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“The Handmaid’s Tale” – Red is the New Resistance

The thing about Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale is that it’s a woman’s book. That doesn’t mean men can’t read or appreciate it, but it is women, who daily experience life in a patriarchal society, who best understand its meaning and feel its truth. On the surface, it’s a dystopian novel about the lives of women in a future America in which a fundamentalist, totalitarian Christian government has implemented a draconian, oppressive social system for women. In the new “Republic of Gilead,” located in what was once New England, women become literal slaves to men, vessels whose sole purpose is bearing children and serving their male owners.

They are given names that only describe them in relation to men (for example, the protagonist “Of Fred” becomes Offred), and they are prohibited from reading, having jobs, or having any of their own possessions. On a thematic level, The Handmaid’s Tale is about power dynamics and collaboration. The men of Gilead are able to subjugate half of Gilead’s population only with the support and collaboration of many women, who rigidly enforce the very system that oppresses them. At the same time, these “pious” men and women lack total commitment to their own ideals, and display a hypocritically flexible relationship with its tenets. Oh right, and “Children of Men”- style pretty much everyone is infertile because of environmental contaminants. So there’s that environmentalist message, too.

NEW YORK, NY – APRIL 26: Organizers arrange copies of Margaret Atwood’s book “The Handmaid’s Tale” during the Interactive “The Handmaid’s Tale” Art Installation Opening at The High Line on April 26, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by J. Countess/Getty Images)

Atwood was inspired to write The Handmaid’s Tale based on anti-feminist patterns of thought and behavior that she saw in the United States in 1985. For the book, she imagined what these trends would look like if taken to their most extreme. Although many people since the book’s publication have dismissed the possibility of such an anti-woman, totalitarian society emerging in the West, Atwood persisted for decades in arguing that such a scenario was not altogether exaggerated, citing attitudes towards women in Afghanistan and other Third World countries as examples.

Although the Hulu series of “The Handmaid’s Tale” was commissioned well before the November Presidential election, depending on your political beliefs, its airing now seems a timely call to arms for women. After all, in most pictures of the signing of new laws concerning women’s health and abortion, it is a room full of only men smiling and shaking hands. There are no women present to have a voice in their own future. The epitome of this “women as objects” attitude is the response of Representative Justin Humphrey to criticism of Oklahoma’s House Bill 1441, which would require women to obtain written permission from their male partners before seeking an abortion. He said,

“I understand that [women] feel like that is their body. I feel like it is a separate – what I call them is, is you’re a ‘host.’
In Humphrey’s worldview, women are dehumanized vessels whose rights are secondary to those of others…which leads fittingly to Hulu’s first episode of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” Okay, everyone wearing their pussy hats? Because I’m pretty sure that by episode three we’re going to be all wearing red robes and plotting some major feminist butt kicking. Or I hope so. Don’t let me down, women of America. Persist, resist.

We begin with an interracial couple and their small child driving a 1990s Volvo along a desolate mountain road (we later learn in a run for the Canadian border by way of Maine), chased by police sirens wailing in the distance. The adults’ faces are strained and anxious, the child’s scared. The car runs off the road and the woman, who we will eventually know as “Offred,” and her daughter flee in one direction while her husband bravely stays behind to delay their pursuers. Seconds later, shots are fired and Offred’s eyes show she knows she is now a widow.

Convinced they can’t outrun their pursuers, Offred and the girl crouch behind a boulder and hold their breath, but it’s in vain: they’re caught. Offred’s daughter is taken from her and in that moment we notice an anomaly: these aren’t uniformed men. They’re heavily armed civilians wearing balaclavas. Where are the police? Who are these men?

