Richard Stanley
Well-Known Member
Yesterday I just watched the first three episodes of the new Hulu series, The Handmaid's Tale, based upon the novel of the same name. In working upon my latest work-in-progress analysis of the Biblical Judges I was stunned to see the reference to 'Gilead' amidst all the OT verses being salted amongst all the conversations. I had not read the novel and as such was not familiar with the storyline. Even if I had read it some years prior, the reference to Gilead would have made little impression on me ... then. But now that I know how to interpret the dark subtext of the Bible properly it stood out like a sore thumb.
As such, the following excerpted review discusses an aspect of the first episode involving making the newly subservient underclass women complicit in the new social paradigm. The novel and show recontextualize matters to a mostly women-centric class dialectic from that of the Biblical one - that of an ethnic Conquest and conversion struggle. Nevertheless the parallels are chilling, and one thus has to wonder just how much the book's author and the show's creators realize this aspect.
As the review discusses the darkly ironic 'Salvaging' ceremony, it is the Biblical people of Gilead who are made complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the men of Ephraim, no doubt the 'undesirables' - marked by their cultural inability to correctly pronounce the word 'shibboleth'. Like the protagonist (and her husband) caught while trying to cross the border to escape, the Ephraimites are caught up while trying to cross back over the border of Gilead (the multi-tribal trans-Jordan region - east of the river), at the river Jordan.
There are other significant parallels to the Bible story of the entire Conquest and conversion period, and here I claim it is the general nature of the takeover that came upon the prior culture, seemingly from within. But you would only understand this "seemingly" aspect from properly understanding the Biblical subtext and such as what archaeology is saying today. This rather than the extreme military blitzkrieg depicted in the religious canon.
From: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/the-handmaids-tale-treats-guilt-too-as-an-epidemic/524583/
At the end of the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, the excellent show now streaming on Hulu, the handmaids of Gilead gather in a grove for a ceremony that goes by an ominous name: the Salvaging. The women file together, in twos, in their red robes, to a series of red pillows that have been laid out in neat lines on the ground. They kneel. From a stage that has been set for the occasion, Aunt Lydia, the woman who is by turns their captor and their mentor, informs them of the reason for the gathering. She summons a prisoner to the stage. The man, Aunt Lydia says, raped a handmaid. The girl had been pregnant. The baby was lost. “This disgusting creature has given us no choice,” she says, glowering at the convict. “Am I correct, girls?”
“Yes, Aunt Lydia,” they reply.
The ceremony begins. “You may come forward and form a circle,” Aunt Lydia tells them. “You all know the rules … when I blow the whistle, what you do is up to you. Until I blow it again.”
Related Story
The Visceral, Woman-Centric Horror of The Handmaid's Tale
The handmaids slowly surround the kneeling man, whose hands are bound, whose lip is bust, whose eyes are defiant and scared. The whistle blows, and Offred, the story’s protagonist, starts: She kicks the man, hard, in the gut. Blood sprays from his mouth, the red of it briefly invisible against the women’s fluttering capes, as they pound and punch and scream. The man disappears, in that chaos of crimson, as the women flail and rage. Aunt Lydia blows the whistle again. They stop. They gather themselves. It is done.
Did the man rape anyone? Did he, in some small way, deserve this brutal death at the hands of women who had become, at the blow of a whistle, momentary agents of violence? In Gilead, of course, those are the wrong questions to ask: Justice, here, is vertically integrated. And the point of the ceremony, anyway, is not the man but the women who carry out the execution. The Salvagings—the ceremonies’ name, my colleague Sophie Gilbert has noted, suggests both salvation and savagery, notions of heaven mingled with notions of trash—offer a rare moment of freedom for the handmaids who carry them out. Within them, after all, what you do is up to you. For women who have been systematically stripped of their autonomy, it’s a potent promise.
But the Salvagings, as with so much else in the Republic of Gilead, are ceremonies at odds with themselves. The state-sponsored maulings may give the handmaids a brief outlet for their anger and a brief reminder of what power feels like; the rituals also, however, further enslave them. This is the cruel cunning of the ceremony, one that serves the cruel cunning of the state: The Salvaging involves the handmaids, intimately and violently, in the regime’s political project. It insists that the women are active participants in Gilead’s execution of justice. What you do is up to you.
* * *
What makes someone complicit—in a crime, in a moment of violence, in a slow-moving atrocity? Failing to speak? Failing to act? Allowing complacency to take over, until complacency is no longer an option? The Handmaid’s Tale, like the book that inspired it, is on top of so much else a nuanced exploration of all that. Its dystopia exists in the first place, we soon come to learn, because the people of the “before,” as the show’s characters tend to euphemize it, slowly allowed its horrors to come into being through the sum of small complacencies. “It isn’t my decision,” a feckless manager tells his staff as agents of Gilead invade their office, forcing the man to fire his female employees. He is explaining himself—and attempting to exonerate himself. “I didn’t have a choice,” the man insists. “I have to let you go. I have to let you all go.” ...
As mentioned above about the sardonic relationship of 'salvation' to 'savagery' in relationship to the 'Salvaging' ceremony, the words 'salvation' and 'slavery' are two sides of the same coin, where I believe it was Goethe who stated that: 'there are none so enslaved who believe they are free'. American 'patriots' today, convinced of the purity of their 'freedom' delivered by conquest and warfare by Divine Providence are falling once again into the same 'cultural' cycle of complicity to their hidden human masters, their patrician lord(s). "Under his eye", as the show repeats.
