I think that the hopefulness of TT is necessary. If Atwood had written this during the Obama Administration, it could have been much grimmer but it would have also been something that didn't need writing.
I think she was hoping for something along the lines of the Nuremburg trials, post fall - so Gilead starts to tear itself apart, there is outside intervention, and then her files become a roadmap to prosecute the people who perverted the 'purity' of Gilead and it's ideals? This with a healthy dose of 'I was here, I mattered, I did the best I could even as a woman in a very male dominated world'. Or that is how I read it.
It wasn’t clear to me how Aunt Lydia’s documents were supposed to bring down Gilead. The regime was in complete control of the media inside the country, and publicizing it outside the country wouldn’t change anything, since the rest of the world would already know about the regime’s repression. Unless Aunt Lydia was hoping for the world to launch an armed attack.
When you wrote "Trump and Putin and the modern kleptofascists, in contrast, they sell continually this dystopian chaos, this vision that it's all hell..." and "We're bringing the mother country back into her glory/we're making America great again, but somehow it's always an urban hellhole, too..." it really reminded me of the last paragraph of Mike Davis' excellent Planet of Slums:
"This delusionary dialectic of securitized versus demonic urban places, in turn, dictates a sinister and unceasing duet: Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side."
He's talking about slums in low-income countries with totalitarian regimes but, since we're talking dystopias, I've seen plenty of comments in this thread that don't show surprise at the possibility of the US ending up as one. Anyway, I think Davis is trying to be positive...by saying that resistance eventually works?
IMO the Econo class and the proles, in both Atwood's and Orwell's books, seemed to be the only people who led lives that were even halfway normal by our standards.
I didn't see the series. To me, Aunt Lydia was a character who in real life exists in any number of extreme situations. i.e., she survives by constant rationalization and Devil's-bargain compromises. But none of us can be sure that we wouldn't have done the same in a similar circumstances.
When I was in college I took a film theory class that included a viewing of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Most of us would live to think that if we were living in 1930s/WWII Germany we'd have seen right through the Nazis but that film did raise some doubts about that.
I think that the hopefulness of TT is necessary. If Atwood had written this during the Obama Administration, it could have been much grimmer but it would have also been something that didn't need writing.
I think she was hoping for something along the lines of the Nuremburg trials, post fall - so Gilead starts to tear itself apart, there is outside intervention, and then her files become a roadmap to prosecute the people who perverted the 'purity' of Gilead and it's ideals? This with a healthy dose of 'I was here, I mattered, I did the best I could even as a woman in a very male dominated world'. Or that is how I read it.
Test
I remember when Dok was a mere non-commenter like the rest of us.
Now look at him. Reading books and all that, like a common elitist .
Aw, shucks
It wasn’t clear to me how Aunt Lydia’s documents were supposed to bring down Gilead. The regime was in complete control of the media inside the country, and publicizing it outside the country wouldn’t change anything, since the rest of the world would already know about the regime’s repression. Unless Aunt Lydia was hoping for the world to launch an armed attack.
When you wrote "Trump and Putin and the modern kleptofascists, in contrast, they sell continually this dystopian chaos, this vision that it's all hell..." and "We're bringing the mother country back into her glory/we're making America great again, but somehow it's always an urban hellhole, too..." it really reminded me of the last paragraph of Mike Davis' excellent Planet of Slums:
"This delusionary dialectic of securitized versus demonic urban places, in turn, dictates a sinister and unceasing duet: Night after night, hornetlike helicopter gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side."
He's talking about slums in low-income countries with totalitarian regimes but, since we're talking dystopias, I've seen plenty of comments in this thread that don't show surprise at the possibility of the US ending up as one. Anyway, I think Davis is trying to be positive...by saying that resistance eventually works?
One of the things I'm noticing about TT is the absence of specifically religious references.
But then, I'm one of those cranks who doesn't take kindly to attempts to dictate to me what to like or not like.
Re-enacting a "Particicution" event might be problematical.
Characters in TT were Offred's daughters? That's news to me but then I haven't finished the book yet.
One of the best cliffhangers in movie history -- literally.
IMO the Econo class and the proles, in both Atwood's and Orwell's books, seemed to be the only people who led lives that were even halfway normal by our standards.
One of the more, shall we say "strained" rhymes in songwriting history:
"Told me love was too plebeianTold me you were through with me, 'n'....."
I didn't see the series. To me, Aunt Lydia was a character who in real life exists in any number of extreme situations. i.e., she survives by constant rationalization and Devil's-bargain compromises. But none of us can be sure that we wouldn't have done the same in a similar circumstances.
When I was in college I took a film theory class that included a viewing of Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will. Most of us would live to think that if we were living in 1930s/WWII Germany we'd have seen right through the Nazis but that film did raise some doubts about that.
Apparently the Schlafly (HA!) Cafe specialized in warm milk.
I read some parallels in the Atwood's references to "roles" and "spheres" re men and women.