The Handmaid's Tale: the 2nd best thing you’ll watch all year
- Thread starter GAMETHEORY
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This is the very reason I haven't watched the show. This fictional future from a revisionist perspective is what makes me not interested in indulging in this type of propaganda. Black women were slaves. White women never were. Their lives got easier and easier with the progression of technology.American women want power without risk. Power AND protection. Although they were treated as property on some level, they were never slaves and ave always been a protected class. Don't believe me? Ask Emmet Till. Everything has been done for white women, so my sympathy for them is a little lacking in some regards.
Watched like 4 episodes with the wife, she says she like's it because it keeps her confused...I hate it because the shit is all over the place.
Sexy Handmaid's Tale Costume Removed From Online Stores After Backlash
- BY CALVIN BARR
- – ON SEP 21, 2018
- IN TV NEWS
ADVERTISING
A sexy version of the titular costume from Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale was removed from a popular Halloween costume and lingerie online store following social media backlash. Yandy put the "Brave Red Maiden Costume" on sale yesterday. The overwhelmingly negative response poured in within hours.
The Emmy-awarding winning TV hit adapted from Margaret Atwood's famous dystopian novel tells the story of a future in which women's rights have been stripped away by a zealously pious, patriarchal, right-wing government. The series follows Offred/June (Elisabeth Moss), who like all of the few fertile women in a time marred by ecological disaster and plague, lives as a Handmaid - a women purposed for breeding and replenishing the population. The series has received wide acclaim for the chilling resonance it's achieved by paralleling present-day political turmoil. Among the many protests that the iconic red dress and white wings outfit has been spotted at, protesters dressed as Handmaids showed up during Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court confirmation hearing earlier this month.
Related: The Handmaid's Tale Season 3 Officially Ordered By Hulu
Yandy put out a statement that their intentions were to support the theme of female empowerment in The Handmaid's Tale. However, they've received a number of messages from people who feel that the costume sends a message to the contrary. Yandy said: "Our initial inspiration to create the piece was through witnessing its use in recent months as a powerful protest image. Given the sincere, heartfelt response, supported by numerous personal stories we’ve received, we are removing the costume from our site.” See the original costume below.
ADVERTISING
View image on Twitter
Professor B
✔@cynthiaboaz
https://twitter.com/cynthiaboaz/status/1042849197806911488
You guys, @yandy is selling a “sexy handmaiden” costume and I think I’m going to be sick. They didn’t have one person there to say this might not be a good idea??
2:53 PM - Sep 20, 2018
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The costume was originally listed with a message imploring the wearer to "be bold and speak your mind." It was retailed at $64.95, alongside lingerie-style Halloween costumes based on other famous female characters, such as Wonder Woman, Disney Princesses, and Jessica Rabbit. Some commentators defended the costume as a fun and ironic approach to promoting sexual freedom and empowerment. Detractors quickly pointed out that portraying characters who undergo egregious sexual assault as voluptuous completely misses the point of show itself.
Critics of the costume have expressed disbelief that Yandy launched the product, which can now be added to a long list of PR disasters resulting from tone-deaf advertisers in recent history. Kendall Jenner's 2017 Pepsi commercial was widely panned as dismissive of police brutality concerns, while social media was quick to jump on the "Lady Doritos," campaign as a vapid attempt to capitalize on conversations about gender equality. Costumes that are considered exploitative and inappropriate have long been contentious points of online debate. Season 1 of Netflix's Dear White People deals with college students dressing in blackface, and the exploration of racism in academic institutions.
ADVERTISING
It's probable that masses of people who've heard of The Handmaid's Tale have yet to watch the series or read the book. Especially as Hulu invests in more projects that have constructively tackled issues of gender inequity and violence, such as the Veronica Mars revival, perhaps more viewers will be encouraged to start watching.
The Handmaid's Tale season 3 review: Blessed be the show that knows when to quit
The season 2 finale ended with June deciding to stay in Gilead — but in season 3, the show seems to have run out of new things to say about her life there
By Kristen Baldwin
May 29, 2019 at 04:24 PM EDT
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'GAME OF THRONES' STAR KIT HARINGTON HAS CHECKED INTO REHAB
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The second season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale ended on a familiar image: June’s face, in extreme closeup, her eyes burning with anger, pain, and fierce determination as they bore into the camera. Five hours into season 3, another episode echoes that ending. The camera swoops in from above and pulls tight on June (Elisabeth Moss) — still in Gilead, still at war with Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) — as she seethes with rage and vows, once again, not to let the bastards grind her down.
If the season 2 finale left you screaming at your screen — For God’s sake, June, why aren’t you getting on the damn truck outta Gilead with Emily (Alexis Bledel) and baby Nichole? — season 3 (premiering June 5 on Hulu) won’t do much to restore your confidence in that decision. Based on the first six episodes, June and the show she anchors are stuck in a grim cycle of combative misery, working ever harder for a future that gets further and further out of reach.
After staying in Gilead — with the goal of somehow reuniting with her daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) — June is installed as a handmaid in the house of the weird and reclusive Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford). As for her wartime lover, Nick (Max Minghella), he’s rising through the ranks and — like some viewers — more than a little frustrated that his baby’s mama is still hanging around. “There won’t be another chance, you know that?” he barks. “You’re never getting out — you’re going to f—ing die here.”
In the wake of Nichole’s “kidnapping,” meanwhile, things are tense between Commander Waterford and Serena Joy. June sees this as an opportunity: With Serena down one finger and more than a little faith in her husband, might she be ripe for recruitment into Gilead’s nascent, female-led resistance? “We can help each other,” whispers June, urgent and persuasive. “You’re scared? Use it.”
HULU
Serena Joy, villain or savior? It’s a dance that’s been going on for two full seasons, and by the midpoint of season 3, I was angry with myself for daring to imagine that the writers were any closer to offering us a resolution. I’m starting to get the same wishy-washy vibe from Whitford’s Lawrence, who the show presents alternately as a sinister genius with benevolent undertones and a sinister genius with even more sinister undertones.
Having exhausted Margaret Atwood’s source material by its 10th episode, The Handmaid’s Tale went off book with confidence in season 2, broadening its depiction of Gilead’s toxic empire and deepening its study of civic responsibility in the midst of a revolution. If it weren’t for June’s disappointing decision in the finale… well, it’s pointless to indulge in what-ifs. The writers chose to keep June in her prison, and now they seem to have run out of new things to say about her life there. Season 3 hits a series of familiar notes: In addition to the Serena Question, we’re treated to variations on the sad saga of Janine the unstable handmaid (poignantly played by Madeline Brewer); the duality of Aunt Lydia, mother figure and truncheon-wielding monster (what will it take for the writers to give the brilliant Ann Dowd a backstory episode already?); and the near-fetishization of Gilead’s brutal efforts to silence women, literally and figuratively.
When season 3 does venture into unfamiliar areas, it retreats quickly. Without spoiling what happens to Emily (Alexis Bledel) after she and Nichole board the escape van, I’ll say her struggle opens up some fascinating new story line possibilities — but our time with her is discouragingly brief. In episode 2, June gains the trust of a group of Marthas who bring her deeper into the resistance’s underground network, a plot that soon gets back-burnered for more Waterford-related drama. Even the show’s visual and narrative flourishes are starting to feel like stylistic tics: The extreme close-ups, June’s profane voice-over prayers (“This is the valley of death, and there’s a f—ton of evil to fear”), the use of slow-motion to signal that what we’re seeing is an Important Moment.
“If I’m going to survive this, I’ll need allies,” June informs us. “Allies with power.” Oh girl, are you just realizing this now? In one of the season’s many incongruous music cues (another Handmaid’s special), U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” thunders in the background as the frame fills with June’s face, ferocious and fraught. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long? How loooooong? At this point, Bono, I’m afraid to ask. B
The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 premieres Wednesday, June 5 on Hulu.
The season 2 finale ended with June deciding to stay in Gilead — but in season 3, the show seems to have run out of new things to say about her life there
By Kristen Baldwin
May 29, 2019 at 04:24 PM EDT
FBTwitter
Loaded: 0%
YOU MIGHT LIKE
'GAME OF THRONES' STAR KIT HARINGTON HAS CHECKED INTO REHAB
×
The Handmaid's Tale
B
TYPE
- TV Show
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The second season of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale ended on a familiar image: June’s face, in extreme closeup, her eyes burning with anger, pain, and fierce determination as they bore into the camera. Five hours into season 3, another episode echoes that ending. The camera swoops in from above and pulls tight on June (Elisabeth Moss) — still in Gilead, still at war with Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) — as she seethes with rage and vows, once again, not to let the bastards grind her down.
