In a world of too much good TV - when you barely have time to keep up,
let alone pause and sit with what you’ve watched,
The Handmaid’s Tale stands out in an important way:
it’s a show that lingers with you.
An episode might crawl around in your mind for days,
even if the main aftereffect you’re feeling is
something akin to depression or despair.
“My fault.
My fault.”
There’s a lot of highly entertaining TV out there
that gets us jonesing for the next fix,
but leaves our minds pretty soon after we move our eyes in another direction.
But what’s strange about watching The Handmaid’s Tale
is that it is also a binge-worthy show,
the kind that you gets you good and hooked,
and yet you have to wonder what it is that’s hooking you,
because so much of the experience of watching is painful.
"But only in suffering will we find grace."
The question naturally arises, are we enjoying the pain?
Is there something perverse going on in the love for this show
that many people feel?
“There's pain now.
So much of it.”
We’d argue - no - the pain of experiencing June’s story is
not a dirty, escapist thrill.
This pain is productive.
So in this video we’re going to take a look at why that is.
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“Or you shall feel the pain of His judgment.
For that is His love.”
Watching The Handmaid’s Tale is an experience of suffering on multiple levels.
There’s the vicarious torture of identifying with June
and with what she and all the other handmaids endure.
“Losing a child is like losing a limb, a part of your body.
But you know what that's like too, right?”
Then there’s the emotional frustration of wanting
a good outcome for characters
we know can’t really get it.
The strange contradiction of watching this show is
that while we want June to escape and get a happy ending,
if she did, the show in its current form would be over.
"What will happen when I get out?
I probably don’t have to worry about it, because there probably is no out.”
So we’re torn between wanting June’s torture to end,
and wanting more of this show which generally consists of June being tortured.
As the show goes on,
it will have to find a way out of this structural conundrum--
probably by expanding the story world further outside the Waterford home,
which we’re already seeing start to happen more.
“See?
This is the problem.
How am I supposed to motivate employees
if I can't leverage salaries?"
But for as long as Offred is trapped in Gilead,
there’s even a kind of guilt we viewers might feel,
because on some level it’s as if we’re willing her to continue suffering
so that we can watch more of this drama.
“Please, God, I don't want pain...”
Of course, not everyone is hooked on the relentless brutality of The Handmaid’s
Tale.
Some critics have argued that Season 2 degenerated into endless shock value abuses of women.
And they’ve even labeled it “torture porn” or “misery porn.”
In one episode, June’s voiceover even apologizes for the show’s constant misery.
“I'm sorry there is so much pain in this story.”
But while some viewers have turned off,
Hulu reported that the audience for Season 2
doubled Season 1’s numbers
And there are some important reasons why it's not right to use
the “torture porn” or “misery porn” label
for The Handmaid’s Tale.
First of all, everything that we see in the show
has actually happened,
either in history or our world today.
Margaret Atwood wrote in 2012 about the book,
“I would not include anything that human beings had not already done
in some other place or time,
or for which the technology did not already exist.
The group-activated hangings, the tearing apart of human beings,
the clothing specific to castes and classes,
the forced childbearing and the appropriation of the results,
the children stolen by regimes and placed for upbringing with high-ranking
officials,
the forbidding of literacy, the denial of property rights:
all had precedents, and many were to be found
not in other cultures and religions,
but within western society, and within the 'Christian' tradition, itself.”
The show’s creator Bruce Miller has also followed
this rule for the show.
He's said “these are things that are happening in the real world.
We’re not making them up.”
So to say that these abuses we see in Handmaid’s Tale are gratuitous or pointless
is kind of out of touch,
when these are things that have really happened, or are happening somewhere,
and could conceivably happen much closer to home in the future.
As Nicole Cord-Cruz wrote on Zimbio, the show,
"forces us to reflect on the problems of our world,
instead of tuning out on Twitter.
It's meant to make us sick.
The Handmaid's Tale is rooted in reality,
and relegating it to torture porn is a statement of privilege.”
