“The level of insidious rule making to further oppress women almost knows no end,” Clinton says in her interview with Financial Times. “You look at this and how could you not but think that Margaret Atwood was a prophet? She’s not just a brilliant writer, she was a prophet.”
As many know, Atwood is the author of The Handmaid’s Tale, the source material for Hulu’s adaptation staring Elisabeth Moss which centers on a not too hard to imagine Republic of Gilead in which women are stripped of all rights and shuffled around as servants and breeding vessels.
Gilead works as it does because female fertility is a very rare thing in that world. It’s therefore very valuable.
Quite how making fertility more common, thus less rarity value to it, creates that same world is, umm, odd.
Describing herself as “the most investigated innocent person in America,”
What a laughable banana republic the US is, lol
Describing herself as “the most investigated innocent person in America,”
Al Capone being a close second.
I’m struggling to think of a naturally occurring example of ‘Gilead’. Giant Pandas maybe? How similar to Gilead is the natural state of relationships among Giant Pandas? Not very, I think.
The Handmaids Tale was written when the new Islamic Republicof Iran started shrouding its women folk and limiting their freedom of movement.
Republic …….. in which women are stripped of all rights and shuffled around as servants and breeding vessels.
In a generation, or two at most, when our Islamic masters officially take control of numerous western countries Margaret Attwood’s talent for prophecy will be confirmed beyond any reasonable doubt.
Whether this is the point Mrs C and her Salon fan-girl were making is unclear.
The Handmaid’s Tale is an allegory for the rise of radical Islam. Of course that’s never mentioned.
So horrid Hillary is a wicked Islamophobe, to malign the beauteous culture depicted in the delightful Tale!!!!
Tim – none of these people have read the book. They haven’t even seen the Netflix series. Hell, they haven’t even read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
I read the Handmaid’s Tale years ago. Didn’t think much of it, to be honest. It would be classed as the other & usually better SF. Speculative fiction. The author changes a few things about society & examines where that might take it. But with HT, it’s almost impossible to work out how it got from now to that particular future. Not in the period of time suggested. But I don’t think Attwood understands real people to start with. By the look at her biog, I doubt she’s had much contact with them. And Canadian academic. I think the book’s as much about her distaste for the USA as anything else.
Prophetic? About as prophetic as Killery’s prediction of a ’16 Presidency for herself. Belongs on the Fantasy shelves
“The Handmaids Tale was written when the new Islamic Republicof Iran started shrouding its women folk and limiting their freedom of movement.”
I’d say that’s more providing an alibi than an explanation of the book.; What gets up Attwood’s nose is Christian Republicans which she’s comparing with the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. Not saying she understands Muslim fundamentalism that well. It shows no signs of producing anything like the society she’s envisaged.
bloke in spain,
I got the gist of it, and saw some trails, and I was wondering how did they get there, and, presumably it’s temporary because if tiny numbers of women are fertile, and that continues, it’s soon going to see the human population become very much smaller.
What struck me most about the trails though is how functional society appears. I think what would actually happen is that men would be murdering each other to try and get the few fertile women.
That’s basically it, BoM4. I’m going on the book, not the TV series. TV or film are incredibly information sparse compared to a novel ( unless your dramatising the C19th classics which are information sparse to start with) So one wouldn’t expect it to make sense. But yes, with a fertility crisis like that any society is going to be going through all sorts of changes because it’s losing the critical mass to keep itself functioning. It wouldn’t produce a rigid hierarchy. It wouldn’t have the spare productive capacity. Quite the opposite. Going down is different to going up because you’re losing things not gaining them. There’s no stable platform to build anything on.
The author changes a few things about society & examines where that might take it. But with HT, it’s almost impossible to work out how it got from now to that particular future.
