In conversation with Margaret Atwood at the #WITW Summit

[Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi there I'm Michelle Goldberg from the New York Times and I am a rageous Li thrilled to be here with the visionary and renowned writer Margaret Atwood okay so the Handmaid's Tale has always been in certain ways of kind of prophetic book but right after the election even before this even before the series people really started gravitating towards it right it shot up a seller charts immediately after the disaster of November 9th and you know and since then I mean obviously the TV series has been spectacularly successful it won the Emmy for Outstanding series protestors where Handmaid's Tale costumes to signal you know their kind of rage at a depression what do you make of all that I mean what do you make of the books contemporary relevance and do you see it as being kind of content relevant to what's happening in the West right now am I going to say no oh yes it's it's been quite strange because the people in the show which started shooting in September 2016 woke up on the 9th of November and said to themselves were in a different show mm-hmm it's not that anything in the script changed but the frame changed so that people were going to see it differently did I foresee that in 1985 no I didn't I thought we were moving away from that you know it towards it but it was always a possibility in this country because there have always been people who took that view in one way or another going back to the 17th century Puritans not a democracy by the way right not a democracy so the people woke up on November the 9th we're in a different show and I think of anything that became more dedicated to it this is a group of people who are very invested in the show it's not just a job for them and I think that's one reason that it's been so good you can you can tell that they're very talented group of people and they're they're giving it their their best one of the things that's so eerie watching this show now is the flashbacks where things are actually sort of normal but also changing in subtle ways that nobody can quite believe and nobody quite knows how to handle them and suddenly people can say things to you like that they couldn't that they wouldn't have ever said before you said we think we think of progress being a straight line forever upwards but it has never been so you can think you were being a liberal democracy and then bang your Hitler's Germany I mean how scared are you we were talking backstage and you were saying you know well things could be a lot worse so how scared are you about the rise of right-wing populism all over the world all over the world or here well here and but but what's happening here is part of something happening it is let's talk about here for it's okay the United States is very big you may have noticed that and it's it's very diverse so I I'm not giving up hope on it yet and neither are a lot of people living in it giving up hope on it yet and that's why you see such increased political activity such pushback so that that's a hopeful sign and they haven't yet started shooting protests marchers but that's always a bad sign when they right start doing that they they have tried to enact some it's pretty strange laws here and there but but those have not always succeeded so I I see it as a moment like this me too two opposing forces and we're not in the Handmaid's Tale yet or I wouldn't be sitting here and you'd be in jail right so speaking of two opposing forces I mean where do you think we are in the fight for women's equality when you're at a place like this and it seems like there's all these powerful women and you know the future is female we have this you know despicable sexist ogre as president the most famous philosopher you know you're not the most famous philosopher and in your in Canada is this guy Jordan Peterson who says you know well maybe women and men can't even work in offices together he says a lot of other pretty weird things where are we going so here's a hint just a hint people aren't lobsters we kill that we consider they're largely not losers so what do we make of that I think what we make of both of these phenomena is that there's that there was a number of people out there who felt they weren't being heard or who also might have felt that something that quotes ought to have been there's was no longer just automatically available to them and then they and then they're willing to follow people who promise to give them that thing back or to provide that thing for them so I think that's one of the things that happened with with both Trump and Jordan Peterson but Jordan Peterson didn't become famous until people tried to shut him down so that's another lesson yeah that's another lesson well yeah I mean and you actually have fallen I mean you've fallen afoul of you know not just kind of the right-wing backlash but of some feminists purists okay I don't I don't think that feminism and human rights ought to be on opposite sides of the fence because in certain circles in certain circles they are but of course feminism isn't one thing it's about 50 things right so in in certain circles human rights are viewed as some sort of disguise some sort of disguise for male empowerment but if you actually look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights it's pretty favorable to two women because it views women as people how radical so they they aren't on opposite sides of the fence and they shouldn't be on opposite sides of the fence because as often has often been said human rights are women's rights but do you think that that's what I mean you've said you've talked about the terror and virtue phase of a rebel no kidding yeah but I think you say some of this going on in in in certain sequestered parts of societies such as certain universities but I think they're they're moving through that and let us hope they'll come out the other side and realize that if you develop a tool like that for shutting people down the next people that will be used against as you right and that is okay