The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books was this past weekend, April 22 & 23, 2017, at the University of Southern California. Margaret Atwood was one of the headliners at the book festival. She is the author of more than 40 books of fiction, poetry and critical essays. Her novels include Cat’s Eye, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada, The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize, and Oryx and Crake, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize.
Her novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, has been adapted as a TV series by Hulu. Atwood's panel on Sunday was entitled, "The Handmaid's Tale: from Page to Screen", which was held in USC's Bovard Auditorium. Atwood was joined by Bruce Miller, the creator and showrunner of The Handmaid's Tale TV series, which premiers on Hulu on April 26th. Miller is a producer and writer, known for “Eureka” (2006), “The 100” (2014) and “ER” (1994), among other projects. The Q & A with Atwood and Miller was facilitated by Mary McNamara, the assistant managing editor for arts and entertainment at the L.A. Times. In promotion of the upcoming Hulu series, women dressed as handmaids walked across the campus at USC. If you approached one of them, you were handed a card that says, "Don't let the bastards get you down".
At the panel, Bruce Miller talked about his love of The Handmaid's Tale from the first time he read the book, about 30 years ago. He said being able to work with Margaret Atwood and develop the series was a dream come true for him. He and Atwood consult regularly on details of the book, and the TV adaptation process. Miller discussed everything from costume design and casting, to the cinematography for the series.
Not only is Atwood closely involved with the adaptation, she also makes a cameo appearance in an episode. There are a few things from the book that have been changed in the Hulu series, for example, the actors playing the Commander and his wife are younger than in the book. Also, in the Hulu series, there are bi-racial characters, where there are none in the book. When changes like these were made, Miller collaborated closely with Atwood to discuss rationales for them, and to make sure the changes were acceptable to Atwood. In the case of casting younger actors to play the Commander and his wife, this was done to increase the sexual tension and rivalry between those characters and Offred. As for having bi-racial characters, the idea is that the dystopian world of The Handmaid's Tale in the Hulu series is a world that came to be after present-day 2017, and, therefore, reflects society as it exits now, vs the world that existed in the novel, and the time the novel was written.
There has been some controversy around labeling The Handmaid's Tale as a "feminist" story vs a "human" story. While Atwood and Miller did not really talk about this controversy in any detail at the panel, Atwood did say that The Handmaid's Tale is not a human story only to those who do not consider women to be human. Atwood stated that, when she wrote the book in the 1980's, it was partially in response to the political climate at that time. Atwood stated that the rhetoric at that time was getting more conservative, and more anti-women, with attempts to roll back gains that had been made for women's rights, particularly reproductive rights. She admits to a definite point of view, and that, in this regard, the novel can be described as feminist. However, she balked at the idea that feminist agendas are separate from, or different than, human agendas.
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Labels: Author Appearances
