The Observer reports that hordes of cranky Trump supporters who can’t find anything in the world to get mad about today are getting their feathers ruffled over Hulu’s upcoming series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on the Margaret Atwood novel, set to premiere on April 26 (viewing party, my house).
Trump People saw the newly released trailer and quickly blew their collective gasket, calling it “liberal propaganda”.
The trailer (google it, it looks great), gives us a full on look at Gilead. Offered (played by Elizabeth Moss), in VO:
“I was asleep before, that’s how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the constitution, we didn’t wake up then either. Now I’m awake.”
We see Offred before she donned the chilling red coat and white hairpiece, protesting the new totalitarian regime, getting fired from her job, attempting to flee with her husband and daughter to Canada. As we know, since we have ALL READ THIS BOOK, The Handmaid’s Tale depicts a dystopian future in which the United States of America has been dismantled and replaced with a theocracy, Gilead, which forces women to act as “handmaids” to powerful men and bear them children if their wives are sterile. So yeah, it seems as if it COULD BE SOMETHING REAL WRITTEN RIGHT NOW. Except that it was a NOVEL. And it was WRITTEN IN 1985.
It’s not weird that Republicans have not read, or even heard of this novel, or can not google it prior to tweeting. What is weird is that The Handmaid’s Tale seems so chillingly familiar to the modern day Republican party and its Twitter-addicted leader, that it would jump to this conclusion.
per the Observer:
The book taps into a genuine and age-old threat: those men who will trade away the liberty of their neighbors for power. A fixation on controlling women’s bodies, and their wombs; performative evangelicalism; anti-intellectualism; pollution and sexually transmitted diseases gone unchecked—“’Better’ never means better for everyone,” the Commander remarks. What about “Great Again,” Commander?
I ask: what is it about a dystopian horror world in which terrorist attacks are used as an excuse for unchecked power, and in which women are suppressed until they are worth little more than their ability to reproduce seems like it’s referring to your political party? Because if you recognize The Handmaid’s Tale, written over thirty years ago, as a big subtweet at your political movement, what does that say about your political movement?
