Popular Culture

No matter what it is you are reading you are almost certain to find some sort of reference to modern day popular culture. It seems that at least now, people find it hard to think and write about something that is so different than the lives they live. Whether it celebrities, events, music or movies, 'pop' culture is all around us. And we don't always realise it either, if you were to read a book that contains two women shopping most people wouldn't think twice about this, yet even this can be considered 'pop' culture.
            While it may seem normal to include notions of our every day life in pieces of literature, it is interesting at the least as to how easily they fit into almost any story. Even in totalitarian novels set in societies completely different from our own they seem to sneak in without our noticing. In one such novel; "The Handmaids Tale" by Margaret Atwood, a seemingly religious society called Gilead is in control of a post apocalyptic society through what is essentially a dictatorship. Even in this flipped world we get glimpses of some very common aspects of our real lives. Certain things we wouldn't think twice about like magazines and scrabble are prized by people who live a twisted life.
          It is perfectly possible that some amount of time stories like these will make very little sense to people. That they'll have positively no clue about the significance of magazines and scrabble, of shopping and hotel rooms. That in the scenes where Offred and the Commander find emotional comfort in the simplest of priveleges, readers won't have the slightest clue what they're doing in the book.
        Al tough, even if it puts a limit to what people can understand of the book, I suppose it makes a lot of sense to use 'pop' culture as a way of describing the characters. To us, or to me at least, most of the 'pop' culture used in Atwood's novel is strongly linked with females, which fits in with the rest of the book. Maybe magazines, shopping and hand lotion are in fact the best ways describe female characters because that is the clearest way we will understand. Maybe 'pop' culture is the most effective way of describing something to an audience because that is the easiest way to connect with an audience. Even if you aren't connecting with everyone.
        The only problem is, not letting 'pop' culture lessen any significance and realism in the story you want to tell. Just because it is popular in our culture doesn't mean it always has or always will and should be treated on an individual basis.

The problem with age

The Problem With Age

Forget racial and religious problems, in my opinion the biggest type of discrimination in every day life is that of age discrimination. Arguably this could actually be worse than the other higher profile types of discrimination. What makes this possibly worse is the fact that age is a field where everyone is equal. As long as they live, everyone will go through the same stages of ageing equally at the same rate. Sure, some people will be more affected by it than others but none the less everyone is as much under its control as the rest of humanity. 

         So, if everyone is equal when it comes to age then how can there be discrimination? This is because while everyone is equal in terms of the rate at which they age, everyone is also unequal in terms of how far along the path of aging they are. For example, common sense would dictate that young children be treated with more respect for two reasons; the first one being that they are vital to survival of the man kind, but also because everyone, no matter how old they are, has gone through that stage in their life and should be understanding towards children. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, it would seem the older you are, the more you forget about your life as a child. The more arrogance you have at being older than other people, despite the key factor in this being something you have absolutely no control in. The time of your birth.
          Something else I've noticed about age is that, even though every single person on the planet pretty much experiences ageing in the same way, there are some incredible stereotyping when it comes to a persons age. There are stereotypes about pretty much every age group; teenagers, middle-aged adults and elderly people to name but a few. These can be almost everywhere in every day life from advertising to books. What else is weird about this is how everyone seems to find this o.k. and almost no one challenges this despite the fact it gets extremely boring after a while. How almost every story has very similar characters due to stereotyping. In Atwood's "The Handmaids Tale" the characters seem to be split between young and old to a certain extent. With the older characters such as the Commander and his wife and Aunt Lydia being the more wise and cynical characters and the younger ones such as Offred and the other Handmaids being slightly more out of control. Even though the age difference between all of them can 't possibly be a huge amount.
       

Any Questions?

Any Questions?

Recently I've finished reading Margaret Atwood's 'The Handmaids Tale", and unfortunately for Margaret Atwood, this has completely ruined my view of her otherwise reasonably decent novel. While I'm not against cliffhangers per se, I find it pretty much spoils a book or movie for me when I'm left with an absurd amount of questions and lack of knowledge of the book itself. When a story is set in a society so different from our own, I feel the author has to make sure the readers understand what is happening up to a certain point. 

           It wasn't just the lack of answers we as readers were given, but also how the last chapter seems to be precisely put in for the sole purpose of clearing up the lingering questions we are certain to still have. Despite what seems to be the purpose of this final chapter, I found myself actually with more questions than I had before. If this wasn't annoying enough, the very last line really got under my skin. "Are there any questions?" is the way Atwood chooses to end her novel. As if  the assumption is that readers has naturally understood this post apocalyptic society and everything within it. Personally, I found this to be rather agitating and left me with bitter memories of the entire book. Not to mention that this paragraph completely and utterly ruined the mood of the book by looking back on this event that to us was the future end of  our civilization. 

