This year's Emmy Awards, "The Handmaid's Tale" beat "Westworld", can be said to be one of the biggest upsets this year.
"Westworld" belongs to the kind of rare works that can firmly grasp the hearts of people from the first second. Imaginative, full of spectacles, and satisfying cinephiles (westerns). And "The Handmaid's Tale" is a full-blown drama, all the metaphors are very obvious, the plot line of losing freedom - the abused people - gradually starting to resist can almost be said to be a bit old-fashioned . But it's better than it is full of stamina. It can make people unable to pull it out when they go in, and the feeling of depression is like a hangover, hangover for a day or two.
This is really an American drama that is as depressing as "Black Mirror".
If "Black Mirror" uses everyday details we've grown accustomed to (such as social media, talent shows) to remind us of the possible dark side of life, "The Handmaid's Tale" drags us directly into a "1984" future world.
In the first episode, a lot of low light, shaky handheld photography and facial close-ups established the atmosphere of the whole show. A woman and her husband and children were running wild in the woods when gunshots were fired and they were overtaken, knocked out, and taken away. Is she a fugitive? Why are you being chased? When the screen lights up again, we have the answer.
She did nothing wrong, just an ordinary person born in the wrong era.
The story takes place in the United States in the future. Because of the war, only the two remaining states in the United States established the country of Gilead based on Christianity and the Bible as the guideline. Society is strictly divided into different grades, and the lives of people in each grade are planned, and they cannot even choose their own clothes. At the top of the pyramid are the ruling class of the country (archbishops) and their wives. Then there are the lower males, who can never approach women; and the infertile women, who are sent to colonies to clean up nuclear waste, and eventually slough off their skin and die in agony.
And the class to which the heroine belongs is probably the most "great" invention of the country of Gilead - the maid. Because of pollution and wars, the global fertility rate has plummeted. Gilead, whose life is guided by the Bible, has come up with a solution: to train fertile women into fertility machines, and let them be leaders with noble genes. give birth to a baby. As a result, "handmaids", a term that only appeared in the Middle Ages, became the collective name for a large part of women in a modern society. They were deprived of their own names, and could only use the name of the host's family before adding of, similar to the "Wang family's" and "Li family's" in many villages in our country, but did not have their own names. Without personal freedom, the only chance to go out is to go grocery shopping with another maid. Along the way, he spoke the same cliché as an endorsement. The most important one is to have sex with the male host during the monthly ovulation period in order to conceive a child. The whole process is solemn as a ceremony. Before starting, the excerpts from the "Bible" should be recited first. Then, the maid should lie between the legs of the hostess, and the three of them would shake together... Although during the whole process, everyone was sullen and pursed, as if The solemnity of worship in church. But every normal person still feels full of absurdity.
What came to mind? "Blind Mountain". Women are also deprived of their freedom and equal rights, and they are reduced to inferior groups who can only do housework and have children. However, in "The Handmaid's Tale", this is not the fate of the heroine alone. The women of the whole country live like domestic dogs. Of course they don't want that. But every woman who became a maid had to go to a reformatory and die once before that. The heroine's friend was originally a radical feminist. After entering the monastery, she was also afraid of being beaten and could only obey. There is also the most heart-wrenching "crazy girl" Jenny in the film, who was brutally murdered because of her unruly character on the first day she entered the reformatory - one eye was gouged out. Been crazy ever since.
Crazy, but still laughing. No one is crazy. If you want to live, you can only lower your head, be honest and obedient, and let your eyes become a pool of stagnant water. According to statistics, in The Handmaid's Tale, there is not a single description of a smile. After that, many people remained silent, accepted their own destiny, and chose to obey the system. (Just like during the Cultural Revolution, many people also choose to expose others)
In a seemingly rational way, the whole country went into a frenzy.
The most terrifying thing is that such a totalitarian society cannot be built overnight. And when it takes shape little by little, most people don't even notice it.
The shocking thing about "The Handmaid's Tale" is that it constantly reminds the audience of a truth with flashbacks - not long ago, the United States was the most democratic and open place in the world. The building that seems to collapse overnight is actually rotten from bottom to top. At first, I just went out for a run in sports underwear, and was looked down upon by a conservative passer-by. Then the conflict between men and women suddenly sharpened, words like "slut" became more common, and straight men became more cancerous. When these small changes happened, they may just choose to be silent, just like many ordinary people (both men and women) kept silent when the country abolished the constitution and Congress. Then came a bigger change. Women can no longer go out to work, can no longer own private property, and finally, are no longer treated as adults. Sister V was very impressed by a detail in the film. Passing by a small shop on the street, a young maid stopped and said: It used to sell the best caramel in the country, better than the best sex. But now, it has become a place to sell handmaiden suits. Looking back, they couldn't believe that ordinary life once existed.
It looks like a dystopian sci-fi fable far from us. The original author, Margaret Atwood, vehemently denied it in an interview. She said: "Science fiction has spaceships, she said, and what I wrote has a good chance of turning out to be true.
Many people agree with this statement, after all, after Trump took office, many dystopian novels including "1984" have reappeared on the Amazon list. Speaking of which, they are less patient, so the imagined future is crueler. In contrast, the people suppressed by the Islamic totalitarian regime can only remain silent.
We all know that a book, a movie or a TV series is vulnerable in the face of power. But they can be like a foolish jester in a Shakespeare play who babbles on to tell the truth, a painful prophet reminding us over and over again -- don't be that frog in warm water. I can't read a book today, and tomorrow a movie is inexplicably taken off the shelves. No one knows what will be lost in the future.
Written in V movie, very dissatisfied one
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