Margaret Atwood is crazy like a fox. She writes feminist catnip for a deranged audience and laughs all the way to the bank. Everything written in that universe by Atwood or others cutting her in on a piece of the action (e.g., screenwriters) goes right into her bank account. I doubt very much that Atwood believes all that much of what she is writing in this vein. She is telling a narrative… and that is what her immature feminist audience wants… not the truth. The West Wing is an even more cynical narrative undertaking as it overtly pretends to be true.
How many of today's Handmaidens actually read the book and just saw the movie? They seem to be copying the few scenes from the movie that I saw flashed on the screen.
When I read fiction about the future I tend to suspend critical thought about how that future got there. I remember reading the book years ago. I may have bought it at an airport for popcorn reading to distract me from the joys of air travel. I may have been attracted to the book because of the Chaucer take off. I don't recall much about the book other than it wasn't particularly good, nor was it convincing about a future we could have. I didn't watch the movie. My guess is that the twits dressing up in red saw the movie and had it explained to them.
I read 1984 in the early 60's and remember it well. It might have something to do with the quality of the writing.
As I mentioned, there are probably some HT cosplayers who never have read the novel but have watched the Hulu series. But though the latter departs from the former in plot—it's more of a dystopian soap opera—in spirit the two are identical.
The funny thing about futurist fiction is that it eventually becomes alternate-history fiction. "Nineteen Eighty-four" can be read in that sense today. You may recall that writing in the late Forties, Orwell forecast an atomic war in the mid-Fifties that set the stage for revolution and the rise of Ingsoc.
Evaluations of literary style are to some extent subjective and so I refrained from raising that issue in my piece. Between you and me, however, I found Atwood's style to be rather turgid.
Margaret Atwood is crazy like a fox. She writes feminist catnip for a deranged audience and laughs all the way to the bank. Everything written in that universe by Atwood or others cutting her in on a piece of the action (e.g., screenwriters) goes right into her bank account. I doubt very much that Atwood believes all that much of what she is writing in this vein. She is telling a narrative… and that is what her immature feminist audience wants… not the truth. The West Wing is an even more cynical narrative undertaking as it overtly pretends to be true.
How many of today's Handmaidens actually read the book and just saw the movie? They seem to be copying the few scenes from the movie that I saw flashed on the screen.
When I read fiction about the future I tend to suspend critical thought about how that future got there. I remember reading the book years ago. I may have bought it at an airport for popcorn reading to distract me from the joys of air travel. I may have been attracted to the book because of the Chaucer take off. I don't recall much about the book other than it wasn't particularly good, nor was it convincing about a future we could have. I didn't watch the movie. My guess is that the twits dressing up in red saw the movie and had it explained to them.
I read 1984 in the early 60's and remember it well. It might have something to do with the quality of the writing.
As I mentioned, there are probably some HT cosplayers who never have read the novel but have watched the Hulu series. But though the latter departs from the former in plot—it's more of a dystopian soap opera—in spirit the two are identical.
The funny thing about futurist fiction is that it eventually becomes alternate-history fiction. "Nineteen Eighty-four" can be read in that sense today. You may recall that writing in the late Forties, Orwell forecast an atomic war in the mid-Fifties that set the stage for revolution and the rise of Ingsoc.
Evaluations of literary style are to some extent subjective and so I refrained from raising that issue in my piece. Between you and me, however, I found Atwood's style to be rather turgid.
what is a "white male supremacy"?