Reflecting on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ and More TV That Dares You to Stop Watching

AB Gray
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“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.” It’s not actually real Latin, more of a joke phrase, but it was last seen carved inside a wardrobe in a first season episode of The Handmaid’s Tale, where it gave downtrodden hero Offred (Elisabeth Moss) inspiration to rise up against her captors. The translation? “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

It’s exactly the kind of worldly wisdom that Offred needed to hear at that moment in time, but it might as well have been delivered directly to the show’s viewers, who by that point had suffered through countless scenes of sadistic behaviour, psychological and physical torture, misogyny, abuse and ritualistic oppression.

An adaptation (and continuation) of the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, The Handmaid’s Tale opened its second season with a terrifying mass hanging and then got cheerier still — we’ve since seen brutal murders, poisonings and countless scenes of men and women being dragged kicking and screaming to their doom… and those are the good bits. We’ve also discovered that the aforementioned Latin message has been sanded off the wardrobe. Or, in other words, it has been ground down. Fitting, for a show that’s keen on snuffing out hope in even its most futile forms.

PEAK BLEAK

The Handmaid’s Tale is just one of a recent crop of bleak TV shows that seem like they’re daring you to stop watching with each passing episode — it’s as if they take great pleasure in creating worlds where great pleasure itself is forbidden.

Take a series like The Walking Dead — a true ‘peak bleak’ phenomenon if ever there was one. Here we have a show that continues a painful slog towards an ending that couldn’t possibly be considered happy. The Walking Dead is set in a world where the vast majority of humanity has been turned into gurning corpses, so it’s not like we’re expecting quickfire gags and silly moustaches, but when did you last truly enjoy an episode? The showrunners go to such great lengths to set a gruesome and nihilistic tone, they’ve begun actively punishing their characters for enjoying fleeting moments of levity.

Any scene like Negan’s infamous double-header Lucille murder spree isn’t just doling out suffering to its characters — it’s making viewers suffer too. Blow by blow, beat by beat, blood spurt by blood spurt, it pummels us into submission, just like it did Rick Grimes and friends.

SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES

The Leftovers.

Even critically acclaimed shows, like HBO’s The Leftovers, have been accused of revelling in too much misfortune and misery. A widely-shared Entertainment Weekly article from 2014 by pop culture writer Melissa Maerz bemoaned the gratuitous opening scene to episode ‘Gladys,’ in which a female character is repeatedly stoned to death over an agonising 88-second sequence: “The scene made me feel like I was being punished for something, maybe for tuning in to watch such a grim show. You want to see people suffer? Well, careful what you wish for — take a look at this!”

Shows like Broadchurch and Top Of The Lake investigate child murder and rape and get progressively more glum from there on in. There was barely a single scene in AMC’s The Killing that wasn’t rain-lashed and miserable. Netflix teen suicide drama 13 Reasons Why gave you way more reasons to switch off than it did to keep watching. The latest series of Ryan Murphy’s American Crime Story, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, started with the savage and bloody murder of the Italian fashion icon, played out backwards and still ended up more depressing than it started. To embark on a new TV box set these days is to expose yourself to approximately 10 hours of doom, gloom and heartbreak.

So why do we continue to tune in? Why do we return week after week for more of the same? It’s a big question, so to answer it we need to think big. Why do we watch TV? Most people would probably tell you it’s because they want to be entertained — maybe they want to enjoy some escapism from the real world.

Sure, we all like well-told stories and drama and great performances — which all of the aforementioned shows have in abundance — but TV isn’t exactly short on well-written, fun, uplifting shows right now either. In fact, the current climate of bleak TV has let light-hearted comedies like The Good Place thrive (it’s mostly set in Hell, but don’t let that put you off) while shows like Black Mirror purposely skewer the downbeat sensibilities of the peak bleak clique with a dark sense of humour (it was hard to watch ‘Crocodile’ from the latest season without thinking it was a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of soul-destroying Scandi drama).

REALITY BITES

The Jinx.

Television in 2018 is a crowded market, and it’s getting harder for shows to be heard among the white noise — even Netflix struggle to promote ‘originals’ on their own service due to the sheer volume of programming. So, for a show to be truly seen these days — for it to deliver its message as intended — it doesn’t hurt if it does so by being extra shocking or upsetting or relentlessly ghastly. The more raw the audience response, the more that show gets talked about — if you’re feeling something, even revulsion, then the show has made its mark.

But maybe escapism from the real world is not really why we watch TV any more — and maybe some TV is closer to home than we’d like to admit. Documentary series like Making A Murderer, The Keepers and The Jinx use real crimes and real people to keep us hooked: the televisual facade between fact and fiction is getting thinner all the time. After all, we don’t have to watch The Handmaid’s Tale to see crying children torn from their parents’ arms, we just have to turn on the news.

Shows like this reflect the real world back at us but in a more palatable form. We can always stop watching if we want to… but we don’t. Perhaps it’s so we can keep reality at arm’s length. But perhaps, subconsciously, we just want to see what happens next.

AB Gray
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