           Despite all this, I found myself with rather a few questions. Not so much the character Offred. No, even I was happy to leave her fate on a cliffhanger. But about the general society the story is set in, because personally I think this is by far the most interesting part of the story. For anyone who hasn't read it, the story is set in futuristic society in North America where some sort of biological disaster has caused a lack of child births. To insure the future of the society, a seemingly religious group has taken control in a somewhat Nazi lie regime. 

          This all is clear enough, even to me. But, what isn't clear is to how this society actually came to be accepted by the average person and how it continues to be allowed, especially as it is set in America. Very early on we are introduced to tourists from a Japan that would appear to be similar to ours. To me, this society seems only to continue because it has managed to keep every one under control. Yet if there are tourists that are allowed in, and know about it, then why aren't they doing anything to stop it? They even ask the Handmaids if they are happy so they must be aware that there is an issue. Maybe this simply shows the selfishness of humanity?

symbols and stereotypes

Symbols and stereotypes

When reading through some of the stories and poems I've read regarding women in Literature there have been some major common trends that I have noticed. Most of them are also very common in the real world even today in our society of supposed gender equality. Many of them can be can and are considered insults by modern women. We wouldn't consider them to be of a very educated 'view', yet we can still find them in pieces of literature that have been written by educated women. They can get away with it because they are describing the hardships that women have gone through in the past. Even though, if any of them were to be used in a more modern piece of work then the author, especially if he was a man, would get absolutely slaughtered. 

            If I was a stereotypical 50's man, which for the record I'm not, then the words that would come to mind when talking about women would be; wife, mother, cleaner, cooker, ditsy etc. and the themes that I would think of might be; flowers, gossip, families, nature, simplicity etc. While the authors don't tend to go as far as call a women a ditsy so and so, they still use a lot of these ideas when describing women. In "A room of her peers" the main women in the story is said to be 'like a bird', 'real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid and fluttery.' If the author had decided to say this directly instead of through a character then it would be considered an insult in the eyes of the reader, since 'Bird' is often used as a term to insult women. But because it is said by a friend of the characters it makes complete and utter sense. The author does use a pet bird being kept in a cage and then killed as a metaphor for a wife being kept in a semi abusive marriage until her soul was destroyed.
             Another commonly used piece of symbolism for women is that of flowers. In 'The Handmaids Tale' by Margaret Atwood, flowers are used throughout the story in connection with the two main female characters. Offred, The Handmaid, talks about and is linked with flowers on multiple occasions. However, it is the Commanders wife where the biggest traditional stereotypical comes in. In the very early stages of the book we learn is that it is the wife who is in charge of the garden and takes good care of it because it is one of her few outlets for power. In many other stories, this would be considered distasteful, but somehow it fits in perfectly with the rest of this highly thought of book.

Power and Envy

Power and Envy

As is the case in any society, a big issue in the clouded society of 'The Handmaids Tale' is that of power. We see the story through the eyes of Offred the Handmaid, a character who has every aspect of her life controlled by certain forces. Some of which we see, some of which we don't ( as of yet ). As someone from our current society in Britain, it seems a very harsh way to treat someone that your society depends so heavily upon.  It almost reminded me of the way footballers and actors earn insane amounts of money for the seemingly insignificant work that they do, yet doctors and teachers (to name but a few) earn almost nothing compared to that for the vital work that they do. Both societies seem to treat people they depend upon as dispensable when in fact they are the opposite. This is taken to pretty much the extreme when you consider that handmaids are not only shipped to 'the colonies' (the location of which we don't yet know) if they fail to have a baby by a certain age, but they also can be executed (along with the rest of the society) for seemingly meaningless actions, many of which we wouldn't think twice about in our world. While we only see it from one characters angle, so we don't know the whole story, the society seems to work in a very self destructive way.
             Their entire society depends on the handmaids yet they don't seem to have any power or rights. In a way this makes sense, why leave the future of your people uncertain when you can take measures to ensure it. However, in my opinion, their society still seems to be shifting towards that of a complete dictatorship.
             In fact there are multiple similarities between the Gilead and Nazi Germany. The main one being the way they treat different types of people. Catholics, Jews and assumedly people from other non Gilead religions are hung and some have their bodies strung up on a wall. Men are sectioned off from women on a social level. Women are treated as inferior to men and the work of the handmaids could be compared to that of slave labor in camps like Auswitch.
            A lot of the women actually envy men. The line "Pen Is Envy" seems to be using the an actual pen as a metaphor for a mans penis. As pens and writing is forbidden, Offred gets a rush of power when she is allowed to use it. This seems to reflect the power that men have as the superior gender in this society.
         All of which reminds me of the power the Church used to have, especially in Western Europe. Mainly because how in both societies, logic seems to have been surrendered to ensure complete and utter control over regular people.