April 1st, 2024 | John Miller

The Handmaid's Tale  Is Good Television

It's not what you think it is.

When The Handmaid’s Tale debuted in 2017, I didn’t bother watching it. I thought it was bog-standard anti-Trump rhetoric, dramatized for television. My general impression was derived from Saturday Night Live skits and breathless references in liberal publications drawing all too hysterical parallels to current year machinations.

Recently, I noticed that the first season of the show was collected onto DVD at my local library, so I thought I’d give it a chance. I’m a sucker for world building series and this alternate-timeline dystopia was something I thought I’d assess for myself. I braced myself for lengthy, preachy monologues about women’s rights and how everyone should always vote Democrat in order to avoid the show’s outcome.

What I found instead was an extremely well-acted and sophisticated series with artistry and attention to detail the likes of which are uncommon in the vast streaming universe. The show is slow-paced, and character-driven and highly emotional, but the reason I’m bringing it to PostCanadian reader’s attention is due to the political lessons (and the complicated nuance and implications), that many of us arm-chair political junkies often overlook in the real world.

To offer a bit of background, Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale as a novel in 1985. The main inspiration seems to have been the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the parallel rise of an American, neo-Nazi subculture that was based on William Luther Pierce’s novel The Turner Diaries. Atwood transposed and extrapolated these real-life issues onto a map of the United States and imagined a situation where a totalitarian dictatorship conquered America.

In the Hulu show, we meet June Osborne, a Sex In The City-type girl living in Boston and working as an editor for a publishing company. June, her husband and her daughter bear witness to a terrorist attack on television one day. The Capitol Building in Washington D.C. experienced a bunch of guys with machine guns opening fire on politicians. June protects her daughter from the television mayhem and puts her to bed. Minutes later an explosion at the White House escalates the attack and we learn from flashbacks that the entire Supreme Court has also been killed. Martial Law is declared, and the National Guard is deployed. From this point on, no one really knows who is exactly in charge. The attacks are blamed on Islamic extremists.

The internet is censored and power is consolidated behind the scenes. Then one day before work June and her friend attempt to buy coffee and their debit cards are declined. They head to work, but squads of men in black uniforms march throughout downtown Boston and order all women to head home as they are no longer allowed to work. With bank accounts frozen and employment curtailed, people take to the streets to protest and are met with machine guns and mortar shells.

At this point June and her husband and daughter make a run for the border with Canada… as do millions of other Americans. Unfortunately for them, June gets caught and separated from her family and enrolled into the Handmaid school.

This is really where the show begins. The United States becomes the theocracy of Gilead and Handmaids are assigned to households headed by Commanders of Gilead. A breeding program unfolds in which the Handmaids are raped monthly until they conceive, and their offspring become the property of the Commander and his wife. The function of a Handmaid is to provide children for a sterile elite. As we come to learn, birthrates have plummeted globally, and this Handmaid protocol, along with Gilead itself, was the elite cabal’s solution to save the human race.

“America is dying. It’s an idea that has outlived its usefulness. You need to understand that everything you value, all the things you’re clinging to, democracy, liberty, justice, all that feel-good crap defined by a bunch of slave owners talking about how all men are created equal…all of that collapsed under the weight of late-term capitalism and rampant consumerism.

It broke our pretty little planet, and almost ended the human race. Gilead…for all of our faults…we fixed that particular problem. We’re having babies again.

Unfortunately, I had to use religious nut-jobs as a delivery system, and I underestimated their depravity, but it was triage, and it worked.” – Commander Lawrence

By the time you get to this speech in Season 5, you realize that this show is not the shitlib feminist fan service that popular media would lead you to believe. There are hints of this complexity throughout the series, a reference to destroying churches, a Commander’s wife bragging to a Mexican diplomat that Gilead has reduced carbon emissions 87%.., confiscating a household that belonged to Baptists, Communist-styled economics reflected in depictions of grocery stores, gay hypocrisy of Gilead leadership, the name “Jesus” is never mentioned… the list goes on.

