The fifth episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, Hulu’s blockbuster adaptation of the Margaret Atwood novel, aired this week and I have finally given up trying to like it – although perhaps “like” is the wrong word, given its tone and content. I’ve given up trying to get onboard with it as a brilliant realisation of where misogyny might end. It is beautifully acted and convincingly staged, but there are just too many ways in which I find it annoying.
These are mainly questions of emphasis. It is a long time since I read Atwood’s novel, but I’m pretty sure that Offred, the protagonist, wasn’t conceived as a spunky heroine with an internal monologue by turns sassy and sad. She had seditious thoughts about the regime – which by necessity a TV show has to externalise – but there is the hint of a “you go girl” subtext in the show, which sits very oddly with its source material.
At the same time, the production seems nervous that viewers might forget it comes from an Important Literary Novel, and sledgehammers home some motifs in the literary style.
For example, flashbacks to Offred’s life before moving to Gilead find her husband looking at a photo of her and saying – the essay question practically forming in a thought bubble above his head – “you look invincible”. Towards the end of the episode, another of the handmaids is carted off by the regime, while Offred intones, “There was something inside her they couldn’t take away. She looked invincible.” Well, yes, she did look invincible, but shortly after that, one imagines, she looked dead, which is where Atwood’s gaze more persuasively lies.
This brings me to another point. Offred is played by Elizabeth Moss, who is a very good actor. She is also a Scientologist, and, I know one isn’t supposed to do this, but in her publicity for the show she’s gone on and on about how it’s a story of resistance – one feisty heroine against a made-up religious order that hates women and gay people – and I keep thinking, how does that work?
Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be a story about the indomitability of the human spirit, which, no matter how grim the rape and torture scenes, overlays a note of unwarranted feel-good to the show. Neither is it supposed to be about one woman against the machine. Gilead will fall, but in Atwood’s version that was beside the point, as was Offred herself. The point was that there will always be another Gilead.
Guerrillas in our midst
Donald Trump came to New York this week and a demo was quickly convened outside the USS Intrepid, the aircraft carrier turned museum where he was due to attend an event. It was a hot day and the atmosphere was festive.
The most noticeable thing was the provenance of the supportive horns being beeped from the highway – as far as I could tell, most came from city bus drivers. I was with a British friend who remarked that in the UK, no driver would dare express a political opinion while at the wheel. I wasn’t sure I agreed.
The question of which nation is more rebellious is a tough one to call. The US is founded on the idea of rebellion, which puts dissent, curiously, in the conservative tradition, and superficially Americans are more respectful of authority. And when they push back, of course, it’s bigger, louder and more revolutionary. But I still think, of all forms of rebellion, foot-dragging British truculence is the hardest to beat.
Screen brake
The link between the amount of time my kids look at my iPhone and their general governability has become unignorable. For months I’ve told myself there’s no difference between TV time and the phone; that they live in a screen-based world and have to know how to navigate it; that 20 minutes won’t make a difference while I throw together dinner.
At the weekend, however, the glazed look and almost instant tantrum after I took away the device gave me a shock. You can watch TV with a kid and talk to them while doing so, but the phone seals them off from reality. It’s a bad business. Phones are out.
