Tag Archives: Gender Issues

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Going Off Book…A Handmaid’s Tale Season 2 If/Then…

Following the enormous popular and critical success of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale (an adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1986 novel), the likelihood that there would be a Season Two was a pretty good one.  Media success doesn’t rest easily.  As a result, the show’s second season (which is currently streaming on Hulu) is running off-book.

It’s a pretty daring prospect, on the whole.  The Handmaid’s Tale is not the first series to run ahead of, or away from, its literary foundations.  The production of Game of Thrones has outpaced George R.R. Martin’s writing, so that the final two seasons have covered material that has not yet been in print….though the books will, hopefully, see the light of day soon.  Fox’s recently cancelled show Lucifer was based on a character in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, but took on a life of its own very quickly (#SaveLucifer by the way.  It’s an incredible show).  But The Handmaid’s Tale has the daunting task of remaining true to Atwood’s masterpiece, and also advancing the plot enough to give both readers and non-readers a reason to keep watching.

Thus far, they seem to be doing a very good job of it.  Ratings and reviews for the second series have been very good–if acknowledging the fact that the harrowing subject matter and superb acting make each episode uniquely difficult to watch.  The show’s creators are moving backwards and forwards on the timeline, showing June and her comrades in a blighted and besieged Boston, while simultaneously showing us how the world they inhabit came to be, from the creeping authoritarian laws to the gradual acceptance of society to the direction their world was taking.  Rather than striking out into wholly new territory, a great deal of this season seems to be filling in the gaps in Atwood’s novel, showing how such a place came to be–a move that strengthens the foundations of the stories and the series as a whole.

Via metro.co.uk

So for those who are watching Season 2 of The Handmaid’s Tale, those awaiting its arrival on our shelves in DVD form, and those who are looking for even more dystopian fiction featuring women and strong social commentary, here are a few suggestions from us to keep you thinking, reading, and enjoying well into the summer….

The Power: Naomi Alderman’s sensational novel won the 2017 Baileys Prize for Women’s Prize for Fiction, and has been referenced frequently alongside discussions of Margaret Atwood’s work–mostly because it turns the premise of The Handmaid’s Tale upside down.   All at once, in a not-too-distant-future, girls find that with a flick of their fingers they can inflict agonizing pain and even death. With this single twist, four lives are utterly transformed, and  society as a whole begins to rethink the way it has thought and spoken about people since it’s conception.  Like Atwood, Alderman doesn’t pull punches; this book is visceral and gritty at times, but it’s also incredibly funny and snarky.  The correspondence that frame the story itself poke fun at our current gender stereotypes brilliantly, and help readers conceive of a world that it as once so familiar, and at once so utterly, completely different.

Red Clocks: Leni Zumas’ novel was released earlier this year, and was already listed as one of the best books of 2018.  Part mystery, part thriller, and all painfully, beautifully compelling, this book is set in a not-too-distant-American-future, where abortion is once again illegal in America.  In addition, in-vitro fertilization is banned, and the “Personhood Amendment” grants rights of life, liberty, and property to every embryo.   Zumas uses this premise to focus in on five very different women in a small Oregon fishing town, and  the effects of these laws, and the culture they promote, on their lives, especially when a reclusive herbalist, or “mender” is arrested, and made the subject of a national show-trial.  Like Atwood’s work, Zumas’ characters are rich and nuanced, and because they both benefit from and are persecuted by the laws of their America, this book becomes a timely and incisive social commentary, as well as a moving and unforgettable story.

An Unkindness of Ghosts: In addition to drawing comparisons to Margaret Atwood, Rivers Solomon has also been compared to Octavia Butler for the way they use the science fiction genre to interrogate issues of race and power in our present day.  An orphan , Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. In order to keep the peace as they know it, the overseers on the ship have imposed harsh and degrading regulations over the darker-skinner sharecroppers onboard, as well as those of different religions and social class.  Aster is a character who needs answers; on a personal level, she is determined to find out what happened to her mother.  But the more she investigates, the more she is determined to find out who is really in charge of the ship that is her world–and to challenge the system that has harmed her and so many others.  Solomon uses their premise to interrogate not only gender and racial issues, but also sexuality, class, and the ways in which power and the police state can corrupt and harm all those involved in it.  This book adds a great deal of dimension to the social commentary that Margaret Atwood provided in her book, while also being a fascinating and deeply imaginative science fiction book that will hold enormous appeal for readers across genres.

The Witchfinder’s Sister: Beth Underdown’s novel is, on the surface, a richly-detailed work of historical fiction.  However, Underdown uses her historical premise to ask a lot of questions that are as significant to the present as they are to the world of her characters.  The year is 1645, and Alice Hopkins, a pregnant widow, has returned to the small English town in which she grew up.  Without prospects, and unfamiliar with the town after a five-year absence, Alice is forced to live with her brother, who has become a rich and influential man–and a feared hunter of alleged witches.  Torn between devotion to her brother and horror at what he’s become, Alice is desperate to intervene—and deathly afraid of the consequences. But as Matthew’s reign of terror spreads, Alice must choose between her safety and her soul.  We have been subjected to a lot of talk about witch hunts lately, but Underdown’s novel delves deeply into what such a practice really is–and the irrevocable damage it causes on all those involved.  Like Atwood’s book, this book deals with the persecution of women in a patriarchal society, but adds an element of mystery and rich historical detail to her fascinating and original novel.

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Some thoughts on the Bechdel Test

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I don’t know about you, dear readers, but I literally cannot wait for Wonder Woman to appear on our screen on June 2.  I tell random strangers about it.  I rage about the lack of advertising for this movie on a regular basis.  And if it is as….unfulfilling…as the other DC films in this franchise have been, I will eat my proverbial hat.

But I digress…in the midst of scouring the internet for excellent information on this most wonderful of superheroes, I noticed a whole ton of articles regarding the now oft-remarked ‘Bechdel Test’, and I had a few thoughts about it that I wanted to share.

For background, the ‘Bechdel Test’, is not really a ‘test’ in the same way, say, a ‘Driving Test’ is a test, or a ‘Blood Test’ is a test.  It is, instead, a way of thinking about the presence of women in films, the ways in which they are represented, and whether they get to be fully human.  The idea came from American cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who drew the follow comic for her regular strip in 1985:

In case you can’t read it, the rules are:

  1. The movie has to have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man.

Bechdel based her test on a quote from the great and glorious Virginia Woolf, who wrote in a 1929 essay:

All these relationships between women, I thought, rapidly recalling the splendid gallery of fictitious women, are too simple. […] And I tried to remember any case in the course of my reading where two women are represented as friends. […] They are now and then mothers and daughters. But almost without exception they are shown in their relation to men. It was strange to think that all the great women of fiction were, until Jane Austen’s day, not only seen by the other sex, but seen only in relation to the other sex. And how small a part of a woman’s life is that

In other words, despite the fact that real women’s lives are shaped by personal relationships with other women, very, very few forms of fiction (particularly film) represent those relationships.  Instead, women are shown as single, isolated entities who support men’s journeys.  If more than one woman is portrayed, it is usually because one (or both of them) is trying to attract the love/attention/desire of a male hero.

The Bechdel Test isn’t perfect.  To highlight one example, the assumption that any discussion of a man makes a movie “anti-feminist”.  But the point of the test has raised a good deal of debate within film circles, and helped to emphasize how far we really have to go to achieve any nominal sense of equality in our representations.  For example, an article in The Wrap cites a study conducted by by Professor Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity & Social Change (MDSC) Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.  The study examined the 100 top-grossing films from 2015 and 4,370 speaking characters for gender, racial/ethnic representation, and LGBT status.  The results?

68.6 percent of named characters were still male, and only 31.4 percent female across the 100 top‐grossing films of 2015 (making a gender ratio of 2.2 male characters to every female). This figure has not changed since 2007.

In addition, females were over three times as likely as their male counterparts to be shown in sexually revealing clothing (30.2 percent vs. 7.7 percent) and with some nudity (29 percent vs. 9.5 percent).

Additionally, this is also a great time to talk about the enormous disparity in film makers, as well.  How are we supposed to tell new stories without new storytellers?

But in studying this material, I couldn’t help but think–what about men?  How many men can you name in film or literature that have meaningful relationships with other men?

This week, Vulture magazine published an article that stated:

…but nothing has troubled filmmakers as enduringly as the mysteries of female bonding. For whatever reason — our inherited medieval imaginations, the cycles of the moon, perhaps — in their short life the movies have been perennially haunted by a fear that when two or more women are left alone together, some kind of dark magic will inevitably rear its head.

Interestingly, though, The Atlantic published an article a few years ago that discussed the very real difficulties that men suffered, especially in later life, keeping friendships.  The reasons cited were: jealousy over friends’ personal and professional achievements, a lack of communication skills, and a society that teaches men not to express emotion.   All of which indicate to me that this gendered structure we’ve set up here is hurting both women and men, forcing them to perform to strange, unrealistic expectations that are harming all of our individual and collective abilities to make connections.

So I figured we could explore some books today that celebrate close relationships that help pave the way towards thinking about relationships differently.  If we’re going to make the world a better place, after all, it’s nice to have some blueprints!

Three Comrades: We’ve discussed this book a lot since our Classics Book Group met this book last year.  Most people were introduced to Erich Maria Remarque through his novel All Quiet on the Western Front, which focuses on the experience of young German soldiers in World War I.  But Remarque wrote a great deal more than that, including this novel, which focuses on three German veterans of the First World War and the auto body/mechanic shop they open.  The narrator of the book falls in love, yes, with a woman named Pat, but that love only brings these friends together more–indeed, rather than shunning her, or shying away from the couple, Pat becomes a member of their circle of friends.  This is a story about love, friendship, loyalty and acceptance, and is absolutely unforgettable.  Also of note here is the way in which Remarque portrays Berlin at the beginning of the Nazi rise to power.  His love letter to a world about to fall is as heartbreaking as any experience of his titular Comrades.

Boy, Snow, Bird: Helen Oyeyemi is a marvel at re-imagining traditional fables and fairytales with a contemporary edge, and feminist observations, and this book is a showcase of her remarkable talent.  This story, which echoes the Brothers Grimm’s  “Snow White”, emphasizes the female hatred so often found in fairytales, but with the broader canvas of the novel, and a richer story-line, Oyeyemi has woven a tale of racial tensions, familial jealousies, and complex relationships between the women. Though for much of the novel half-sisters Snow and Bird are separated by Bird’s mother, Boy, they begin to write letters to each other sharing snippets of family history as well as their own secrets and girlish curiosities about each other. Their friendship, in the end, is not about men, but about their mutual quest for a stronger kind of bond, and the sense of themselves they find in communicating with each other.

Ancillary Justice: Ann Leckie’s novel doesn’t so much pass the Bechdel Test as leave it behind in the dust, as her Radchaii empire don’t care much about gender, and their language does not make distinctions between male and female.  Moreover, Leckie’s choice to make the default gender distinction (which, in English is “he”) female makes the world of this book feel strangely alien.  Once, the heroine of this tale, Breq, was a Justice of Toren –a colossal starship with an artificial intelligence linking thousands of corpse soldiers in the service of the Radch, the empire that conquered the galaxy.  Now, she has nothing left but her desire for revenge against the many-bodied, near-immortal Lord of the Radch.  But the real power of this book lies in Breq’s relationships with One Esk and Lieutenant Awn–two characters who are difficult to describe, as Leckie does such a wonderful job letting the reader conceptualize them on their own.  Though not always an easy book to read, the characters and their bonds are so real and so believable that this story becomes a visceral treat that even readers who aren’t big sci-fi fans will enjoy.

The Kite Runner: Not only is Khaled Hosseini’s story an emotionally wrenching tale of male friendship, but it also a perfect example of our “Reading Without Walls Challenge” books, too!  The novel follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir’s father’s servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable, spending idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors–until an unspeakable event changes their friendship forever.  Amir and his father flee to America as the monarchy begins to crumble, but the ties between these two young men is too powerful to be severed, and years later, Amir’s yearning for his friend’s forgiveness will lead him on a journey to a home he can no longer recognize.  Though this book deals a great deal with the pain that relationships can cause, Hossenini reminds us over and over again that they are still absolutely worth the pain, because they remind us who were truly are.

Happy reading dear friends!