Will they ever really awaken?
As such, the following excerpted review discusses an aspect of the first episode involving making the newly subservient underclass women complicit in the new social paradigm. The novel and show recontextualize matters to a mostly women-centric class dialectic from that of the Biblical one - that of an ethnic Conquest and conversion struggle. Nevertheless the parallels are chilling, and one thus has to wonder just how much the book's author and the show's creators realize this aspect.
As the review discusses the darkly ironic 'Salvaging' ceremony, it is the Biblical people of Gilead who are made complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the men of Ephraim, no doubt the 'undesirables' - marked by their cultural inability to correctly pronounce the word 'shibboleth'. Like the protagonist (and her husband) caught while trying to cross the border to escape, the Ephraimites are caught up while trying to cross back over the border of Gilead (the multi-tribal trans-Jordan region - east of the river), at the river Jordan.
There are other significant parallels to the Bible story of the entire Conquest and conversion period, and here I claim it is the general nature of the takeover that came upon the prior culture, seemingly from within. But you would only understand this "seemingly" aspect from properly understanding the Biblical subtext and such as what archaeology is saying today. This rather than the extreme military blitzkrieg depicted in the religious canon.
From: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/05/the-handmaids-tale-treats-guilt-too-as-an-epidemic/524583/
At the end of the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, the excellent show now streaming on Hulu, the handmaids of Gilead gather in a grove for a ceremony that goes by an ominous name: the Salvaging. The women file together, in twos, in their red robes, to a series of red pillows that have been laid out in neat lines on the ground. They kneel. From a stage that has been set for the occasion, Aunt Lydia, the woman who is by turns their captor and their mentor, informs them of the reason for the gathering. She summons a prisoner to the stage. The man, Aunt Lydia says, raped a handmaid. The girl had been pregnant. The baby was lost. “This disgusting creature has given us no choice,” she says, glowering at the convict. “Am I correct, girls?”
“Yes, Aunt Lydia,” they reply.
The ceremony begins. “You may come forward and form a circle,” Aunt Lydia tells them. “You all know the rules … when I blow the whistle, what you do is up to you. Until I blow it again.”
Related Story
The Visceral, Woman-Centric Horror of The Handmaid's Tale
The handmaids slowly surround the kneeling man, whose hands are bound, whose lip is bust, whose eyes are defiant and scared. The whistle blows, and Offred, the story’s protagonist, starts: She kicks the man, hard, in the gut. Blood sprays from his mouth, the red of it briefly invisible against the women’s fluttering capes, as they pound and punch and scream. The man disappears, in that chaos of crimson, as the women flail and rage. Aunt Lydia blows the whistle again. They stop. They gather themselves. It is done.
Did the man rape anyone? Did he, in some small way, deserve this brutal death at the hands of women who had become, at the blow of a whistle, momentary agents of violence? In Gilead, of course, those are the wrong questions to ask: Justice, here, is vertically integrated. And the point of the ceremony, anyway, is not the man but the women who carry out the execution. The Salvagings—the ceremonies’ name, my colleague Sophie Gilbert has noted, suggests both salvation and savagery, notions of heaven mingled with notions of trash—offer a rare moment of freedom for the handmaids who carry them out. Within them, after all, what you do is up to you. For women who have been systematically stripped of their autonomy, it’s a potent promise.
But the Salvagings, as with so much else in the Republic of Gilead, are ceremonies at odds with themselves. The state-sponsored maulings may give the handmaids a brief outlet for their anger and a brief reminder of what power feels like; the rituals also, however, further enslave them. This is the cruel cunning of the ceremony, one that serves the cruel cunning of the state: The Salvaging involves the handmaids, intimately and violently, in the regime’s political project. It insists that the women are active participants in Gilead’s execution of justice. What you do is up to you.
* * *
What makes someone complicit—in a crime, in a moment of violence, in a slow-moving atrocity? Failing to speak? Failing to act? Allowing complacency to take over, until complacency is no longer an option? The Handmaid’s Tale, like the book that inspired it, is on top of so much else a nuanced exploration of all that. Its dystopia exists in the first place, we soon come to learn, because the people of the “before,” as the show’s characters tend to euphemize it, slowly allowed its horrors to come into being through the sum of small complacencies. “It isn’t my decision,” a feckless manager tells his staff as agents of Gilead invade their office, forcing the man to fire his female employees. He is explaining himself—and attempting to exonerate himself. “I didn’t have a choice,” the man insists. “I have to let you go. I have to let you all go.” ...
As mentioned above about the sardonic relationship of 'salvation' to 'savagery' in relationship to the 'Salvaging' ceremony, the words 'salvation' and 'slavery' are two sides of the same coin, where I believe it was Goethe who stated that: 'there are none so enslaved who believe they are free'. American 'patriots' today, convinced of the purity of their 'freedom' delivered by conquest and warfare by Divine Providence are falling once again into the same 'cultural' cycle of complicity to their hidden human masters, their patrician lord(s). "Under his eye", as the show repeats.
Will they ever really awaken?
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