June 11, 2021
For a long time I wouldn’t watch The Handmaid’s Tale. I knew it would hit too close to home. My mother started watching it first. She told me about it with great drama. From my past experiences, and the rawness of writing my book, I tend to avoid things that will trigger me. But, at the same time, I knew I had to watch it one day.
Oddly enough, I started watching it once my mother went up north for a while. Or perhaps it wasn’t so odd. Perhaps I needed to do it on my own.
June 12, 2021
At first it was too hard to watch. No surprise really as it depicts such brutality. One doesn’t have to have experienced trauma to find The Handmaid’s Tale difficult to view. So, I would balance out watching one episode with a different show that was lighter in energy. My current favorite is The Mentalist. I realized that I’m often attracted to a similar character dynamic of a very smart, yet deeply flawed, character who with his (usually a man, damn patriarchy) intelligence is able to outsmart the others around him and often for the greater good. My favorite shows: The Mentalist, Elementary (or anything Sherlock Holmes), White Collar, Psych, Life, Person of Interest, House… all have this in common. I think I’m drawn to these characters because I liked to think of myself that way. I grew up so physically limited, in the hospital in traction or out of the hospital in braces, casts, or crutches. My mind was what I could always rely on and developing my mental skills was often all I had time for. But, of course, the mental acuity would come at a cost, hence the flaws in the characters, and that flaw is what would keep them human.
But I digress… Back to The Handmaid’s Tale.
So, while at first I needed to intersperse Handmaid episodes with lighter content, over time, and as the show itself evolved, I started to connect with another aspect of the show, one that was very empowering to women. There’s no question that ALL the women in the show are oppressed in some way. Even the dreadful character of Aunt Lydia had her trauma and pain. Selena is a very interesting character because she’s both the instrument of pain and the receiver of it — the perpetrator and the victim in one. But it’s the ones most oppressed — the handmaids, the marthas, etc. that, in time, truly come to represent the power of women to overcome. That’s what we do.
Now I’m not saying that men don’t overcome things, of course they do, but they are often the ones in power so they exercise that “muscle” far less than women do. Women, on the other hand, face oppression on a daily basis, often from a range of sources, so we learn how to survive, and when we can, to thrive. Think back to a very oppressive time for women, the Victorian age. What was a popular accessory for women back then? Poison rings. They were rings that had a secret compartment where poison could be kept and at the right moment poured into a drink, making a deadly concoction. Women throughout history have found ways to not only navigate the oppression and trauma they were experiencing but ultimate to gain power in a powerless dynamic.
Power within a powerless dynamic. I can relate so much to that. So when June held her ground, when she continued to find rivulets of freedom or power that she could leverage, I felt my heart soar. The show was still very dark, and hard to watch in parts for sure, but it also conveyed the idea of hope against all odds and the idea that even in the darkest of dungeons, there could be a chance to escape.