Margaret Atwood and The Handmaid's Tale

On Wednesday, I had the honour of watching the Canadian premiere of the first episode of the new series The Handmaid's Tale, followed by a Q&A with the author of the book the series is based on, Margaret Atwood. I found the episode to be well-done, if horrific, and Margaret Atwood to be both funny and perceptive. Overall, the event touched on the themes of this blog, so I thought it would be appropriate to share some thoughts with you here. 

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopia about a futuristic totalitarian pseudo-Christian government in the US. The society is heavily tiered, with some people basically having slave status. When the book first came out, Americans scoffed and said, this can never happen here. Now, just over thirty years later, under the current political climate, people aren't quite so quick to dismiss it. Some of the rules and systems of the dystopian society seem far-fetched and surreal. But Margaret Atwood had a rule--she included nothing in the book that hadn't already happened at some point in history. 

In the story, pollution has caused the majority of women to be infertile, and so the few women who are fertile are forced to be 'handmaids' to the leaders of the government, with the job of bearing children for them, in the model of Sarah's handmaid, Hagar, when Sarah and Abraham couldn't have children (read the story of Hagar, Abraham, and Sarai in Genesis 16). 

Now just in case there is any confusion, Sarah's decision to convince Abraham to father a child by Hagar, and Abraham's decision to go along with it, was never described as a good thing, but rather as a failing on the part of Abraham and Sarah for failing to have sufficient faith that God would provide them the son he had promised. It caused all sorts of problems. Sarah (predictably) got incredibly jealous of Hagar, and treated her badly. Eventually Hagar and her son Ishmael were driven out of the community. It's a bit of a stretch, but one could even claim that the negative consequences of these actions are still being felt today, since there are some that claim that Arabs are (at least partially) descended from Ishmael--and are still at war with the Jews, the descendants of his half-brother, Isaac.

One thing that I wondered as I watched the premiere was why Margaret Atwood, a Canadian, chose to set her story in the States. I asked her in the question period, and she replied that this is where the story is inevitably set. That, basically, it is the result of a thought experiment--if the US were to have a totalitarian government, what would it look like? It would not be, she said, a communist or a left-wing dictatorship, not in the States. It would have to be a religious thing. 

Interestingly, she took pains to note that the root of such a government is just a thirst for power. The religious aspect is just a tool to reach that goal. The original book was written over 30 years ago, and a movie version of it was released in 1990. Apparently, when the movie was shown in East Germany, people reacted saying, this is our life. Whatever the ideology behind the totalitarian government, she said, the end result is much the same. All humans get corrupted by power and turn on each other--man and woman, religious and atheist, poor and rich. The question should not be, why do people turn on each other. It should be, why do some people risk their lives to help others. Margaret Atwood referred to a story about a man who survived the Holocaust because someone hid him, and who set out to answer this exact question. He found that those who were willing to risk their lives did not share a particular political ideology or religion, but at the end of the day, they were people who, if they did not help, their image of themselves would be destroyed.

So I ask you: are you willing to put your life on the line to stand up for what is right? Do you want to be the kind of person who is willing to do so?

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13 NIV)

In Canada, The Handmaid's Tale airs Sunday nights at 9 pm on Bravo. The season premiere aired last night. You can stream it here. 

Warning: the series contains explicit violence and sexual content, including depictions of rape. It is definitely not suitable for children. You may wonder why I think it is suitable for me. Well, some of the scenes definitely made me uncomfortable. But they made me uncomfortable in the same way Schindler's List makes me uncomfortable--in a way that motivates me to act, to stand up and defend marginalized people. One of the Christian summer camps I worked at had as a guideline about the media we consumed while at camp. Rather than basing it on a particular rating, they suggested we not watch or read things that glorify sin. By that measure, The Handmaid's Tale is more appropriate to watch than, say, Ocean's Eleven. Philippians 4:8 says to think about things that are true, noble, and admirable. I say the main character's fight for survival in The Handmaid's Tale is all of those things. But, of course, you must make your own choice on the matter.