Look What You Made the Handmaids Do

By Nancy Colasurdo

Not so long ago I posted on Facebook about the escalating number of obituaries I wouldn’t mind reading. It was the nicest possible way I could express that nearly every day, I think of how much better the world would be if some specific people died.

This is not a side of myself I consider pretty or admirable. I don’t like it.

I think that’s why I had such a powerful reaction to the opening of the second-to-last episode of The Handmaid’s Tale. The handmaids and others rose up against their oppressors, and as they marched down the street -- a vision in their (now) power red robes with angry, determined faces – they realized they were being chased by trucks.

Suddenly an explosion takes out the chasers as heroine June Osborne yells, “Run!” The women pile into awaiting getaway trucks.

And all the while, the Taylor Swift track underneath is “Look What You Made Me Do” from her Reputation album. If you’re not familiar with the tune, it’s a driving, forceful song with a repetitive chorus about what circumstances can make us do.

Let me first say this. If you’re one of those self-aware people like me and you’re thinking, no one makes us do anything because we have free will and we’re ultimately responsible for our actions, I’m with you. Technically.

But emotionally? The stuff that makes me want to read some people’s obituaries comes from that human, raw place we can go years and years without tapping into, until a bunch of elected officials and the uninformed people who vote for them try to turn our beloved country into a soulless, lawless place. Or at the very least take away our goddamn Social Security.

Then it becomes me reacting to the news of the day and coming to a realization. Oh wow, am I wishing people dead? Again? My apartment walls bear witness.

Ugh. Oh …

Look what you made me do.

Sing it with me.

Swift wrote the song as she emerged from her much-publicized “break” after being humiliated and dragged by Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. It made for a bust-through-the-door kind of reentry, as the song (and album) was not only commercially successful, but she did a number on dreadful people who brought out something in her she didn’t even know was there. I think we call it anger.

Look what you made me do.

It’s a killer song. Pardon the pun as I bring this back to The Handmaid’s Tale.

The TV series and the song are so much bigger than what drove the respective artists at conception. Both are an evocative commentary on our times under a Trump regime. It’s why I cheered when the bombs blew up the trucks of evil men in that opening scene. It’s why the plane with the commanders exploding in the air was so fucking satisfying. The series decision makers knew – those flames lingered … and lingered. I had happy tears with June, even though the love of her life was on that plane.

Look what you made me do.

Who wants to feel like we are being oppressed? Silenced? Hardened?

I don’t want to be hardened. One of the most excruciating parts of watching The Handmaid’s Tale is seeing good people become hard, vacuous, unrecognizable to themselves.

It’s why June’s reunion with Luke and Moira in Canada is far from smooth. She’s become a victim coated in steel. Beaten, raped, subjugated – all for being a “fertile” female. It’s like, what more can you do to me? Not to mention being separated from her kidnapped child.

We watch women kill in revenge on this show. We also get a stark picture of what are known as “the wives” in the series. The women who love their patriarchy and the status it affords them (sound familiar in real life?). Even a woman as smart and accomplished as Serena. She falls for the man shit and, frankly, the God shit.

Not saying there isn’t a god. It’s just not a picture of Gilead that comes to mind when I think of a gracious and just higher being.

So, so much to process.

Earlier on, I’m gasping as Aunt Lydia is slapping a comatose girl across the face in her hospital bed. By the series end, she repents and fights her own impulses and is instrumental in reuniting the precious handmaid Janine with her toddler daughter.

Commander Lawrence ultimately sacrifices himself and carries a bomb on a plane filled with commanders even though the plan was to drop it off before anyone saw him. He gets caught and boards anyway, knowing his fate. Nick ascending the plane steps at the last minute made me exclaim out loud. Nooooooooo. I guess there’s a bit of a romantic in me even in the worst circumstances.

I still can’t stop thinking about the fact that the men killed Commander Putnam for rape. Rape! Because he had sex with his under-age handmaid before the actual ceremony allowing him to – what? – rape her under the law? If you’re not familiar with the premise of the story, it’s that men with barren wives take young, fertile women (handmaids) into their homes and have sex with them while the wives hold down the handmaids.

Procreation for everyone!

I loved the scene where Moira and June – best friends before Gilead took over America – are in the throes of executing a plan to kill the commanders when they have a conversation initiated by Moira. It’s about June’s emotional selfishness and how sometimes it feels like she alone is allowed to have PTSD around the whole vile experience. Very real life. Showed extraordinary emotional intelligence.

Later in the same scene, as the pair is waiting for a safe time to escape a hotel room, a guard walks in and doesn’t just threaten to expose them. He expresses his intent to rape them and throws Moira on the bed.

At that point, the highly conscious viewer in me emerged. In my mind, in that quick moment, I begged the writers to not make us sit through Moira and June being raped again. I think at this stage it would have broken all of us. So yes, ladies, overtake and incinerate the bastard.

Look what you made me do.

In another mind-blowing moment, I felt nothing but relief when June stabbed a vile commander in the face.

Look what you made me do.

So many of us don’t like the side of ourselves that emerges when someone pushes our buttons. That’s at a base level. But then there are these times that are so egregious that it brings out the worst in us. Pettiness and vindictiveness are one thing. Pushed to the brink of violence is another.

Perhaps unwittingly, yet oh so prescient, Swift’s lyrics capture it:

I don't like your little games
Don't like your tilted stage
The role you made me play
Of the fool, no, I don't like you
I don't like your perfect crime
How you laugh when you lie
You said the gun was mine
Isn't cool, no, I don't like you

But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time
Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time
I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined
I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!

Look what you made me do.