Open scene onto a wonderfully, artistically filmed moment in which a woman sitting in front of a window is framed by the bright yellow light streaming in. Her blond hair is covered by a vaguely Amish-like bonnet and she’s wearing a deep red dress. It’s an iconic image, but one that also immediately registers as somehow…wrong. A light female voice intones,

Creeeeepy. Oooh, that’s dark. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. Offred, for we see now that it’s her, then explains she had another name, but it’s forbidden now. So many things are forbidden now. Between when she was captured and now, Offred has become a “Handmaid,” a class of women in the Republic of Gilead who act as surrogates for couples in which the Wife is unable to conceive.

In the next scene, Offred sits in front of Repressed Blond Woman (her name isn’t given in the first episode), whose tightly pulled back hair and blue prison warden dress instruct us to understand that she has serious self esteem issues that are definitely going to be expressed by dominating Offred. She quizzes Offred archly, comparing her to a puppy that needs to be taught, but then, unexpectedly, expresses some discomfort at their situation. Offred has used the wrong honorific, and it’s awkward for both of them, like neither is used to this terminology.

Repressed Blond Woman’s husband, Commander Waterford, then walks in and he and Offred exchange words that might as well be in another language:

Commander Waterford: Blessed be the Fruit.

Offred: May the Lord open.

The two then grimace, and we suddenly understand that everyone here is saying things they must have recently learned but don’t believe in. The Commander, still awkward and uncomfortable, leaves and Repressed Blond Woman figuratively pees on everything around her to mark her territory. “If you give trouble, I will give trouble back,” she says. And this couch is mine. And this chair. And this rug. Offred clenches her fist and takes a deep breath. Beyotch, I don’t want your man. I want my life back.

Pause for a second to talk about the cinematography. It’s amazing. When Offred walks down the stairs and looks outside the next day, it’s like we’re looking at a living painting. The filters on the camera make everything look slightly surreal, which is probably what Offred is feeling about the whole situation. Light is also used strategically. It frames Offred as she moves through the house, and spotlights the house’s “Martha,” named Rita, as she makes bread in the kitchen.

Marthas do menial work like cook and clean. They are a lower rank of women, below Handmaids and Wives. While Offred learns from Rita what food to purchase that day using tokens that Rita gives her, in another room the Commander takes leave of his wife, Repressed Blond Woman, and it’s obvious the two have an uncomfortable relationship. We watch the scene as though spying from the crack in the door. Whose eye are we? This panoramic view of everything going on in the house reinforces the paranoia within and without: no one is safe, everyone is constantly monitored.

Photo courtesy of inverse.com

Offred leaves to buy eggs. On her way out, she runs into the Commander’s driver, Nick. He is low status and “hasn’t even been issued a woman yet.” Offred has more mental commentary about him and suddenly we realize that she is FEISTY under that ridiculous white hat thing she’s wearing. These pious zealot overlords might have tamed her, but they didn’t break her. She remembers what freedom was like.

I like Offred. Offred wonders if Nick is an “Eye,” which is a spy. Offred joins another Handmaid named Ofglen, who is waiting for her at the gate, and they exchange “Blessed be the fruit” and “May the Lord open” formalities. Ofglen is totally Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) and Offred is having none of it. In the Republic of Gilead, Handmaids have to go everywhere in twos. Ostensibly for their safety, it’s really so that they can spy on each other. Offred thinks of Ofglen as a, direct quote here, “pious little shit with a broomstick up her ass.” I’m liking this script writer.

As they walk, Offred and Ofglen exchange intensely awkward dialogue. Awkward because it’s more of this weird religious speak and because both have to display a false patriotism that neither truly feels lest the other report them to the morality police or whoever. Ofglen remarks lightly that their government will “smoke out” the rebel fighters in the Blue Mountains, and now we have a better idea of what the Republic of Gilead encompasses and what it doesn’t.

The two walk past a school and a bunch of little girls are led out wearing pink dresses and bonnets. Men with assault rifles supervise them and it’s legit creepy AF because those two things should NOT go together. It’s also creepy because it’s possible to imagine a future for the US in which just such a thing does end up happening. The key to this show is to combine the mildly philosophically terrifying with the just barely possible, if improbable.

Offred and Ofglen go to a supermarket and the cognitive dissonance is overwhelming. They’re dressed like they’re in the 1800s, but they’re in a modern grocery store manned by men in paramilitary gear toting machine guns. In the Republic of Gilead, food doesn’t have writing on it (women aren’t allowed to read), just pictures. It’s like if Hipster culture was taken to the extreme. Offred and Ofglen run into some other Handmaids, who exchange news about fighting in Florida.

“Your mistress likes oranges,” Ofglen remarks to Offred lightly, and Offred probably has an idea of where Ofglen can shove those oranges. One of the Handmaids says that Offred could probably get the oranges for free just by mentioning that she is owned by Commander Waterford. She’s heard he’s kind of a big deal from the news. Record scratch. Hold up, you did what? “I didn’t read, I promise,” the Handmaid says nervously. Ofglen is already totally going to report her, and everyone knows it. This is the world they live in now.

 

Oranges really are the new black, but Offred just wants to scream. She wants to grab the nearest machine gun. This is not okay. This is not okay. Ofglen suggests they walk home by the river, like it’s totally normal that they’re chattel shopping in a grocery store run by men with machine guns. Their walk is gorgeous; again the world looks like a beautiful painting. Except for the part where they have to walk past the decomposing, hanged bodies of men: a priest, a doctor (abortionist?), a gay man (wait, that triangle is oriented the wrong way…). Offred flashes back to her “re-education” at the Red Center after her capture.

A stout matron, Aunt Lydia, explains that God spread a plague of infertility on Earth to punish man for pollution and radiation (and birth control pills and Tinder and probably also those really slow people in checkout lines in the grocery line). Offred, who has just arrived from being kidnapped, sees a familiar face in the crowd. It’s Poussey Washington. Just kidding, it’s Moira, Offred’s lesbian best friend from college, played by Samira Wiley.

Offred then flashes back even earlier, to happier times when they could drink and smoke and be themselves and Moira had a new girlfriend. Now they’re getting a lecture about dirty women. Sluts. God punished those women, they’re told, but they are fertile, and that means they have the good fortune to be Handmaids. They will bear children for the barren Wives. The basis for their roles is drawn from the Old Testament: Jacob’s barren wife Rachel asks him to sleep with her handmaid, Bilhah, so that she may have a child to care for. A newly arrived woman, Janine (played by Madeline Brewer, who played Tricia Miller on “Orange is the New Black”) resists and gets zapped with a cattle prod by Aunt Lydia. Aunt Lydia then says deeply chilling words: Offred looks as horrified as I feel every time I read the news these days. And for the show, that’s the point. That night, Moira advises Offred to keep her head down, that this must end, and they’ll find her daughter. We learn from Moira there were “dyke purges,” and many lesbians, including her girlfriend, were classified as “Un-women” and sent to the Colonies. Offred returns to the present. Moira isn’t hanging on the wall today, and that gives her hope.

Once home, Offred prepares for the (ritualistic sex) Ceremony that is intended to lead to her pregnancy, then heads down to the living room like a prisoner going to her execution. Flash back to the Red Center, where the Handmaids sit in a circle. They are incited by the Aunts to denigrate Janine and tell her the gang rape she endured was her own fault, commanded by God to teach her a lesson. The parallels to our society’s culture of victim shaming is so strong that it needs no further mention, but the scene explains how women in Gilead are forced to become instruments of their own subjugation.

Fun fact: the Aunt on the left is Margaret Atwood, in a cameo.

Back in the present, Rita and Nick have entered the living room; this ceremony is a whole house affair. Repressed Blond Woman lights a thin cigarette. This isn’t going to be fun for her either, and she snarks about men always being late, underlining her bitterness. The Commander shows up, then he and Offred have suuuuuuuper uncomfortable sex (some recappers go so far as to call it rape), with Offred’s head lying in Repressed Blond Woman’s lap. No one wants to be there: not the mortified Commander, not his angry Wife, and not Offred, who basically just wants to will herself into non-existence.