If the season 2 finale left you screaming at your screen — For God’s sake, June, why aren’t you getting on the damn truck outta Gilead with Emily (Alexis Bledel) and baby Nichole? — season 3 (premiering June 5 on Hulu) won’t do much to restore your confidence in that decision. Based on the first six episodes, June and the show she anchors are stuck in a grim cycle of combative misery, working ever harder for a future that gets further and further out of reach.
After staying in Gilead — with the goal of somehow reuniting with her daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) — June is installed as a handmaid in the house of the weird and reclusive Commander Lawrence (Bradley Whitford). As for her wartime lover, Nick (Max Minghella), he’s rising through the ranks and — like some viewers — more than a little frustrated that his baby’s mama is still hanging around. “There won’t be another chance, you know that?” he barks. “You’re never getting out — you’re going to f—ing die here.”
In the wake of Nichole’s “kidnapping,” meanwhile, things are tense between Commander Waterford and Serena Joy. June sees this as an opportunity: With Serena down one finger and more than a little faith in her husband, might she be ripe for recruitment into Gilead’s nascent, female-led resistance? “We can help each other,” whispers June, urgent and persuasive. “You’re scared? Use it.”
HULU
Serena Joy, villain or savior? It’s a dance that’s been going on for two full seasons, and by the midpoint of season 3, I was angry with myself for daring to imagine that the writers were any closer to offering us a resolution. I’m starting to get the same wishy-washy vibe from Whitford’s Lawrence, who the show presents alternately as a sinister genius with benevolent undertones and a sinister genius with even more sinister undertones.
Having exhausted Margaret Atwood’s source material by its 10th episode, The Handmaid’s Tale went off book with confidence in season 2, broadening its depiction of Gilead’s toxic empire and deepening its study of civic responsibility in the midst of a revolution. If it weren’t for June’s disappointing decision in the finale… well, it’s pointless to indulge in what-ifs. The writers chose to keep June in her prison, and now they seem to have run out of new things to say about her life there. Season 3 hits a series of familiar notes: In addition to the Serena Question, we’re treated to variations on the sad saga of Janine the unstable handmaid (poignantly played by Madeline Brewer); the duality of Aunt Lydia, mother figure and truncheon-wielding monster (what will it take for the writers to give the brilliant Ann Dowd a backstory episode already?); and the near-fetishization of Gilead’s brutal efforts to silence women, literally and figuratively.
When season 3 does venture into unfamiliar areas, it retreats quickly. Without spoiling what happens to Emily (Alexis Bledel) after she and Nichole board the escape van, I’ll say her struggle opens up some fascinating new story line possibilities — but our time with her is discouragingly brief. In episode 2, June gains the trust of a group of Marthas who bring her deeper into the resistance’s underground network, a plot that soon gets back-burnered for more Waterford-related drama. Even the show’s visual and narrative flourishes are starting to feel like stylistic tics: The extreme close-ups, June’s profane voice-over prayers (“This is the valley of death, and there’s a f—ton of evil to fear”), the use of slow-motion to signal that what we’re seeing is an Important Moment.
“If I’m going to survive this, I’ll need allies,” June informs us. “Allies with power.” Oh girl, are you just realizing this now? In one of the season’s many incongruous music cues (another Handmaid’s special), U2’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” thunders in the background as the frame fills with June’s face, ferocious and fraught. How long, how long must we sing this song? How long? How loooooong? At this point, Bono, I’m afraid to ask. B
The Handmaid’s Tale season 3 premieres Wednesday, June 5 on Hulu.
I like this show, its okay. It make you think a little. But I like too see octavia butler's "parable of sower" and "parable of talents" or "kindred" made into series or movie.
This could easily be real life. Do you know in Saudi Arabia women have to download a app on their phone so their male relatives can keep track of them in case they try to escape
Just couple decades ago white folks use to gather around with popcorn to watch lynches, I can see the Trump crowd justifying this today if it came back.
She will probably like Man in the High Castle as well. Similar vibe different plot.
I'm halfway through the second season.
I like the show enough to have watched a season and a half but I'm sick of the world they live in being so poorly constructed. They don't do a good job of showing how this world could emerge in five years. There's no clarity as to the size of Gilead or how the government and territory were so totally taken over. June and Luke are oblivious to the fertility crisis during the Hannah pregnancy seen in flashbacks. It seems like a future that could be built in 50 years or at least 15 but cramming so much change into 5 years is tough to explain and the show doesn't do it well.
In a sense, it seems like tragedy porn to me. "Everybody wanna be a ****** but nobody wanna be a ******." White women wear these outfits to protests like slavery is their true history. The Mike Brown story becomes a Martha's. Meanwhile, the show has totally erased race. I prefer the book realistically depicting non-whites being killed and cast off rather than the show pretending it is a non-factor. (I read a season 2 preview saying the all-white writing staff, in response to criticism after season 1, was going to deal with the issue this season. There are clearly (suddenly and with no explanation) more black handmaids at the beginning of season 2 but I'm halfway through it and they've done nothing in terms of story.
It's a very good story at times but it feels stolen and appropriated. Add to that the logic of the show's history not working and I definitely don't feel like it lives up to the hype.
I like the show enough to have watched a season and a half but I'm sick of the world they live in being so poorly constructed. They don't do a good job of showing how this world could emerge in five years. There's no clarity as to the size of Gilead or how the government and territory were so totally taken over. June and Luke are oblivious to the fertility crisis during the Hannah pregnancy seen in flashbacks. It seems like a future that could be built in 50 years or at least 15 but cramming so much change into 5 years is tough to explain and the show doesn't do it well.
In a sense, it seems like tragedy porn to me. "Everybody wanna be a ****** but nobody wanna be a ******." White women wear these outfits to protests like slavery is their true history. The Mike Brown story becomes a Martha's. Meanwhile, the show has totally erased race. I prefer the book realistically depicting non-whites being killed and cast off rather than the show pretending it is a non-factor. (I read a season 2 preview saying the all-white writing staff, in response to criticism after season 1, was going to deal with the issue this season. There are clearly (suddenly and with no explanation) more black handmaids at the beginning of season 2 but I'm halfway through it and they've done nothing in terms of story.
It's a very good story at times but it feels stolen and appropriated. Add to that the logic of the show's history not working and I definitely don't feel like it lives up to the hype.
I'm caught up now.
I agree with the recent bad reviews. If I had finished season 2 a year ago, I doubt I'd have come back for season 3.
But I'm enjoying Ofmatthew's Candace Owens storyline.
I agree with the recent bad reviews. If I had finished season 2 a year ago, I doubt I'd have come back for season 3.
But I'm enjoying Ofmatthew's Candace Owens storyline.
I read the reviews on AV Club and the writer who covers the Handmaid's Tale is a stereotypical liberal snowflake, who once wrote of a June/Moira exchange "the sight of a white woman lecturing a black one about anything is always going to feel gross."
I figured most of the audience for this show would disagree with me about Ofmatthew or, as I call her, Candace Owens. The AV Club writer didn't cover that part of the story at all in her review but a blogger focused on it in a review he posted in the comments for the review of last week's show:
A little Respect, Just a Little Bit: On White Feminism and How “The Handmaid’s Tale” is Being Weaponized Against Women of Color
by Max S. Gordon
July 4, 2018
“All I’m asking is for a little respect when you get home (just a little bit).”
Aretha Franklin
(This essay contains spoilers from Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of The Handmaid’s…oh, fuck it. Either read it or don’t.)
1
Two weeks ago, I was kicked out of a Facebook group devoted to discussing Season Three of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It is still unclear to me why I was ejected, as I never received a warning from a moderator or even a private message. I went to check on a comment I had left on the page earlier in the day and discovered that not only was I unable to find the thread I had started, I couldn’t locate the group or its notifications in my history. I was completely disappeared.
The criticisms I posted about the show weren’t new; I’ve written twice now about The Handmaid’s Tale since the show premiered and I continue to express my frustration about the show’s treatment of race — or lack thereof. To some, Bruce Miller’s decision to blind-cast his series based on Margaret’s Atwood’s 1985 novel was admirable. Miller claimed to be committed to diversity, appalled, in 2017, at the idea of creating an all-white show.
I wanted to give Miller and his team the benefit of the doubt, and like someone in an abusive relationship, I’ve continued to come back to The Handmaid’s Tale hoping that it would have a moment of insight and become the show it might have been all along; a drama that would include examples of white and black female resistance. I hadn’t anticipated writing about the series a third time — twice was more than enough to make my point — but what I saw in the episode that premiered last night was disturbing on so many levels, so antithetical to what I know about black women, both historically and from what I have seen in my own life, that I feel the show has now become a tool to be weaponized against women of color.
