Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 18, 1990 TAG: 9003222321
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The film is called "The Handmaid's Tale," based on a novel by Margaret Atwood. Reviewer Ted Baehr summarizes the plot in the publication, "Movieguide":
"Set in America at the turn of the [21st] century, religious right-wing fundamentalists have overthrown the government and replaced it with a numbingly repressive society. Reading is outlawed, minorities and `non-believers' have been sent to work camps while white women are compelled into the roles of wives, domestics and childbearers. The different classes of people wear identical costumes and are identified by bar-code bracelets read by scanners at military checkpoints.
"The cumulative effect of pollution, nuclear accidents and genetic experimentation have finally taken their toll, rendering most women infertile. Those still capable of childbearing are deemed `handmaids' and are assigned to Commanders, men of the ruling elite.
"Refusing to submit to life under the new regime, Kate tries to escape to Canada, but gets caught at the border, is tested for fertility and sent to a training center where she is forced to become a handmaid. There, Kate meets Moira, a lesbian whose fertility has saved her from a `gender treachery' crime punishable by public hanging.
"Training completed, Kate is renamed Offred and assigned to a barren couple, Fred, an important Commander and his wife, Serena Joy, a TELEVISION EVANGELIST!"
All of this takes place in a town with the biblical name, Republic of Gilead. The makers of this film want us to believe this is what America will be like if people committed to the conservative social agenda prevail and extend constitutional protection to unborn babies.
That the film is designed to do more than entertain was made plain last week when 500 pro-abortion leaders joined their ideological relatives from Congress and assorted other spokesthings for the leftist social agenda at a screening in Washington.
"This is not science fiction," author Atwood addressed the audience. "Everything you see has been done by somebody, somewhere, sometime."
The scheduling of the screening was anything but coincidental, since Congress last week was taking up a bill known as the "Right to Privacy and Reproductive Freedom," a measure of dubious constitutionality that its sponsors hope will block states and the Supreme Court from enacting additional restrictions on abortion.
That members of Congress, including the supposedly moderate Virginia Sen. Charles Robb, would support this propagandistic, bigoted trash with their presence at the screening is beyond excuse.
The editorially pro-abortion Washington Post gave the film and its related political events two straight days of gushy coverage, including two articles in its well-read "Style" section and a followup piece with one of the film's stars, Natasha Richardson, daughter of left-wing actress Vanessa Redgrave.
Imagine for a moment that someone designed a film to deny blacks their civil rights. The film might show blacks taking drugs, but not drug-free black youth. It might show blacks on welfare, but not blacks working as executives in corporations who have strong families. It might depict corrupt black politicians, but not honest ones. The community outrage would be loud and justified.
"The Handmaid's Tale" takes an identical approach with different targets. The menu includes anti-Christian bigotry, profanity and obscenity, adultery, lesbianism, female nudity, violence and blasphemous distortions of the Bible.
Whether one is outraged or sees a book or film as merely an exercise of artistic privilege depends on whose ox is being gored.
"The Handmaid's Tale" is strident feminism's last gasp, and a distinctly unpleasant gasp it is. It is a desperate attempt to keep the door open to abortion on demand, a door that is beginning to close ever so slowly. Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB