Religious Reproduction in The Handmaid’s Tale
Tags: Television

The Popular Culture Relevance

The backdrop of the story is a pseudo global issue with birth rates shockingly dropped due to the polluted environment, as well as the dystopia of Gilead tearing itself apart from the U.S. and being guided with certain twisted verses of the Scripture. The “Handmaids” are those very few women with fertility, who are deprived of their names and freedom, treated as breeding machines for their assigned Commandants and Commandants’ wives (they do not have children). They are “imprisoned” in the name of “god”. The main character, the Handmaid June, is forced to be renamed Offred and to participate ceremonies of having sexual intercourse with her master between the legs of his wife and give birth to children. Her older daughter was taken away by the government. She struggles to survive and to escape with her daughters. She is “the product of American television: vocally rebellious, increasingly heroic, very much like Atwood’s Moira” (Howell). Several other female or male characters with various positions are also narrated, showcasing tragic patriarchy. Many roles of the S1 are very impressive. The actresses Elisabeth Moss (Offred) and Ann Dowd (Aunt Lydia) won the “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series” of the Emmy Awards in 2017.

The selected episode exemplifies the phenomenon “religion in popular culture”. A twisted Christian Fundamentalism is applied in the patriarchal Gilead, not merely functioning as a religious backdrop, but interrelated with various worldly concerns. In the depicted ritual of the baby birth, classical surroundings and clothing, on one hand, are in cooperation with awkward practices, highlighting the suppression of the minority of the Handmaids with fertility involved at the bottom of a hierarchy; on the other hand, they symbolize part of traditional norms severely contrasting with modern liberal ideas about justice and equality. Besides the male authorities at Gilead, several female figures’ opposing to the Handmaids strengthen the complexity of the story — are people aware of their own suffering when they make others suffer? Commander’s wives seem to benefit from the policies of Gilead, but they are in fact trapped in their houses as well. Aunt Lydia is also empowered to train and assign the Handmaids, and she mostly dehumanizes herself as well. It turns out to be a complex religious representation showcasing the dialogue between religion and popular culture. Bible verses are interpreted differently by two camps of 3 characters for contrast, just as viewers of various backgrounds tend to differ. Feminism is heavily involved in the controversial religious theme. With the professional filming skills and visual settings, such an extravagant form of art creates a sensory attraction and entertainment in media. And this episode did get nominated for the award of “Outstanding Special Visual Effects in A Supporting Role” of the Emmy Awards in 2017.

It reflects the reality’s being complex with religion and other disciplines interwoven, such as feminism, bioethics, slavery, politics, and gender issue, with symbolic characters, costumes, and lines as visible representations, involving dramatic and ridiculous plots. It is also shaped by “industrial conditions and cultures of production” (Howell). Audiences are attracted to the story due to the controversies in reality out of some sort of exaggerated settings. The relevance of the story causes their compassion, while its fictional nature provides a certain comfort. Gilead as one religious representation in the play functions like a made-up institutional Christianity cult or heresy rather than any existing church. Quakers and Baptists are overtly against it in the story. The setting is subtle and should be able to avoid resistance of many Christians to some extent. Overall it is representing a religion through which we see the dialogue between the sacred and the worldly. It seems not to affirm nor does it denunciate Christianity. Rather, the story merely attempts to reflect some reality and what a world could be.

Gilead as one religious representation in the play functions like a made-up institutional Christianity cult or heresy rather than any existing church. A scene of demolishing a church building in Gilead implies its opposing to certain regular churches. George Kraychyk/Hulu

Yet, it tends to create some sort of trauma against feminism, as Aisha Matthews sees it an “alternate vision of the primarily physical female existence in the ecologically devastated Christian fundamentalist society of Gilead”. The female characters are fixed to the “enslaved subjectivity” while they remember their previous freedom. For instance, Offred in E2 thought of the pale-blue and the motherhood she owned in the past (Matthew). The two modes of existence as living experiences conflict in a shifted social construction (Matthew). What used to be “normal” is what now is illicit. The womanhood is reduced to the most extent to the temporary motherhood. Aisha seeks to explain that the men and some women of Gilead internalize the traditional depicted female figures in the Bible then rigidly idealize genders and a marriage, using “Christianity and the impetus to repopulate as means of circumventing faithfulness” (Matthew). Howell listed a few events echoing Atwood’s question in 2012 and the TV adaptation that comes after: “Revelers dress up as Handmaids on Hallowe’en and also for protest marches — these two uses of its costumes mirroring its doubleness. Is it entertainment or dire political prophecy? Can it be both?” (Howell). She explains that “both aspects of her fiction blend when activists capitalize on the entertainment value of Handmaid performances to capture media attention for political purposes, to voice their democratic rights”.