s brief flirtation with a run for the Libertarian nomination in 2000 and his actual entrance into the Republican field in 2015.”
• The Handmaid’s Tale’s first 3 episodes are brilliant, terrifying television [Vox]
“Caroline: I've always been a little wary of calling The Handmaid's Tale especially timely at any given moment, because the whole point of the story is essentially that it could happen at any given moment. Many of the book's most uncomfortable truths for me come when Atwood is blunt about complacency being a huge part of how Gilead came to be, and the same holds true for the show. “Birth” hammers home that point in its flashbacks, with most everyone (except Moira) rationalizing away the disturbing new changes as necessary — or at least temporary — security measures. "We were asleep," Offred tells us in her voiceover, blunt and bitter. But I won't lie: The Handmaid's Tale’s pilot was the first episode of TV I watched in 2017, and it was tough. The little details the show includes to make the “before” flashbacks feel current — June as a college student, crashing on a paper about campus sexual assault; Moira griping about slow Ubers — make the “after” of Gilead feel that much more awful and jarring.”
• The Handmaid’s Tale: How a 30-Year-Old Story Became 2017’s Most Vital Series [Vanity Fair]
“One of the series’s biggest changes was revealed before the show even premiered. In the original book, Offred’s rebellious friend Moira is white by default; the insurgent government has driven all people of color out of the nation they’ve re-dubbed Gilead, resettling them out West. But in this version, Moira is played by Orange Is the New Black alum Samira Wiley, who is black. (Executive producer Bruce Miller explained the decision by saying that although sending away people of color may have worked on the page, it’s less palatable to audiences on-screen; he also decided while crafting the show “that fertility trumped everything,” even racism.) Wiley told Vanity Fair that the reaction to her casting was about what you’d expect: “You’ve got people who think it’s a wonderful idea, and that it’s going to be so cool, and then you’ve got people—I don’t know, let’s just call them ‘purists’—who are not happy that the story has ‘changed.’ ””
• Hulu's 'The Handmaid's Tale' Is Compelling — And Chilling [NPR]
“This is a world of 1984-style paranoia and doublespeak. On the surface, it's a placid, polite community that just happens to have black-clad guards with machine guns on every corner. But beneath that veneer is a world of grim desperation, fear and oppression. Women are stripped of husbands, children, jobs, their own money and control over their sexuality. The scene depicting the "ceremony" in which Handmaids copulate with commanders is emotionally brutal without being overly explicit. Commanders' wives cradle the Handmaids' heads in their laps during the act, creating a nightmarish scenario. Both prisoner and oppressor are forced into a brutal, dehumanizing ritual that pretends to be edifying.”
posted by Fizz (76 comments total) 62 users marked this as a favorite
 
I am excited to read this thread, because I honestly don't know if I have the emotional fortitude to watch the show itself.

Like I'm already there. I'm terrified. I don't need to be convinced.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [40 favorites]


FanFare Discussion: Episodes 1, 2, 3.
posted by Fizz at 9:21 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


I adore The Handmaid's Tale, but I just wish that the premise was different. They use the excuse of low birthrate/pollution to be assholes (which I don't see happening in our lifetime). In real life, it's much scarier (We're going to be assholes not because of the low birth rate, but because we just feel like it/are threatened by women), and I worry that some real-life assholes will read the book and miss the point.
posted by Melismata at 9:25 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]


The novel is really fantastic and well worth reading. The 1990 movie was so-so and not really worth watching unless you're really curious. I'm very hopeful this new TV treatment will be good.
posted by Nelson at 9:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


To read alongside: 1984 is a utopia, and Trump is not Big Brother
posted by chavenet at 9:29 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


so there's no balm in Gilead then
posted by iffthen at 9:29 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I just read the book for the first time a month or two ago. Obviously long overdue. And found it more bone-chillingly terrifying and unsettling than any horror novel I've ever read. It's the kind of thing you can't forget.