Atwood’s novel about a dystopian society in which the religious right has run amok is a beautiful elegy to one woman’s battle against despair. In the theocratic society of Gilead, in which women are ritualistically raped by the State and forced to conceive as “handmaids”, we meet a woman whose daughter has been stolen from her. The character as written by Atwood — we never learn her name in the novel — is brave in subtly subversive ways. Her resistance is mostly internal, psychological. With her freedom constricted and her body controlled in every way, she resists Gilead in the way an imprisoned artist or abused child does — she ferociously protects her imagination. She maintains her sanity through her greatest asset: her ability to remember her past. The book moves the reader with its intrusions of the life she once knew, reconciled with the life she is now forced to live. We see the way memory ambushes, and the horror of watching evil normalized as well as the exhaustion of living in a constant state of bewilderment.
Miller’s conceit was that Atwood’s handmaid, named June in the TV series, has a best friend, a husband and a daughter who are black. An intriguing, potentially profound choice — in the right hands. Miller’s dilemma is that he never conceived of a way to integrate these black American characters into Atwood’s fundamentalist society. Finally exasperated, oblivious or both, Miller threw up his hands and chose not to explore racism in Gilead at all. Miller lets race ride, and despite the great talent on the screen, both behind and in front of the camera, the show, founded on this bedrock of disbelief, suffers greatly for it. A fundamentalist Christian American society conceived without racism might as well have dancing unicorns, winged horses, and magic flying carpets. It is the stuff of fantasy, child’s play.
The Handmaid’s Tale is mesmerizing television, but no one is able to answer — and believe me, I’ve asked — how we got from a contemporary America with the likes of Fox News, Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson to a society in which racism is completely eradicated. We are meant to assume that black handmaids are encouraged to sleep with white commanders during the fertility ceremony while their white wives lie beneath him.
In Atwood’s novel, blacks, or “the Children of Ham”, were exiled to the Outer Hebrides of Gilead and used for slave labor. Homosexuals were criminalized and hanged, older women, no longer useful for Gilead’s reproductive purposes or punished for their feminist activism in the past, were worked to death in concentration camps called the “Colonies.” Atwood was very clear in her novel about the agenda of Gilead’s architects, their commitment to genocide, and what they believed about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Miller not so much.
Race was obviously a problem in the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale, and many voices weighed in early, expressing their exasperation with the show. The problem was that black women, with the exception of Moira, were too often seen but not heard. This might have worked if everyone in the cast were cowed and silent — women of all different races and sexual orientations organizing with each other in whispers — but under Miller’s conception, June is a different kind of handmaid than in the book — outspoken, outraged, a rebel. And alone.
She is also, oddly, a life coach, motivational speaker and teacher, reminding women of color about why they must resist oppression. In the first season, she shames and speechifies at a visiting ambassador from Mexico, begging her to provide some underground help. The woman declines, and we as an audience immediately feel contempt for the character. There is no attempt to understand her previous history, no conversation about how she might once have been harmed by racism or Americans — “Where were you when we needed your help?” — or the risks she might face. No acknowledgment of the power issues between the two women, now in Gilead and once upon a time. Miller isn’t interested in this kind of nuanced perspective. The show tells us that Ambassador Castillo is a mean lady and that when the chips are down, Latinas have no desire to resist. One may be tempted at this point to say, “She’s just one flawed Latina in the series, what about the others?” Answer: there are no others.
Several episodes later, June gives her black lesbian friend Moira a pep talk on resistance and why she needs Moira not to give in to patriarchy. At this point, it should have been clear to the writers that the show was getting out of hand with its white paternalism, but viewers were encouraged to hang in there — Season Two promised to be better.
On the subject of race, the second season was, devastatingly, worse than the first. Not only had Miller not solved the problem, he hadn’t even approached it. Season Two was filled with walk-on supporting roles for women of color, characters we meet and never see again, or a silent Greek chorus of black, Asian and Latina victims, experiencing the same torture and persecution as the white women and all without saying a word.
In several of the discussion groups I visited, viewers were becoming exasperated at June’s sassiness; it seemed that whenever the show needed her to be feisty it bent the rules to accommodate her. Miller didn’t seem to realize that his choices weren’t making June more heroic, but just succeeded in making her more white. Under Miller’s eye, the Republic of Gilead, where punishments are swift, brutal, and often grotesque, seemed to be less of a dystopia and more of a secret society, in which spunky white women were given second and third chances as long as, when they committed their crimes, their hearts were in the right place.
The series’ creators could have made a different choice. Orange is the New Black used their privileged white female character as a Trojan horse to tell the stories of the black, Latin and working-class white women inside Litchfield prison; when Piper Chapman’s storyline began to run out of steam and someone in the writers’ room figured out that the women of color around her were far more interesting than she was —that they could only take the fish-out-of-water, Private-Benjamin, entitled-white-princess-in-over-her-head theme so far — the writers pulled back the focus on Piper and made her part of the ensemble.
Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, however, seems even more determined in Season Two to keep the juicy plotlines firmly in the hands of the same white female characters — June, Emily, Janine, Serena, Aunt Lydia. The show is so greedy, in fact, some of the white characters get the same plotlines twice. Miller might have focused, even briefly, on what the black handmaids experienced in a white Commander’s house, what a transgender woman’s reality looks like in Gilead, what stereotypes an Asian or a Latin woman would be forced to contend with. But one must conclude now, after close to thirty episodes, that he and his writers simply aren’t interested. So we watch June plot her third, fourth, fifteenth escape.
As Season Two reached its final episode, I argued in the discussion groups that it was important in the times we live in for younger generations to appreciate the intersectional dynamics of racism, gender inequality and violence against the LGBTQ community. Often, when you look at the lawmakers who attack difference of any kind, they are the usual suspects. But I was told several times, and in some cases by people I respect, that race was just too much to deal with on The Handmaid’s Tale, that sexism and homophobia were enough, and if I didn’t like it, go create my own show.
Now, it may not be my place, as a gay man of color, to comment on “white feminism” or feminism of any kind. But, from reading black feminist scholars, I am aware that the idea of eradicating sexism first, racism second, and the passive-aggressive, and sometimes aggressive-aggressive, silencing of black women by white women while in dialogue has been an issue within the feminist movement. There are enough testimonials from black women activists on the frustrations of organizing with white women who refuse to consider their class privilege and race, who become uncomfortable if the voices in the room become “too loud” (translate “too black”), and who try to control every aspect of the dialogue and a black woman’s anger. If they don’t like what they are hearing they either cry or shut the conversation down.
This may seem like a deeply unfair assessment to some, and perhaps the ones who should be criticizing white feminism are other white women. (Nichole Denato and Callie Coker of the podcast Vegan Warrior Princess Attack, brilliantly deconstruct the problems with June as an entitled white character with great insight and often hilarity.) All I know is that as I began to challenge the show in the third season, I observed a new aggressiveness in the discussion groups until eventually I was kicked out of one. I might have understood being thrown out if my tone had been aggressive or if I was “mansplaining” to everyone. But I merely expressed my frustration that the black female characters on the show were underused. I couldn’t help but observe the irony that I was silenced as a black gay man in a Facebook group about a TV show where people are silenced by the government for speaking out. It seemed that some of the Handmaid discussion groups were turning into mini-Gileads run by Aunt Lydias. I was definitely feeling the cattle prod.
The advice, “If you don’t like it, don’t watch”, may seem like an easy remedy for the constantly frustrated viewer, but the problem is this: my “not watching” The Handmaid’s Tale wouldn’t change what is happening in these groups, nor would it affect the impact the show has had on our culture and around the world. Prior to the show’s airing, but especially in this cultural moment, when a group of women dress up in handmaids’ costumes and attend a rally, a political hearing, or stand on courthouse steps, it is a stunning, horrific image. The Handmaid as a cultural symbol has become iconic and represents the attack on women’s bodies and and how a totalitarian society can appear almost overnight when we aren’t hypervigilant about the dissolution of our civil rights.
As Margaret Atwood is listed as an executive producer, one has to wonder in which ways she may be complicit in the changes we’ve seen. Fortunately, her novel is so emotionally powerful and true that I returned to it recently and realized that Bruce Miller’s corruption barely made a dent. I still believe in the woman of that story: I trust her and love her. And I believe in what The Handmaid’s Tale stands for, I just don’t like the way the show is being executed.
Which is why I continue to be fascinated by the conversations taking place around this show. And while I believe there are those who are critical about the choices the writers and June as a character makes, the series enables the majority of its viewers to stay firmly entrenched in their white privilege. This would be sad, but not surprising, if the series were based on another book, but Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t romanticize whiteness at the expense of black women. And it didn’t go out of its way deliberately to harm them, as the series now does.
