strange and random happenstance

The Handmaid's Tale
Based on the book by Margaret Atwood
Starring: Elisabeth Moss, O-T Fagbenle, Jordana Blake, Samira Wiley, Yvonne Strahovski, Joseph Fiennes, Amanda Brugel, Max Minghella, Ann Dowd, Madeline Brewer, Alexis Bledel, Tattiawna Jones, Nina Kiri, Jenessa Grant, Bahia Watson, Ever Carradine, Stephen Kunken, Zabryna Guevara, and Christian Barillas
Release Date: April 26th, 2017 - June 14th, 2017
Rating: ★
To Watch

Offred was once called June. She was married to Luke. They had a daughter called Hannah. When the Sons of Jacob felled the US government and established Gilead June and her family attempted to escape. She and Hannah were caught and she believes Luke was killed. Hannah is the proof that she is fertile in these times of sterility and therefore she was trained to become a handmaid. She was sent to a Commander's house, assumed his name, and once a month "participates" in the ceremony that will hopefully bring forth a child to his family. The ceremony is nothing more than sanctioned systematic rape. Yet Commander Waterford wants Offred to be happy, as does his wife Serena Joy. They think that this is not just an acceptable life but a good life for Offred. Yet Offred doesn't understand the game Commander Waterford is playing, and it is literally a game. He calls her into his study when his wife isn't around to play Scrabble. Such luxury to play with lettered tiles, to form words, to read when women are no longer allowed to. Yet who knows what Serena Joy would do if this aberrant behavior in her husband were discovered. The two of them literally helped write the rules of Gilead, yet Serena herself is willing to bend them a little if she could get a child, having Offred couple with her husband's driver, Nick. Yet she would never violate them outright no matter how stifled she feels now that she's nothing more than a Commander's wife dressed in blue. But if anyone is stifled, if anyone should be revolting, it's Offred. She makes contact through a fellow handmaid with the Mayday resistence group, but then her contact Ofglen is gone one day. But through her new daring Offred learns that Luke is alive, as is her best friend Moira. She now has even more reasons to fight. She is June and they will not destroy her.

I genuinely went into watching The Handmaid's Tale with high expectations. I mean it won ALL the Emmys so it had to be good right? Wrong! I think voting for The Handmaid's Tale was like a protest vote, it says the right things but in truth Westworld should have won. But I would have also taken The Crown or Strangers Things as acceptable substitutes. And the thing is, I'm not sure if I'm alone or not in this dislike. The people I know who liked the miniseries haven't read the book and those whose opinion I trust haven't watched it because they in turn trust my opinion. On paper the show sounds great, even if you're not a fan of Elizabeth Moss like I am. But the execution was just self-indulgent television that felt like it was done by a student filmmaker. While I can understand certain changes, moving all the big events that are excruciatingly paced throughout hundreds of pages of reminiscences into the first episode makes sense. You HAVE to hook the viewers right away. There can't be an entire episode with Offred deliberating about telling the Marthas about the arrival of oranges in the shops because no one would watch that and yet it's over fifty pages in the book. So I'm being generous here, I get these changes, even if it means you've wasted almost all the good plot points in the first episode, it was necessary. But there's the fact that with all the directors there is no fixed style. It's so varying that there is one episode that literally spends the entire hour with only Offred's eye in focus. What student level BS is this? But what I won't ever forgive is the annoyingly repetitious sound design. Low, ominous noises drawn out for what felt like eons. Or a musical cord or strident sound played over and over for entire blocks of the show. If this show wanted to go for sound design over music look to how David Lynch did the revival of Twin Peaks, that is masterful, this is shit. And yet the sound design is NOTHING compared to the music choices. Each episode had some classic used inappropriately or mashed up in some horrific way, WTF was that "Heart of Glass" remix? At the start of every episode I kept wondering, which classic song is going to be ruined in this hour? The answer is whatever song they used.    

Yet the use of the songs from "Don't You (Forget About Me)" to "You Don't Own Me" underscore a larger problem in the series. The book has a timelessness to it, and the soundtrack, no matter how "appropriate" the title or the lyrics date the show. In making this show NOW they made everything too definite. Yes, whatever time you make a series in dates it to an extent, but just because our political climate is so similar at the moment doesn't mean the series should be set in the moment. It might give it immediacy, but will it give it longevity? I don't think so. By giving such specifics, even down to making sure we know all the characters real names, there's a universality that has been taken away. Though oddly there is one thing that is less emphasized amongst all this specificity that further strips any meaning out of the narrative. This story is set in Cambridge and Boston. It's very clear in the book but it's not very clear in the show because they didn't film it on location, instead they took the benefits that Atwood's country gives in tax breaks and damn the consequences the show was filmed in Canada. The problem is NO town can be a substitute for the Boston area. It has a very specific look and use of red bricks that when gone, well, you notice it. What's more is that by having the story set in and around Harvard, there's symbolism attached to having the bodies of the traitors hung on the University's wall that can never have the same impact by just having some bodies on a wall next to a river. This is a MAJOR statement about how the current regime views education and betrayal and here it's just gone, entirely lost. What's more, Boston is the cradle of America! This is where the revolution started! This is where Paul Revere made his midnight ride! To have that which created us under the yoke of an evil regime? That is a statement that can only be said by seeing Boston on the screen! 

