This business of ignoring female opinions over male ones is exhausting. And lest we think it doesn’t happen here, just take a gander at Kamala Harris and her attempts to question white males in recent Congressional hearings.
I would ask all of us with privilege, particularly white males, but truly, all of us with privilege, to take a step back and examine that privilege. To focus exclusively on the construct that fertility is decreasing, thus that predicates all that follows … this ignores much of the point of the novel and the show to our detriment.
Such privilege, such patriarchy, hurts all of us. And to deny that these things are happening here, right before our eyes, is naive.
The circumstances are existent now without such dramatic decreases in fertility. It’s been happening for most of human history. Atwood simply used fertility as her narrative framework for what HAS AND IS ALREADY FUCKING HAPPENING.
I was subtly questioning the one person on this thread who seems to be basing his entire argument on “well, things got dire, so of course this would happen”. Why is this scenario the logical conclusion…you know?
And put June through all that again? Give the poor woman a rest, you monster
No but I would like to read it, I just feel like I should take a break from that universe for the sake of my own blood pressure. Just got myself a copy of Oryx and Crake, thanks @LearnedCoward for the recommendation!
See, he knew that as soon as he tried to come up with a list of things that Couldn’t Happen Here, his list would consist mainly of things that are happening here, so he deflected to the topic of widespread infertility. Because biological and chemical warfare can cause that, as they do in the book that he never read, he deflected further to “show me the data proving that there’s currently a worldwide infertility epidemic”.
Not that i can possibly add anything others have put more eloquently but, this show… amiright? I’m in two minds about a second season as well but i want to see gilead’s fall and take a lot of those fuckers with it. If atwood is on board then i’m less anxious about it, the epilogue does cover those events briefly anyway and is it true she’s writing a sequel?
Or maybe never put in? Or maybe I’m imagining reading something years ago about one of the actresses involved in the project being disappointed that none of her hours of voice acting were used? and thinking “well that would have helped!”
I read the book in the 1990s and have just finished all 10 episodes of the TV show. Truly harrowing and disturbing, but a must-watch on all levels (story, social commentary, dialogue, performances, direction, production and costume design, etc.). So many nice, subtle touches that are in line with Atwood’s dictum about only including horrors that have actually occurred in real life (e.g. Nick’s recruitment, which is straight out of the Jihadi playbook).
Um. My country went from pretty normal Central European power to “let’s round up all Jews, Homosexuals, Gypies and kill them” and “subjugate those Slavic subhumans” within disturbingly few decades and within the usual framework of human political interaction. No external catastrophe there.
To be fair, Germany got hit by the depression earlier than Western Europe and the US, with some major problems with hyperinflation in the early 20s, and of course there were high tensions between nationalists/proto-fascists and Communists/socialists. I suppose it could be argued that much of that was “imposed” externally because of the Versailles Treaty (and that was in fact what the Nazis argued). And all of this was on the heels of the Great War and the break up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire just south of what became Germany (minus the Rheinland, of course). In generally, looking back at least, it seems like the Weimar Republic was never that secure in the first place.
Oh, I consider some of the causes to be external in the sense that they originated and were controlled from outside the German nations. Hyperinflation, though, didn’t just “hit” but was orchestrated to get rid of reparations and war debt.
In any case, the point wasn’t about externality, but about humanity. All this happened within normal human politics, even though we like to pretend otherwise. Various powers wanted to have things their way, set up powder kegs and gasoline and then started throwing fire. (I refer to WW 1 here, WW (West) 2 was entirely our own doing.)
There have been cases where great changes were brought by natural agents out of control of the humans of that time. Climate change killing Mayan crops. Measles or whatever killing a huge part of the Roman Empire. But what led to the Holocaust and related atrocities was man-made. Perhaps still beyond control by mankind, but shaped and caused entirely by humans.
I have neither watched or read The Handmaid’s Tale, just synopses. I don’t even plan to do so, there are literally dozens of TV shows recommended to me by friends and colleagues, which simply don’t fit into my approx 3 hours of TV usage a week.
But to argue that “it couldnt happen here” because the excuse in the book is not one likely to occur in real life is terribly short-sighted and misses the point of the novel entirely.
It’s not about what a specific event X would lead to. That’s like arguing that the moral plays in Star Trek are invalid because there is no such things as Warp drives.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through the book, and it was a shockingly quick read. Never has a 9 hour travel day passed by quicker. Really engrossing even with the quirks to the writing style that required me rereading the first chapter or two once I got what was going on with the punctuation/format.
