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Ardennes posted:That said, I don't think Gilead would actually be that sustainable in the long-term because its economy seems pretty much non-existent, and it seems generally technophobic. Hell, I bet it's birthrate is probably much lower than other countries that actually tried to use science/medicine to address the issue. They only a handful of kids being born already, and the most advanced piece of medical equipment they had during the birthing scene was a stool with a hole in it. It's not. The book is set only a handful of years after the revolution, and the "middle period" of cyclical purges and internal power struggles begins soon afterwards. The book's epilogue is a historical conference set 200 years in the future, and the implication is that Gilead has long since fallen. Really the biggest trouble with accepting the rise of Gilead isn't "it could happen here" so much as "it could happen this fast and this successfully." We're a nation of hundreds of millions spread across about a third of a continent, our states have independent military forces (National Guard), and the countryside is full of zealous gun nuts who would not all be happy with the Sons of Jacob's creed. There would be a lot more violence and chaos even in New England before things settled into the uncomfortable peace depicted in the book. But like I said before, the point of the book isn't to show how quickly and easily this could happen. It's to show how uncomfortably close we are to it already.
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Apr 29, 2017 17:49
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Anyone else find the music weirdly off putting? Took me right out when Simple Minds started playing.
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Apr 29, 2017 19:29
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:It's not. The book is set only a handful of years after the revolution, and the "middle period" of cyclical purges and internal power struggles begins soon afterwards. The book's epilogue is a historical conference set 200 years in the future, and the implication is that Gilead has long since fallen. Yeah, I don't know if the book is considered a spoiler or not, although it has been out for 30+ years. Either way, I don't see a society like Gilead lasting too long, that much "purity" comes at a cost (especially since you thrown almost all of your human talent down the toilet). quote:Really the biggest trouble with accepting the rise of Gilead isn't "it could happen here" so much as "it could happen this fast and this successfully." We're a nation of hundreds of millions spread across about a third of a continent, our states have independent military forces (National Guard), and the countryside is full of zealous gun nuts who would not all be happy with the Sons of Jacob's creed. There would be a lot more violence and chaos even in New England before things settled into the uncomfortable peace depicted in the book. Granted, is is heavily implied in all three versions that the government's control over the situation is quite fragmentary and if anything the US is still actively at war (if anything Syria is an apt comparison). Life in coastal Syria is still relatively "normal" while most of the rest of country is a war torn battlefield. There are at least active fronts in upper New England and Appalachia. In Boston itself (which is heavily implied to be the location of the story), things are pretty stable but if anything it might be a relative island of stability. The show/movie/book are all slightly different but there is common thread that the war isn't over. Hell, the show mentions that the rebels in the blue hills were just put down which is in the Boston metro area. quote:But like I said before, the point of the book isn't to show how quickly and easily this could happen. It's to show how uncomfortably close we are to it already. That is true.
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Apr 29, 2017 19:38
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Anyone who thinks the world couldn't turn into this show virtually overnight is incredibly naive. This show should not be so entertaining considering how utterly bleak it is. Good to see Rory doing some heavy acting. God drat episode 3. Have they intimated whether this follows the novel closely? There's already several big deviations and I think they're heading for a very major deviation (which most of you can probably guess)
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Apr 29, 2017 20:28
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I saw a headline that said Margaret Atwood wrote new content for the series. I don't know the extent of that or if it matters.
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Apr 29, 2017 20:31
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vaginadeathgrip posted:Anyone else find the music weirdly off putting? Took me right out when Simple Minds started playing. The Jay Reatard playing as Ofglen was realizing her genitals had just been mutilated was a really strange musical choice for that moment.
