Proper Gander: A Tale Of Two Cities (2018)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

You’d be forgiven for thinking the world was turning into some kind of dystopia, like the old Cold War again but with creepier people in charge. Dystopias have come back into fashion on the telly as well, following the popularity of the adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (see July 2017’s Socialist Standard). Less striking, but still worth a watch is BBC2’s recent The City And The City, a mash-up of a police procedural and dystopian thriller, based on the 2009 novel by China Mieville. The main criterion of a dystopia is that it’s set in a fictional society somehow worse to live in than our own. The City And The City gives us two joyless settings for the price of one. The cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma share the same space, but are divided. They’re not separated by Berlin Wall-style fences and soldiers, but by the citizens of each city being trained to ‘unsee’ the other. Blurry shapes can be made out across the other side of the street, but otherwise the cities could be miles apart. Campaigns to unify the cities are illegal, while most people have just learnt to accept the strange situation. Both Ul Qoma and Beszel have fascist regimes, which have created drab, rule-driven societies. When people cross legally between cities, they must attend a two-week induction course to orientate themselves. Crossing over to the other city without authorisation, and even recognising it, is a grave crime called ‘breaching’, which involves a citizens’ arrest, a nasty interrogation and an unknown penalty.

Although the TV version doesn’t dwell on any meaning behind the populace being blind to what’s around them, it reminds us of what we unsee in the real world. As Andrew McKie wrote in his review of the novel in the Spectator (20 June 2009), ‘all city-dwellers collude in ignoring real aspects of the cities in which they live—the homeless, political structures, the commercial world or the stuff that’s “for the tourists”’. Like the characters in the drama, we can get used to shutting out what we don’t want to confront.

The stylish, imaginative design work almost distracts from how the drama reuses lots of familiar tropes. The police procedural aspect of the story starts with the murder of a young woman, which is investigated by a gruff, troubled cop with a personal connection to the case. The dystopian setting borrows imagery from Cold War-era Eastern Europe, from the styles of architecture down to the propaganda posters. The dystopian plot has echoes of Orwell’s 1984, with its paranoia, the character who flirts with a resistance movement, and harsh punishments for breaking the rules. What’s more original in The City And The City is the weird set-up of the two separated communities, and the truth behind the subversive rumours of a third city, supposedly a utopia.

The City And The City and The Handmaid’s Tale are not the only recent dystopian dramas on television. Last year’s SS-GB was set in an alternative 1941 where Britain was occupied by German Nazis, and several episodes of the anthology series Black Mirror have imagined different hellholes caused by society becoming too reliant on technology. On the big screen, dystopias have been the settings for popular films like Ready Player One, Blade Runner 2049 and The Hunger Games series. These have all followed the usual pattern: the writer takes a particular trend in the real world –such as fascism, surveillance technology or alienation –and extrapolates it until it dominates their invented future. Left-wing principles are criticised in dystopias as much as right-wing ones, as in 1984’s regime as well as in the surprisingly large sub-genre of dystopias aimed at teenagers. Ewan Morrison, writing in The Guardian (1 September 2014), was suspicious of blockbuster young adult dystopias like The Hunger Games, Divergent and The Giver, which he says are ‘whether intentionally or not, substantial attacks on many of the foundational projects and aims of the left: big government, the welfare state, progress, social planning and equality’. He was concerned that modern dystopias surreptitiously instil right-wing libertarian ideals, especially by having individualistic lead characters. A more balanced view, though, is that dystopias should challenge all aspects of capitalist society, left and right. They are warnings of what could happen to society and ourselves if we become complacent to troubling aspects of the world, especially divisions between people. Although with the depressing direction which global politics is taking, dystopias will have trouble keeping up with reality.

Mike Foster

Proper Gander: Maid In America (2017)

The Proper Gander column from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lengthy, weighty, glossy dramas have become a speciality of US television producers in recent years. The more interesting examples have had some political slant: The Americans follows the increasingly complicated lives of Soviet agents undercover in 80s Washington DC, while House Of Cards depicts the power games and machinations in Congress. The premise behind The Handmaid’s Tale (Channel 4) is less familiar, but its themes have wider relevance to society today. The series is an adaptation of the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, who is one of the show’s producers and makes a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo appearance. Leisurely dramatised over ten episodes (with a second series already commissioned), the series has more time to explore its setting than previous stage and screen versions and, arguably, the novel itself.

