Misadventures in Blissville

“Jezebels”

So Nick, right? We’re on to Nick in our origin story round-up. In the before-time, in the long-long ago, Nick was an unemployed loser just lookin’ for a job, Son. He gets into a tangle at the local employment agency, Worthy Path Career Counseling (creepy name with religious connotations). He basically gets “witnessed” to by a Son of Jacob, who gives him a few pointers on discipline and responsibility. Where are we? Five years ago? Ten? This is when I began to suspect that Gilead was a Socialist construct. The man he talks to speaks about Capitalism with disdain. He speaks of a plan to set the Country right and clean up the mess. He tells Nick he’s not alone, and I wonder why Nick has to be a bad apple so that the Sons of Jacob could clean him up and set him on the “right path.” June finds Fred waiting for her in her bedroom. He tells her he’s going to take her out for a night on the town. He even shaves her legs. The leg-shaving scene is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen in any television show or movie, or anything. He asks her if she remembers how to put on makeup. It’s been three fucking years. He wraps her up in a slinky dress. Elisabeth Moss is a handsome woman, but she’s hardly glamorous. I wouldn’t even call her sexy, but it takes all kinds to make a world, I guess, and I still don’t understand Fred’s attraction to her, or Nick’s. Maybe I’m just being cruel, but if you’re gonna put her kisser up on my big-screen TV, I’m gonna judge her looks. Sorry.

Commander Fred is a man made of desires and tastes. It isn’t enough that he has a devoted, beautiful wife in Serena, no. Her devotion is mandated by the State. She knows her place (she wrote a book about her place), even if it requires her silence, her masquerade of illiteracy, and her reptilian gaze. What Fred needs is a throbbing erection and a throbbing orifice in which to place that erection, and his needs are all that matter. He’s even willing to break the law to get what he wants, just as they all do. This is why we have Jezebels, a brothel at the edge of town, where all manner of depraved acts can be committed under a magic cloak of silence. First rule of Jezebels is you don’t talk about Jezebels – that sort of thing. In a flashback, Nick is a driver for the Elite of Gilead. He overhears talk of rounding up the fertile women to be impregnated. There is some argument about this, but as long as there is “scriptural precedent,” nobody has a problem with it. They also talk about making the wives part of the Ceremony (just as I thought, it’s all made up on the spot) so that they’ll shut up. “White Rabbit” plays rather inappropriately as June tours Jezebels in a strange Eyes Wide Shut-like tableau. “Somebody to Love” would’ve been a better choice, but I don’t think the producers listen to much Jefferson Airplane*. This is where the educated (or infertile yet attractive) women, the doctors, the lawyers, go when they aren’t shunted off to the dreaded Colonies. Isn’t this a nice place?

Jezebels is an enormous mistake for Atwood and the television series, because it puts all of Gilead’s cards on the table. This isn’t just keeping the women in their place. It is a sociopathic fear/lust of women. In a way, Gilead gives or acknowledges in women a supernatural power that must be vanquished or suppressed. Yet, in all this madness, June finds Moira, who did not escape. She’s now a whore named Ruby. What is this obsession with changing people’s names? It’s a little too intellectual a premise to rob someone of their identity. Nick uses his Eye credential to get information from a Martha working at Jezebels about a Commander who has bent the rules. It’s interesting he doesn’t use his knowledge of Fred to bring him down (unless he worries about hurting June in the process). Nick remembers the discovery of the previous Offred hanging from the ceiling in her bedroom. At Jezebels (which, I don’t know, it’s kind of a cute name, it sounds like a chain of restaurants or night clubs), Fred wants to have sex with June, like for real, not this ridiculous Ceremony. June slips out to find Moira. She hears sounds, sees images of violent and depraved sexuality. The women are brutalized, of course – what else is new? Do we expect any less of this show? Moira tells June she was rescued by Quakers (I don’t understand – do they have “Quaker” I.D. cards or something) but they were killed for harboring her. Moira was captured, given a choice: the Colonies or Jezebels. Wait a minute. They gave her a choice? Her spirit has been broken. She lives in fear now.

We do learn a little more about the Eyes of Gilead. They’re a little less than snoops, and more like tattle-tales, put in place by the top brass to ensure loyalty from their Commanders. My guess is after ratting out so many high-ranking officials within Gilead, Nick was entrusted with the duties of an Eye. The photography of the show is stunning but the Kubrickian symmetry of the compositions is undermined by excessive use of tight depth-of-field shots in order to evoke an almost Pavlovian emotional response to the visual. As such, and because this practice is repeatedly used, there is no evolution in the cinematography. Same with the wardrobe (which I’ve heard dubbed, “Hyatt Regency” – all drab and lifeless, but for the bright, blood red of the handmaid cloak. The show is way too polished for the effect it is trying to achieve. June yells at Nick, because of her anger over the atrocity and hypocrisy of such a place as Jezebels, about how such a fiery and fierce lesbian as Moira can die on the inside because all she had in her heart was anger, and that really is all she had. I don’t know why Nick has to hear this. It’s not his fault, right? Or is it the fault of all men? Serena returns from wherever the hell she was and presents June with a gift: a music box with a dancing ballerina. We get more aggravating purple prose from June as she etches words into a wall. “You are not alone.” Cute.

* What happened to Jefferson Airplane? Is Gilead paying royalties to Jefferson Airplane for use of the song, or are royalties not considered part of the framework because it isn’t in the Bible? What happened to Grace Slick? At the age of 79, would she be considered a Martha? Or did she, you know, blow a pilot to get her safely away from Gilead when she saw the trouble coming down?