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Apr 29, 2017 22:05
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I think Elizabeth Moss might have had some say in the musical choices, Jay Reatard is the exact kind of stuff she's into. The Simple Minds needle drop was absolutely fantastic. Part of why this show is so devastating is that it keeps having moments of humor or hope before reminding you that everything is terrible.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:05
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precision posted:
That was a brilliant moment. My partner was sitting on the couch opposite with headphones on while I was watching it, so couldn't hear or see a thing) and said my mouth just dropped open at that moment.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:33
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precision posted:Anyone who thinks the world couldn't turn into this show virtually overnight is incredibly naive. Probably not. The biggest issue of realism/plausibility is the totality of it all. We are presented a scenario where society is almost completely restructured. In most authoritarian situations, you don't really see this, because the level of control it would require is beyond most states' abilities. What you have is situations where most people's lives don't change too much, which creates passivity. It would be more realistic if it were more post-apocalyptic, if it were implied that most people are dead and this new world arose from the remains of the old one, rather than arguing for any kind of gradual transition from one to another. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 23:33
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I mean, part of the premise is that there have been fertility issues for awhile. So a giant civil war with very few children would actually result in a giant drop in population.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:37
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Also, we aren't really been shown a "totality" situation. They have total control over this small area the show takes place in, but we already know there are rebels and whatever is going on in Alaska. You have to keep in mind that the flashbacks don't take place in our world - in the flashbacks, the fertility rate has been dropping steadily for a long time
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Apr 29, 2017 23:44
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Probably not enough to account for the "Pol Pot Is Prez" state of things we've seen so far.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:45
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Snak posted:I mean, part of the premise is that there have been fertility issues for awhile. So a giant civil war with very few children would actually result in a giant drop in population. I've got no real problem with the concept - a drop off in birth-rate like that would be absolutely terrifying to a population, and I could absolutely see enough of the population being in favour of (or at least not opposing) measures. I've just had a thought - is Offred named that because she literally belongs to Fred? Same with Ofglen? It's been 16 years or so since I read the book so I can't remember - that's horrifying if so.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:47
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Red Oktober posted:I've just had a thought - is Offred named that because she literally belongs to Fred? Same with Ofglen? It's been 16 years or so since I read the book so I can't remember - that's horrifying if so. Yes. The names of Handmaids change to reflect the head of their current household.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:51
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Snak posted:I mean, part of the premise is that there have been fertility issues for awhile. So a giant civil war with very few children would actually result in a giant drop in population. Also a giant portion of society was straight up liquidated or has fled, basically almost everyone thats left are effectively working for the regime (or forced to work for them). There are still a few civilians around but they seem pretty thin on the ground. I wouldn't be surprised if the population in regime controlled territories was 30-40% of the pre-war amount. In the show they are walking by mostly vacant shops on the way back from food store, and there is very little to no street traffic beyond government vehicles (we know of). At a certain point you are going to end up either just true believers, cynical opportunists and people too fearful to do anything. That said, the absurd rigidity of such a society also makes it brittle (and it is why Gilead doesn't last more than 10-20 years). Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 23:52
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i do not like the changes they've made from the book (it's one of my all time favorites) especially straight up telling you her name. i liked figuring it out on a reread. the regime's worse in the book, they've neutered the white supremacy angle which whitewashes (heh) the fact that the "moral majority" irl got into politics not because of abortion etc but because the federal government forced them to integrate their universities or lose federal funding.
Groovelord Neato fucked around with this message at 23:58 on Apr 29, 2017 |
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Apr 29, 2017 23:56
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:Yes. The names of Handmaids change to reflect the head of their current household. Well, that is straight up horror then.
