The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood. Its been almost five years since I wrote my review. Ive rewritten large parts of it for clarity. The main idea remains the same. Extremist Judeo Christian beliefs have won Americas culture war. Now women have no rights. They are slaves to men and the biblical, patriarchal society in which they live. MRC is a diversified global media company with operations in filmed entertainment, television programming and original digital content. The company is the industry. Hitcounter Contact Email APSATTV. COM does not support the hacking of PAY TV. The Handmaids Tale has 720,546 ratings and 38,567 reviews. Stephanie said 7717 Im just going to leave this here. Paul Ryan. but not liter. Check daily for additional speakers 8 a. Registration. 9 a. Always On Masters of the Connected Entertainment Campaign. The weekend is for trying to parcel out a book youre really enjoying so you dont finish it too soon and have nothing to read on the subway. Also, video games. Weve known for some time now that wed see much more of the terrifying and stylish First Order in Decembers The Last Jedi, but now we get to see more. The Handmaids Tale is the first person account of one of these enslaved women. Massachusetts Turns Into Saudi Arabia More than thirty years have passed since The Handmaids Tale was first published in 1. It makes numerous best of lists, the kinds with 9. Even so, The Handmaids Tale frustrates me a lotand not only because it contains run on sentences and needlessly abandons quotation marks. This is no train wreck like Jos Saramagos Blindness, but its bad enough. Simply put, if you can ignore whether you agree or disagree with Margaret Atwoods ideas about politics, religion, and womens rights, the plot and setting make no sense. The religiosity of the Reagan era inspired Atwoods dystopia, in which fundamentalist Christians have taken over society. While that premise does give me the heebie jeebies, Atwoods taken the idea to a literal extreme to make a point. This ruins the foundation of The Handmaids Tale because most American fundies would balk at this world. Atwood imagines the extreme of the extreme and in the process completely misunderstands American evangelicalism. Im a heathen bastard and no fan of religion. Fundamentalism has hurt people, particularly women, for millennia. Extremism continues to hurt people every day, especially in some parts of the world, especially in some states. Even so, its hard to accept Atwoods dystopia when its set in the U. Guide to the people, events, programming and new technology trends that affect the industry. A noisy cheer went up from the crowd of hackers clustered around the voting machine tucked into the back corner of a casino conference roomtheyd just managed to. Blum, 47, ingeniously rode to success on a wave of microbudget genre movies such as Paranormal Activity, Insidious and The Purge his franchise films have grossed. Contact Discovery Channel Customer Service. Find Discovery Channel Customer Support, Phone Number, Email Address, Customer Care Returns Fax, 800 Number, Chat and. S., in the near futureand in Massachusetts, one of the most progressive states in the country, one of only sixteen states in the union with state constitutional protections for abortion since 1. I believe. Massachusetts is a liberal bastion when it comes to American womens reproductive rights, so its an odd setting for this brand of nightmare. In recent decades, Massachusetts is also one of the least religious states, so its an odd setting for a theocracy, too. Atwood chose Massachusetts for its puritanical history. Watch Gabriel Online Free 2016 there. I can embrace the connection to the Reagan administration, in the same way I can embrace Orwells fear of communism in 1. Massachusetts requires a bit too much. Societies Dont Change Overnight. The Handmaids Tale is told in first person by a woman whos lived in our present day more or less, as well as in this dark fundamentalist Tomorrowland. Watch Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones Online Hulu' title='Watch Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones Online Hulu' />Shes gone from wearing flip flops and sundresses to a full body religious habit, color coded red to match her subservient role. She was married once, had a child. Now shes anothers property, one of the handmaids sent from one mans house to another. The hope is that she will become pregnant when a prominent mans wife cannot. Her life has been flipped and made forfeit. She lives in fear and depression and abuse. This is meant to make me unnerved, and it does. But. Simply because an author wants to comment on society doesnt mean he or she can ignore important, logical story elements. The logic part should be emphasized here, I think, given this is supposed to be science fiction, not fantasy. Although Atwood does insist The Handmaids Tale is speculative fiction, because that further legitimizes her story. Never mind that sci fi and fantasy are types of speculative fiction. Theres a question I have that never gets answered, not properly at least. How did this happen so quickly How did we go from burning bras to having every part of our lives regulatedWhy did it take Massachusetts decades, centuries, to reject puritanism, but only a few years to reject liberalism Rights can erode, but you dont see it happen on such a large scale and so seamlessly, and not overnight. Nothing happens overnight, especially not governmental takeovers in relatively stable, secular societies, which is the books scenario. Societies evolve, one way or another, usually rather slowly. Civil, moral, and regime changes dont sneak up on you. It wasnt the case in Germany before Hitler, in China before Mao, in Afghanistan before the Taliban, in Syria before its civil war. Its not the case in 2. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump leading in GOP primary polls. The world may be disappointing and horrible sometimes, but it is rarely surprising. If Atwood had built her dystopia on a chain of events that occurred over a longer period of time, or explained how everything unraveled so quickly, I might have been on board with the premise. That isnt how The Handmaids Tale is written, though. The explanations for the sudden changes are fantastical, at best, dependent on evil, digitized moneybe careful with the mobile payments and bitcoins, ladiesand misogynistic, conservative conspiracies that readers are to believe could bring millions of people to a stupefied halt and change culture in the blink of an eye. Apparently its easy to gun down all of Congress while its in session. Who knew hide spoilerI dont buy it. You can change laws all you want, but society, culture, has to be willing to follow the most drastic changes. This is why the American Drug War has never worked, why prohibition of alcohol never worked, why banning abortion didnt work. Why was modern American society so willing to enslave women Atwood chucks a plot point at you here or there, hinting at a larger, more complex world through her main character. Theres a vague fertility crisis of course. Theres conflict somewhere between some people about some stuff, but details are never given. Some of this can be excused, what with the limited point of view, but not all. Plot holes arent mysterious or clever. Theyre just plot holes. By the end of The Handmaids Tale, I feel the book is less an exploration of religious extremism and feminism than it is a narrative written for shock value. Its an irrational feminists fears exposed, that the world is out to get you at every turnespecially the men, especially the women controlled and brainwashed by the men. Nowhere is safe. Overall, the summary for this book could be this Almost anyone with a penis is mostly unfeeling and evil, deep down. The rest are idiots, I suppose. He doesnt care. He will betray you at the first opportunity. Even when youre dead and gone, he will chuckle at your misfortune and demise. No, this isnt sexist or a generalization. Of course not. Not at all. Except it is. Asides For a slightly more accurate portrayal of American Christian fundamentalism and its very awkward relationship with women, see Hillary Jordans When She Woke. It makes several nods to The Scarlet Letter and The Handmaids Taleand better understands its villains and their behavior. Two nonfiction books, Jenny Nordbergs The Underground Girls of Kabul and Ned Constance Sublettes The American Slave Coast The History of the Slave Breeding Industry, will show you what its really like to live in a society where women are chattel. Some think that because I dislike this book Im not a feminist, or am a bad feminist. I hate to break it to everyone, but Margaret Atwood is not feminisms god, and The Handmaids Tale is not a religious text. If I must attach labels to myself, feminist would be one of them, and Ill say and think whatever I damn well please. And as a feminist, I hate how one dimensional the men are in this book, just as much as I hate how one dimensional women are in far more books, TV shows, and movies. Deal with it. Or dont. Hollywood Reporter Entertainment News. The veteran agent stands accused of sexual harassment and assault from numerous men who have spoken out on social media this week, including Blaise Godbe Lipman, Lucas Ozarowski and Jordan Gavaris.