2
This season we have been introduced to a black handmaid who is probably considered by most viewers to be a “kool-aid” drinker, a “company” woman, Ofmatthew, played by actress Ashleigh LaThrop. Ofmatthew is pious, judgmental, she knows her Scripture and has convinced herself that she doesn’t mind that Gilead has taken her children away from her. She’s already conceived several times and is now pregnant again. She stands in stark contrast to June, who we know has foiled an escape attempt and put other characters in danger in her determination to see her daughter and one day get her back.
Ofmatthew is presented without irony, and she’s annoying as fuck —she’s the the student in high school who rubs it in, reminding you when you fail the test that there was plenty of time to study and that she began the reading the asssignment three weeks ago. I prayed that this character would reveal an ironic, nuanced side, as I just couldn’t imagine that Miller & Co. would serve us this abominable black person after we’d been starving for authentic representation for years.
I don’t need Cleopatra Jones, by the way, for me to be satisfied with a black female character, karate-chopping and shooting her way to glory. And I don’t want to suggest that every black woman must be portrayed heroically, because that means falling into a different trap. There are black women all over the world who are addicted to religion, who have been brainwashed or who use the church to mitigate their own pain and to harm others. But I wanted someone I could empathize with, root for, created with the same sensitivity afforded characters like Emily and Janine. Given the history of enslaved black women in this country and black women who have had to protect their children from everything from malnutrition to street violence to police brutality, I found it incredible that Bruce Miller found the one black woman in the world who seemed delighted to give her children away. (There are suggestions that Ofmatthew is traumatized, but she never reveals herself, she never lets her guard down. She is a pariah amongst the other women: the moment anyone tries to connect, she goes into “Stepford” mode.)
Because there is no racism in Gilead, or appreciation of the trauma that comes from surviving a racist past, June feels no compunction at all for her hatred towards this black woman. Surprisingly, even with a black husband and best friend, June seems to have no empathy whatsoever for Ofmatthew, who, if she is as heinous as portrayed, must be deeply disturbed. Instead, June tells her as they part company one afternoon: “Bite me.” In Atwood’s Gilead, even the remotest suggestion of insurrection, of disbelief, the slightest hesitation after one of their Christian slogans (“Blessed Be The Fruit”, “May The Lord Open”) can lead to devastating consequences. June and the writers seem to have forgotten she exists in a totalitarian society and speaks instead as if she were in a touring company of the musical “Grease.”
In the latest episode, “Under His Eye”, June enlists the help of the Martha who works in the house where her daughter is being raised by another family. June has been told to stay away, but she convinces the Martha, a terrified, mousy black woman, to help her. This is the second Martha of color we’ve seen who has a case of the shakes; another Martha in a previous episode, I believe of Indian descent, is also a hot mess; she gets yelled at and ridiculed for being a clutzburger, for dropping things and not moving fast enough.
The plan to see June’s child is so maladroitly carried out (and so badly written) that it is no wonder that everyone involved gets caught. June, whose part of the plan is too contrived to be detailed here, comes home when it falls flat and once again gets to tell everyone, including her commander, exactly what she is thinking, regardless of consequences. Miller has maintained some of June’s internal dialogue from the book in his series, but I have no idea why it’s necessary — most of the time June says whatever she thinks, to whomever she wants, whenever she wants. She may be Gilead’s single case of Tourette’s.
The black Martha involved in the plot is discovered for her role and hanged. There is no “give me liberty or give me death” in her state-sanctioned murder; she is just as sniveling and quaking as she was when she reluctantly agreed to help. It’s a tiny pathetic death without grandeur, and much too graphic. Her mouth is covered while she screams in terror: this scene might have been directed by Eli Roth, from his Hostel torture-pornfilms. We discover that the woman who has turned her in is Ofmatthew. And while there may be a show that can handle the lethal betrayal of a black woman by another, instead of the sisterhood that many black women count on in real life to survive, this show ain’t it.
Meanwhile, June, who hatched the disastrous plot, one of many, watches as another person of color is sacrificed to her entitlement, ineptitude and bad planning. (You may recall a father of color, who was punished by death in Season Two.) Of course, as the women walk away from the hanging, Ofmatthew says something self-righteous that reveals she is the snitch; the camera freezes and we realize that with all the rage pent up in June, she’s going to attack this black woman.
We’ve been waiting for this release for weeks now, we’re eager to watch Ofmatthew get her ass kicked. The scene is set up in the same way that countless scenes have been set up in movies to release an audience’s misogyny, to feed their desire for violence against women. You know the kind; a woman in the movie just won’t shut up during a fight, she goes on and on about how worthless her husband is, how unsuccessful, how little money he makes, how he’s a terrible father, and finally, she does the unforgivable: she laughs at his penis. He slaps or punches her or kills her and the audience cheers because they’ve been encouraged to cheer. We’ve seen this scene in everything from Tyler Perry’s films to the final scene in Fatal Attraction. Glenn Close was committed to a nuanced portrayal of the character Alex Forrest rather than a feminist “psycho”, but the producers of the film changed the original ending and were more interested in what has now been referred to as a “Kill the Bitch” climax. When Ofmatthew gloats, not over snitching for a minor infraction like catching someone shoplifting but for her role in the death of another black woman, June asks, “What did you do?” in a tone that sounds like the Clint Eastwood iconic growl from Sudden Impact: “Make my Day.”
In a moment of blind fury, June flips out and starts to choke Ofmatthew, pushing her to the end of the bridge. She doesn’t take her hands off her until the other handmaids intervene. Miller has come up with his own variation on a theme: “Kill the Black Bitch.” The audience has been hyped-up since we met OfMatthew to share June’s fury. Some want her dead.
If you doubt this, “Under His Eye” aired exactly three hours from the time of this writing and I have already observed on Twitter and Facebook the posts expressing their rage at Ofmatthew, that she deserved more than she got, that they can’t wait to tune in next week to see what else June has in store for her, etc. One post by a woman reads, with a picture of Ashleigh LaThrop as Ofmatthew, “Hang the bitch. Choke her out.”
These viewers are outraged and bloodthirsty, like the women in the book who tear a rapist apart limb from limb during the “salvaging” scenes. It is quite extraordinary: Miller has taken a classic novel which I consider to be sympathetic to the experiences of enslaved woman of color around the world and creates a macho TV show that has inspired a social media lynch mob to attack a single black woman.
When I went on social media to voice my frustration about the audience’s reaction to the episode, I was told in several discussion groups, “It’s only a TV show” and, specifically in response to the violent hatred towards Ofmatthew: “Hey, no one likes a tattletale.”
But I think it’s much deeper than that. At the 1946 Nuremberg trials after World War II, Julius Streicher, founder and publisher of the newspaper “Der Stürmer”, was convicted of Crimes Against Humanity. His paper was known for its propaganda, which included cartoon depictions of Jewish people. The cartoons portrayed Jews as pickpockets with big noses, devils with horns, and Nazis shoving Jews off cliffs. The paper was tried for war crimes because prosecutors believed those cartoons helped facilitate the exterminations. Julius Streicher didn’t drive the train to the death camps, but he created a culture in which the hatred of Jews was encouraged.
When the five black boys known as the Central Park Five were tried in New York City in 1989 for raping a white female jogger, the newspapers and TV stations ran stories describing them as “animals” and “savages”. Filmmaker Sarah Burns in her book “The Central Park Five” describes how the media used this language to whip the city into a frenzy of hate. Most New Yorkers probably weren’t aware that this language had a historical context — it wasn’t new, nor was their response of rage at the “rape” of a white woman by a black man. Their reaction was a direct descendant of racist tropes from the Jim Crow era, the justification for many Southern lynchings of innocent black men.
My point is, the media and the entertainment industry have power. And it knows that people can be manipulated easily to respond in certain ways — it’s called advertising. Well, racism can also be advertised. If you’ve been wondering how we go from generation to generation, seeming to have different media and different consumers, and yet dealing with the same racial discrimination, the same hate-crimes, over and over, the portrayal of Ofmatthew on “The Handmaid’s Tale” will help you understand exactly why.
These are fragile times, with back-to-back shootings, and a president who seems to revel in divisiveness, who encourages its progress. We need nuanced characters, complex motivations, not two-dimensional people we can easily despise. We need responsibility, even when what we are responding to appears to be “just a show.”
