Yahoo Movies 'The Handmaid's Tale' branded 'torture porn' over gratuitous violence against women
The second season of The Handmaid’s Tale has arrived on television and it is not for the faint-hearted.
The original season was based on Margaret Atwood’s celebrated feminist novel of the same name but this new season continues the story beyond the end of the book and after watching the first two episodes viewers are branding it ‘torture porn.’
The first episode sees gagged women urinating on themselves as they are forced to line up in front of nooses and face death. They are brutalised, electrocuted with cattle prods, threatened with dogs, and in one case one handmaid has her hands chained to a stove and their hands burned.
In several reviews, critics talk of the season’s continuing violence against women and their bodies and now viewers are catching up to that fact and describing it as ‘torture porn.’
I finished the first season of handmaids tale and it was good, now I’m on s2 and……I didn’t sign up for all this torture porn I’m out
— Adelisa (@posppana) May 29, 2018
Channel 4 The Handmaid’s Tale. Second series is a huge disappointment. Repetition of misogynistic violence to women unnecessary- we got that in the excellent first series. I’m out. #tortureporn
— Pat Keegan Poels (@PatKeegan21) May 27, 2018
“Second series is a huge disappointment, repetition of misogynistic violence to women unnecessary,” one viewer tweeted. “I’m out. #tortureporn.”
“The Handmaids Tale is a great show but it’s now starting to whiff of a little torture porn,” another viewer wrote.
The Handmaids Tale is a great show but it’s now starting to whiff of a little torture porn. @HandmaidsOnHulu
— 'Tom Wilson' (@tombasswilson) May 26, 2018
I know that this is incredibly pathetic but I really wish I could watch a slightly edited cert-15 version of Handmaid's Tale with some of the violence omitted. I honestly can't watch it as is anymore.
— Rebecca Reid (@RebeccaCNReid) May 29, 2018
Showrunner Bruce Miller excuses the violence but saying it is based on real-life torture of women in the real world, from Taliban oppression to female genital mutilation.
“We don’t make up some kind of cruelty, I don’t want to do that. I hate that,” he said. “It’s hard because these are things that are happening in the real world. We’re not making them up. But showing them, you do carry some responsibility. The last thing you want to be making is torture porn.”
Scenes of gratuitous violence against women on screen are obviously vile and unnecessary. So it was all more depressing to see them in a 'feminist' TV show like The Handmaid's Tale last night. First half an hour nigh-on unwatchable.
— Jessie Thompson (@jessiecath) May 21, 2018
I lasted 20 minutes into first episode of Handmaid’s Tale season 2. After shackled pregnant woman and handmaid burned on stove. So much lingering on women’s distress and pain. Beyond credible dystopia into cruelest misogyny. I think I’m out.
— Janice Turner (@VictoriaPeckham) May 28, 2018
Elisabeth Moss, who is also an executive producer on the show, claims they made efforts to stop the violence from being too gratuitous.
“When we’ve told the story that we needed to tell,” she told USA Today. “There’s a very dark scene later on in the season, and it was cut down a little bit because it didn’t need to be gratuitous.
“We’re not trying to pound anything down anyone’s throats.”
It seems a lot of viewers would beg to differ.
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