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Apr 29, 2017 23:57
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precision posted:Also, we aren't really been shown a "totality" situation. They have total control over this small area the show takes place in, but we already know there are rebels and whatever is going on in Alaska. We are. In the first episode, there's a scene in a supermarket. Every single person shopping at the supermarket is a woman, and every single one of them is wearing either the red handmaiden outfit or the gray regular maid outfit. The supermarket shelves are fully stocked (which means this is a functioning society), and we are shown all the labels on the products. They all look the same and have no text (I imagine because women are not allowed to read, but it also suggests no consumer brands either. There's probably a good level of control over production/business. When women walk outside, the streets are largely empty, except for soldiers. It is quite explicitly showing you a world without normal people. The world shown shows no trace of the old world, only a few years into a revolution. The closest we get to being told that there's people out there that are normal is when we're told Nick is so low status that he 'hasn't been assigned a woman yet'. But that suggests a government with such total control over their state that they're even managing the relationship status of random lower class people. This level of reach is implausible. The show takes place in what looks like a reasonably sized city. Let's say it had 1 million people. There are clearly not that amount of people living there. It's not shown and it's impossible for the government of the show to control so many people so strongly. Now, you could say they died, there's way less people now. But that makes it a very different story. It's one thing to say 'we could slowly and then suddenly descent into authoritarianism' and another thing to say 'we could live in some nightmare world where 2/3rds of the population were wiped out and the rest are enslaved by randos'. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 00:06
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it takes place in cambridge, which is next to boston. boston has a population of 500k, cambridge is around 100k.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:09
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We also know that a bunch of people tried to escape to Canada.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:11
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Groovelord Neato posted:it takes place in cambridge, which is next to boston. boston has a population of 500k, cambridge is around 100k. Oddly it's mainly shot in Cambridge, Ontario which looks nothing like Cambridge Massachusetts really.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:11
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The food in the supermarket could easily be read to have been produced elsewhere and stolen with the new authority simply printing new labels for the cans. And yeah, it's implied that most of New England just went to Canada, and I think that was even before the "cops just slaughtering protestors" scene. e: you know just once we could have a thread without devolving into the argument of tactical realism
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Apr 30, 2017 00:14
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Cambridge doesn't seem like the most logical place for a theocratic government to have a stronghold on.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:14
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it isn't, but that is where the book takes place. then again, we here in mass had blue laws until fairly recently. also "banned in boston" was once a thing. my town voted for trump btw and i'm in the greater boston area.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:14
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Pedro De Heredia posted:We are. I think that post means that you're being shown a single city under control of a particular regime but without a clear sense of how far its control extends beyond or of how many people live there, or how stable that control is. It's like how ISIS can run a city and if you happen to be in that city, it doesn't really matter what the bigger picture is. The story's built out of 20th-century revolutions like in Cambodia or Iran. It doesn't have to be a totalitarian state or a superpower to kill everyone with glasses or start doing fgm.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:15
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Jack Gladney posted:I think that post means that you're being shown a single city under control of a particular regime but without a clear sense of how far its control extends beyond or of how many people live there, or how stable that control is. It's like how ISIS can run a city and if you happen to be in that city, it doesn't really matter what the bigger picture is. The story's built out of 20th-century revolutions like in Cambodia or Iran. It doesn't have to be a totalitarian state or a superpower to kill everyone with glasses or start doing fgm. yeah, this. I don't think we're supposed to expect that every city in america looks like what we're shown. Just that this one does.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:18
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precision posted:e: you know just once we could have a thread without devolving into the argument of tactical realism while i agree, it's also a problem with the show showing more of the past. there are flashbacks in the book but they're spread way out and focus more specifically on offred's life (and she wasn't a protester in the book).
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Apr 30, 2017 00:19
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precision posted:The food in the supermarket could easily be read to have been produced elsewhere and stolen with the new authority simply printing new labels for the cans. And yeah, it's implied that most of New England just went to Canada, and I think that was even before the "cops just slaughtering protestors" scene. I don't really think that's what we are meant to read from looking at the supermarket. I also doubt that the economic math would add up if we just assumed "most of New England moved to Canada". This stuff doesn't really matter in terms of enjoyment of the show or book. I read the book way too long ago, but I remember you felt more trapped in its world, since it was more focused on the inner mind of a person living through it, and had less of the old world in it (plus, since it's not a visual medium, you are not seeing a bunch of modern buildings and remembering this is meant to be 'reality'). And obviously the important thing is the ideas. I'm just saying that, in terms of 'this could happen', it probably couldn't, because what the show and book depict (or at least what the book makes you *feel*) is very far away from most authoritarianism, which tends to be less in control.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:21