In other words, the person who doesn’t think, when she tweets “Kill the bitch” about a black handmaid, that she’s tapping into a wellspring of conditioned cultural violence against black women, shares a relationship to the young man in the fraternity house who believes that his joking about sexual assault only occurred because he “drank too much that night” and not because of millions of messages he’s gotten since birth about women, sexuality, and his right as a man to violate. It doesn’t let him off the hook, or justify his behavior, mind you, but it helps us contextualize why an actual assault may occur on a given night when his friends are chanting him on, why this hatred of women may be readily accessible in his consciousness when he looks for the inner permission to rape.
Online, the mob against Ofmatthew grows bigger, they now call her “snitch bitch”. I am not worried about the safety of the actress who plays the character but perhaps I should be — fans can be dangerous. I am more worried about the black woman next door — our neighbor, our co-worker, our friend. Those calling for the death of Ofmatthew may not be able to get their hands on her, but they can start a fight with LaVonne at work, they may be too aggressive when pulling Stacey over for a traffic violation, they will choose not to invite Andrea to a play date with other children because black girls and women “can’t be trusted.”
The more reliable way to tell that a character has been objectified or “othered” is not by examining the show’s intention but by our reaction: we have no compunction about wanting this woman destroyed. The fact that we even have to have this conversation about The Handmaid’s Tale, whose source material challenged us about this very question — the way people are dehumanized in a totalitarian society — is a form of sacrilege.
3
It is hard to watch Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale if you’ve had a black mother, sister, friend, or if you’ve ever loved a black woman in your life. If you’ve watched that mother, sister, friend deal with racism and sexism and homophobia: if you’ve even seen a black woman broken, if you’ve seen a black woman thrive. I’ve shared in a previous piece that a friend of mine is dead this year from cancer complications; she was in her early forties and left behind an eleven-year-old son. She was radiant, black, courageous and alive — trust me, you would have loved her.
Another black woman I know, an executive in a major company, has been locked out of meetings consistently by a racist, sexist boss. When I was eight, I remember my mother was fired from a job because of discrimination, and we had to get a lawyer. She won the battle and we went out to dinner to celebrate. I remember being very proud of her.
It is hard to watch the crying, pathetic Martha and the zealot Ofmatthew on The Handmaid’s Tale if you are familiar at all with the names Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde. It is impossible to watch this show if you are committed to the appreciation of the complexities of a black woman’s life, any black woman’s life. Black women whose children were educated despite segregated schools, who worked hard in the South and the North to make sure their daughters weren’t violated on dirt roads by the Klan, that their sons weren’t lynched and found floating in rivers. The history of black resistance in this country is extensive and profound, from Phillis Wheatley to Michelle Obama. Black women and their experiences in America are fascinating and complex and some of that brilliance could have translated to the screen. We may not insist on this legacy from Game of Thrones and Stranger Things, but it should be required of The Handmaid’s Tale. Archetypally, black women have been looking for the children who’ve been separated from them a lot longer than June has. If the show were interested in the truth, these black women might be able to give June some tips on how to survive that particular heartbreak.
What’s sad for Miller and Atwood is that the effort to maintain their main character’s heroism at this point — on the backs of women of color around her — is having diminishing returns. June is so brave, so courageous, so impudent, that she’s become ludicrous. And that doesn’t do any favors to historical white women committed to social justice, women like Emmeline Pankhurst, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Helen Keller. June’s a big white brat. Elizabeth Moss is a deeply sensitive actress and she has won me over many times when the script has failed her. But it is depressing when I imagine what this show might have been if June had found a real black female ally. Perhaps that is where the show is going with the characters of Moira and Emily, both refugees of Gilead in Canada. There is potential in this interracial relationship, but I may not stay around for it. The bottom line is that women of color just aren’t seen on The Handmaid’s Tale unless it is a white woman doing the seeing; and too often that gaze is contemptuous. What once seemed a benign omission and an oversight, and then a bad habit, has now become an act of aggression and perversity.
4
I think it is a safe bet that if one of the show’s producers threw a wrap party after the taping and played some music, there would probably be at least one or two songs by a black American performer, most likely a woman. Everyone loves disco classics, music from the Seventies! They might play Evelyn Champagne King’s “Shame” or Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real” or The Emotions’ “Best of My Love.” Someone might request “I’m Every Woman” by Chaka Khan. Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige. And I think it is more than likely, especially if the party went on for a while, that there would be several songs performed by Aretha Franklin.
The presumption on Aretha’s classic ‘Respect’ is that she is telling off a man who has done her wrong. But the song came out in 1967 during what are considered to be the final years of The Civil Rights Movement. Aretha is also speaking to racism in her country. All I’m asking is for a little respect when you get home, just a little bit. We dance to Aretha’s music, we know all the words by heart, but are we interested as Americans in the black experience that created that sound, that shaped her music? Are we interested in the scream of terror that lies at the core of that beautiful sound?
In Season 1, Miller uses the music of Nina Simone as a radical shorthand. June walks towards the camera with a phalanx of handmaids in formation style — she’s a badass. The show hasn’t earned Nina Simone. (Imagine a young Nina Simone as a handmaid.) Perhaps Miller knows that if he used the energy of Nina Simone and not just her “hits” — she wrote “Mississippi Goddam” so she wouldn’t take to the streets with a gun in her hand to kill racists — June as a model of resistance would be an embarrassment to all of us.
In the novel, the woman who narrates the story of The Handmaid’s Tale leaves her remembrances on tapes so that people will know what happened to her. We see the value of her story to future generations as a historian reflects on her resistance as part of a conference on Gilead. The novel speaks to the basic desire in all of us to leave a legacy, for someone to know who we are, who we were, what happened to us.
What’s happening now is that we seem to live in a time where people create whatever they want about whomever they want without consequences. You can perpetuate a mythology about someone’s culture, you can revise history, you can imagine a black woman who doesn’t seem to care about her children’s being sold or about the death of another black woman on a show about female empowerment, and if you are a white man you can get away it.
I grew up believing our generation would be different, that we wouldn’t fall back on the lazy racist tropes that defined our parents’ generation and the generations before. I thought we’d be better. I feel powerless against what I saw this week on The Handmaid’s Tale; and I don’t know what to do, and I don’t know whom to tell, because when I tried to speak out, I was kicked out of the group, the doors firmly locked behind me, because someone didn’t like my “tone.”
They prefer Bruce Miller’s tone, and they prefer their mythology. So we will turn a page tomorrow, and there will be another episode to watch, another conversation to avoid, another distraction. Another season to anticipate. But when June choked that black woman on the bridge I felt harmed and betrayed, and when the show executed the other black woman and she screamed for help, I felt terror. We never heard that woman’s last words, because no one wrote her any. Even before death, in this space, black women remain silent. And that’s wrong.
You, whoever you are, reading this, today, tomorrow or perhaps one hundred and fifty years in the future: they will continue to control the conversation, they will ignore dissenters and they will reward themselves. But I wanted to say this to you now, if you’re listening somewhere. Because I thought it might one day matter to someone; because I thought you’d like to know.
New York
July 3, 2019
(this essay was revised on 7/5/19)
further reading by Max S. Gordon:
"); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">On Race and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale
"); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">Walking On Broken Glass: How Bruce Miller’s The Handmaid’s Tale Turned Out Racist After All”
Max S. Gordon is a writer and activist. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991), Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared on openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His essays include "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">“Bill Cosby, Himself, Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”, "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">“A Different World: Why We Owe The Cosby Accusers An Apology”, "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">“Faggot as Footnote: On James Baldwin, ‘I Am Not Your Negro’, ‘Can I Get A Witness’ and ‘Moonlight’”, "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">“Resist Trump: A Survival Guide”, "); background-size: 1px 1px; background-position: 0px calc(1em + 1px);">“Family Feud: Jay-Z, Beyoncé and the Desecration of Black Art”
You should get her a handmaids outfit and cut some holes in the sheets, she might be into it
The backlash regarding race is so strong and predictable that I have to believe the show is doing it on purpose and it is going somewhere.
I hope it is the latter but I'm not sure. The show has been going downhill since that terrible, terrible season two finale.
“Unfit” is the worst episode of The Handmaid’s Tale yet
The series delves into the past of Aunt Lydia. But its biggest problems all have to do with its supposed hero.
By Emily Todd VanDerWerff and Constance Grady
Jul 10, 2019
...
The racial politics of this show have never been this clumsy or bad
I mean, two weeks in a row the show ends with a black woman being killed because of June! As I mentioned, this show's base is "woke" Resistance liberals who say things like "the sight of a white woman lecturing a black one about anything is always going to feel gross" in response to a friendly conversation. They are just asking for it now, so this is either pathetically unaware writing or it is intentional and leading somewhere.
I hope it is the latter but I'm not sure. The show has been going downhill since that terrible, terrible season two finale.
“Unfit” is the worst episode of The Handmaid’s Tale yet
The series delves into the past of Aunt Lydia. But its biggest problems all have to do with its supposed hero.
By Emily Todd VanDerWerff and Constance Grady
Jul 10, 2019
...
The racial politics of this show have never been this clumsy or bad
Constance: So the standard critique on race in The Handmaid’s Tale started way back in season one, and it was most elegantly laid out by Angelica Jade Bastién at Vulture: Essentially, The Handmaid’s Tale consistently presents Gilead as a “post-racial” world in which racism is really just not a big problem, as though racism and misogyny are not interrelated systems of oppression. It treats racism as a problem that is not worthy of the kind of serious analysis this show aspires to give to systemic misogyny.
And at the same time that The Handmaid’s Tale posits that racism is just not going to be a thing in our dystopian future, it consistently underwrites its characters of color. Look at how little material we get for Moira compared to, say, our beloved Emily, even though Moira is a much bigger part in Atwood’s novel and even though Samira Wiley can clearly handle anything this show’s writers care to throw at her.
In response to this critique, showrunner Bruce Miller spent basically the entire hiatus between seasons one and two of Handmaid’s Tale telling anyone who would listen that they totally planned to deal with race in season two, and then that basically just … did not happen at any point.
Given all of this backstory, it is concerning, to say the least, that “Unfit” ends with Ofmatthew, who is black, going into a rage and grabbing a gun out of nowhere, and then being brutally shot down and having her lifeless body dragged out of the grocery store.
That ending plays into a few different racist tropes. It gives us the black person who just randomly becomes a violent menace out of nowhere, which is the same idea that you can see lurking within, for instance, the testimony of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown in 2014. (Wilson on Brown: “The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”)
The show then uses Ofmatthew’s rage as a justification for her death, making her the second woman of color in as many episodes to die violently onscreen. And it links her death to June’s bullying, making Ofmatthew the second woman of color in as many episodes to die as a result of June’s actions in her quest to be reunited with her daughter. That’s a pattern that suggests the show is essentially treating its supporting characters of color as pawns who can be killed off whenever the stakes need to go up, while the white supporting characters who surround June remain untouched.
And finally, there’s that lingering close up on Ofmatthew’s body being dragged away, that shot that has nothing to do with Ofmatthew as a person and everything to do with Ofmatthew as a signifier of horror. That shot reduces her body to a prop, to an it.
Now, there are plenty of arguments we can make to justify a lot of those creative choices. We’ve seen other Handmaids snap and do violent things out of nowhere, for instance (ILU, Emily!), so maybe we’re meant to read Ofmatthew’s grab for the gun as more of the same, even though I would argue that the buildup there is nowhere near as thought through and elegant as what we got with Emily. And sure, maybe the show is going somewhere with the repeated choice to have June’s actions lead to the death of women of color, and we’re eventually going to get some trenchant racial commentary out of it.
But nothing about this show’s track record in dealing with race inspires confidence in me. It’s very hard for me to give Handmaid’s Tale any benefit of the doubt on that ending, given everything that has come before. Do you feel differently?
Emily: I highly doubt we’re going to get trenchant racial commentary out of this storyline. But I do think the show may be setting us up for June to get some sort of comeuppance.
The one scene I unquestionably liked in “Unfit” involved Lydia and some other aunts planning out which Handmaids were going to go to which houses and being a little mouthy and unguarded when among peers. It was the one scene in the episode that sounded like how human beings in this situation might actually talk, and it got at something this season has talked about a lot, but rarely convincingly: June must survive for “reasons.”
But what I liked about the scene is that it suggests the show at least has a clearer eye about June’s actions than she does. Lydia might be evil, but she’s also a pragmatist, and a pragmatist would see June’s journey this season for what it is: a woman slowly spiraling and taking a whole bunch of people down with her.
Again, I’m not sure we’re going to get anything out of this — the next episode is called (full-body shudder) “Heroic,” so boy, am I not sure. But the show is at least cognizant of it, and that’s weirdly more credit than I was ready to extend it in last week’s episode, which was probably “better” than this one but also seemed a lot harder to parse in terms of how aware it was of what it was doing.
What’s ultimately most disappointing about Ofmatthew is that she existed as a character solely to be killed. She could have been a window into why women of color might be as fully into Gilead as she was. After all, plenty of people of color exist in modern evangelical churches, often for wildly different reasons. She might even have been a window into the more subtle racism of the show’s world, where people of color are welcome so long as they are completely fine with a system that upholds the white male hegemony.
But we didn’t know anything about her, and now she’s dead. That she turns the gun on Lydia after seeming like she might shoot June is meant to suggest, I guess, that even those who have drunk the Gilead Kool-Aid know who the real oppressors are in the end. Had we known who Ofmatthew was, Lydia crying, “Natalie!” could have had the power it was supposed to.
But “Unfit” never earned that scene or that moment, due to its inability to better develop either the woman holding the gun or the woman she was pointing it at.
And at the same time that The Handmaid’s Tale posits that racism is just not going to be a thing in our dystopian future, it consistently underwrites its characters of color. Look at how little material we get for Moira compared to, say, our beloved Emily, even though Moira is a much bigger part in Atwood’s novel and even though Samira Wiley can clearly handle anything this show’s writers care to throw at her.
In response to this critique, showrunner Bruce Miller spent basically the entire hiatus between seasons one and two of Handmaid’s Tale telling anyone who would listen that they totally planned to deal with race in season two, and then that basically just … did not happen at any point.
Given all of this backstory, it is concerning, to say the least, that “Unfit” ends with Ofmatthew, who is black, going into a rage and grabbing a gun out of nowhere, and then being brutally shot down and having her lifeless body dragged out of the grocery store.
That ending plays into a few different racist tropes. It gives us the black person who just randomly becomes a violent menace out of nowhere, which is the same idea that you can see lurking within, for instance, the testimony of Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot unarmed teenager Michael Brown in 2014. (Wilson on Brown: “The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”)
The show then uses Ofmatthew’s rage as a justification for her death, making her the second woman of color in as many episodes to die violently onscreen. And it links her death to June’s bullying, making Ofmatthew the second woman of color in as many episodes to die as a result of June’s actions in her quest to be reunited with her daughter. That’s a pattern that suggests the show is essentially treating its supporting characters of color as pawns who can be killed off whenever the stakes need to go up, while the white supporting characters who surround June remain untouched.
And finally, there’s that lingering close up on Ofmatthew’s body being dragged away, that shot that has nothing to do with Ofmatthew as a person and everything to do with Ofmatthew as a signifier of horror. That shot reduces her body to a prop, to an it.
Now, there are plenty of arguments we can make to justify a lot of those creative choices. We’ve seen other Handmaids snap and do violent things out of nowhere, for instance (ILU, Emily!), so maybe we’re meant to read Ofmatthew’s grab for the gun as more of the same, even though I would argue that the buildup there is nowhere near as thought through and elegant as what we got with Emily. And sure, maybe the show is going somewhere with the repeated choice to have June’s actions lead to the death of women of color, and we’re eventually going to get some trenchant racial commentary out of it.
But nothing about this show’s track record in dealing with race inspires confidence in me. It’s very hard for me to give Handmaid’s Tale any benefit of the doubt on that ending, given everything that has come before. Do you feel differently?
Emily: I highly doubt we’re going to get trenchant racial commentary out of this storyline. But I do think the show may be setting us up for June to get some sort of comeuppance.
The one scene I unquestionably liked in “Unfit” involved Lydia and some other aunts planning out which Handmaids were going to go to which houses and being a little mouthy and unguarded when among peers. It was the one scene in the episode that sounded like how human beings in this situation might actually talk, and it got at something this season has talked about a lot, but rarely convincingly: June must survive for “reasons.”
But what I liked about the scene is that it suggests the show at least has a clearer eye about June’s actions than she does. Lydia might be evil, but she’s also a pragmatist, and a pragmatist would see June’s journey this season for what it is: a woman slowly spiraling and taking a whole bunch of people down with her.
Again, I’m not sure we’re going to get anything out of this — the next episode is called (full-body shudder) “Heroic,” so boy, am I not sure. But the show is at least cognizant of it, and that’s weirdly more credit than I was ready to extend it in last week’s episode, which was probably “better” than this one but also seemed a lot harder to parse in terms of how aware it was of what it was doing.
What’s ultimately most disappointing about Ofmatthew is that she existed as a character solely to be killed. She could have been a window into why women of color might be as fully into Gilead as she was. After all, plenty of people of color exist in modern evangelical churches, often for wildly different reasons. She might even have been a window into the more subtle racism of the show’s world, where people of color are welcome so long as they are completely fine with a system that upholds the white male hegemony.
