THE HANDMAID’S TALE
Red is the colour
Did the small screen do Margaret Atwood’s classic novel justice?
UK Broadcast Channel 4, Sundays US Broadcast Hulu, finished Episodes Reviewed 1.01-1.10
“My name is Offred. I had another name, but it’s forbidden now.” Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale has become a byword for the loss of women’s rights, quoted and referenced whenever abortion laws are threatened, or women are blamed for the terrors that happen to them. So in a world where religious extremism is becoming ever more prevalent and sexual assault is no barrier to the highest political office, it seems a relevant time to bring the story to TV.
In an alternate America – renamed Gilead – the birth rate has collapsed, with almost no women able to conceive or carry children. The few who are fertile are enslaved as “handmaids”. Clad in red, they live with elite families and are raped monthly in an attempt to impregnate them with a baby that will then be considered to belong to the family, with the handmaid then reassigned to another household to begin the cycle all over again. Yep, it’s just as awful as that sounds.
The show’s central character is June, now renamed Offred (as the commander she lives with is called Fred), played by Elisabeth Moss in a devastatingly intimate performance. We see the horrors of the world she’s trapped in, interspersed with her memories of before the revolution. It’s this developing horror that is the most terrifying part of the show – the little moments when all women’s debit cards stop working, or they are all sacked from their jobs. “Ordinary is just what you’re used to,” says June – and little by little that ordinary can change.
It’s not an easy show to watch, with small victories drowned out by the constant horror, from the slow, measured “Ceremony” rapes to the hanging bodies, mutilations and beatings, accompanied by women being told, “This is good for you, this is what you deserve, this is a better way for things to be”. Fertile women are the most important thing in the world, and yet even in a country where that’s recognised, there is never any question that they should be celebrated – only held down and forced to breed. A show to watch, cry at, and think about when reading the news. Rhian Drinkwater