Women, men, power: "Handmaid's Tale," "Succession," "Yellowstone," "GLOW," "CLAWS," more
Spoilers included. At dinner with friends recently, the conversation turned to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the ending of the second season. I thought the season as a whole was powerful in the way it repeatedly emphasized the ruthlessness of the powerful – that the men in charge of Gilead were going to maintain control no matter how brutal they felt they had to be. And that control was not over some women, but all women, as we saw in the execution of a misguided teen (who had been betrayed by her own, control-minded father) and the repeated punishment of Serena. As one of our friends said, Serena thought privilege gave her a pass on society’s worst treatment of women – only she learned otherwise, and finally saw that her “daughter” would be denied even those few things Serena had carried over from the pre-repression years. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the portrayal of women, men and power – not only because of what we see from the men ruling the country (and their, w...