I just saw a video of a radio interview with Margaret Atwood

[lunatica]

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017490948

Ms Atwood has been a consultant on the series with Elizabeth Moss who is the main character Offred and also a producer of the series. Ms Atwood was pretty involved even to doing promotional appearances in various cities. She explained that the end of the first season is also where the book ended so season two is now the speculation of what might happen to her characters, which she is perfectly OK with.

The book was written long before the advent of the internet or electronic social media but Ms Atwood seemed to find these very interesting and talked a bit about how it has changed storytelling and the way readers and watchers interact differently with fiction.

When queried about how she came up with the idea of the Handmaids dystopian society Atwood said that everything in the book has been done before in real life, and of course the interviewer and she talked about what is being attempted now to suppress women’s rights and liberties. The way the suppression of women happens is by taking away their rights, and we see those attempts happening right now. Atwood though, expressed confidence that women will not allow that to happen since we’re already fighting it.

Then she said something that was almost a throwaway comment because the interviewer didn’t pause to flesh it out. They were talking about people using the power of their vote and she said: Ultimately it’s the people who sit on their hands who determine the outcome of elections.

The truth of that felt like those intuitive flashes one gets in the Aha! moments when you recognize the universal Truth of something.

The Handmaid’s Tale televised series started before Trump was elected but it sure fits perfectly with what is happening right now. The serendipity of it is pretty amazing. The timing couldn’t be better for that story to be taking the thunder out of the oppressors in government who are trying to take all our rights away. The book has now become much more than just a novel. I think it’s risen to the level of the classics. Atwood said that if what she wrote has already happened somewhere in the world then it can happen again.

[Achilleaze]

1. Aha!

[lunatica]

3. Did you get that Aha! too

[Achilleaze]

4. More or less. I already realized the hand-sitters were deciding things

...by choosing apathy. But hearing that reality articulated plainly, and in the context of everything else Ms. Atwood observes about the dangerously hate-and-fear driven parallel trajectories of our current political reality and Handmaids Tale, definitely squeezes a long sad sighing "aha" out of me.

[lunatica]

2. Kick

[Nitram]

5. The book affected me in a very powerful way.

I'd be reading it in a coffee shop, and when I walked out everything looked strange because I was so immersed in the reality of the world Atwood created. It is a work of genius.

[lunatica]

7. I know what you mean

You lose a sense of yourself as you get completely absorbed in the story and it takes a little while to get the feelings you were experiencing while reading to dissipate, especially when the feelings involve some fear.

Good writing does that.

[Hortensis]

6. "the people who sit on their hands ... determine the outcome of elections."

Well, if 2016 didn't prove the truth of that, what would? Not voting, throwaway voting didn't just give us Trump and Republican atrocities but cost us everything on our agenda. For now.

COUNTDOWN TO TAKING CONTROL OF CONGRESS AND GETTING TO WORK: 183 days!

[lunatica]

8. .