The story is set in near-future America, renamed the Republic of Gilead when a fundamentalist Christian movement took power following a terrorist attack on the government. Gilead is ruled as a theocracy-cum-military dictatorship, with tropes familiar from other dystopias: stormtroopers, unpersons, secret police (the ‘Eyes’), a strict caste system, surveillance and an underground resistance network. Gilead’s economy isn’t explored in detail; tokens are needed to purchase particular commodities, which could imply some form of state capitalism. Pollution has caused many people to be infertile, so women able to have babies have become a valuable commodity. These ‘Handmaids’ have been appropriated to bear children on behalf of the ruling elite, and are forced to be live-in sex slaves. The drama follows the repressed, trapped life of one such Handmaid, named Offred (literally ‘of Fred’, the Commander who owns her). Other women work as housekeepers or instructors for the Handmaids, and all are forbidden to read, write, own property or go outside unaccompanied. The system is enforced not only by cattle prods and rifles, but also by indoctrination using the language of the Old Testament. When writing the book, Atwood was careful to keep Gilead plausible: ‘One of my rules was that I would not put any events into the book that had not already happened in what James Joyce called the ‘nightmare’ of history, nor any technology not already available. No imaginary gizmos, no imaginary laws, no imaginary atrocities’(New York Times, 10 March).

It would be tempting to draw parallels between Gilead and Trump’s America, although work had begun on televising The Handmaid’s Tale months before he became president. The producers have wanted the series to draw attention to longer-term threats to women’s rights; since 2011, a resurgence of conservative lawmakers in America have passed hundreds of restrictions on abortion and access to birth control. America’s shift to the right with Trump’s ascendancy has made the story more politically charged. Lead actor and co-producer Elisabeth Moss is concerned that people could sleepwalk into an even harsher society: ‘People have to stay awake. And after you wake up, you should get out of bed and start doing things. There is no time later. My worst fear is that people become complacent, and apathetic, again’(Guardian Guide, 10 June). So, The Handmaid’s Tale can be interpreted as a warning against complacency. Offred often recalls her comparatively free life before Gilead was established, raising the question of how society could shift so quickly. Atwood suggests that people would be more likely to drift into accepting oppression if it was couched in pre-existing structures. When writing The Handmaid’s Tale, she imagined such a foundation could be ‘the heavy-handed theocracy of 17th Century Puritan New England, with its marked bias against women, which would need only the opportunity of a period of social chaos to reassert itself’(Guardian Review, 21 January 2012).

Atwood had studied Puritanism at Harvard University, which itself would become one of the novel’s settings. She wrote the book during the mid-80s’resurgence of the right wing in America, which encompassed conservative religious preachers as well as government. ‘One third of all federal budget cuts under Reagan’s presidency came from programmes that served mainly women’(Just A Backlash: Margaret Atwood, Feminism and The Handmaid’s Tale, Shirley Neuman). Atwood also drew inspiration for Gilead from her stays in Iran (then going through its Islamist ‘Cultural Revolution’ and at war with Iraq) and countries behind the Iron Curtain. In Ceausescu’s Romania, for example, contraception and abortion were severely restricted and pregnant women were policed closely, with the aim of increasing the birth rate.

The impact of authority on women is the central theme of The Handmaid’s Tale. Moss said ‘for me, feminism is equal rights for men and women . . . I play a breeder, a host, a woman for whom all of her rights, and all of her family and friends, have been taken away. She has nothing. So, yes, it is a feminist story’(Guardian Guide, 10 June). Atwood has said that the book is ‘a study of power, and how it operates and how it deforms or shapes the people who are living within that kind of regime’(New York Times, 17 February 1986). In the story, those who are oppressed also reinforce the oppression of other people around them, such as when a group of Handmaids publicly blame a rape victim for being assaulted. Atwood said that since she first wrote this scene, it has taken on new relevance in our ‘age of social media, which enables group swarmings’(New York Times, 10 March). The most effective dystopias reveal different facets as their real-life context changes. All speculative fiction is really about the past –  and present –  rather than the future. The Handmaid’s Tale reminds us of the dangers of accepting authority, and its new adaptation is as timely now as it was when it was first written.

Mike Foster