{"id":339396,"date":"2017-04-27T05:40:43","date_gmt":"2017-04-26T21:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1481889"},"modified":"2017-04-27T05:40:43","modified_gmt":"2017-04-26T21:40:43","slug":"the-dark-future-of-the-handmaids-tale-feels-terrifyingly-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/the-dark-future-of-the-handmaids-tale-feels-terrifyingly-real\/","title":{"rendered":"The dark future of \u2018The Handmaid\u2019s Tale\u2019 feels terrifyingly real"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

For the past few years,\u00a0Hollywood has been enamored with\u00a0dystopias pulled from young adult fiction<\/a>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0stories like The Hunger Games<\/em> and Divergent<\/em>, where the evil government\u00a0provides a structure for our heroes to rebel against, a set of villains for them to defeat.<\/p>\n

The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em> is something else entirely.\u00a0I\u2019ve only seen the first three episodes (the same three episodes that premiered on Hulu<\/a> today), but I have a suspicion that Offred, played by Mad Men<\/em>\u2018s Elisabeth Moss, will not be overthrowing anything. The best she can hope for is survival \u2014 and just maybe, escape.<\/p>\n

Adapted by television writer Bruce Miller from\u00a0the novel by Margaret Atwood<\/a>, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/em>\u00a0takes place in Gilead, a near-future New England\u00a0controlled by Christian fundamentalists. As the series opens, Moss\u2019\u00a0character (one of the few women who can still become pregnant) is captured by the government and enslaved as a \u201chandmaid\u201d \u2014 which means she\u2019s forced to have sex with one of the regime\u2019s commanders (Joseph Fiennes) in the hopes that she will bear his child.<\/p>\n

Sounds pretty grim, right? The show certainly is bleak at times.\u00a0But there are also moments of humor, particularly as you see the\u00a0strange, absurd rituals of Gilead.\u00a0And even when it\u00a0gets dark, it isn\u2019t a slog. It\u2019s far too tense for that,\u00a0as you wonder how things could possibly get worse for Offred and the other characters.\u00a0(Almost inevitably, they do get worse.) At least once or twice each episode, I found myself shouting at my laptop and\/or covering my eyes.<\/p>\n

Moss is predictably great as Offred, giving us a woman whose life is full of fear and pain and degradation, but who remains determined to survive and find the daughter who was stolen from her. Ann Dowd also brings charm and conviction to the role of Aunt Lydia,\u00a0the woman overseeing the handmaids. But the show\u2019s MVP might\u00a0Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Serena, the commander\u2019s wife. We see her inflict many petty torments on Offred, but we also see\u00a0how Gilead imprisons and demeans Serena at the same time.\u00a0The show never lets us forgets her complicity, while never making her seem less than human.<\/p>\n