Going back to the specificity that this adaptation has embraced when it's convenient to them Offred herself is just too specific, she's too defined. Yes, Atwood's book gives us a lot of information about Offred's previous life, but at the same time she is generic enough, she can be the everywoman she's supposed to be. You can scarily see yourself in her shoes because she could be you! She's a passive vehicle for the atrocities of Gilead to flow through. Here with Elisabeth Moss's portrayal of Offred we see a woman who is not going to just lay back and take things, she's going to stand up and fight. She's going to hold onto her name, she's going to hold onto her memories, she's going to hold onto hope. She is going to be the rallying point for the rebellion. Offred here is not so much just one of the handmaids, she is front and center, punching and kicking during the punishment, helping in the birth, she's June goddammit and she's going to talk other handmaid's off the ledge and be a force for change. And THAT is a big change from the book. There suicide was an option because hope had run out, here hope never runs out. There is a far more optimistic bent here because Offred is willing to show when she's pissed off or sullen or sulky, she's not the blank vessel for her Commander. She doesn't always follow the rules, and while perhaps we can root her on, I don't think we can relate as much. I totally think there's a time when hope does run out, but for some reason this show was unwilling to embrace this fact. Yes, I know that all this makes sense when switching from one medium to another, but I think more than that this was done in an effort make this more than just an adaptation of the book and more an expansion of the story. This is just the beginning of the series, one that will be full of rebellion, whereas Offred's story in the book is just the beginning of the horrors of Gilead, her rebellion in that context would have meant nothing, would have had no impact, she was just the voice of the oppressed with no actual impact expect for historians.   

Yet as much as I don't like the changes to Offred I have to say they occasionally got it so right that I was, for the moment, happy. In fact I will begrudgingly admit that Elisabeth Moss is the perfect actress for this version of Offred, which is understandable given how much creative control she had in this instance. Therefore I have partially forgiven her for all the times I've hated her in the past, burn in hell Peggy Olson! OK, back to The Handmaid's Tale, in episode two "Birth Day" the handmaids attend the labor of Janine, Ofwarren. Offred goes downstairs to inform the wives of the commanders how things are progressing and one of them asks if she'd like a cookie. Of course this decision is in the hands of her mistress, Serena Joy. Serena asks Offred if she would like a cookie, in the way you'd ask a very small child. There's this big beautiful tower of macaroons and the range of emotions on Elisabeth Moss's face is exquisite. You can see how much she does want that cookie but simultaneously how much it pains her not only to have to ask but to ask it of these women. What's more, she's not even given a choice about asking, because once the suggestion is out there she must do as they say. All this is embodied in this one simple scene, and for once I thought, maybe they get it, maybe they get what Margaret Atwood's story was all about, but then Offred goes to the bathroom and I can see they didn't. Because what happens in the bathroom is that Offred spits out the cookie, but in the biggest act of rebellion she just leave it there, so that those women will know what she's done. Therefore I guess you could say this one scene embodied both what the book was about and likewise the rebellious nature this adaptation is going to take. Yet I have to say it, that at this point it's not the adaptation that is drawing me in no matter the level of acting, it's the expansion. I want to see where this goes. Offred so far has been too omnipresent, she needs to step back out of our faces and let the other characters have the spotlight for once.

Speaking of some other non-Offred characters, let's talk about Commander Fred Waterford and his wife, Serena Joy. In the book the Commander is a bit of a silver fox and Serena a washed up televangelist. In other words, 70s to 80s age range given the timeline. Here we have Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski, 47 and 35 respectively. In fact Elisabeth Moss is the same age as Yvonne Strahovski. Now there are two ways to take this change, one is good, one is bad. Let's start with the bad. The bad is that this is Hollywood and they couldn't have an unattractive elderly man raping Elisabeth Moss, so instead we have the beautiful though perfectly brooding Joseph Fiennes who is only a mere 12 years older than her. In an aside, am I the only one who wonders if the Fiennes brothers used to spend their time trying to see who could be more menacing? So vanity wins even in the darkest of stories in this interpretation. Perhaps Elisabeth Moss even insisted on a pretty face to act to? This is Hollywood, weird things are the norm. The unlikely "dark" yet infinitely better interpretation is that by making Offred's oppressors young and beautiful we can see the true horror of what they are doing. Because somehow it would be more understandable if the Commander and his wife had no way of having kids because of their age and an old guy barely getting it up isn't as much of a threat? Also here the crisis of infertility is also brought home by this beautiful couple. This really pushes the message on the inability to procreate which kind of gets lost in the horror of oppression and rape. But going beyond this, going back to the whole infertility crisis, one thing that I just don't get is this need of all the women to have children. I understand the biological imperative what with the fact that the world could end without procreation, I just don't understand this sickening need to have a baby. Is it because it's all that the men have left them? But that's something that needs to be thought on more... biological clocks and imperatives and parental desires can not be covered in a paragraph or two, you need a book, like The Handmaid's Tale, not just some series you can stream and be done with in a few hours.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: David Lynch, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, Elisabeth Moss, Gilead, Harvard, Hulu, Joseph Fiennes, Margaret Atwood, Offred, Rape, Stranger Things, The Crown, The Handmaid's Tale, Twin Peaks, Westworld, Yvonne Strahovski