This isn’t to suggest that it’s a conservative show with a conservative outlook. It isn’t. What it is, is good drama with complicated characters in a world with many shades of grey. It’s intelligent and not easily defined. Motivations are duplicitous and consequences are often irrational. Weird things happen in this show that you don’t expect, just like real life. It’s a nuanced and introspective adult show that doesn’t offer easy answers.

Now for the politics.

There are some interesting illustrations regarding the in-world development of Gilead. Lessons that we should learn regarding our own politics. Dissident conservatives are all over the map when it comes to outlining our ideal society and there are multiple pathways forward within our declining Western sphere. The great aspect of The Handmaid’s Tale is that it illustrates the problems with a lot of authoritarian approaches.

One fascinating aspect of the show is the realistic depiction of normal characters having their lives affected by events outside of their control. Hollywood loves to champion the hero that kicks ass and takes names, but in The Handmaid’s Tale, the heroes of the story simply endure and survive. There is no Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson showing up to save the day. In this universe, the bad guys won, and suffering through their victory is a part of everyone’s experience.

Early in the series, there are nods to people taking a stand, but what the characters don’t realize is that by the time they are mobilized to do so, it is far too late. People protest against the loss of civil rights, but they’re met with gunfire and gulags. Towns organize militias, but the professional army overwhelms them and leaves the rebels hanging by their necks from community centers as a warning.

When June and her family attempt to flee, the fear and panic is palpable throughout society. Violence is used as a tool and terror is a form of control. Identifying with the main characters can leave the viewer wondering how millions of people could allow this to happen, but they do let it happen.

We learn throughout the show that due to the birth collapse, this United States had something of a religious revival. This religious revival was very strident and socially conservative, and it was seized upon (or created by) a group called The Sons of Jacob.

The Sons of Jacob is an organization that we later learn, has a military-style command structure and functions with the façade of a cult. It operates like a secret society but has a grassroots component out in the open. It appears to have popular support amongst a small minority of the population (and a small hidden elite), but once The Sons of Jacob fully implement their coup d’état, the majority of society simply submits to the newfound leaders.

This is a shadowy inversion of the American Revolution of 1765-1791. The secret society back then was, The Sons of Liberty and they functioned as a vanguard for the coming of the American Revolution. These were the elites that later founded the United States. It’s debatable that people at the time really wanted to separate from Great Britain. There were arguably as few as ten percent of the population fighting throughout the Revolutionary War, and the majority of Americans did not support independence.

In The Handmaid’s Tale universe, this unfolds much the same way. The Sons of Jacob organize and infiltrate positions of power. They cultivate an army of supporters in the tens of thousands. They have sympathizers beyond that, but the millions upon millions of masses don’t support the new regime…until they realize that they don’t have a choice.

“Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead

It’s amazing to see how different characters adapt to the new normal. Many resist and die in the process, but most of the show takes place in the aftermath of the coup d’état and the immediate struggles that follow. Once the bad guys win and establish power, people learn quickly to accept and submit to their situations…the ambitious ones learn how to thrive. Status systems are upturned. Some people are better off in this new system. Most aren’t but are unwilling to complain if it costs them a hand or an eye.

Waiting for the masses to “wake up” and “stand up” is futile. History is made by a small number of actors in positions of power, and that’s a lesson dissident conservatives need to learn. The Sons of Jacob win, not because they are trying to use facts and reason to convince people in the marketplace of ideas. They don’t need popular support. They don’t need to legitimize their authority. They don’t need to win elections. They don’t need hearts and minds.

They win because they organize, outsmart their enemies, take drastic action, and seize power.

“The Resistance” is what people call themselves if they are opposed to Gilead. They function much like the French Resistance during World War 2. They organize escape routes and throw monkey wrenches into the machinery of the state. Not much comes from their efforts beyond small personal victories involving saving some kids or killing a Commander. Gilead is very much large and in charge by the end of season 5. In fact, the power of the Sons of Jacob is beginning to spread outside the borders of the former United States.