I had the same problem with Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. I just couldn’t accept that you’d somehow get wealthy, libertarian Hong Kongs emerging from under brutal penal colonies. It required a different human race than the one that exists, no matter the unique conditions on the moon. That, and that it was basically the same story as “Stranger in a Strange Land”, got in the way of me fully enjoying it. Still good, tho’.
I never thought Heinlein was a particularly good Speculative Fiction writer. Nor Asimov for that matter. More cowboys in spaceships SF. Mostly the stories take place in US suburbia amongst US suburbanites. But, then, that was the audience being written for.
Though Heinlein’s future history of America seems to be coming true. Anti-intellectualism, cult of ignorance, academic institutions being required to abolish entry and graduation standards, democracy voting to destroy democracy, targetting people for destruction just because they are lucky to have the ability to do well….
“Anti-intellectualism”?
I would have thought there was far too much intellectualism. You can’t walk ten paces without tripping over an intellectual. Help if they had some intellect, but when has that ever been a requirement.
I’d describe myself as anti-intellectual. In the sense of wanting to shoot them on sight.
I’ve been thinking about Heinlein’s political philosophies. They’re appropriate for a frontier. But that period of US history was comparatively short. And the frontier was the frontier which had a thousand miles of developing economy behind it to feed off. Those philosophies get you mud hut & chipping stone tools in isolation.
That’s why I came to believe libertarianism is a crock. Much of classical liberalism. The vast majority of people could barely hack subsistence farming if left to themselves. If they could acquire the work ethic required. Most people are basically sheep of one breed or another.
I rather liked John Wyndham.
I’m fearful of watching the Midwich Cuckoos TV series anticipating they’ll probably make it about trans climate change or something.
And his classic “waking up in hospital to find shit happened while you were unconscious” in Day of the Triffids has been copied many times since.
Most people are basically sheep of one breed or another.
. . . clinging to their guns, religion, covid masks, rainbow hashtags, etc.
Careful, derision of the masses is an intellectual trait.
I’ve been thinking about Heinlein’s political philosophies. They’re appropriate for a frontier.
That’s a good insight. You can take it further and apply it to so much of the human condition. We seem to be good at frontiers, be they territorial, technological, economic, philosophical, religious. We seem to suck at establishment; everything turns to shit. We often seem to resolve a shit state with a new frontier of some sort.
Davy Crockett had three ears :
Left ear
Right ear
Wild frontier
( See also Capt Kirk )
bloke in spain,
“What gets up Attwood’s nose is Christian Republicans which she’s comparing with the rise of Muslim fundamentalism. Not saying she understands Muslim fundamentalism that well. It shows no signs of producing anything like the society she’s envisaged.”
This stuff is about land-based vs industrial societies. If the money is made from the land (growing crops, selling mineral rights) you have a lot more tribalism as people build groups to try and defend or take each other’s land. And with that comes religion, as it becomes part of your tribal identity. And a lot less liberalism.
The only way the USA would have that sort of society is to roll back hundreds years of industrial society beyond the civil war and probably even further back than the Salem Witch Trials. The idea that Trump, or a bunch of judges overturning the constitutional right to abortion is putting the USA onto this path is just ludicrous. It’s not even close to women’s rights in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia.
I haven’t seen the film but some years ago I was requested to read the book and IIRC the scenario was infertile wives of high-ranking citizens delegating the task of producing children to poorer women – just as Victorian wealthy/middle-class women delegated all the housework to their female servants.
Exploitation of poor women by rich women.
Presumably Killary has seen the film but not read the book.
. . . a bunch of judges overturning the constitutional right to abortion . . .
Seems fair; it was a bunch of judges that invented this “constitutional right” out of wibble in the first place.
Safe abortion is yet another thing invented by men to protect women which women then proceeded to abuse.
Well, as Agammamon points out, I haven’t read the book, so I decided to try and skim over the wiki entry. This certainly confirmed to me that I don’t want to read the book. Or try the film.
I suppose the thing that most struck me at a glance was Atwood saying, as though it was some great revelation, that the Puritans didn’t settle in New England to create a religiously tolerant society, but instead to establish their own little Jonestown.