I'm afraid watching the show will make me physically ill with anxiety. But it looks amazing, so I'm at least going to try. And I'm so happy they cast Samira Wiley as Moira. Just perfect.
posted by the turtle's teeth at 9:32 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I love the book, but it's already so terrifying I'm a little afraid to watch - especially when it feels like there are men currently in power watching it for pointers.

Nice use of "Nevertheless, she persists" in the NYT piece.
posted by Mchelly at 9:33 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


I neglected to look at my calendar when scheduling a thing for tonight, so I don't think I'm going to get to watch this until tomorrow. I'm going to spend the next 24 hours girding my loins though because I watched an extended trailer last night and just about threw up. (I have read the book and I've also seen the 1990 movie but this looks like a way more visceral gut-punch than the movie was.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 9:34 AM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Man, this better be good, because I have never seen a show this hyped up. The novel's one of my favorites.
posted by xammerboy at 9:37 AM on April 26, 2017


xammerboy - the only show more hyped is American Gods ;)

The link gives away something I didn't get until the end of the book (the epilogue explains her name).
posted by k5.user at 9:46 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I (finally!) read the book for the first time last month.

I am a white dude with a white-collar job in New England, and I was still left frightened by the time I finished it. I don't want my kids living that, much less myself.

I know I can't watch the show -- heck, I doubt I could make it through hearing the audiobook just say the words out loud.
posted by wenestvedt at 9:52 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]


One of my very good female friends has organized a watch party for the first three episodes and THANK GOD she did because there's no way I could watch this alone or without the support of other women. I just couldn't.

I've said this elsewhere here before, but my daughter chose The Handmaid's Tale as her deep research project for her English class (and she got the highest grade in the class *parent humble brag*) and she took a really optimistic view of the ending, which I never have. It always felt incomplete to me. I do wonder how true to the book this adaptation is going to be.

I'm not looking forward to it, but I'm looking forward to it, you know?
posted by cooker girl at 10:00 AM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


Like the masochist I am, I reread the book right after the election. I'm going to watch it this weekend.
posted by Sophie1 at 10:01 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


Somehow, when I first read the book, I was young enough to think of it as an alternate reality fiction story - like, I missed somehow that the world which existed before looked like our world, that the complacency looked like my own complacency. I reread it recently and am like "I do not know how I missed this/ever slept again."

I am so excited for this that I'm probably going to get a Hulu subscription.
posted by corb at 10:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


so there's no balm in Gilead then

How about a bomb instead?
posted by Dr Dracator at 10:16 AM on April 26, 2017


Oh, and it's even creepier for those of us who grew up next to Harvard Square.
posted by Melismata at 10:16 AM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]


Thing to note: "Hulu plans this as a continuing series, so it will presumably stray further eventually. Ms. Atwood is a consulting producer." So this isn't just going to adapt the book and stop there, I guess it's eventually going to move outside of the novel, so we may get a very alternate ending.
posted by dnash at 10:19 AM on April 26, 2017 [4 favorites]


Every year I reread this book and something different jumps out. Last time it was wow, blaming Islamic terrorists seems prescient for 1985. This year it was, yes, that Offred's whole story takes place in Cambridge and the bodies are displayed in Harvard Square.

The trailer made me feel excited, well, excited and scared. I'll watch every minute but can't see binging this for the sake of my mental health.
posted by Flannery Culp at 10:22 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


They use the excuse of low birthrate/pollution to be assholes (which I don't see happening in our lifetime). In real life, it's much scarier...

If it's any consolation, there are many of the very far right who feel white people aren't reproducing fast enough to counter the birth rates among hispanics, blacks, etc. Basically a "white people are breeding their own extinction" world view. So...
posted by Thorzdad at 10:25 AM on April 26, 2017 [22 favorites]


I can't help but notice that this thread came very soon after the one about the founder of The Red Pill. The seeds are there.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 10:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


One day I happened to be downtown and came across a movie shoot. Now, when I lived in a bigger city, that was a commonplace event. There was practically a shoot on my doorstep every day. Where I'm living now, it happens much less frequently.