Canada begins the series as a refuge for fleeing Americans, but by the time we get to season 5, Canada is displaying many of the same attributes that early Gilead had. This is standard for Canada in the real world as well, United States culture and influence impacts every facet of Canadian life, it’s no different in The Handmaid’s Tale. June and her family have to flee Toronto by train as Canadians slowly adopt Gilead's stridency. Power, status, and earnest ideology are a force to be reckoned with, regardless of the morality attached.

Another interesting lesson in the show is the illustration of utopia being impossible due to the human condition. Like every other highly ideological society ruled with an iron fist throughout history, Gilead is ripe with hypocrisy and Machiavellian antics.

Gilead has a club called Jezebels which functions as an Eyes Wide Shut styled brothel/nightclub for society’s elites. Behind closed doors the Commanders are portrayed in every manner of compromised and corrupted condition one can imagine. At one point in the show, an ambitious Commander Waterford meets with High Commander Winslow, and in clear, but unspoken terms Winslow requires homosexual acts from Waterford in order to be promoted.

The hypocritical and corrupt leaders in the show are often scheming and positioning for power within the structure of their society. The more time that passes, however, the more the original founders of Gilead get replaced with second-wave elites. By the time we get to season 5, the upcoming commanders are less pious and more managerial. This is most illustrated when Serena Waterford, one of the only female architects of Gilead, uses the religious phrase, “Under his eye” in order to conclude an interaction with a new commander. Without even looking up, the commander responds dismissively with, “Oh, yeah.”

The upcoming Commanders participate in the system without believing in it, which is often how societies degrade over time. Demoralization leads to destabilization and this is a threat to any nation state.

A ruthless iron grip is the only solution to solidifying power, but constant management of rebels throughout the land causes schisms within the elite and proves to be a testament to the unending desire for human freedom. If your population becomes increasingly ungovernable, then you’re doing it wrong.

At one point we see a map on the wall indicating that Gilead doesn’t control as much of the former United States as we’re led to believe. Despite dropping nuclear bombs on Los Angeles and San Francisco and huge swaths of Arizona, Missouri, and Arkansas, Gilead still only really controls about a quarter of the former United States. Managing Americans within a totalitarian theocracy would be hell for any leadership in charge. For those of us with dreams of imposing a healthier, more socially conservative culture on what’s become of the Western world, take note; right or wrong, people want to be free, warts and all.

Commander Lawrence seems to be the only member of the higher command who understands that Gilead can’t murder its way to long-term power. A big hook in season 5, is the introduction of New Bethlehem…an island of liberalized living for American refugees to return to Gilead and live in a non-totalitarian environment. Is it a trap? Is it a compromise? One thing is for sure, the government-in-exile, the former United States, sees it as an existential threat. If Gilead softens itself, it will more easily be recognized, accepted and consequently legitimized. The death of the United States will be final.

It's unclear if Gilead is ascendent much like the United States of the 1780s or if it is in its death throes like the Soviet Union of the 1980s. It is clear, however, that the birth of Gilead did not lead to a utopia and compromising the initial zealotry is required to maintain power.

As with so many political and ideological aspirations, the outcomes of these ambitions are often flawed failures riddled with unintended consequences. The show does a good job of getting below the surface-level actions and analyzing what really motivates character actions. Serena Waterford, for example, just really wanted to have a child of her own. Her ideological zeal for revolution was more about her externalizing her own personal desire onto society as a whole. Likewise, many of the commanders that take power as society’s new elite, are simply just power-hungry psychopaths… the culture and religious stridency just function as window dressing to justify their ambitions.

There are many such lessons for political junkies like us to learn from The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s a good illustration of the nature of power, Machiavellian intrigue, revenge, ideological blind spots, second-order effects, and the horror of living under tyranny. The show is very rich and nuanced and brutal…be prepared to dwell on some of the episodes long after having watched them.

Season 6 of The Handmaid’s Tale is set to start filming this year and will be the finale of the show. You can stream it on Amazon or track it down on DVD at your local library. Definitely worth a watch.