But that’s what toleration means. You have to put up with us until we get control. Then we’ll fix you!!!
I’d expect if there was a huge drop in female fertility that there’d be a major covid-vaccine-style crash program to produce fertile eggs and keep the numbers up. Instead of just allocating the fertile birds to the upper classes. After all as BiS points out, if their servants couldn’t reproduce, where would our lords and masters get the new ones from.
As for ‘The Moon is a Harsh Mistress’, I’d argue that Oz didn’t do too badly despite all the convicts dumped on the place. And Bob has at the end of his tale, new regulations and taxes being introduced once democracy is in place. Instead of a bludging bureaucrat of a governor ‘running’ the place.
Absolutely with Boganboy. TMIAHM is obviously based on Oz-some of the slang like ‘new chum’ gives it away and Oz didn’t do so badly until the past decade.
The funny thing about The Handmaid’s Tale is the assumption that if fertility plummeted government would do something drastic about it. It’s funny because fertility has plummeted, to below two thirds replacement, which the demographers regard as the point of no return, and nobody either in government or out gives a toss.
“. . . clinging to their guns, religion, covid masks, rainbow hashtags, etc.
Careful, derision of the masses is an intellectual trait.”
It’s not derision of the masses. It’s the acceptance that the vast majority of people are dependent on the complex society that supports them. And very few would be capable of surviving outside of that society. It’s not just they lack the knowledge & skills to do so. It’s they lack the ability to acquire the skills to do so. Put them down in the wild with a book on how to survive & they’d starve reading the book.
The human race stopped breeding for those sort of people a very long time ago. Because the ones can’t hack it haven’t been culled. You destroy those societies & it would take a long time bootstrapping them up again. You’d lose virtually all of the human race in the process.
Heinlein’s great at proselyting a sort of frontier ethic. Personal independence. But it’s just words on a page. Heinlein’s an academic. With no personal experience of doing it. His “frontiers” depend on a complex society behind the frontier to supply the frontiersman what he needs to survive. And that ethic does not produce a complex society to do that.
That’s why I don’t believe in libertarianism or a lot of classical liberalism. Certainly not in rights. There are only obligations & obligations have to be compelled by force. Or few accept them.
BiS : “But it’s just words on a page. Heinlein’s an academic. With no personal experience of doing it.”
Here’s a long quote from Heinlein : “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
There’s a certain amount there lifted straight from his life story – which didn’t stop a few of his fanboys from taking that list totally literally.
@Boganboy
“I’d expect if there was a huge drop in female fertility that there’d be a major covid-vaccine-style crash program to produce fertile eggs and keep the numbers up. Instead of just allocating the fertile birds to the upper classes. ”
Attwood lacks to knowledge to write on the subject she chose. A fertile woman produces an egg for every turn of her monthly cycle. She’s stuffed with the them. A vast surplus. It’s the eggs that are needed, not the woman. Harvesting, in vitro-fertilisation, implantation into host mothers.
What do expect from someone who’s area of expertise is poetry?
@NDReader
Any idea how long it takes to learn to build a wall? Let alone design a building. (I can do both)
@BiS…
What do expect from someone who’s area of expertise is poetry?
Another Green Party MP?
“a bunch of judges that invented this “constitutional right” out of wibble in the first place.”
Wibble? WIBBLE? Listen, matey, it was out of an emanation of a penumbra. Or vice versa.
@ bis
no 1 – a few minutes, no 2 – yonks (if you want to get it right – otherwise ditto)
Bloke in Spain,
“What do expect from someone who’s area of expertise is poetry?”
There’s a general problem in writing today that too many people have come from comfortable lives, into college and then into writing. These upper middle class London women in the papers, film writers whose only references are other films.
People like Hemingway, Tolkein and Vonnegut had seen war.
@john77
What bond are you using & why?