Cancel the Fourth? Fuck it . . . nah
Our trip to Yellowstone left us behind on several TV shows, and me especially on The Handmaid's Tale, since Shobhit has no interest and I thus have to catch up on my own time. I was three weeks behind but watched two episodes last night. By tomorrow, unless I can get to last week's episode this evening, I'll be two weeks behind again.
It's a very well-produced show, but as I've said before, it's oppressively bleak. And the episodes I watched last night left me with a glimmer of hope, but I feel like I've fallen for that with this show before. And I've already made my decision: if Offred/June isn't any better off at the end of this season, and not one of the villainous characters get any comeuppance, then I'm done. I won't be bothering with season 3 -- unless, I suppose, it begins with revolution in full swing. One of the episodes last night included the rape of a nine-months pregnant woman, for fuck's sake. And the impetus behind it was both to "put her in her place" and to induce labor. That's just the tip of the iceberg with how bleak this show is.
I do consider it a vital cautionary tale, but the original novel stands on its own, and we don't need this shit dragging on for weeks, even years on end. The real world is grim enough already, and we shouldn't need shows like this to illustrate the importance of fighting fascism.
I went ahead and Googled "when will The Handmaid's Tale turn around," and have yet to find any direct answer to that question, but did find this compelling piece at The Verge from a couple of months ago. This passage really gets at the heart of what I'm talking about:
In a lot of ways, stories like this aren’t meant to be lived in long term: the whole concept relies on the high concentration of horror in a discrete, limited package, and it only works “effectively” if audiences get to escape afterward, to consider and, hopefully, learn from it. (This is why Black Mirror works so well.) To me, the show’s renewal — its Game of Thrones-ification, if you will, in which it surpasses its source material — suggests that it has no purpose other than prolonging and deepening misery for those already under Gilead’s boot (because it’s definitely not changing anybody’s mind about anything). And, like Laura, I am tired — too tired for that.
I just ate my lunch out on the patio. It's sunny today, for the first time in a while -- it hasn't been cold, exactly, but cloudier and cooler than usual for this time of year, highs in the mid-sixties to only occasionally low seventies. We're looking at sunny and 73° today -- 81° tomorrow, the Fourth of July. That makes the holiday several degrees warmer than normal. I really need to remember to put on sunscreen tomorrow -- when the office is closed, so I won't be working.
Shobhit will be, but only until 4:30 pm. I'd say there's about an 85% chance he and I will go down to South Lake Union Park, just as we did last year -- in spite of how much it resonated to me when I saw a tweet reading Cancel the 4th of July, after the news broke that President Fuckwit will be appointing a second Supreme Court Justice. The country is in such a disgusting, sorry state right now that it almost feels disingenuous to celebrate it. Then again, I do love fireworks.
I have exchanged texts with Danielle about her 4th of July plans, as I've spent many Independence Days with her but haven't since 2005. So, although she may have other plans (but told me there's an 80% chance she won't), if she comes up with another idea, I can be flexible. That's probably still a long shot, for two reasons that are related to each other: 1) the 4th is in the middle of the week, which means being out well past 10pm when there's work to get up early for the next day; 2) I live in Seattle and Danielle lives in Renton. Her coming up to brave the Seattle traffic seems unlikely. On the other hand, I still have all day and could hang out with her for a while before the evening, I suppose. We'll see. My guess is nothing will come of this and it'll just be Shobhit and me at South Lake Union Park again. It was pleasant enough last year, and easy enough to walk to and back.
[posted 12:26]