The were a bunch of black SUVs and military vehicles with a corporate/military type of insignia (bird wings below a sun with radiant rays) on the doors and body panels that were parked at the end of one of the town's arched bridges. Now, I found this to be really weird because most of the shoots that do happen in this area are historic (with one notable exception, but it's for a small-town set in fantasy/sci-fi show--plus that mainly shot in a completely different part of town).

I asked around but nobody on the street knew what the production was. When I got home I did a bit of Internet sleuthing and discovered they were shooting Handmaid's Tale. So know I'm torn. I've never been a fan of Atwood's (I know, I can be stripped of my Canadian citizenship for admitting this), and I really didn't have an interest in reading the book, but I'm curious to see how much of the local area made it into the production.
posted by sardonyx at 10:35 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I was more excited about this before all the showrunners said that the movie wasn't a feminist story, it's just "a story about people!"

Seems pretty garbage-y to be coddling men in the hopes that they might maybe care about the story even though it has GIRL STUFF in it, UGHHHH.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:38 AM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]


I've never read the book, and I probably won't watch the show, but setting this particular story in Cambridge is truly, truly a stroke of genius. Nowhere is safe from reactionary politics. And there's so much awfulness lurking under the surface even (especially?) in a lot of "nice" liberal enclaves, that nobody thinks they have to talk about because they're such nice liberals.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:40 AM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]


Flannery Culp: ...Offred's whole story takes place in Cambridge and the bodies are displayed in Harvard Square.

Oh, man -- corpses staked out in Harvard Square?! I never stopped to figure out where the action takes place, aside from that revival-meeting penance event in front of the libraries in Hahvahd Yahd. Having spent a lot of time in the area, this...creeps me out.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:49 AM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


Yes indeed, wenestvedt. "The newsstand on the corner..." *shiver*
posted by Melismata at 10:51 AM on April 26, 2017 [9 favorites]


On top of having to live in Trump's America, I've had a terrible and sad 2017 personally so far so although I very much am interested in this, I'm not sure I have the strength to watch it right now.

However, I will say that the book, which I read some time between the publication date and 1990 or so, terrified me and blew my mind and seemed to containe such a profound truth of a possible endpoint of the way that so many Americans (and religious fundamentalists worldwide) feel about women, that I still remember the afternoon I was reading the book on a family outing, and the sunny forest on the mountain we were visiting as my mind blew apart and collapsed back into something more scared, and angry, and also more convinced than ever that I needed to fight for feminist beliefs despite being faced with the apathy of my friends and peers at university.
posted by Squeak Attack at 11:13 AM on April 26, 2017 [14 favorites]


My housemate literally laughed in my face when I told him I refused to watch this with men. I kind of want to make him watch it Clockwork Orange style, but I am afraid he would still miss the point.

All I know is, it was the women in the room who really understood why I was crying on election night. I think it's important to support this work, but I can't do it alone and I won't do it with men.
posted by Space Kitty at 11:15 AM on April 26, 2017 [35 favorites]


Flannery Culp: ...Offred's whole story takes place in Cambridge and the bodies are displayed in Harvard Square.

The night of the election, I was reading Hugh Trevor-Roper's The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century. It begins with an essay on the European witch-craze, which pointed out that it had been heretical to believe in witches from about 800 until the 1400s or so. Witches were ridiculous superstition! Satan deluded folks into thinking that they had magical powers or that their neighbors were practicing the dark arts! But then, of course, the agenda changed and those who had believed in witches all along were finally vindicated in this new era of Enlightenment.

Then I went back across the river, passing by Boston Common where several witches and Quakers had been hanged in the early days of America, and riding the subway under Harvard Yard, where Cotton Mather wrote his defense of the Salem witchcraft trials and enjoyed a long and prosperous career--for a while. Everyone believed him when he said that specters were bewitching young girls, but then later in his life he said that his slave, Onesimus, had explained to him that he was inoculated against smallpox in Africa and that New Englanders should be inoculated as well--and by then everyone knew he was crazy.
posted by Hypatia at 11:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [10 favorites]


black humor break: With the casting of Alexis Bledel as Ofglen, there's a morbid joke here somewhere about Rory finally making it to Harvard that I leave as an exercise for the viewer.
posted by Flannery Culp at 11:28 AM on April 26, 2017 [33 favorites]


I just read the book this week and have been left extremely unsettled by it. I'm undecided on whether I want to watch the show. I don't know that I can bear it.
posted by twilightlost at 11:58 AM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


I don't subscribe to the channel broadcasting this in Canada, but I am determined to get hold of it somehow. I love the casting of Samira Wiley, and the trailer looks excellent.

I first read this book in 1995. I had just finished my English Lit undergrad and my first Women's Studies elective, so how I managed not to read it until then I'm not sure. We were assigned Margaret Atwood's novel Cat's Eye (another excellent book) in my Canadian Lit class, and somehow I just...missed The Handmaid's Tale until then.

When I read it, I was immediately immersed. I was transported to Gilead; I was Offred. I have read it several times since then and every time, the sensation upon finishing it is one of surfacing, gasping for air, relieved to find that I am not a Handmaid living in Gilead after all.

One of the many memorable scenes from the novel is the one where the Japanese tourist group interacts with Offred and Ofglen, who are out shopping for food. The interpreter asks them if they are happy, and although Ofglen doesn't answer, Offred answers yes, they are happy, because she knows many of the interpreters are Eyes (spies), and that is the answer that the rulers of Gilead want the rest of the world to hear.

That scene gives me a lot to think about, because on the one hand I do think it's wrong to automatically think every woman in a fundamentalist religious community is oppressed. I definitely believe that is a choice some women make. But the scene does make me wonder about how much subtle/unsubtle pressure there is on these women to state firmly to the outside world, yes, of course this is my choice. This is an important part of my faith and my faith is important to me. I prefer to dress this way, and I prefer to submit to my husband and the male leaders of our church.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [21 favorites]


Also, I probably won't be able to see the series, but I would be interested in viewers' opinions of how making some characters people-of-color works. On the one hand I'm glad that actors get these parts; on the other I'm a little leery of "white supremacism is just not a Thing in this dystopia any more"; on the third, I wonder about how much the "jesus, this is an ethnically cleansed world" could come across on screen anyway.
posted by Hypatia at 12:57 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


Several commenters feel hesitant to watch. I was as well, but after viewing the first three episodes, I think it's worth the effort.

It's often hard to watch but it's really well done. It takes the book and makes it more real, rounds it out to explore things that are happening outside Offred's view. Moss is terrific. Samira Wiley as Moira is an inspired choice, and I really like the other casting. Alexis Bledel is great.

When I started watching, I wasn't sure I'd make it through, so I watched them alone, in the bright morning sunlight, on an iPad screen. There were a couple of bits I fast forwarded through in episodes 1 and 3. Being able to watch it alone and pause/fast forward was very helpful.

Parts of it must be absolutely beautiful in HD (the red habits!), but I was happy for the small screen because it's... wow... harrowing and I think the large screen would have been a lot to take in.
posted by mochapickle at 1:16 PM on April 26, 2017


On the one hand I'm glad that actors get these parts; on the other I'm a little leery of "white supremacism is just not a Thing in this dystopia any more"; on the third, I wonder about how much the "jesus, this is an ethnically cleansed world" could come across on screen anyway.

Nah, white supremacism is still a Thing. Reviews indicate that while they backed off the book's shipping non-white people off to undisclosed areas, the show has nonwhite people and people of mixed race appearing as servants and handmaids, with all high-ranking commanders and their wives white. (Spoilers galoooooooooooooooore at the link.)

Which y'know. Still white supremacist as fuck, just in a way that lines up a little better with how evangelicals treat POC now (respectability and usefulness politics), while also not shutting non-white actors out of yet another opportunity to participate in a major prestige series.

I'm actually delighted (which is not the right word, really, but my best approximation of the HAH THAT'S SHARP GET 'EM SHOW sentiment) with the knock-on effect in the story of children borne by WOC handmaids getting snatched from their mothers and raised by white women who are complicit in the horror because it lets them gain status as mothers. Hello, reference to questionable adoption practices by white evangelicals!
posted by joyceanmachine at 1:20 PM on April 26, 2017 [26 favorites]




If there were balm in Gilead, I would go
To Gilead for your wounds, unhappy land,
Gather you balsam there, and with this hand,
Made deft by pity, cleanse and bind and sew
And drench with healing, that your strength might grow,
(Though love be outlawed, kindness contraband)
And you, O proud and felled, again might stand;
But where to look for balm, I do not know.
The oils and herbs of mercy are so few;
Honour's for sale; allegiance has its price;
The barking of a fox has bought us all;
We save our skins a craven hour or two. --
While Peter warms him in the servants' hall
The thorns are platted and the cocks crow twice.

Edna St Vincent Millay
posted by clew at 1:59 PM on April 26, 2017 [13 favorites]


the show has nonwhite people and people of mixed race appearing as servants and handmaids, with all high-ranking commanders and their wives white.

I don't think I like this change, or at least, part of it. If POC can be handmaids and servants but not commanders or wives, what would the Commanders think their new biracial children would grow up to be? It removes a huge element of the book which is the presumed perpetuity of it all - Gilead was, iirc correctly, a pretty long period, not just an in-between time for 20 years or so.
posted by corb at 2:04 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


what would the Commanders think their new biracial children would grow up to be?

Sally Hemings?
posted by clew at 2:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [8 favorites]


what would the Commanders think their new biracial children would grow up to be?

To me, it accurately reflects how certain white evangelical families treat their adopted nonwhite kids -- as having been raised out of their nonwhiteness by adoption. To them, these kids are, yes, technically nonwhite, but they've been saved and will be raised and will grow up just like other white kids.

It fits hand in glove, too, with the modern flavor of bigotry where everybody agrees it's terrible to hate _________ people for being _________, and of course the speaker isn't __________ic or -ist because they have that one friend who is ______________ , but you'd barely know it because they go to the right church/don't rub their ____________ness in people's faces/don't try to push their extremist agenda down everybody's throats/has a job/is a very nice person, etc.
posted by joyceanmachine at 2:38 PM on April 26, 2017 [16 favorites]


Add me to the list of people who find this too frightening to watch.

Literally while reading this thread, I got an email from Planned Parenthood about a bill being voted on in the Michigan State Senate tomorrow that will, if passed create a “Choose Life” license plate and give profits from the sales to “eligible nonprofit organizations that promote life-affirming programs and projects”.
posted by still_wears_a_hat at 2:55 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


Do you have to have a Hulu account to see it?
posted by thelonius at 3:01 PM on April 26, 2017


I have probably posted my thoughts on Handmaid's and Atwood enough times to not repeat them again, but I will say I'm always creeped out when people run with "Offred" as the protagonist's name. It's explicitly not her name, explicitly not a name. We never know her name. It got erased along with her personhood. I get the need to have some kind of names for these characters, but their namelessness is a significant part of the book.
posted by byanyothername at 4:41 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


^ eponysterical
posted by mochapickle at 4:55 PM on April 26, 2017 [6 favorites]


Also terrified to watch after reading the first recap. I don't think I can take it. Reading it was bad enough, y'know?

I believe you can deduce that her name is "June" from the part where everyone is secretly telling their names at the training center. June is the only one who isn't named elsewhere in the story.
posted by jenfullmoon at 5:56 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


We never learn Ofglen's real name, but everyone else gets a name except for the narrator, her mother, and her daughter. Her husband is Luke but she and her direct female relatives are not named.

On preview, I think the show uses June. I kind of wish they hadn't, but it looks like there are a lot of flashbacks and without the artificial constraint of strict first-person viewpoint, maybe the writers just found it too weird to never have anyone call her by name.
posted by Flannery Culp at 6:03 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Re: June, I believe Atwood has sad that while she did not intend for Offred's name to be June, she is satisfied with the fan theory and is cool with people using it. I think this was in a Reddit AMA, if I'm not mistaken.
posted by dysh at 6:18 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


Datapoint for anyone on the fence. The book scared me as a teenager, and I was terrified to watch the series after the Great November Dumpster Fire. Managed to hyperventilate through the first episode with the help of a huggable fat tabbycat and a box of wine. By the end of Ep. 3 I was all, "WTF can I do to help fund women's self defense classes around the world?!" After months of post-election despair, the shot of rage was welcome as sunshine in spring. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, in-fucking-deed.
posted by Orange Dinosaur Slide at 7:47 PM on April 26, 2017 [12 favorites]


One of my very good female friends has organized a watch party for the first three episodes and THANK GOD she did because there's no way I could watch this alone or without the support of other women. I just couldn't.

I just watched the first episode with a group of 8-10 people and am glad I did. That was brutal. Sharing it with others both amplified the brutality (no one spoke) and mitigated the fear (...until the totally inappropriate commercial break). Would recommend group watch. Caveat: we decided we definitely can't do more than one episode a night.

Oh, and it's even creepier for those of us who grew up next to Harvard Square.

Watching here from a couple T stops away, the Boston references jumped out at me more (we decided the ice cream shop was probably Here's) but we were disappointed they so obviously didn't film here (decent Maine woods, but that was so not the Charles).
posted by maryr at 8:36 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


BTW, small spoiler: the first episode ends with Offered explicitly naming herself as June, so you may as well consider it canon, at least on TV.
posted by maryr at 8:39 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


Holy guacalmoly how am I just now learning that the book was published a mere year before I was assigned it in high school. I always figured it was decades old at the time like 1984 (which was assigned immediately before and published in 1949). Mad props to my English teacher; 64 year old, 64 Mustang driving, Mrs. *redacted* for so quickly identifying such a seminal work and managing to get it into the curiculum.
posted by Mitheral at 9:46 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


So I'm watching the first episode right now. I didn't realize Hulu had fucking commercials. I just watched a horrific rape scene and now someone is trying to sell me a goddam Jeep? The fuck? I thought I was paying for this.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:00 PM on April 26, 2017 [7 favorites]


And now there another fucking commercial like 3 minutes later? Fuck this shit. I'm out.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:02 PM on April 26, 2017 [1 favorite]


Hulu has different plans. I'm on the no commercials plan for $12 and it's totally worth the extra few dollars.
posted by mochapickle at 10:20 PM on April 26, 2017 [2 favorites]


the bodies are displayed in Harvard Square

Are the bodies hung in the Square? I always thought they were hung on the wall surrounding Harvard Yard.
posted by longdaysjourney at 10:23 PM on April 26, 2017


As a white guy, a woman had to point out to me that this book wasn't speculative fiction for women, but a horror story. Now that I've read the book (in anticipation for this series), I see her point. Watching "The Ritual" in episode 1 helped drive that home.
posted by Pseudology at 10:48 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


Hulu has different plans.

OK. I figured this out now, but I just have to vent about it....

So I wanted to watch this pretty badly, so I went to the Hulu app on my Amazon Fire Stick, downloaded it, created an account, and signed up for the free trial. Signing up for the free trial required me to enter my Amazon password (even though the device is already validated with my Amazon account). My Amazon password is a randomly generated string of 50 characters. I tried that twice, it didn't work. So I went into Amazon and changed my password to something with 8 characters. Now I could sign in on Hulu and start watching.

Then a commercial comes on and I freak out. I will not abide by this, and I express my frustration on Metafilter. mochapickle helpfully informs me that a commercial free plan is available. Wonderful! That is well worth four dollars!

So I look through the app on my device as to how I can upgrade to the commercial free plan. Nothing there. I log into my Hulu account on line. There, right at the top, "Watch Commercial Free"! Awesome! So I click on that, it sends me to my account page, and I click on a link that says something like "Amazon payment options". This takes me to a scree that informs me that I can't watch commercial free with Amazon. And there doesn't seem to be any way in my Hulu account to cancel the pending payment through Amazon.

Alright, so I just go to Amazon and cancel my payment through there. Right? Well, I can cancel the recurring monthly billing, but there's no way to cancel my current free trial. I spent like 15 minutes looking.

Finally, I deleted everything about my Hulu account with Amazon, created a new Hulu account with a different email address, signed up for commercial-free, and everything seems to be working.

