As many of you may have seen over the weekend, The Handmaid's Tale cast (specifically, Elisabeth Moss) from the new Hulu series were under fire for refusing to call the story a feminist one.
Here's the article with the full story:
http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/04/handmaids-tale-hulu-feminist-elisabeth-moss
And here's Moss's quote that caught flack:
“Well, they’re both human beings. They’re the same height,” she quipped, adding later, “For me, [The Handmaid’s Tale is] not a feminist story. It’s a human story because women’s rights are human rights. So, for me it’s, I never intended to play Peggy as a feminist. I never intended to play Offred as a feminist. They’re women, and they’re humans. Offred’s a wife, a mother, a best friend. You know, she has a job. And she is a person who’s not supposed to be a hero, and she falls into it. And she kind of does what she has to do to survive, to find her daughter. It’s about love, honestly, so much of this story. So for me, you know, I never approach anything with any sort of, like, political agenda. I approach it from a very human place, I hope.”
For me, this seems like a canned answer from Moss -- one which Amazon should be quite ashamed they concocted. Why would an up and coming studio adapt one of the most beautiful and controversial pieces of 20th century literature at this moment, today? Because it is relevant - now more than 10, or even 20 years ago. And for the lead actress to avoid confronting women's rights and equality - one of the main themes of the novel (which, by no accident, is one of the most pressing issues facing America in the current political climate) is quite a cop out by the marketing powers that be. It would be naive to think Amazon execs, the showrunners and Moss didn't discuss these themes extensively during the making of the show - so why not open up that conversation to the public too?
In my mind, they're afraid to politicize a new series. They're afraid to marginalize it. And if this is just some marketing ploy, the negative attention they've received over the last 48 hours, no matter how good the show is to save itself, will undoubtedly make them second guess their strategy.
I always find it frustrating how media/tv/films whatever it may be need to automatically align themselves as "political" or not, especially because it seems Hollywood has such a warped texture attached to that word. Political doesn't have to mean "bad" or "preachy," but that discourse seems to be here to stay. Im pretty shocked by her quote in this instance with a story so crucially and irrevocably connected to feminism. I thought that recently we'd started to shy away from the "fear of being labeled feminist/political," but this seems like a step backwards.
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