“Your shadow was so charming, I wish mine could be that intimate.
It’s just so overwhelming, My Martha’s been cleaning up for days.”
True examples of “Torture porn” frequently derives
a questionable sadistic pleasure
by encouraging some level of audience identification with the torturer.
Common examples that are often pointed to like Saw or Final Destination
arguably provoke curiosity about the creative or strange ways
that characters are killed.
But in The Handmaid’s Tale, we’re not taking
the point of view of the oppressors,
nor do we find the violence exciting or fascinating.
We’re very much in the women’s experience.
“No.
No.
Please stop.
Please stop it.
Please stop.
NO.
STOP."
You might argue instead, then, that the pain we’re hooked on is masochistic -
are we enjoying feeling like the victim?
but this explanation isn’t totally satisfying, either --
June’s story so often emphasizes her resolution not to be a passive victim,
but to fight and keep hope alive.
"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, bitches."
Thus for all these reasons,
the argument that the Handmaid’s Tale’s misery is
indulgent or pornographic just doesn’t hold up.
The pain of watching this show is the pain of being pushed
to actually look at reality and face difficult truths of the world,
rather than fleeing into a comfortable distraction or escape.
“The world can be quite an ... ugly place.”
And the reason some of us are hooked on this painful experience is
that surprisingly little art these days does manage to do this,
even though you could argue it’s the most important thing
that art can and should do.
“Now I’m awake to the world.
I was asleep before.”
So what “reality” is it exactly that The Handmaid’s Tale is making us face?
We talked in another video about how beyond literal parallels to overt oppression,
The Handmaid’s Tale symbolically reflects dynamics
we can recognize in a subtler way,
even in US society -
like the way a pregnant women might feel infantilized by those around her,
“Ohh, you can do much better than that, can’t you?”
or the way a successful woman might wonder if on some level
her husband wants to take her down a peg or two.
“My wife.
Always so strong.”
In Season 2, The Handmaid’s Tale has an eerie knack
for reflecting global world events as they’re happening.
"Did you try to find me?"
"I did.
I tried so hard.
Daddy did too."
"Why didn't you try harder?"
In these cases the timing of the show’s plots
has been so close to news headlines that --
given the filming schedules -- the mirroring of these details can’t have
been planned.
And the deeper explanation for the Handmaid’s Tale’s relevance
comes from the ideas in its source material.
Atwood wrote, explaining some of her thinking in conceiving of Gilead, quote,
“The deep foundation of the US...
was not the comparatively recent 18th-century Enlightenment structures of the
republic,
with their talk of equality and their separation of church and state,
but the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th-century Puritan New England,
with its marked bias against women.”
"The mouth of a woman is a deep pit, he that falls therein will suffer.”
"which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself."
This statement points to a fundamental piece of the US identity that's captured in Handmaid’s
Tale.
"'Gilead knows no bounds,' Aunt Lydia said.
'Gilead is within you.'"
While so much of American rhetoric centers on Enlightenment ideals
like freedom and all men being created equal,
another perhaps equally important element of our society's of our emotional core is
this Puritanical outlook:
A somewhat strict standard of piety, a willingness to judge others’ sins harshly,
“I don't know how you could give your baby up to somebody else."
"I'm trying not to."
"I would die first."
"Yeah, I used to think that too."
and a conservative approach to family and womanhood.
“No wonder God has turned His back on us.
No wonder there are no children.
He doesn't want them to grow up in this... screwed-up world.”
The US is the most religious wealthy country in the world,
Literary critic Harold Bloom calls our country “a nation obsessed with religion,”
and the pervasive religiosity of Americans is evident
even in the underlying logic of our popular thought and sayings
that don’t seem overtly religious-
“Everything that's meant to happen does.”
As Psychology Today wrote, “The saying that everything happens for a reason is
the modern, New Age version of the old religious saying:
'It’s God’s will.'"
"Blessed be the fruit."
"May the Force be with you."
