Chapter 7: The Perks of Being Bedridden

As we all know, the good thing about being ill is that you can watch all the tv you want without feeling guilty. And you do watch it - or at least I did, most of this week, after I came home with a staggering earache following my German class on Tuesday. (And yes, I do think there is a causal relationship between the two.) Now I think about it, I felt too ill to watch TV to being with: in a haze of exhaustion, I only had the energy to make myself pasta and crawl into bed with my clothes still on. Between naps, however, I finally finished reading The Handmaid’s Tale.

I know what you’re all internally shouting at me: how could I reach the venerable age of 24 without reading The Handmaid’s Tale?! Believe it or not, it is my first Atwood, too. I read some of the Penelopiad when I was at Oxford, but I was very touchy about my Homer at the time (still am: one of the collateral damages of being a Classicist). The reason I had never read The Handmaid’s Tale is because I knew I needed to be in the right mood for something very dark and possibly psychologically damaging; well, two months in Cambridge have served at least that purpose. I had read the first few pages so many times in the bookshop, toying with the idea of visiting Gilead, that I already knew them by heart. “Waste not, want not. I am not being wasted. Then why do I want?” Atwood is obsessed with words. She can write paragraphs and paragraphs just moving around a word, dancing around it like around a fire, making it small like the flame at the end of a match or build it into an enormous bonfire to lit the night with. “Waste not, want not. I am not being wasted. Then why do I want?” These words still echo in my head from time to time, unexpected and unlooked for, a drop falling from the end of a sink though the night … Anyway. You see, that is what Margaret Atwood did to me, she got into my head and I can’t chase her out anymore. I have read the usual dystopian novels in my youth, and I remember how shocked I was by Fahrenheit 451 and much more so by 1984, but neither of those drilled into my brain like The Handmaid’s Tale. The thing is, she does it quietly: there isn’t much in the book that is unimaginable or immediately harrowing, not if you live in the era of Trump, Brexit and Salvini (the Italian version of Trump, with his own special Russiagate - check him out if you want to feel better about your country.) Yet, every time I fell asleep reading The Handmaid’s Tale, I was transported to Gilehead. Again, not the more brutal, obviously distressing scene, but the quieter ones, like going down the stairs in the Commanders’ house or walking around in the Red Centre, scenes which wouldn’t have been scary if I hadn’t felt so vividly the sense of despair which pervades every page of the novel. Oh, and the ending. Genius. I will never read or write on ancient history the same way again - which is a pretty big deal, since I am supposed to be an ancient historian.

I guess this turned into something about how amazing The Handmaid’s Tale is rather than something on how much tv I watched, and even that was meant as a prelude to how much I loved - loved - The Morning Show, which came out today on Apple tv. I tried to watch it on my laptop but I couldn’t, which is annoying, but still: Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston in the same show would be enough to make me watch anything through any available media. I knew I’d love the show ever since the trailer came out, because I loved that film with Rachel McAdams, Morning Glory, which is also about a morning show. But this was something else. The energy, the dialogue, the anger! Every time Jennifer Aniston shut a drawer or shouted or just told people to fuck off (note to self: next time I watch it I should organise a drinking game), I wanted to sing. It was liberating like a Greek tragedy is supposed to have been - cathartic in the sense of ‘watch Steve Carrel destroy a tv so you don’t have to destroy yours’. I mostly liked the way they addressed the “me too” movement: it made me feel uncomfortable at times, but I guess that is the point. But why only three episodes?? PLEASE, REESE, I WANT MORE!

Now I could elaborate some philosophical reflection on how The Handmaid’s Tale and The Morning Show are really about the same thing, but I have used all of my brain-time for today, so I’ll read The Rules of Magic instead.

P.S. I have recently written this article but wix is being silly in not allowing me to edit the website. Anyway, you can check it out here:

https://rabbitholemag.com/the-hand-on-the-wall/

#themorningshow

#thehandmaidstale