On Sunday night, the Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale won two Golden Globe awards: Star Elisabeth Moss took one for lead drama actress, and the show took one for best drama series. In a question-and-answer session after the second award, executive producer Warren Littlefield announced that the entire cast had effectively joined the “resistance” against President Donald Trump.
“There were a lot of times we wish we were not as relevant as we are. We went into development and then into production, and the world was a very different-looking place. It was not a Trump world,” Littlefield said, recalling that production for The Handmaid’s Tale began before Trump won the November 8, 2016, presidential election.
“And then, mid-way through the first season, the reality changed. And I think each and every day we’re reminded of what we carry forward, a responsibility to Margaret Atwood’s vision and also to be a part of the resistance,” the executive producer added.
As Littlefield mentioned the “responsibility” to the “resistance,” no cast member on stage shook his or her head. It seems the producer really did speak for the team behind The Handmaid’s Tale in expressing their television show as an act of opposition to the president.
Littlefield went even further, however. He added, “And today we also join the resistance for Time’s Up.” The “Time’s Up” campaign is an offshoot of the #MeToo movement. It calls for a legal defense fund for women who claim to have been sexually assaulted, legislation to punish companies for allegedly fostering harassment, a drive for gender parity in Hollywood, and for women at the Golden Globes to wear black in solidarity.
Women — and many men — did express solidarity by dressing in black at the Golden Globes. Each member of The Handmaid’s Tale did so. Indeed, a group of protesters dressed up as handmaids outside the Golden Globes.
HOLLYWOOD HANDMAIDS MAKE THEIR DEBUT. #TimesUp on sexual violence in Hollywood. @goldenglobes #SilentNoLonger pic.twitter.com/pduAX19WWV
— Hollywood Handmaids (@HHandmaids) January 7, 2018
In these remarks, Littlefield has cast Trump not only as guilty of sexual assault (which remains unproven), but of attempting to bring to pass the kind of dystopia The Handmaid’s Tale presents.
The Handmaid’s Tale, a show based on the 1985 book by Margaret Atwood, depicts a dystopian future. Following a calamity that makes most women infertile, the United States has been coopted by a movement known as “Gilead,” which removes all autonomy from women.
Gilead removes women’s property, fires them from their jobs, and forces them into a stratified society based extremely loosely on one specific Bible passage. The government assigns fertile women to the position of “handmaids,” silent servants who are systematically raped in order to bear children.
The idea that Donald Trump or any of his allies or staff would support this kind of misogynistic regime is ludicrous. Even so, liberals have compared Trump’s healthcare law to The Handmaid’s Tale, they have protested against pro-life legislation by dressing up as handmaids, and they have sung impeachment-themed Christmas carols in front of the White House dressed in handmaids costumes.
Somehow, crazed pro-abortion liberals seem to think that if Trump and pro-life evangelicals really got their way, women would lose all their rights, all their autonomy, and would end up being systematically raped — all justified by some obscure Bible verse. In other words, they hate conservative Christians and Donald Trump so much that they have no idea what these people actually believe.
By endorsing this absurd argument, Littlefield has spread a ridiculous and malicious lie, and associated the entire team of The Handmaid’s Tale with it.
Ironically, the closest comparison to The Handmaid’s Tale in America came not out of Washington but out of Hollywood, with the revelations that Harvey Weinstein allegedly used his position to force more than 50 women to have sex with him in order to get ahead in Hollywood. Even if every accusation against President Donald Trump is correct, the president’s misdeeds would utterly pale in comparison to Weinstein’s.
Trump does face some serious allegations, and his Access Hollywood comments were disgusting, but he is far from a Handmaid’s Tale president, and anyone who cannot see this is fooling himself. If liberals are dead-set on connecting The Handmaid’s Tale to real life, they should look at Iran, where women are not allowed to show their faces in public, or at North Korea, where women who get pregnant in China are beaten to have miscarriages.
As for Donald Trump, whatever his personal vices, he has elevated women to positions of authority before and during his presidency.
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