The Handmaid's Tale Spotlight: The Political Wake Up Call We Desperately Need

There are basically three types of women and reactions. One is the good woman who very much loves her future husband, solely for himself, but refuses to sign the agreement on principle. I fully understand this, but the man should take a pass anyway and find someone else.

The other is the calculating woman who refuses to sign the prenuptial agreement because she is expecting to take advantage of the poor, unsuspecting sucker she’s got in her grasp. There is also the woman who will openly and quickly sign a prenuptial agreement in order to make a quick hit and take the money given to her. Personally speaking, when I come home and dinner's not ready, I go through the roof. For, this reason, I could never vote for Hillary Clinton. I mean, if she can't satisfy her husband, what makes her think she can satisfy America? She doesn't have the look, she doesn't have the stamina.

The words of a pathological male supremacist or, as he's more commonly known, Donald, the tangerine tyrant, Trump, alleged leader of the 'free world'. While it's hardly original to label a man who has boasted about grabbing women "by the pussy" and who has claimed "there has to be some form of punishment" for women or doctors disobeying abortion laws- a sexist, many continue to underestimate the severity of such misogyny. To anyone who believes that he is a mere anomaly in society’s otherwise successful pursuit of gender equality, I urge you to watch Hulu's adaptation of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and reconsider such a position. The message of this gripping, chillingly poignant new adaptation is more pertinent now than ever.

Season 3 is expected to air on Channel 4 in May

Bringing to life Atwood's legendary 1985 novel, a seminal text in modern feminist literature, the programme presents a dystopia in which humanity's environmental contamination (certainly not a farfetched idea) has led birth rates to plummet. The ensuing crisis has resulted in the overthrow of the US government and its replacement by the ultraconservative 'Gilead' regime, a totalitarian Christian theocracy in which Constitutional law has been replaced by bible verse. What could be better placed to guide a country out of crisis than the good old, cuddly Christian bible? A book that is older, I might add, than the Roman Empire...

Under the regime, women are completely banned from reading and personal income, their occupations diminished to little beyond servant work. If you're a fertile, unmarried woman, or a 'whore' as you're cheerily pronounced, you can expect to be shipped off to a member of the new oligarchic elite to be systematically raped each month in order to 'rebuild the nation'. The story follows Offred (formerly June), one of these lucky ladies. Names reduced to that of their new master, these 'handmaids' become the latter's property, doing "God's work" by becoming human incubators for the happy Christian couples who make up Gilead's new social elite. Happy Christian couples who also beat them for disobedience, tardiness or just because they generally feel like it. Atwood's brutal dystopian world casts a grim metaphor for our own.

Having read the book aged seventeen, my lasting memory of it has always been slightly conflicted. As a critique, it is nothing short of genius. Alongside Shelley's Frankenstein, it opened my eyes to the feminist ideas of gender representation, societal gender roles and systemic inequality. However, despite my deep appreciation for their ideas, the verbose gothic writing style of Shelley and the blunt realism of Atwood weren't personally enjoyable to read. They were not, as is often foolishly yet aptly described: 'page turners'.

The TV adaptation, however, possesses everything I found lacking in the book. Elisabeth Moss brings Offred to life sensationally, transforming what I found to be a somewhat frustrating protagonist and narrator into a bonafide dystopian badass. On screen, we are able to see smaller acts of defiance in things like Moss' tone of voice and facial expressions which make her a far more inspiring protagonist. Despite the unimaginable oppression she suffers, Offred's resilience and razor-sharp wit, combined with a profoundly dark sense of humour, allow her to persevere against the systemic evil of the Gilead regime.

While clearly the original text focussed, principally, on gender, the show's creators have been able to widen the scope of its criticism to make it more relevant to 21st-century audiences. First and foremost, far more narrative weight is placed on the environmental element which establishes the show's opening premise. And you can see why. Concerns over the future of our species have never been so widespread. Mr Trump, as well as claiming that “global warming was created by and for the Chinese”, has appointed two successive human-caused climate change sceptics as heads of America’s Environmental Protection Agency. With so much about this planet still unknown, it is far from unfeasible to suggest that our mutilation of it may come back to bite us sooner, even, than we currently imagine. If Atwood’s warning of masculinist totalitarianism isn't enough to make you start doing your recycling, I'm not sure what will!

Furthermore, the series gives more weight to Atwood’s critique of religious intolerance, principally of other faiths but also of those deviating from traditional norms of sexuality. While women are forced into de facto slavery, Muslims, Jews, homosexuals and any other group considered ‘deviant’ are simply exterminated. Clearly, hers is an extreme example but there are certainly traces of Gilead in modern society. Our failure to tolerate difference and our alarming lack of solidarity during times of crisis was evident in the frenzied (politically reinforced) Islamophobia in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, as well as in the hostile xenophobia of post-Brexit Britain. It’s disconcerting that Atwood’s criticism, written over 35 years ago, continues to be chillingly relevant today.

Season one sticks fairly closely to the plot of the novel, elaborating upon it where necessary and quoting from it directly in Offred's detached first-person narration which preserves Atwood's astute social commentary. We are given gems like "ignoring isn't the same as ignorance, you have to work at it" and "a rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, so long as it stays inside the maze". The latter really has the most resonance as a critique of today's world, an unambiguous metaphor for the glass ceiling effect which women around the world suffer every day.

Women gaining the right to drive in Saudi Arabia and corporate giants introducing 'gender non-discrimination policies', while seemingly abstract from each other, are linked in this regard. Both present the illusion of the expansion of rights as a form of short-term placation to help preserve a system run by, and thus inherently for, men. Women being physically held captive purely on account of their gender in Gilead metaphorises the very real constraints they continue to experience on a daily basis in the job market, in political representation and in social perceptions.

When societies attempt to define themselves, they nearly always look elsewhere for points of comparison. This can (and often does) too easily become self-delusion. In Britain, we inflate the liberal, egalitarian nature of our country by contrasting it with the perceived ‘backwardness’ of nations like Saudi Arabia. We overlook our own problems of systemic racism and police brutality by fixating on the shocking stories coming from across the Atlantic. This prevents us from looking inwardly at our shortcomings.

Mark Duggan, whose death at the hands of police sparked
the London riots in 2011. The cropping of this image in the
mainstreameam media demonstrates how he was dehumanised.

Let us not forget that in my current home of Spain, married women were not allowed to work without their husband’s permission until 1975. Or that, during the Argentinian dictatorship, around five hundred babies born within the regime’s torture centres were taken from their mothers and given to couples to be raised in strict concordance with the junta’s capitalist, Christian vision. Most of these couples were “directly linked to the dictatorship”.

What the Handmaid’s Tale tells us, above all, is that we have become complacent. Powerful political forces are at play, conditioning us to ‘keep calm and carry on’ ignoring the vast social inequalities which exist between men and women. If you believe systemic sexism and racism to be things of the past then it seems they have already been successful.