What a pain in the ass. I guess the sunk cost will keep me watching, though.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:57 PM on April 26, 2017 [3 favorites]


This is playing right after the Metafilter thread where people were saying that no, we can't actually criticize Democrats who want to make abortion seeking women watch ultrasounds. Because the Big Tent and inclusiveness is more important than women's rights.

I can't really watch this, because at this point I can't see how we're gong to avoid an equivalent to Gilead here. When even the supposed allies of women desert them, I just can't have much hope.
posted by happyroach at 11:35 PM on April 26, 2017 [11 favorites]


One of the few things that my ambivalently-Catholic high school in London, Ontario, Canada did was to assign The Handmaid's Tale as one of the 'Canadian lit' readings for English class. (Also, lots of Alice Munro, for which I am eternally grateful.)
posted by LMGM at 2:46 AM on April 27, 2017


OMG, from the NYTimes article: "It’s a ruthless dictatorship, but it would make a lovely Pinterest board." I can't even with this.

Also, from the same article: "Making America Gilead Again"

Give this reviewer a Pulitzer already.
posted by LMGM at 4:00 AM on April 27, 2017


Woman is the n----r of the world. - John Lennon

No way will I read this nor watch it. Damn right, women's self defense training. What power we have, just by being able to carry a kid. What would happen in this world if suddenly women denied men their vaginas?
posted by yoga at 4:48 AM on April 27, 2017


I've never read the book, just the synopsis. It's widely talked about in birthmother groups- you know among those of us who are the bad birthmothers who don't mind our place and swallow our tears nicely. The ones of us who questions if it really "has to be this way" or if it's really "for the best".

For those of us who impregnated by abuse and rape, and subsequently refused needed aid to keep our children by our communities, there's already a sense of certain parallels in what is already happening to many women in the US who are forcibly impregnated, then shamed and discarded by their communities without any aid to keep and raise their children.

For some women who were sent as teens to maternity homes where they had no real choices, they have said their experiences felt eerily similar, being taken from their whole lives and hidden away and forced to give up their children and told it's all for the best.

A part of me hopes watching this will help people empathize and question this current choice our society has agreed on to use as a solution for women in need of resources to parent by actually providing resources instead of taking the children from parents without resources and putting them with parents who have resources.

I know I can't handle watching this or reading the book so it could be they are tangentially related issues, but I am hopeful soon to see more questioning of how we leave so many women who have already been raped or abused without meaningful supports to even make a real choice and they often face further reproductive exploitation when their children are sold for high dollar and to benefit wealthier "more worthy" people.
posted by xarnop at 5:44 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]


So I'm watching the first episode right now. I didn't realize Hulu had fucking commercials. I just watched a horrific rape scene and now someone is trying to sell me a goddam Jeep? The fuck? I thought I was paying for this.

I got a Johnsonville sausage ad after that scene, which seemed somehow darkly appropriate.

In general, I sort of wonder if the advertisers I saw last night even *knew* they were advertising on this specific series, because the ads I got were in a lot of ways consistently and completely inappropriate for the context. Lots of Johnsonville sausage. Weight watchers. An edited version of this Chanel perfume ad featuring Joss Stone singing 'Its a man's world'. (Also a Samsung Galaxy ad and some car brand that wasn't a jeep, both of which were unobjectionable.)

Honestly, though, I will now forever mentally tie Johnsonville sausages to this show, which isn't a good look for them.
posted by anastasiav at 6:43 AM on April 27, 2017 [8 favorites]


This is my first experience with Hulu and I didn't realize their direct-to-streaming shows have the same four-act structure as regular broadcast TV. Even watching ad-free, the repeated fade to black, oh right, this is where the commercials would go, was jarring.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:08 AM on April 27, 2017


Woman is the n----r of the world. - John Lennon

Er, I think you meant to say Yoko Ono?
posted by Squeak Attack at 8:50 AM on April 27, 2017 [5 favorites]


Are the bodies hung in the Square? I always thought they were hung on the wall surrounding Harvard Yard.

