The Handmaids Tale : Emotional Devastation on a Weekly Basis

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > TV IV > The Handmaids Tale : Emotional Devastation on a Weekly Basis

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Look at what has happened to access to contraception and abortion in the us since the 70s and the belief systems that drive that change, as well as how various nations have selectively removed or ignored the human rights of women to raise or lower birth rates. No abortion at all any more in South Dakota, but mandatory abortion in China.

Women can become objects in the political imagination pretty fast, not least of all because they're still severely underrepresented in most western-style democracies--to say nothing of places with other systems in place.

# ¿ Apr 28, 2017 20:44

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:03

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

The Vice President of the United States finds the mere existence of women outside of marriage so threatening that he refuses to have dinner with any woman who isn't married to him. What would he do if he suddenly had real authority over women (he did, and he tried to make them have burial plots and headstones for miscarriages)?

# ¿ Apr 28, 2017 20:58

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Pedro De Heredia posted:

We are.

In the first episode, there's a scene in a supermarket. Every single person shopping at the supermarket is a woman, and every single one of them is wearing either the red handmaiden outfit or the gray regular maid outfit. The supermarket shelves are fully stocked, and we are shown all the labels on the products. They all look the same and have no text (I imagine because women are not allowed to read, but it also suggests no consumer brands either. When women walk outside, the streets are largely empty, except for soldiers.

The closest we get to being told that there's people out there just living 'regular' lives is when we're told Nick is so low status that he 'hasn't been assigned a woman'. But that suggests a government with such total control over their state that they're even managing the relationship status of random lower class people. This level of reach is implausible.

The show takes place in what looks like a reasonably sized city. Let's say it had 1 million people. There are clearly not that amount of people living there. It's not shown and it's implausible. Now, you could say they died. But in terms of 'this could happen', "authoritarian government" is much more likely than "authoritarian government + total obliteration of the population".

I think that post means that you're being shown a single city under control of a particular regime but without a clear sense of how far its control extends beyond or of how many people live there, or how stable that control is. It's like how ISIS can run a city and if you happen to be in that city, it doesn't really matter what the bigger picture is. The story's built out of 20th-century revolutions like in Cambodia or Iran. It doesn't have to be a totalitarian state or a superpower to kill everyone with glasses or start doing fgm.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 00:15

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Pedro De Heredia posted:

I don't think so.

What you're saying, essentially, is that what they're showing you is an aberration: that this is not what things are like. But... what would the point of that be?

No, the point is to show you how things are. They show you the essence of this world (that it's extremely mysoginistic and that women are under some pretty brutal control) through a character who is not special, but rather living what many characters are living.

The themes and the world aren't really interesting if we're meant to assume that somewhere not too far there's a bunch of poor people living lives indistinguishable from Pre-Gilead ones.

You're seeing a pastiche of historically real transgressions and horrors given a 20th-century context to unify their appearance. It doesn't matter what the world beyond is like or whether this version of an authoritarian state resembles one or another specific historical state. ISIS built cages in the town square of every town they invaded and burned heretics there every week until they were chased away. The exact state and nature of ISIS as a geopolitical unit is irrelevant to the people trapped in an ISIS-controlled city being killed for having photographs of dogs or touching cooking pots while menstruating or whatever. You're being asked to identify with the people who are victims of things like that and to extrapolate the experience of victimization to Mike Pence demanding a funeral for every miscarriage or a brood of Duggars believing that a man hugging a woman is being tempted by the woman in a way that is the woman's fault.

But if the narrative is disorienting in the sense that you can't figure out how the state works, that's probably how it felt to live under Pol Pot, too. I'd imagine that plenty of people killed by the taliban found it implausible.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 01:06

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

I bet that the kind of white man who can't sympathize with black characters also has a hard time identifying with white women.

# ¿ May 4, 2017 00:47

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Dick Dorkins calls himself a "cultural Christian" now.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 18:05

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

The human race was a giant mistake anyway, tbh. It's not really worth the effort of saving.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2017 20:18

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

Skizzzer posted:

I do appreciate the back story into Nick's and lucas' lives simply because I think it's worthwhile to also explore the damaging effects of a society like Gilead's on men and families.

also, speaking as a man, I found I could easily and readily emphasize with lucas' story - whereas with the other episodes I'm horrified, angry - but more like sympathetic but not empathetic, like an observer if you know what I mean. with the Lucas episode I could picture my place in the story (or prob just dead)

the nick centered one was like eh, okay, though.

I've had similar revelations and it's always a very creepy thing to realize. It basically validates every argument ever made about diversity in storytelling and film production.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2017 03:29

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 02:03

I AM GRANDO: Aug 20, 2006

I hope there's at least one season spent with assholish sexist college professors in the far future working on their book.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2017 18:01

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