Margaret Atwood’s vision of an America in which the conservative Christian right of the ’80s gets the exact patriarchal power-structure it yearned for has retained its power in the intervening decades. But today, men in power don’t even have to use the cloak of the religious right to maintain power and suppress dissent; Donald Trump was able to become the president while openly boasting about sexual assault. He represents a horrifying evolution of the sort of misogyny Atwood was drawing attention to in The Handmaid’s Tale.
And yet in his much-scrutinized relationship with First Lady Melania Trump, we see many of the same dynamics at play. Trump objectifies women and thinks of them in subordinate terms, and his wife is alternately cast as a victim of his violence and an enabler of it. None of this is particularly funny, but a new video from Funny Or Die does draw the comparison with convincing explicitness.
Trump’s The Handmaid’s Tale from Funny Or Die
Okay, we take that back: Some of these cuts between Melania’s feigned affection and Trump’s most heinous assertions are pretty funny, if only in the “holy fuck this guy is still the president” way.
Last week, Funny Or Die made a similar equation between Trump’s daughter Ivanka and Get Out. It is also harrowing and amusing, in equal parts; check it out below.
Get Out (Of The White House) from Funny Or Die