and that's that's that's about as good as I can imagine to the clip we have here from The Handmaid's Tale which I mean from from the first use of the hand mates tell you know about how quickly any sort of curtailment of human rights can be used against if you're really if you're willing to shoot people mhm could have been very fast so are we gonna see they would do she went they were but you are special girls fertility is a gift directly from God he left you intact for a biblical purpose like Milla served ritual you girls will serve the leaders of the faithful and their barren lives you will bear children so lets them so privileged why don't what a great actress she's terrifying I know she knows she's channeling my grave or tidge it's it's strange as an artist to see I mean the first season Hughes fairly closely to your book but now it's about to branch out in all of these different directions is that a strange thing to see as an artist to kind of create a world and then have other people run with it well once in a while that happens to books that they escape from their covers and take on a life of their own so we see a picture of Scrooge we know who that is especially if it's at Christmastime so he's a character who has escaped from his book and gets put into all sorts of other narratives sometimes to get you to to buy things but I think the The Handmaid's Tale has escaped from its book and as being reinterpreted not only by the television series but also by its Raiders so this this movement of dressing as handmaids and going and sitting meekly in legislatures or just standing outside it's it's quite brilliant because nobody can throw you out they're not making a disturbance you're just there right and anybody looking at you knows what that means they they may find it irritating but they can't actually do that much about it and this is gone this is going around the world but it started guess where in Texas it started in Texas and the women had decided to do it sent away for the outfits thinking that would be red and when they arrived they were pink so they said because we have to do something about this so they very quickly devised patterns and sewed those things themselves and then they put the patterns online so that anybody else who wanted to do that could do it as well and this has popped up in all sorts of places including Poland and in England and Croatia and just just here in the Ireland here and there around the world particularly at friction points where governments are trying to either withhold human rights legislation for women or take away rights that women already had no the hen maids tale I mean it's a lot of things but it's really you know a parable about among other things reproductive tyranny what do you think it's gonna happen as you have plummeting birth rates in Western countries all over the world coupled with rising xenophobia I mean it seems like a recipe for really forcing women back into these roles as that's been tried I put nothing into the Handmaid's Tale that had not already been done so it's been tried in several places most notably in Romania under our church our chess COO and he mandated that women had to have four children he mandated pregnancy tests every month and if you weren't pregnant you had to give a reason why as if you could it was him it meant that all these women who couldn't afford them were having too many children and then they're ending up in orphanages and a lot of people jumped out the window so it is really cruel and inhuman to force women to have children if you're not going to give them the money to do that no right and then you're not going to give them any money to bring them up what is that a recipe for once it's a recipe for despair and dance do you is there anything that you can say about season 2 of The Handmaid's Tale I mean I saw well no I'm not I'm asking this not just because of my own personal countdown to April 25th when it debuts I was actually I was able to as a prize for doing this interview see a couple of the first couple of episodes and they were really brutal yeah weird where do you see this story going they don't we don't just say brutal and we say brutal and riveting yes this is a this is a team that is extremely invested in the show they're sticking to my main rule which is nothing goes in that has not already been done somewhere someplace so all of those things need to be researched they need to if the writing team comes up with something they need to be able to show where it came from so they are very dedicated and they're not pulling any punches some people said about the first season well it's so beautiful you know it's so it's so lush and so the photography is so wonderful the colors are so attractive and the showrunners had well we have this idea of disco they're always sort of grim and full of dust and sand and things like the honey said that's that's not usually the way things are right they're often very nice for some people it seems to be the point of them although in this one we see a little bit more of a kind of yes we're going to we're going to the colonies which row is there in the book so cleaning up toxic wastes generally bad for your health right but the colonies in the book sort of were this like off this nightmare that you didn't want but this makes them very real you know so the difference between the television show in the book is that in the book we have only one narrative point of view which is augmented at the end by the historical notes but during the narrative we we can only see at what she can see in the television series we controllin characters that disappear from the view of the central narrator we can follow them and see what happened to them where she cannot write so they've built out the cast of characters they've taken the narrative as it were behind the scenes to places that the narrator could never go to in the book are we gonna find out what made aunt Lydia what she is Oh a ventually I think you know and in anybody's life there are there are a series of choices that that person can make so what choices did the younger