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1985
Format: Hardcover, 350 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Offred once had a husband. She once had a daughter. She once had a different name. But the United States fell. It feel so fast that it's hard to remember what it was like. There was a constitution, there were rights, but they were suspended. Women who could reproduce became a valuable commodity. They were rounded up and distributed to the ruling elite. Offred is a handmaid to her Commander. Hopefully, God willing, she will provide him with an heir. It's best not to think what would happen if she's unable to conceive. She has her daily routine, shopping for the household as a way to be useful and keep herself healthy for reproductive purposes, and lots of time to think on all that she has lost and the little she has. The room with the bed and the desk and the window. The room with the carving from it's previous occupant, the previous Offred: "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." Yet soon Offred's life starts to change. The Commander has a shrewish wife who used to be televangelist and now does nothing by garden and knit and long for the baby Offred will give her. This has distanced the couple and the Commander feels a void, a void he fills by inviting Offred to come into his study. At first they only play Scrabble, a wordy luxury to Offred. Soon she is given magazines and moisturizer. She knows she's playing a deadly game, if she were to be caught, if his wife were to find out... but "his wife" found out once before when she first met her husband Luke... But when the Commander invites Offred to a "special club" she can't help but notice the hypocrisy. Yet there is also hope. Yes, there is an easy way out, a way the other Offred took, but perhaps she can find another way...

If you're an avid book reader there are books that everyone just assumes you've read. Certain classics that make up the bedrock of the literary world. If you actually admit that the only Dickens you've dabbled in is a perfunctory reading of A Christmas Carol and that you prefer the movie version with Mickey the Mouse they might throw you out of the club. Of course it's not that I don't have these classics by the titans of the literary world, it's that I've just never gotten around to reading them. There are A LOT of books in the world and my "to be read" pile is so staggering it could possibly crush me to death if it was to fall on me, so I hope I'll be forgiven for slowly getting around to these classics. This is one of the reasons for my "theme months." They give me a focus. That month I'll tackle E.M. Forster and get around to reading all his work. Or those months I'll do nothing but indulge in Sherlock Holmes. This way I create content for my blog while getting myself to read the books that are de rigueur. One book that's been languishing was The Handmaid's Tale. Yes, yes, I know, it's been a long time coming, but see above! I can easily see why this book is a Classic with a capital "C." I read this book almost two months ago but it's still with me. I can't help thinking about it all the time. I think waiting to read The Handmaid's Tale until now gave the book more impact. In fact, at the moment reading any dystopian literature makes it seem eerily prescient and also, in some way, a rebellion. These books are a how to not end up in the same situation. You can see the correlations yet see how you can revolt! I can easily see the government oppressing women to this extent because every day there's some new and crazy legislation trying to take away our rights. But we have to fight. We have to keep ourselves informed. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum!

What's interesting about The Handmaid's Tale is that our heroine Offred is unlikable. I know you might not agree with my opinion, she's oppressed, trapped, ritually raped, she is a sympathetic character in regard to her situation, but her situation and who she is are two separate things and I just don't like her. In the "present" tense I don't like her because she's very passive, she's willing to embrace the end if she can't take it anymore, she doesn't fight, she doesn't initiate change or outright rebellion. Yes, you could say to me that by surviving and getting her story, the story of all those like her, out into the world is a rebellion, but again, her escape wasn't of her own doing, she just took it. Likewise if the escape had never presented itself she would have just stayed put. But through her we do hear the stories of interesting and likeable characters, Ofglen, Moira, and others. Women who obviously didn't make it out and who, while they might have had more interesting lives, still, at the heart, lived the same life as Offred. But this is all the "present" it's Offred's past that I have issues with, that made me not like her. She was an adulterer who waited in hotel rooms for years waiting for Luke to divorce his wife and marry her. Yes, I know this situation takes two to tango, but I just can't like her because it makes me feel like condoning cheaters. And while yes, Luke and Offred might have been "meant to be" the way they got there just doesn't sit right with me and therefore makes me dislike Offred. Again, you might be saying what she's gone through should wipe the slate clean, but the thing is, who someone is deep down, what they do informs everything, and while I can pity her I can never like her. Like that bully at school who always picks on you, you might learn what made him that way but does it make it any better when he's still attacking you?

Then there's the odd narrative structure. Yes, it's first person and tends to flow backwards and forwards with Offred's memories and associations and her desire to escape her life into the story of one of her friends, but this inner monologue doesn't help you come to terms with the lack of forward momentum. The Handmaid's Tale is structured in such a way that it's one step forward and two steps back. Every time a plot development seems about to break Offred retreats into her reveries that just stops the narrative momentum in its tracks. At times you even forget what the next plot reveal you were waiting for was. She heavy-handedly keeps talking about the ceremony wherein she copulates with her Commander and yet we have to wait 109 pages until we learn what that ceremony is! And that ceremony is mentioned right at the start of the book! I couldn't help thinking over and over again "just get on with it!" I've said to a few people who were interested in what I thought of this book that I think it's a book that would be better the second time you read it. I stand by this statement. Because after you've read it once you know what happens next so the excruciating wait for certain reveals wouldn't annoy you. After awhile, knowing that the narrative was so drawn out I found myself less and less likely to pick up the book to grab a chapter or two before bed. Books take me, on average, about a week to read as I read at speaking pace. The Handmaid's Tale took me almost three weeks to read, which is almost unheard of for me. Because it's not a long book, and it's not a book I abjectly hated, it's just a book that is plotted in such a way that you become lackadaisical about when you pick it up.

Beyond pacing, there are lots of concepts and atrocities that I had problems with, yet these are problems that are what make the book the Classic that it is. These are the ideas and issues you keep dwelling on and that make the book leave a lasting impression. But what I had the biggest problem with stylistically was The Club that Offred's Commander takes her to. The Club is a brothel in a hotel which Offred visited with Luke before they were married and is there to tend to the "needs" of the high ranking officials of Gilead, whether those are personal or diplomatic needs it doesn't matter. Now it's not the hypocrisy that bothers me, because in a country enslaving women to the will of God it makes a sick kind of sense that those in power don't obey the laws, laws that they themselves have written. What bothers me is that for the first time in the book it felt dated. In the introduction written by Valerie Martin she says that the reason this book is a classic is that it becomes more relevant the more time has passed. This struck me as so very true. Yes we can play "what if" games and think about how certain technological advances, like the Internet, would have changed the outcome, but taken as it is there is a timelessness to The Handmaid's Tale in every instance EXCEPT The Club. For the first time you can feel that this book was written in the 80s. Yes, you've known this all along, you've caught glimpses here and there but Offred arrives at that Club and wham, it's the 80s right in your face. And the thing is I can't quite put my finger on why. Is it the hotel design with it's glass elevators that anyone growing up in the 80s stayed at at one time or another? Was it the weird dishabille feathered outfit Offred dons? Was it the makeup she applied? There's not one thing on it's own, but everything in total all of a sudden dates this novel and takes away it's timelessness.

The truth is with The Club monopolizing the final third of the book with Offred's story abruptly ending shortly thereafter if it wasn't for the epilogue of "historical notes" The Handmaid's Tale would have been a tale worth quickly forgetting. The Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies gives the book a broader context. We get some indication of what happened to Offred, but more than that we learn a little about the cast of characters whom we've been spending so much time with. Hypotheses on who her Commander was, why she was called Offred (Of Fred) and so much more. Yet the "symposium" also gives a hint of what's to come in Offred's world, that it will become far harsher before it gets better. The times, the horrific times that Offred lived in are viewed by the academicians as rather lax, when having just spent all this time with Offred we know they are not. So one can draw some pretty horrific conclusions as to how much worse it got. What I also liked about this little end note was that it gave a stronger sense of reality and weight to Offred's story. She is the voice of the oppressed in Gilead. In a world where women weren't even allowed to read it's her story that survives. Her tale. Somehow these few pages made it all seem more real. I might have disliked Offred, I might have had issues in how she told her tale, but in the end the fact that her tale was told is viewed as a triumph because her voice got to be heard. This is oddly why I'm looking forward to the TV series so much. This epilogue opened up the world of Gilead more. Offred's world is so small, so cloistered, and yet there's this big world out there and I want to hear all the stories, I want to see all of this world, and then I want it burned to ash and stability and human equality returned.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1st Person Narration, 80s, Adultery, Charles Dickens, Classics, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, E.M. Forster, Epilogue, Gilead, Margaret Atwood, Offred, Reproduction, Sherlock Holmes, The Handmaid's Tale, Women's Rights