"The Handmaid's Tale" never gives people hope. Whenever we feel that the heroine is finally going to resist and fight back, the heavy reality is that the world has never been kind to women.
This series, adapted from the novel of the same name by Canadian female author Margaret Atwood, has caused great repercussions since it was launched on the Hulu website in 2017, like a spicy satire of the extreme feminism. The series directly points to the enslavement and oppression of women in the male-dominated society. Although the story takes place at some point in the future, the irony is: these dystopian events have evidence in human history, which undoubtedly makes the audience Amazed.
maid? Living Surrogacy!
The first season of the series is basically the same as the original novel. It tells that at some point in the future, crops will be reduced in a large area and the ecological environment will be severely damaged, but what is even more sinister is that due to problems with the reproductive system of most women, Infertility, the reproduction of human beings is in jeopardy. So the vast majority of men and very few women in the society began to conspire to create a new society, taking the Bible as the only law and code of conduct, constantly suppressing the elected government, and finally establishing a new country on American soil through violent means— - The country of Gilead.
The people in power in this new country are all priesthood-related archbishops, who not only implement a policy of ignorance against ordinary women - all women cannot read, but also cruelly punish those who violate the spirit of the Bible, such as women who have extramarital affairs , lesbian groups, the infertile are sent to the "colonies" for reclamation, where the environment has been polluted, and there is waiting to die; The allusions of La instead of her own conception, so that these "female prisoners" receive "handmaid" training, and are eventually sent to the homes of various archbishops to conceive and give birth to children on behalf of their wives.
The heroine Jane is one of these maids.
From her perspective, the social customs and superstructure of the entire country of Gilead gradually became clear. The more we know, the more angry and desperate we will be about that world. This is a complete use of gender differences to cause gender cleansing and enslavement, because the so-called "women are guilty and cannot conceive, so women should be punished" The original sin view It's a whole set of deceitful tricks created by the patriarchal society.
Because women cannot have children, it is not just female reproductive problems, but also men. The root of the problem is the radiation pollution caused by nuclear leakage. However, men's rights organizations took advantage of the appearance that women can't have children and directly convicted women. This is actually the same as in ancient Chinese society. Once a wife can't have children, the husband can justifiably take concubines, although sometimes it is because of the man.
This absurd logic is shocking in the first season. Not only are the maids forced to have sex with the archbishops every month, but the "ritual" during sexual intercourse is even more absurd. The maid lies in the lap of the archbishop's wife, Both hands were held by his wife, and the archbishop took off his pants and looked at his wife, but the sex object was a maid. The maid is like a sexual intercourse agency, she is just a surrogate machine, not only physically parasitized by the sperm of strange men, but also mentally invaded by the archbishop's wife.
In other words, she became a surrogate sex slave, but was falsely praised by the entire nation of Gilead as messengers sent by God to give babies. However, once the maids show the slightest dissatisfaction, their eyes will be gouged, their hands will be cut off, and their hands will be branded. While undergoing mental brainwashing, they will not be less physically tortured. After all, for the families of the archbishops, their most important thing is their reproductive organs. Having hands and eyes does not affect pregnancy.
Fundamentalism = Patriarchy
In the first season of the series, the hypocrisy, viciousness and coldness of the country of Gilead were revealed little by little. In the second season that is currently being broadcast, the original story of extreme despair seems to reveal a glimmer of hope. With the help of her lover Nick, Jane tries to escape the country of Gilead and head to Canada in the north. The shadow of fear even makes her give up on rescuing her daughter. I thought that the story would develop into Jane reuniting with her husband in Canada, and then other countries jointly sanctioning the country of Gilead, but the show is obviously not willing to let Jane feel comfortable so early.
When Jane was about to escape, reality slapped her to the point of complete despair. This time, when she returned to the country of Gilead, Jane was no longer a clever girl with hope, but was defeated by her own sense of guilt and guilt. This kind of indoctrination of the original sin consciousness is precisely the most powerful way of governing the country of Gilead. It not only uses the scriptures of the Bible to enslave the people, but also uses sinful words to deter the "handmaids" and completely destroy their minds.
"The Handmaid's Tale" combines a fundamentalist modern story with gender enslavement in a future dystopia. Its "terrifying" lies in the fragmentation of modern social civilization, and the party is divided.
Political scientist Samuel Huntington, in his book The Clash of Civilizations, elaborated on the enormous impact of civilization on human society. Although he mainly uses race as the unit of civilizational conflict in his text, this does not affect the extreme confrontation between the civilizations of the sexes. You must know that before the 20th century, the so-called human civilization was a "history of patriarchy", and the patriarchal groups used their own The civilized code of Confucianism converted the whole society into a circle centered on men, and women not only became subordinate, but were often enslaved.
A very important feature of "The Handmaid's Tale" is its setting of the "Bible". Some people may feel that this is a bit demonized in the film. Is it possible that once a woman is enslaved, it is all religious?
But the truth may be this, the so-called "Bible", the so-called religion, in the final analysis, is the religion of men, otherwise God would not be a man, and the first man would not be Adam. From the description of the first woman, Eve, who was just a rib of Adam, it is known that woman is only an appendage of man.
So "The Handmaid's Tale" is a sober drama, although its plot progress is very slow, and the plot is mostly subtle changes in the inner activities of the characters, but it clearly tells you that all fundamentalism is male-dominated discourse The disguised incarnation of , which on the surface is purging the society, but actually enslaves women under the guise of "pacifying the world", and enjoys "self", of course, this "self" has always been male.
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