aunt Lydia have offered to her or let us say how did people end up in charge of nunneries in the Middle Ages mm-hmm it was a powerful position right went with them within a frame you can only be powerful to this extent but at least you were powerful within that sphere so speaking of power you have a button on it that says it says after meeting you what does that mean what is that that is a movement in Canada Canada is that cold place to the north where we escape when things get really bad when things get really bad here you're all very welcome [Laughter] we'll have a nice hot cup of tea for you and you know to have seen in the show there's a little America up there right just as there was a little Norway in Toronto during World War two so government-in-exile if you like is up there and you can have a nice mattress in a church basement and Sansome soup but you don't have to do that yet in fact we're kind of hoping you don't we're kind of hoping that you stay here and and vote next time [Laughter] okay but after me after me too so so there's there's me too there's times up there's she - mm-hmm she too is for women in other countries and there's after me - which is a Canadian thing that started again in the entertainment business but aims for a an ongoing structure that will provide first of all safe place to report and second a fair process for all including independent third party professional investigators so they've they've thought it through and you can go online and look up after me - and read their nine-point report so the idea is to create more of a due process around the ideas career to create a number of things including immediate support for for sexual assault victims and survivors like immediate support you know to wait for counseling so a number of those things but including fair process due process process is a legal term and not all of these things are legal type cases and as they're not things that you could necessarily bring a criminal charge for so fair process covers independent third party investigation and takes the books that says feminism and Human Rights don't have to be in opposite sides of the fence so you recently told variety and I'm not gonna ask you about the dumb Star Wars thing I was reading about Adams this is more interesting I think because I feel you you recently told variety right after 9/11 they hired a bunch of Hollywood screenwriters to tell them how the story might go next sci-fi writers are very good at this stuff anticipating future events I mean we're at a point in America right now where it seems to me that none of the possible outcomes are plausible so I wonder where do you think things go next well I'm about to say some of my sci-fi writer friends mm-hmm and I will ask them I think it's always there is no the future there is no one the future there are a number of possible futures and which one we get is going to depend partly on what we do now but we also know that you can have a the future all laid out and predict it and then something comes out of nowhere and there goes your interesting plan so there's a couple of ways of thinking about the future that are that are not very productive and one of them is that progress is inevitable and just goes on and on upwards and uppers till you get to the wonderful perfect place that has never been true it's not and it's just an excuse for not doing anything so it's well it's all going to work out anyway right and the other one is everything in circular you can't ever make any real progress because it all just keeps coming round again and that's not true either so I think the only thing that is true is that there are a number of different possibilities and writing dystopias and utopias is a way of asking the reader the question where do you want to live mm-hmm and where you end up living is going to depend partly on what you do now but there's always some wildcards there's always some wild cards and things that people don't see they don't see the consequences of the choices that they're making so any human technology has got a good side a bad side and a stupid side that you didn't anticipate um do you you know do you think that as far as I know there's not been a human society that we're aware of where men and women were truly I mean I guess you hear about a couple anthropological exception let's walk back in time so I do you think we'll ever see one do you think that okay that's a Equality of men and women is a possibility in the modern world okay let's walk back in time yes for a minute so before before wheat before wheat arrived on the scene in the days of hunters and gatherers first of all people were healthier and second so far as we know they were more equal and in the days of nomadic horse herders there really were women who rode around on horseback wearing pants and shooting bows and arrows so that's what the great space the Amazon's on wheat arrives and a couple of things happen number one you've got a surplus and therefore you can pay a standing army and what is your standing army going to defend it's going to defend the territory where you're growing the wheat gets very circular and at that moment we see women being fed less well than men so men are getting meat and wheat and women are only getting wheat and bone diseases so you also want to produce a lot of children to help you grow the wheat and I think that's when things went down the slippery slope but we are now in a different age we're in an age in which upper-body strength to defend the wheat with your sword and an armour and whatnot that's not such a necessity anymore because guess what women can work a keyboard yeah and also they have this thing called our brain so in an age in which brains and keyboards are quite important women get an edge again they they get a better position so I think we are on the up from from the moment when it was wheat and it was nothing but wheat well thank you so much thank you

Channel: Women in the World

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Length: 26min 13sec (1573 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 13 2018