But we didn’t know anything about her, and now she’s dead. That she turns the gun on Lydia after seeming like she might shoot June is meant to suggest, I guess, that even those who have drunk the Gilead Kool-Aid know who the real oppressors are in the end. Had we known who Ofmatthew was, Lydia crying, “Natalie!” could have had the power it was supposed to.
But “Unfit” never earned that scene or that moment, due to its inability to better develop either the woman holding the gun or the woman she was pointing it at.
Halfway thru season 2 and i have a lovehate relationship with the show. I live the acting and visuals but it’s hard as fuck to get pass the fact that they feminizing our truth of slavery. I watch wit with black eyes and that in mind and the only reason I’m a able to watch it
How many seasons has this show had and what would you rate each one? Ive heard good things about the concept in the past but now it appears the quality has degraded?
Bru , I'm going to say this 1 more time for the slow folks........ every President for the last 40 years did their part to get us here. The Bushes , Clintons ,Obama and now Trump just did it with more exuberance
its in its 3rd season now
just marathoned 2 seasons trying to see what was good here
this show was never well written - it was never better than current walking dead quality of writing with even lower production standards
IMO the hype of this being good is only from feminists pushing their agenda
My guess is - considering your age / generation - this show will infuriate you on par with watching Trump rally speeches
I'd say these two posts capture my sentiments... I'd give season 3 an F right now but there's still a quarter season to go, so hopefully they salvage it in some way.
I read an interview with the showrunner where he said he'd like to do ten seasons and he described one as a sort of Nuremberg trials for Gilead-- That seemed really cool to me but the further they've gotten from the book, which was 90% covered in the first season, they've just proven to be incompetent. Very questionable plot decisions and glacial pacing.
Season 1, I give a A-. Season 2 I give a solid B, despite my complaints below (which focused on the negative and would probably suggest a lower grade). I think the first two seasons would have been damn near perfect if not for the problems with world-building/logistics and the note they ended the second season on. Those two were definitely thought-provoking and worth watching.
Wow... I've read quite a few reviews and never seen the production questioned. I think the cosmetics are great to the point of being a crutch and the over-reliance on that has been a major flaw in the third season.
I'd say it's very well-written-- Some basic conceptual flaws but the execution from that point was excellent, IMO, for the first two seasons.
Do you find it infuriating on the level of a Trump speech? I'm surprised you even made it past season 1, if so.
Wow.
the production value is low for a "premium show"- the budget was limited.... Gilead didn't feel like a real "world" in S1 compare this to shows like S1 Man in the High Castle
S2 of Handmaid was much improved in that aspect but the writing was threadbare in S1 fell apart in s2
and then in the beginning of s3 the audience has to believe there was always an underground railroad run by the grey bitches?
Like in one of your posts - the review said the protagonist is white privilege personified in this story
- the screenplay/ story keeps breaking every one of the 48 laws of power w/o consequence - every instance of profound story telling exemplified in mainstream media turned out to be just lazy writing a la Power
I watched 1 season because of the critical acclaim and hype -the 2nd season I watched because I've seen mediocre writing and poor production improve greatly with success a la Enter the Badlands...
I stopped watching after 2 eps in S3 - not even realizing that S2 ended.
Im willing to bet the same people that love this show are the people that ignored the Wire until there were college courses and millenial cool points for being aware of that story
I'm not from the civil rights generation - so I wasn't infuriated by the show
My mother watched S1 while traveling.... she had nothing good to say about white girls pretending to be oppressed
i slept on this shit.
it is a well written acted and well done show.
and after skimming through the thread i agree about the white women being oppressed criticism. while i am intrigued by the show that imagery sticks out like a sore thumb.
i am only 3 episodes in so the bad writing criticism isn't there for me yet.
it is a well written acted and well done show.
and after skimming through the thread i agree about the white women being oppressed criticism. while i am intrigued by the show that imagery sticks out like a sore thumb.
i am only 3 episodes in so the bad writing criticism isn't there for me yet.
I think the "Roots: White Women Edition" aspect of this show is important and interesting, which is why I read and shared that long ass breakdown on the topic. I can definitely see older black people being totally repulsed. I didn't think of it from that angle. I personally exist in an environment where white feminism is very dominant-- as a feminist myself, I wouldn't go so far as dismissing it as "white girls pretending to be oppressed" because the oppression of patriarchy is real and my issue is more with them painting white women as the most oppressed. I'm too used to it for that problem with the premise to be a complete dealbreaker for me, especially since the entire show can't be boiled down to simply that.
Most critics regard the first three episodes as the best.
From that point on-- actually, beginning with the end of the third episode IMO-- you definitely see foreshadowing of the biggest problems that emerge at the end of season two and through season three--
namely, the need for the occasional peppy ending and over-worshipping Elizabeth Moss as an actor resulting in way too much of a reliance on June staring at the camera.
But I'd say there's still a lot to appreciate with the rest of the next two seasons, despite the flaws.
Well, that was the saddest rape yet.
The Handmaid's Tale renewed for season 4
By Rachel Yang
July 26, 2019 at 12:30 PM EDT
FBTwitter
SOPHIE GIRAUD/HULU
The Handmaid's Tale
TYPE
GENRE
The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for a fourth season, Hulu announced during its TCA presentation on Friday. A premiere date was not revealed.
Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, the drama series is set in a dystopian world where women, oppressed by a totalitarian regime, are only valued for their ability to produce offspring. The third season, which premiered June 5, found protagonist June (Elisabeth Moss) staying behind in Gilead with a mission to “fight fire with fire.“
The Handmaid’s Tale has received critical acclaim and its first season garnered eight Emmy Awards out of 13 nominations, including for Outstanding Drama Series. This year, due to Emmy eligibility rules, the series picked up only two nominations for guest actors Bradley Whitford and Cherry Jones, along with nine nods for writing, directing, and other below-the-line categories.
By Rachel Yang
July 26, 2019 at 12:30 PM EDT
FBTwitter
SOPHIE GIRAUD/HULU
The Handmaid's Tale
TYPE
- TV Show
GENRE
The Handmaid’s Tale has been renewed for a fourth season, Hulu announced during its TCA presentation on Friday. A premiere date was not revealed.
Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, the drama series is set in a dystopian world where women, oppressed by a totalitarian regime, are only valued for their ability to produce offspring. The third season, which premiered June 5, found protagonist June (Elisabeth Moss) staying behind in Gilead with a mission to “fight fire with fire.“
The Handmaid’s Tale has received critical acclaim and its first season garnered eight Emmy Awards out of 13 nominations, including for Outstanding Drama Series. This year, due to Emmy eligibility rules, the series picked up only two nominations for guest actors Bradley Whitford and Cherry Jones, along with nine nods for writing, directing, and other below-the-line categories.
I agree with this article. Bad direction for the story. I wonder if Aunt Lydia is intentionally modeled after Uncle Tom? The name became an epithet in a similar way-- I saw it a lot with Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I have never read Uncle Tom's Cabin but I don't think Uncle Tom was at all empowered or implicated in evil like Aunt Lydia, so I don't think the slur is as fair (or fair at all) in that case based on my understanding. I think recasting Aunt Lydia as a hero is some apolitical white feminism glass ceiling bullshit.
Margaret Atwood Shouldn’t Exonerate Aunt Lydia
The Testaments, Atwood’s sequel to Handmaid’s Tale, gives undue credit to Gilead’s misogynistic female enabler.
By Katha Pollitt
The Nation
September 2019
When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale decades ago, I thought Offred was a wimp. She’s living in a violent, misogynist Christian theocracy, raped and impregnated, forbidden to read, and sees hanged corpses on her mandatory daily walk—and she misses hand cream?
In fact, Offred’s lack of obvious heroism was one of the novel’s strengths. It let the reader identify with her and see daily life in Gilead in all its grinding, mundane awfulness. It’s the source of the novel’s strange, indelible aura of eerie depression. Besides, was Offred really so wimpy? If you had to live as a reproductive slave, thinking about small lost comforts might help you avoid the fates of feistier characters: mutilated, executed, or shipped off to die in a radioactive wasteland.
The wonderful TV series manages to capture the book’s ominous mood while casting Elisabeth Moss as a more daring and energetic Offred. This makes for a more exciting, plotty narrative, and it might even have gotten to Margaret Atwood, because her just-published sequel, The Testaments, is fast-paced, full of action and suspense, with quick crosscuts among its three narrators. The novel is shot through with dry humor and clever touches and culminates with the end of Gilead—not a spoiler, because the first novel ends, like the sequel, with an academic conference on Gilead studies from the safe post-theocratic future.