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If I recall correctly the Sons of Jacob hold the entire continental United States. Except Alaska where the remnants of the US Government escaped to and operate from. Also possibly Hawaii is not under their control I think.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:24
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I can't speak to the series, but the impression I got from the book was that the conflict was mostly settled on the East Coast, with only terrorists and holdouts in the Appalachians and an underground resistance in the cities. The regime also had enough control over the Midwest to resettle all people of color to Native American-style reservations in those states. It's implied that most of the active fighting is taking place in the West. Then again, everything is told from the protagonist's limited perspective and what little news she gets is guaranteed to contain at least some lies.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:24
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Le Saboteur posted:If I recall correctly the Sons of Jacob hold the entire continental United States. Except Alaska where the remnants of the US Government escaped to and operate from. Also possibly Hawaii is not under their control I think. they don't. gilead is confined to some part of new england from what offred knows and if i'm remembering correctly the historical meeting at the end.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:26
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Jack Gladney posted:I think that post means that you're being shown a single city under control of a particular regime but without a clear sense of how far its control extends beyond or of how many people live there, or how stable that control is. It's like how ISIS can run a city and if you happen to be in that city, it doesn't really matter what the bigger picture is. The story's built out of 20th-century revolutions like in Cambodia or Iran. It doesn't have to be a totalitarian state or a superpower to kill everyone with glasses or start doing fgm. I know we're being shown a single city. I'm saying that even within a single city, this level of complete control and total submission is implausible. Which isn't a flaw in the book/show, it just makes suggestions that what's shown here could happen a bit of a stretch. Iran is an example of what I'm talking about. Many (most?) people in Iran live lives that you and I could probably recognize as 'normal', even if particulars are different (both because of the country and because of the culture). But it's a country that has a bunch of people in it, who have 'normal' jobs, do 'normal' things, etc. It's easy to overestimate how much control a state can actually exert on its population in any practical sense. And in a large country like the United States, even moreso. Most authoritarian governments rely on some degree of passivity or tacit approval, and they get that passivity and approval from people who are not too affected by the new order. They buy that passivity / approval by not changing some fundamental aspects of their lives too much. In reality, what you would probably see is the change in status and loss of rights limited to the fertile women, and this new situation being passively accepted by non-fertile women (who are most of them) and men whose lives would be allowed to remain mostly the same. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 00:39 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 00:30
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But the part of society we're seeing isn't analogous to a city, even if it geographically used to be one. We're seeing the estates of the super rich, their nearby academy, and their local market. This is not a place that is near peasents. It's not an urban center.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:36
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Snak posted:But the part of society we're seeing isn't analogous to a city, even if it geographically used to be one. We're seeing the estates of the super rich, their nearby academy, and their local market. This is not a place that is near peasents. It's not an urban center. I don't think so. What you're saying, essentially, is that what they're showing you is an aberration: that this is not what things are like. But... what would the point of that be? No, the point is to show you how things are. They show you the essence of this world (that it's extremely mysoginistic and that women are under some pretty brutal control) through a character who is not special, but rather living what many characters are living. The themes and the world aren't really interesting if we're meant to assume that somewhere not too far there's a bunch of poor people living lives indistinguishable from Pre-Gilead ones. Pedro De Heredia fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 00:49
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you aren't to assume that, the only world you "know" is the part of cambridge offred inhabits and perhaps camps and the place they send unnecessary women to work and die at.
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Apr 30, 2017 00:53
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Pedro De Heredia posted:I don't think so. You're seeing a pastiche of historically real transgressions and horrors given a 20th-century context to unify their appearance. It doesn't matter what the world beyond is like or whether this version of an authoritarian state resembles one or another specific historical state. ISIS built cages in the town square of every town they invaded and burned heretics there every week until they were chased away. The exact state and nature of ISIS as a geopolitical unit is irrelevant to the people trapped in an ISIS-controlled city being killed for having photographs of dogs or touching cooking pots while menstruating or whatever. You're being asked to identify with the people who are victims of things like that and to extrapolate the experience of victimization to Mike Pence demanding a funeral for every miscarriage or a brood of Duggars believing that a man hugging a woman is being tempted by the woman in a way that is the woman's fault. But if the narrative is disorienting in the sense that you can't figure out how the state works, that's probably how it felt to live under Pol Pot, too. I'd imagine that plenty of people killed by the taliban found it implausible.
