Second Half of The Handmaid's Tale

I thought it best to have a separate posting for the second half of the graphic adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale -- there are different issues raised there -- and also, it's less confusing to have the conversational thread start fresh.

We realize, in the end, that the narrative we've been following turns out to be an historical document -- the subject, indeed, of a presentation at an even more far-future academic conference of some kind. Renee Nault mentions in an interview that she'd been tempted to replace the male lecturer with a woman, but that in this one instance, Atwood nixed the idea. There was a desire, somehow, to make it all more hopeful, but apparently the author wanted to leave things stand. Nault does add, though, a small vignette of a handmaid -- perhaps the future equivalent of a PowerPoint slide -- at the bottom of the frame.

Personally, I'm very fond of the end of the 1990 film, where the former Offred -- brilliantly portrayed by the late Natasha Richardson -- is seen in her trailer, her place of escape, complete with a faithful dog. It is here, we learn, that she recorded -- using what now seems an ancient device known as a cassette recorder -- the narrative that has spilled upon these pages of print, and over them into the imagery of colors of Nault's adaptation.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale first appeared in 1985, at a time when its dystopian religious-state future seemed to some to be -- potentially, at least -- just around the corner. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority organization had emerged as a major political player, along with other evangelical leaders; many decried the rising tide of "secularism" and demanded that their God combine forces with the state. At the same moment, the expansion of mass media -- tame by today's standards, but notable at the time -- gave many the feeling that, with the vast increase in cable channels and the abolishment of the "Fairness Doctrine," the possibility of state control of the media was a real and present danger.

How naive some of these fears seem today -- not because they were groundless, but because when these things really came to pass, they were a good deal more insidious -- and darker -- than anyone back then could have imagined. It's little wonder that the novel has come back into prominence today; Atwood herself has written about the power it's had in its new (juxta)position. The current television series starring Kate Moss is certainly one sign of this renewed relevance; this graphical adaptation by Renee Nault is surely another. Nault, like Atwood, is Canadian, which certainly gives her an ideally parallel perspective on Canada's irksome southern neighbor, but she's also a generation younger, a native of the dynamic, cosmopolitan province of British Columbia. Her style is very much influenced by other arts of the "Pacific rim," drawing in particular from that of Japanese Ukiyo-e prints. And, as we've seen with other graphic novels such as Kristina Gehrmann's version of The Jungle, the presence of red in a dark world is even more dramatic -- not only is it, of course, the color of the habits assigned to handmaids, but it's the color of blood. And here, unlike in Gerhmann's work, it's a bright, bright red, spilling onto and over the frames and margins of the page. Nault has talked about her approach, but bear in mind that, as with our other books, it's we the viewers and readers of this book in whose eyes and hands the ultimate judgement of her success rests.