Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Dystopian Fiction vs. Real Horrors

Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Dystopian Fiction vs. Real Horrors April 25, 2017

handmaids-tale-hulu-elisabeth-mossOn April 26, Hulu premieres “The Handmaid’s Tale,” a 10-part adaptation of Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel of the same name.

Hulu’s iteration of the story is set in an alternate present (Uber is even mentioned) when environmental pollution has devastated female fertility, and a war has caused Gilead, an oppressive theocratic dictatorship, to break off from the United States.

Elisabeth Moss (“Mad Men”) stars as Offred, who is captured into this regime because she was proven to be fertile. Her husband was shot, and her daughter taken. Now she’s given over to a wealthy man and his barren wife as a “handmaid” — inspired by the story of Leah and Rachel in the Book of Genesis. Offred and her wealthy master (Joseph Fiennes) go through highly ritualized sex in hopes of producing offspring (which obviously does not please the wife, played by Yvonne Strahovski).

Some critics, apparently in a permanent state of panic since the presidential election, proclaim that it’s a harbinger of things to come.

Said the Los Angeles Times:

With Oklahoma state Rep. Justin Humphrey — sponsor earlier this year of a bill that would require “the written informed consent of the father” to obtain an abortion — referring to women as “hosts,” and the vice president’s much-publicized habit of calling his wife “mother,” Atwood’s 32-year-old novel of enforced childbearing feels oddly, disquietingly contemporary. Indeed, apart from the series’ odd 21st century reference (Tinder, Uber, salted caramel ice cream), not much has been changed.

It’s a sort of quasi-post-apocalyptic story, in that a toxic environment has made sterility widespread, with other sorts of human activity chipping in: “Birth control pills, morning-after pills, murdering babies,” spits overseer Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd), “just so they could have their orgies, their Tinder.”

Trumpets the Hollywood Reporter:

How ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Became the Most Unintentionally Relevant Show Ever

There does exist a world, though, where women, especially poor women, sell their eggs or rent out their wombs to allow couples that cannot produce children to have them. The children are then taken from the women who bore them, who may then have no part in their lives.

Women and girls are forced into sexual slavery, have their genitals mutilated (even by doctors in Michigan), are slain to preserve some notion of family “honor,” are forbidden to drive or hold jobs or even converse with men outside their families. Women are denied education and treated as if they aren’t fully human.

Children are simultaneously discarded before birth by the millions, or desired so fiercely by the infertile that no amount of money or surgery or medical treatment or laboratory experimentation is too much.

Of course, these things didn’t come out of Margaret Atwood’s imagination, and they’re not some litany of future horrors. They’re part of the world we live in right now, whether in the U.S. or abroad, and they deserve high-profile Hulu series of their own.

But, when the Atwoods of the world look for a bogeyman, he’s usually holding a Bible. Now, let’s be clear, neither Atwood nor the producers of “The Handmaid’s Tale” are claiming that the Catholic Church — or any mainstream Christian denomination — are the villains in their tale.

The leaders in Gilead seem very fond of the Old Testament, but never mention the New Testament — and a Catholic priest is seen hung in the pilot (which echoes Atwood’s story, in which Catholics, Quakers and Jews are enemies of Gilead).

At a press event last summer, I addressed the issue of faith in the series with executive producer Bruce Miller. Here’s the exchange:

QUESTION: In the book Gilead is run under the auspices of a very specific form of biblical fundamentalism, and Quakers, Jews, Catholics are not welcome, not considered our friends at all. So, how do you deal with the religious aspects in the series?

BRUCE MILLER: Well, interestingly, in the book they’re dealt with in a very specific way. I mean, I don’t think they ever go to church once in the book. You know, it’s a society that’s based kind of in a perversion misreading of Old Testament laws and codes, but I don’t think — even Margaret Atwood said it isn’t — they aren’t Christians, the people who are running Gilead. You know, I think that we deal with it the same way they deal with it in the book. You know, in the pilot, in the next few episodes, they’re tearing churches down that are not — that are anything besides their sect. I think there are a lot of parallels between the book and certainly the TV show and life in Puritan times. And I would say that we use that as — or the writing staff has been using that as a big parallel. You know, this country gets a reputation for being a place where people came from religious freedom. The Puritans who came liked their religious freedom, but not anybody else’s. So, certainly, there were no other churches besides the Puritan church. And, so, the way that they dealt with outsiders is, I think, slightly nicer or slightly meaner than the people in Gilead. I think they branded Quakers on the forehead — didn’t they — with Qs and stuff like that, and sent them out of the state. So, I think we’re trying to harken back to that origin story for the — that Margaret used as the beginning for this book.

Luckily for him, the Puritans aren’t really around to take offense.

The pearl-clutching among many secular TV critics might be funny if I didn’t think they actually bought into their fears (thankfully, not everyone agrees with this). What’s really sad is that, if you’re looking for actual crimes against women, you don’t have to look far — but you might have to risk being politically incorrect or culturally insensitive to point them out.

For example, while “The Handmaid’s Tale” gets trumpeted all over the headlines, the “Gosnell” movie can’t even find a distributor — and that’s a true horror story of our times.

UPDATE: Oh, speaking of abortion, Planned Parenthood has endorsed the series.

Image: Courtesy Hulu

Don’t miss a thing: head over to my other home, as Social Media Manager at Family Theater Productions; and check out FTP’s Faith & Family Media Blog.


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