The deed done, the Commander leaves and Repressed Blond Woman kicks Offred out unceremoniously. After Offred has left, we see the tears in Repressed Blond Woman’s eyes, because she has failed, but whether her failure is to be a desirable wife or to be fertile is unclear.

Shortly thereafter, Offred runs outside, desperate for air and sick to her stomach. She’s not supposed to be outside, and Nick sees her, so she flees back inside. She flashes back to the Red Center, where Janine seems to have gone insane. Moira tells Janine that if they send her to the Colonies, she’ll clean up toxic waste and her skin will slough off and she’ll die (and hence no one should EVER want to go there). Moira is ruthless, because to survive, everyone has to keep their fucking shit together. In the present, Offred reminds herself that keeping her fucking shit together is what’s going to get her through this. She is going to keep her fucking shit together, no matter what it takes.

The next day, three bells toll, meaning there is a “Salvaging.” You know who isn’t down with Offred heading off to whatever a Salvaging is? Rita. Rita is like, “Girl, ugh. Now I have to do your work too? Hell no.” Rita’s in a mood, which is interesting because it seems that even though she’s of a lower social class, she’s given more leeway to express annoyance with the system in public than the women above her. Nick shows up to say the Commander wants more oranges, and Offred suggests that Rita get tuna from Loaves and Fishes as well. Inside joke. Rita, 100% attitude, snarks, “Oranges and tuna. Sounds delicious.” She storms off, and Nick and Offred exchange A Look. I feel like he’s a bit young for her. Is this just me?

Offred and Ofglen make their way to the Salvaging, where Offred reunites with an old friend and they joke about their new masters and Ofglen plots their future apprehension for treason. Talk turns to Moira, but there’s no news until Janine, a few rows up, turns around and pipes up happily, “Oh, she’s dead!” Janine, who is both pregnant and also still clearly five sandwiches short of a picnic basket, elaborates that Moira tried to run away, was caught, and was sent to the Colonies, where she was surely dead by now. Offred’s world spins.

She doesn’t have too much time to think, however, because now it’s Aunt Lydia on the stage who tells them the Handmaids are there to see the execution of a man convicted of raping a pregnant Handmaid. That crime might not have been so bad, but the baby died. The Handmaids gasp in horror. Aunt Lydia has been telling them she does her best to protect them and Offred’s lip is curling like in about five seconds she’s going to run up and start unleashing the Kraken on Aunt Lydia, but instead the women form a ring around the rapist and then beat him to death like a crazed mob. While Janine dances, insane.

 

For Offred, it’s cathartic in the moment, but afterward she is horrified by what she’s done. She has lost another piece of her humanity to this perverted system. She flashes back to when she told Moira she was pregnant. We learn that by then, women had started to miscarry consistently. Moira promises they always have each other’s backs. In the present, Ofglen expresses condolence for Moira’s death, and the two realize that neither is a true believer. The ice between them has been broken. They begin to talk of their lives before. Offred admits that her daughter would be eight, and Ofglen says that she and her wife (WIFE) had a son named Oliver who would be almost five (side note: this means that this Republic of Gilead has only existed for five years).

As they separate, Ofglen warns Offred, “There’s an Eye in your house. Be careful.” Offred enters the house to find a Commanders’ meeting in progress. The Commander shuts Repressed Blond Woman out of the meeting room and she stands there like a dog on the other side of a door, sad and hurt and wanting to be shown affection. Offred sees this, and Repressed Blond Woman sees her watching. As Offred’s voiceover narrates, “Someone is always watching.” But Offred is going to survive. Because her daughter was Hannah and her husband was Luke. And her name was June.

What did you all think? I’m worried that Ofglen is a spy and didn’t have a wife and kid at all, but I’m 100% supportive of Ofglen becoming a kickass lesbian avenger.

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