DYSTOPIAN THRILLER: Everything You Need To Know Before Watching ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
The Handmaid’s Tale has officially been released in Australia and you must prepare to be thrown in the deep end. So before you’re plunged into the show’s nightmare dystopia there are some things you need to know.
The buzz over the series has been building for months after it first debuted in the states back in April. Now Aussies can FINALLY feast their eyes on it. PRAISE BE!
As of today you can stream the whole show on SBS On Demand. If you haven’t had the chance to watch it (there are always ways) it’s time to jump the fuck on board. Legit, this is political thriller, nightmare reality, creepy ass dystopian drama at its best. So… be excited.
All those that have seen the show and are carrying on like ‘ahhh I am so shook from HM’s Tale’ can now find solace that their m8’s will also be like ‘ahhhh I too am shook to my core’ and we can all be shook together. Do not be left behind from the shook. Shook.
Forget what you know, and enter into an effed up world where America has been taken over by the extreme conservatist right and ditched their ‘land of the free’ motto. Freedom’s overrated right? It’s an especially bleak life for the women who are essentially enslaved and only valued as vessels to make babies. Plz no.
Here are a few things you should know about this grim AF series:
1. The future is now
The Handmaid’s tale was originally a book written in 1985 by Margaret Atwood. Keep that in mind when you’re watching it and thinking HOLY SHIT this is so eerily edging on real life. There are some very, very real attitudes brought to their sinister extreme and hitting close to home on America’s current cultural climate.
That’s why everyone is like hot dayum Margaret, you really know your shit.
2. It’s not so far from reality
It might seem like a very distant (and frankly terrifying) dystopia but legit nothing happens in that society that hasn’t happened somewhere before. Atwood created the hellish fiction by taking the most fucked-up bits and pieces from our global (but mainly America’s) history and remixing it into a disturbing reality.
3. It’s been Hollywood-ified
In a not-so-unexpected turn of events, the producers have decided to take the main older couple and make them young and hot instead! Wow. Such creativity! So ingenious.
Originally, the Commander and his wife are wayyyy past their prime, which is significant for a lot of reasons but mostly because she is obviously past child-bearing age (this will make sense, just trust).
Essentially, there was a great role for an older actress, so naturally the show’s producers cast someone young and hot? Ah yes. Give us heartthrobs and eye candy only. Plz and thank you.
4. The story originally bumped people of colour out of the picture
In a refreshingly progressive move, the series includes characters of a variety of ethnicities instead of following the book’s erasure of blackness. The show recognised the racism and was like ‘no thank you’.
In the book, all people of colour are taken care of with throwaway lines about them being “resettled” to “National Homeland One”, which we assume is Africa? Apparently not important!
Anyway just keep in mind that the OG text appropriated the experience of black slaves and used it for the suffering almost exclusively of white women. Needless to say that’s not cool. So it’s a good example of how NOT sticking exactly to the source material is the right thing to do when the source material is racist.