Well, given that a large part of that wall would be considered Harvard Square, yes. I mean, maybe they're hung on Quincy Street? At least half the wall is on Mass Ave though, so...

PS: Typo in my earlier comment - Herrell's. We decided the ice cream shop must be Herrell's since Tosci's wasn't established enough when Atwood was in Cambridge.
posted by maryr at 5:10 PM on April 27, 2017 [3 favorites]


(Alas, that Herrell's is no more. It's a Mike's Pastry now.)
posted by tobascodagama at 6:08 PM on April 27, 2017 [1 favorite]


Noooooo.
posted by ChuraChura at 3:21 AM on April 28, 2017


Sorry for the derail, but regarding that John Lennon/Yoko Ono quote, it's so very, very racist and sexist. Let's not use it here. Let's just forget it even exists (except as a cautionary tale of good intentions gone wrong).

Why? Because it's problematic to use language that oppresses one marginalized group while simultaneously seeking equality for a different marginalized group. It also completely ignores the fact that using racist language to describe "women's struggles for equality" is exclusionary to Black women. Especially since Black women deal with intersectional oppression from both racism and sexism.

Listen to Black feminist Pearl Cleage when she says: “If Woman is the “N” of the World, what does that make Black Women, the “N, N” of the World?” This quote really underscores how weird, exclusionary, unnecessary and racist the phrase is. It's the very height of unexamined privilege for John and Yoko, or anyone else who isn't Black, to use the "n" word. It was racist then and it's racist now.

Let us forever banish this quote from our collective lexicon. We can't uplift all women if we're pushing Black women down.
posted by i feel possessed at 5:13 AM on April 28, 2017 [22 favorites]


(Alas, that Herrell's is no more. It's a Mike's Pastry now.)

It's been gone for years. The Harvard Square Tosci's is gone too, but was replaced by also local fave JPLicks. And I don't feel too bad for that because the reason that Tosci's closed, best of my knowledge, was that they got caught not paying payroll taxes. You can still go to the Central Square Tosci's thanks to crowd funding.

I should really put together an ice cream crawl, or maybe a series?, on IRL like I've been talking about.

posted by maryr at 8:53 AM on April 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I never see discussions of Handmaid that give a nod to Heinlein's If This Goes On—, not for plot, but for the background story and atmosphere. It's got to be a major influence.
posted by zadcat at 10:12 AM on April 28, 2017 [2 favorites]


zadcat, I thought I was the only person who'd read "If This Goes On" in years!

Heinlein gets (properly!) smacked around a lot, but he had a pretty clear eye for what America could turn into if no one headed it off.
posted by wenestvedt at 12:35 PM on April 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


I never see discussions of Handmaid that give a nod to Heinlein's If This Goes On—, not for plot, but for the background story and atmosphere. It's got to be a major influence.

This really sounds like you are implying that Atwood could not have come up with the concept of her own novel by herself. Given how many men who have never read Heinlein are always on the verge of setting up patriarchal rape & breeding cults, I'm not sure that "it's got to be a major influence" is particularly true at all.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:02 PM on April 28, 2017 [10 favorites]


If I remember correctly, Atwood said that she was partly inspired by the Iranian revolution. Khomeini's intentions seemed so inclusive and democratic at first, or Iranians wanted to believe that, anyway, and then *boom* woman-hating theocracy.

After I read The Handmaid's Tale, I got freaked out about what's happening in the American military.
posted by clawsoon at 8:29 PM on May 1, 2017 [2 favorites]


Margaret Atwood reviewed the Danish opera that was based on The Handmaid's Tale, as well as talking about the many real-life inspirations for the book; everything from Ceausescu forcing women to have babies in Romania through the Salem Witch Trials.

It may be her most realistic work of speculative fiction: "One of my rules was that I couldn't put anything into the novel that human beings hadn't actually done."
posted by clawsoon at 8:39 PM on May 1, 2017 [1 favorite]


Book Riot looked up the 10 most highlighted quotes (by Kindle users) from The Handmaid's Tale.
posted by mixedmetaphors at 4:44 PM on May 4, 2017 [1 favorite]


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