Last week, March 8th was International Women's Day, so I wanted to share an American drama "The Handmaid's Tale" that I watched before. It has been released for three seasons so far, and it has won many awards and has a good reputation. Let's talk about this drama today~
Adapted from Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel of the same name, The Handmaid's Tale is set in a not-so-distant future, when the earth was severely polluted, resource-poor and birthrate extremely low. , after a bloody revolution in parts of the United States, the male totalitarian society of Gilead was established. In order to protect the population, the country of Gilead brought together fertile women, gave them probation education, and helped them to have children in the upper-class families of the society. These women were called "handmaids".
01 What is a dystopia
Dystopia is the opposite of utopia. It is an unpopular and frightening imaginary society, which is the opposite of the ideal society, an extremely bad final form of society. Dystopian literary works include Brave New World, 1984, Animal Farm, and some well-received film and television works such as Westworld and Black Mirror. Abundant, the world seems to be getting closer and closer to our "utopia", but essentially hides a weak and empty spiritual world. Scarcity of resources, class contradictions, loss of freedom, oppression of democracy, degeneration of morality, etc. problems appear one by one. We can’t pretend that we don’t see these ills. Even if we look at the future from these ills alone, we see nothing but despair. "dystopia".
Any voices that are suppressed will not settle for silence, they will speak out about their existence in a way that is more silent than sound.
"Seeing that she would not bear children for Jacob, Rachel was jealous of her sister, and said to Jacob, give me children, or I will die. Jacob was angry with Rachel, saying, God is the one who made you barren, I How can you be the master instead of him? Rachel said, My maid Bilhah is here, and you can have sex with her, and make her bear a child under my knees, and I will have a child through her." - "Bible - Creation of the World" Records, Chapter 30, Sections 1-3
The show begins by citing the biblical Genesis text and unfolds the whole story in a very religious way. The heroine Offred is a maid, and of means subordination, which means a sacrifice, a victim offered as a sacrifice. And the heroine's former name, June, can no longer be used. The plot is intertwined with the shackles and savage handmaid's tale and the modern life of freedom and civilization, and the contrast and irony are more intense, which makes people shudder.
The original author once said: "I have a principle that I will not put in the book events that never happened, or any technology that does not exist. There are no imaginary gadgets, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities. It is said that God lies in Details. The devil too. And that's where the real scary comes in.
02 The so-called normal is something that is accustomed to become natural
Mammy Lydia said, I know it must be difficult for you to adapt, but normality is just what you used to be used to. You may think it is abnormal now, but time will change everything and it will become the new normal.
And by what means is this normality obtained? In other words, how was the freedom of women lost?
(1) Restricting women's economic freedom and depriving them of job opportunities
Everything is not done overnight. They use a step-by-step method of boiling frogs in warm water to gradually change people's ideas and disintegrate their lives.
One day, June and a friend went to a cafe to spend and found that the bank card was frozen. The company subsequently dismissed all female employees. New laws prohibit women from owning property, women’s accounts are frozen, and property is transferred to husbands or immediate male relatives; companies are afraid to hire women because of political violence.
There's nothing wrong with June's husband, Luke, who can take care of her. It is precisely in this situation that women become weak and need men to protect them. To protect their bodies and their lives is actually taking over their lives.
June's best friend Moira said, this is too arrogant and arrogant, she doesn't need your care, she is not your subordinate.
(2) Fertility machines
When women are forced to lose their jobs and men become the sole source of household income, women are forced to find value within family life. All of this just opened a hole for the long-planned "population continuation" policy of the country of Gilead, because the background setting is that serious environmental pollution has caused most people to lose their fertility, and the survival rate of babies is extremely low, while those with fertility are logically become the group that shoulders this responsibility.
Behaviors contrary to fertility are hit hard, contraception is criminalized, homosexuality is stigmatized and even killed. Females with reproductive potential were caught by violent means, and the disobedient females were subjected to physical torture such as electric shocks, gouging eyes, and cutting off their arms. and monitor each other through their eyes. The newly recruited maids will be indoctrinated and brainwashed in an institution called the "Red Correctional Center". They must learn to let go of their previous identities and understand that they no longer have real rights. All that is required is compliance and acceptance.
There is a scene where the maids sit in a circle and nuns with stun sticks force them to take part in what is now known as "slut humiliation," insulting one of their members named Jenny. She was forced to tell her story of being gang-raped as a teenager. The other maids chanted "it's her fault, she seduced those men" in unison, and denounced him angrily. It's not like this is happening openly before our eyes in today's social media age, where people condemn victims to protect themselves or their own interests.
You will speak up, especially when they use electric shocks and other torture devices to extract confessions. You don't care what you say.
