The Triumph and Utter Travesty That is The Handmaid’s Tale
by Brother Dash
“The Handmaid’s Tale is not a feminist text. It is a white feminist text. And this is specifically the case because it imagines a white-woman dystopia by stealing and reappropriating the historical injustices done to Black women in America by way of slavery.” —Clarkisha Kent, The Root Jan 2018
I finished season two of the television adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale. The series is adapted from the dystopian feminist novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. What follows is not really a tv review as it is a commentary on why I consider the show both a triumph and not only a travesty…but an UTTER one at that. I will dispense with providing a synopsis of the show (you have Google for that) so that we can get right into my feedback. First the triumph.
The Handmaid’s Tale is one of the most beautifully filmed, well-acted, and masterfully directed series in recent television history. The triumph of the show is its excellence in all aspects of visual storytelling. Whether it is the dazzling dynamic between lead actor Elizabeth Moss as June/Offred and co-star Yvonne Strahovski as her diabolical and endearing frenemy Serena Waterford…or scene stealing performances from Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia, you come away feeling for the plight of the women of Gilead. You draw connections between this dystopian world and our own. This is a world where America has largely become a brutal fascist state that is heaven for the wealthy (white) male power structure and it is hell for women who can breed (the handmaids). Other women have varying levels of privilege and a modicum of protection between those two bookends. So from an artistic craft point-of-view this is a triumph on both the surface level storytelling—“I just want to be entertained for an hour”—and on the deeper “I want you to force me to think” level. But I didn’t write this for the triumph. I wrote it for the utter travesty. Here goes…
While the show is a marvel of technical excellence in filmmaking, acting, editing, cinematography, and writing it is a travesty in that the very premise of the show steals from the black experience. It co-opts black suffering at the hands of white supremacy during slavery and replaces the enslaved Africans with white middle and upperclass women! Everything that happens to these women is taken from what was done to Black Americans. Christianity is radicalized and used a tool for the brutality and indoctrination of women (same as during slavery).The forced rapes, the use of women for breeding, the second class citizenship of women, the male overseers/goons, the underground railroad, rebellions, forced labor camps where “field” women are worked from sun up to sundown, whippings, chopped hands and fingers for daring to read…all of this is taken straight from black suffering without even a scintilla of acknowledgement.
One of the biggest criticisms about Atwood’s novel is in how it is not so much a feminist novel as much as it is a WHITE feminist novel. Atwood herself, a Canadian, admitted that she studied American slavery to craft her novel but didn’t want to be bothered with race. The novel took all of that and made it the reality of WHITE WOMEN. But the television adaption had an opportunity to right the horrific wrongs of a novel that erases Black women. What did it do? It doubled down! Not only does the show keep this phony premise of White female suffering—no white woman ever had her finger chopped off because she dared to read but that DID happen to Black people—the show mostly erases Black women from this fictionalized drama that is using their own historical suffering to mine storytelling gold. And when they do put a Black woman front and center in the narrative–Samira Wiley as Moira–they still end up shipping her off to Canada where most of the action DOES NOT take place. This leaves the only other significant screen time for a woman of color to a biracial woman that is cast as what? Drumroll everyone…you guessed it…A MAID!!! No, not a handmaid (they are the focal points of the show) but a maid maid. This, my friends, is an utter travesty. You cannot use Black female suffering to tell a story about feminism and then write them out of said feminism. It’s as if you are saying that Black women are good enough to use for their blackness but not their womanhood. Black women are just Black. They aren’t women. It reminds me of Sojurner Truth’s famous quote, “Arn’t I a woman?”
“And Black women are erased from Atwood’s fictional and narrative hellscape just so that our struggles can be cosplayed by white women.” —Clarkisha Kent, The Root Jan 2018
And herein lies the problem. The Handmaid’s Tale is indeed a triumph in visual storytelling as I said. But because it is so damn good…that means it is “so damn good” at stealing and slipping into a cloak of black suffering, magically turning it white, and making you cry over what is happening to these poor white women.
Now I am not one to criticize without offering a solution. So, how would I fix this? Well, for one…if you’re one of the producers and you’re reading this? Hire me! No, I’m sorta kinda serious. I can fix this. But if you are one of the 99.9% reading this who aren’t the producers what I would do? I would admit that I’m stealing. I would show the audience my theft. And it would be brilliant. Let me explain. The show uses flashbacks of the days before the coup when America was in a cultural war. I would show that the leaders who eventually came to take over Gilead were studying American slavery as a blueprint for their fascist utopia. That would be a good start. And then for Seasons 3 and beyond I would have a more multicultural Gilead and one that would help explain why racism “went away”—as if it ever would happen but fine we’ll roll with that creative choice for sake of argument. But I would lay the creative breadcrumbs for the audience to deduce that centuries of racism got usurped by patriarchy and religious fanaticism. In this way you can have Black, Asian, Arab, Latino, Native American men and women who are just as fascist as the White men because they all coalesced under the allure of power and privilege that patriarchy provides…that white supremacy provides. They can BECOME WHITE MALES TOO. And that would be quite plausible. And frankly that would be some daring, badass writing I’d sign up to help write. As Clarkisha Kent says in her article on The Root that I alluded to earlier…
“And the goal of white feminism itself is to simply emancipate white women from white men. Meaning, in simpler terms, that white women want to be able to get out from under white patriarchy (and throw the rest of us under the bus to accomplish this), but do not necessarily want to get rid of it, because doing so would destabilize white supremacy—and then boom! Suddenly, even they would be left with no power or privilege when the dust settled.”