After reading the prompt for this blog entry, I immediately knew that I wanted to write about the show The Handmaid’s Tale. This show is a perfect representation of gender roles and how toxic these roles can become, and how whether or not we understand it, social class affects the lives of everyone on this earth more than we know. However, for this prompt I will stick to one cultural aspect: Gender roles.
The Handmaid’s Tale is a perfect representation of the way each gender views each other: Women view men as overpowering, dangerous and controlling and men view women as submissive, confusing and creators of life. However, despite these views being set into place by the premise of the show, a close look into each character shows that this is not the case- each person is not a “one size fits all” into their gender stereotypes. Despite the fact we see some characters playing exactly into this stereotype, such as commander Fred Waterford being exactly this (overpowering, dangerous, controlling) and handmaid Janine being exactly her stereotype (submissive, confusing, and creator of life) we still get to see that despite the ways each gender views each other, it isn’t true for each person (for example, characters June and Nick both stray from these stereotypes).
While things are a little different because of the dystopian society that this show is set in, we get a good understanding of the ways that these stereotypes affect us and the world around us. After all, it is simply because of these stereotypes that Gilead (the setting of The Handmaid’s Tale) exists and why there are the Handmaid’s vs. the Commanders- the handmaids (women) being controlled by the commanders (men). Femininity is suppressed while masculinity is celebrated in this show, as this reflects the way open and free Femininity is often paired with promiscuity and Masculinity is often paired with strength and courage in our modern society. The Handmaids Tale takes these societal issues with gender and puts a spin on it to the most extreme circumstances, yet highlights this cultural aspect and all of its problems wonderfully.
sydney poynter 