03 Under totalitarianism, everyone is a victim of shackles
In addition to the great pain suffered by the female character in this show, is it really possible to stay out of it for other people?
Domestic maid : Ordinary women without a family and without fertility become domestic maids in the upper class. Whether you used to be a professor or a doctor, what you have to do now is make bread, cook food, and clean up your room.
Mother Reformatory : In hard times, it's better to have any power than nothing at all. Some of the nuns in power do believe in their hearts that they are helping the handmaids: at least they are not sent to clean up the toxic nuclear waste, at least in this brave new world they will not be raped, not raped that way , will not be raped by strangers. Some nannies are sadistic. Some are opportunists.
Handmaid : Jenny, who had her right eye gouged out for her rebellion, completely accepts the status quo and tries to benefit herself. She gave birth to a healthy child and was cared for by her nuns.
There is a scene where June and Jenny are having a conversation indoors, and Jenny is standing by the window bathed in the faint light saying that he loves me and my Charlotte, we are going to elope. In the depths of the darkness, June looked at Mad Jenny, who lost a right eye, as if watching a tragedy that would not end well.
And in the end Jenny lost her baby, and fantasies, and was sent to another family.
Lady Archbishop : Is this character who seems to have more power and an abusive side really happy and content? Selina, the wife of Archbishop Fred, was the earliest proponent of the Gilead birth policy and had strong political talents. She spoke and preached everywhere, and when it was done as she wished, she herself became a victim. Without access to knowledge and books, her activities were limited to weaving and planting flowers. Fred is wounded in an attack, and Selina drafts some papers over her husband to save the family. When Fred found out, he was very angry and was severely flogged by his husband.
Therefore, in the male-dominated society of Gilead, no woman can truly escape the fact of being oppressed. Everyone is a victim of shackles. As the commander said to the heroine: "A better world doesn't mean good for everyone. For some, better always means worse."
04 Women's rights are human rights
The play turns the fantasy future of patriarchy into a cool-toned visual feast. Even if there is no excessively bloody scenes with the sound of light scenes and vocals, it still makes people feel very depressing.
In the neat and tidy streets, houses and trees of Gilead, everything is in order. The modest clothing worn by the women here comes from Western religious symbols - the archbishops wear blue, symbolizing purity, from the Virgin Mary; the handmaids wear red, symbolizing the bleeding during childbirth, but also from Magdalene's Mary. Plus, red is easier to spot if you're running away. The maids wore dark camel robes. Men are almost exclusively dark suits. The whole society is strongly institutionalized.
In Modernity and the Holocaust, Bowman argues that moral self-restraint against atrocity can be compromised under three conditions: violence is empowered; actions are routinized; victims of violence are dehumanized .
Behind slavery is always a "great vision" of "building a better world order". Hitler slaughtered Jews in order to "purify" the world, and Japanese soldiers brutally slaughtered Chinese in the Nanjing Massacre. From the perspective of God, Westworld created a paradise for the release of bestiality. The enslavement of women by patriarchal sociology in the play is no different from Hitler's massacre of Jews and Japanese soldiers to Chinese. Humanity would cease to exist without women giving birth. Mass rape and murder of adult women, girls, and young children has long been a feature of genocide and other wars aimed at subjugating and exploiting a group. Control over women and babies is a hallmark of every authoritarian regime on Earth.
In this fictional world, a woman's only value is her womb. Women are completely objectified and become the property of the state and the subordinate tools of men. In the play, the maid lies between the legs of the bishop's wife during the sacred fertilization ceremony with the bishop. The relationship is deformed and comical. The child born will be raised by the bishop's family, and the maid is required to cut off contact with the child and send it to the next family.
Whether you were a waiter, an editor, a university lecturer, or a prostitute on the street, all your worth has been savagely wiped out, and even this body no longer belongs to you. The most ironic and terrifying thing is that although this is the author's fictional future world, the exact same objectification of women has always existed in the real world. In today's widely controversial legalized surrogacy behavior, those who are occupied by the uterus to give birth. The women in the show are essentially the same as the handmaids in the show.
The wheels of the times are not always moving, sometimes exhibiting some striking resemblance to history. Some people say that we fought for equal rights for a hundred years, and it was turned into ashes lightly.
"The Handmaid's Tale" has always been regarded as a feminist literary work. However, women's rights are human rights, and all the deprived rights shown in the works should not be enjoyed by a woman, but should be enjoyed by a natural person. The essence of feminism is to restore all the rights that a group should enjoy equally as a human being. This should not only be a struggle for women, but a common struggle for all. As long as women are still enslaved, a society that is technologically advanced will still be a savage jungle society.
When Jone is in despair, these words, touched in the dark, wake us up:
"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum"
- Never be defeated by the wicked.
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