In the book, Atwood imagined how this Puritanical spirit
would be magnified in dark times.
“You're spoiled, you're privileged, and you're living in an academic bubble!
All of you!
The rate of healthy births has dropped 61% in the last 12 months!”
and so because we currently are in a divided, contentious era, politically,
the story by following its own internal logic will naturally arrive at
emotional and thematic resonances with events of our world.
“But only the truth can save America now.”
What we’re really recognizing here is an emotional reality.
There is a mirror of our American society in The Handmaid’s Tale --
it’s not a literal one, but a reflection of something that we recognize, that can be
felt.
“But ordinarily, it's just what you're used to.
This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will.
This will become ordinary.”
And the terror of watching this show is that this emotional connection to our society
makes Gilead feel plausible --
especially when we think of Atwood’s statements about how social catastrophes,
like the show’s fertility and climate crises,
could bring Puritan panic and extremism to the fore.
"They can't just do this.
They can't."
"They can."
Atwood has warned that climate change, especially, presents a danger
likely to hit women hard in the future,
as women tend to suffer disproportionately in wars and times of upheaval.
Season 2 of Handmaid’s Tale has centered a lot on the question,
what makes someone a mother?
In the season finale, Serena Joy - after having stolen a child by force --
finally becomes a mother when she makes the ultimate sacrifice
of giving her child up for the girl’s best interest.
“She cannot grow up in this place…
Listen to me.
[SOBS] You know she can't."
In the episode, Offred refers to the baby by the name Serena chose,
“Call her Nicole.”
to honor that Serena's sacrifice has given her daughter a future.
Being a parent, after all, is giving life to a future
that we ourselves won’t fully witness or enjoy.
“I need you to do something for me, okay?
Listening?
Enjoy your life.”
The deeper point in Serena’s transformation is
that being a good parent -- or a good person --
sometimes means doing the hard thing, the thing that doesn’t feel good.
“We believe that our sons and daughters should be taught to read it.”
“[MEN MURMUR] That is a radical proposal, Mrs. Waterford.”
“Offered with the deepest respect.
And the love that I have for my daughter.
And for all the daughters in Gilead.”
And what’s liberating about spending some time
with this message is that we don’t always hear a lot in our culture
about the hard things we need to do for ourselves, our families or our society.
More emphasis is placed on comforts and quick fixes we can buy to make life easier,
and the ways “wellness” activities can make everything perfect.
But the reality is that life is full of tough choices
between options that all don’t feel good enough.
Life is plagued by feelings of powerlessness to change what we think is wrong.
“And I'm so sorry I couldn't be there.
For you.
And to protect you.
I wanted to.”
One of the long-standing criticisms of TV, versus movies,
is that TV is like junk food.
You eat more and more, but you’re never full
because you’re not getting the nutrition of a meal.
Unlike a well-structured movie, so the argument goes,
the never-ending action of long-running TV show
never offers a catharsis.
But The Handmaid’s Tale brings to the surface and addresses real emotions in us
that we’re not acknowledging a lot of the time,
“I don't need oranges.
I need to scream.
I need to grab the nearest machine gun.”
So it does offer an important release.
And when the show is over, we remember it, we stay with it,
and after the depression and terror subside we feel better,
because in the end it feels good to acknowledge that life is difficult,
and there’s a fair chance it could just get worse.
Ultimately what’s so satisfying about The Handmaid’s Tale
is that it makes us look at a worst-case scenario.
It makes us face the hardest things imaginable in life,
and in that process we also confront what’s challenging in smaller ways in our
regular lives.
We watch June go through the worst possible pain,
and still go on to live and fight another day.
“I think, in this place, you grab love wherever you can find it.”
So in the face of all the terrible things we can imagine coming to pass,
we can comfort ourselves with a truth that June teaches us:
That we possess far more strength than we know,
and that when it comes down to it, we can do the hardest things, if we need to.
"Tell her I love her."
"June!
No!
June!
June!"
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Pes is a director and stop-motion animator
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