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Apr 30, 2017 01:06
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I will refuse to accept the setting until I see that: 1. The new government established some "continuity of the Red Sox" program and 2. We see a character with a good Dorchesta accent.
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Apr 30, 2017 02:12
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Le Saboteur posted:Oddly it's mainly shot in Cambridge, Ontario which looks nothing like Cambridge Massachusetts really. That explains a lot, I was confused when the show starting naming places in the Boston area when it obviously isn't set in Boston. The New England setting does seem bizarre, by setting it in such a cosmopolitan location they do end up needing to explain how the culture became so homogeneous in such a short time when the culture of the Boston area is pretty heterogenous. That said, I don't think that really hurts the show because the ambition and scope of what this story is portraying is ultimately way bigger than just New England. This is a great show, its not small one that's just banking off a specific political moment in a specific place in time but one that is paying tribute to all the moments in history where dystopian societies similar to those portrayed in this show have already formed. The point of this story isn't for a political scientist to present a credible explanation for how this could happen, because much of what is being portrayed are things that have already happened in different places and times in history. Like it is tough to think of Caimbridge turning into a place that executes homosexuals as a matter of day to day life, but it's not hard at all to think of societies that do. Like one thing I've heard mentioned frequently as an inspiration for this story was Romanian Decree 770, where contraception and abortion were made illegal in unless you already had four or five children to try and boost the population of Romania. That historical reference gels extremely well with the idea of secret police suddenly, violently and brutally enforcing dehumanizing social mores. But if you want to set that story in Boston, it does make a million times more sense for it to be motivated by Christian religious extremism than Soviet-Block Communism or Islamic Theocracy. Seeing modern Caimbridge devolve into a Christian theocracy is a tough sell, and given that they didn't film the show there I don't really blame people familiar with the area if they have trouble buying into it, but that isn't a very important aspect of the show. This isn't just a narrow minded cash-in looking to shock you by say, showing the lynching of homosexuals and minorities off the side of the Bunker Hill monument for easy, empty shocks. This is a character driven show that focuses on how each of these characters are human beings and contrasts it with a society with an irredeemably cruel and utilitarian attitude towards human sexuality. Seeing the "trial" in episode 3 is loving brutal, not because we recognize these women as cosmopolitan New Englanders from our world but because we see them as people with dreams, aspirations and love that society cruelly and coldly destroys with the same detached, industrial attitude as an assembly line turning out engine blocks. That said I don't like the sound design very much. I love the orchestral music a lot but some of the pop songs feel very out of place and clash terribly with the tone in my opinion. Worse, some of the dialogue seems mixed in a way that is too quiet, so much so that I missed a few lines and hand to rewind to make them out (thanks Hulu). Otherwise this is an excellent show so far, easiliy one of the better depictions of a dystopia I've seen in a long time. A lot of socially conscious stuff can focus too much on just one moment in a way that can make things feel dated, but by mixing the hypothetical elements with the historical reality of societies that have attempted this sort of social engineering the show ends up having a more timeless feel than it otherwise would had it focused too much on contemporary political science with the narrow context of 2017 era New England.
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Apr 30, 2017 02:27
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:I will refuse to accept the setting until I see that: This is a good joke, but it's also a good example of what I mean. Boston without the Red Socks as an institution is probably more absurd and incredible than a Boston that treats women like cattle, but that doesn't really undercut the point the show is actually making. It's just fun to point out as a way to laugh and relieve some tensions after episode 3 ends with one gay woman being hung as hastily and coldly as a loving Christmas ornament followed and her lover, who is fertile and thus too valuable to kill, undergoes a forced clitorectomy to keep her from experiencing sex as anything but a means to bear children ever again. Goddamn, this show pulls no punches and is all the better for it. Bifner McDoogle fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 02:46
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Pedro De Heredia posted:I don't think so. That's not what I'm saying at all. But I guess I'm starting to understand your problem with the setting. Like if you literally believe that the setting you're suppose to believe in is a population density of like 50 people per city and not that we are seeing a small section of an elite neighborhood.
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Apr 30, 2017 02:56
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