The book is tremendous fun: I binge-read it in a day and a half. That’s a tribute to Atwood’s skill as a storyteller, because I have questions about the inner logic of her dystopia.
The major narrator is, of all people, Aunt Lydia, the sadistic and fanatical enforcer of women’s subjection in the original book. (She’s a more central character in the TV show, deliciously played by Ann Dowd with a prim little ghost of a smile.) “Aunt Lydia” has become a synonym for prissy reactionaries like Phyllis Schlafly who enforce patriarchal norms in return for a bit of power, but surprise—the Aunt Lydia of The Testaments is a closet feminist playing a very long game. As a family court judge brutalized during the Gileadean takeover and given the choice to join or die, she’s been collecting dirt on the Commanders, the ruling male elite, for years. Her complicated plan to get the truth about Gilead’s rulers out to the free world involves the two other narrators: a bold Canadian teen and a lonely young Gileadean woman whom Aunt Lydia saved from a scary forced marriage. And it succeeds. Her revelations set off the downfall of the regime.
In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg has suggested that Atwood is giving the truth too much credit. I agree with her. It’s a sobering thought to a writer that none of the many shocking and sordid disclosures about Donald Trump have damaged his popularity with his base. Atwood’s assumption that the truth could bring down a regime is the human rights version of the old hope of the oppressed Russian peasantry: “If the czar only knew!”
There’s another kind of wish fulfillment at work in The Testaments. Women like Aunt Lydia, Atwood seems to be saying, may be more on women’s side than you think, even if circumstances force them to gouge out some eyes or supervise the occasional stoning. Power in the separate women’s sphere is, after all, real power, although limited, and one of the things Aunt Lydia and her fellow senior Aunts do in the beginning is to maximize their independence by banning men from their residence, Ardua Hall. It’s not clear how Aunt Lydia has used her power to help women, beyond framing a male sex criminal or two. It’s hard not to be reminded of the nuns who ran the cruel Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes of Ireland. Didn’t they say they were helping women, too?
The Testaments reads as if Atwood wanted to exonerate her magnificently evil creation twice over: Aunt Lydia cooperated to survive and to bring down the patriarchy. But the Aunts of the world need no exculpatory rationale. The cooperation of women is essential to any society, including misogynist ones. Even ISIS has its female devotees, now busily tormenting “heretic” women in Syria. “Aryan” German women adored Hitler, even as he deprived them of their rights. The Nazis made good use of separate-sphere ideology, too, putting mothers on a pedestal, giving girls and women their own organizations with traditions and banners and uniforms.
As long as there are privileges to hand out as well as punishments, as long as basic material needs are supplied and there is enough religious or nationalistic or ideological fervor to keep things exciting, it is not that hard to get women to go along, just as men go along.
Even if Gilead succeeded in brainwashing its citizens into Christian fundamentalism, it could never have lasted in its harsh original form. The society promoted too much punishment and not enough pleasure. The only entertainment was religious mania, executions, and for lucky women, babies. Except for the elites who enjoyed a steady supply of homemade fancy desserts, even the food was terrible—ersatz cheese and soups made out of kitchen scraps. The Romans had the right idea: bread and circuses. And plenty of hand cream.
If it had managed to end its wars and become more prosperous, Gilead might have come to resemble Saudi Arabia, a theocracy where banned imports find their way in, a subject caste does the hard work, much foreign media is censored or banned, and only a few people have to be tortured and beheaded as an example to others. There are plenty of Aunt Lydias in Saudi Arabia; they’re instrumental to the functioning of every country where women are subordinate, including our own.
And when those regimes are overthrown, there will be plenty of Aunt Lydias who will claim they had a hand in it.
Margaret Atwood Shouldn’t Exonerate Aunt Lydia
The Testaments, Atwood’s sequel to Handmaid’s Tale, gives undue credit to Gilead’s misogynistic female enabler.
By Katha Pollitt
The Nation
September 2019
When I first read The Handmaid’s Tale decades ago, I thought Offred was a wimp. She’s living in a violent, misogynist Christian theocracy, raped and impregnated, forbidden to read, and sees hanged corpses on her mandatory daily walk—and she misses hand cream?
In fact, Offred’s lack of obvious heroism was one of the novel’s strengths. It let the reader identify with her and see daily life in Gilead in all its grinding, mundane awfulness. It’s the source of the novel’s strange, indelible aura of eerie depression. Besides, was Offred really so wimpy? If you had to live as a reproductive slave, thinking about small lost comforts might help you avoid the fates of feistier characters: mutilated, executed, or shipped off to die in a radioactive wasteland.
The wonderful TV series manages to capture the book’s ominous mood while casting Elisabeth Moss as a more daring and energetic Offred. This makes for a more exciting, plotty narrative, and it might even have gotten to Margaret Atwood, because her just-published sequel, The Testaments, is fast-paced, full of action and suspense, with quick crosscuts among its three narrators. The novel is shot through with dry humor and clever touches and culminates with the end of Gilead—not a spoiler, because the first novel ends, like the sequel, with an academic conference on Gilead studies from the safe post-theocratic future.
The book is tremendous fun: I binge-read it in a day and a half. That’s a tribute to Atwood’s skill as a storyteller, because I have questions about the inner logic of her dystopia.
The major narrator is, of all people, Aunt Lydia, the sadistic and fanatical enforcer of women’s subjection in the original book. (She’s a more central character in the TV show, deliciously played by Ann Dowd with a prim little ghost of a smile.) “Aunt Lydia” has become a synonym for prissy reactionaries like Phyllis Schlafly who enforce patriarchal norms in return for a bit of power, but surprise—the Aunt Lydia of The Testaments is a closet feminist playing a very long game. As a family court judge brutalized during the Gileadean takeover and given the choice to join or die, she’s been collecting dirt on the Commanders, the ruling male elite, for years. Her complicated plan to get the truth about Gilead’s rulers out to the free world involves the two other narrators: a bold Canadian teen and a lonely young Gileadean woman whom Aunt Lydia saved from a scary forced marriage. And it succeeds. Her revelations set off the downfall of the regime.
In The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg has suggested that Atwood is giving the truth too much credit. I agree with her. It’s a sobering thought to a writer that none of the many shocking and sordid disclosures about Donald Trump have damaged his popularity with his base. Atwood’s assumption that the truth could bring down a regime is the human rights version of the old hope of the oppressed Russian peasantry: “If the czar only knew!”
There’s another kind of wish fulfillment at work in The Testaments. Women like Aunt Lydia, Atwood seems to be saying, may be more on women’s side than you think, even if circumstances force them to gouge out some eyes or supervise the occasional stoning. Power in the separate women’s sphere is, after all, real power, although limited, and one of the things Aunt Lydia and her fellow senior Aunts do in the beginning is to maximize their independence by banning men from their residence, Ardua Hall. It’s not clear how Aunt Lydia has used her power to help women, beyond framing a male sex criminal or two. It’s hard not to be reminded of the nuns who ran the cruel Magdalene Laundries and mother and baby homes of Ireland. Didn’t they say they were helping women, too?
The Testaments reads as if Atwood wanted to exonerate her magnificently evil creation twice over: Aunt Lydia cooperated to survive and to bring down the patriarchy. But the Aunts of the world need no exculpatory rationale. The cooperation of women is essential to any society, including misogynist ones. Even ISIS has its female devotees, now busily tormenting “heretic” women in Syria. “Aryan” German women adored Hitler, even as he deprived them of their rights. The Nazis made good use of separate-sphere ideology, too, putting mothers on a pedestal, giving girls and women their own organizations with traditions and banners and uniforms.
As long as there are privileges to hand out as well as punishments, as long as basic material needs are supplied and there is enough religious or nationalistic or ideological fervor to keep things exciting, it is not that hard to get women to go along, just as men go along.
Even if Gilead succeeded in brainwashing its citizens into Christian fundamentalism, it could never have lasted in its harsh original form. The society promoted too much punishment and not enough pleasure. The only entertainment was religious mania, executions, and for lucky women, babies. Except for the elites who enjoyed a steady supply of homemade fancy desserts, even the food was terrible—ersatz cheese and soups made out of kitchen scraps. The Romans had the right idea: bread and circuses. And plenty of hand cream.
If it had managed to end its wars and become more prosperous, Gilead might have come to resemble Saudi Arabia, a theocracy where banned imports find their way in, a subject caste does the hard work, much foreign media is censored or banned, and only a few people have to be tortured and beheaded as an example to others. There are plenty of Aunt Lydias in Saudi Arabia; they’re instrumental to the functioning of every country where women are subordinate, including our own.
And when those regimes are overthrown, there will be plenty of Aunt Lydias who will claim they had a hand in it.