The Handmaid's Tale
anecdote · tv: The Handmaid's Tale ·
retold in 6 talks
Žižek criticizes *The Handmaid's Tale* for allowing viewers to enjoy the fantasy of enslavement under the pretext of critical distance, noting the failure of its sequel to find a new formula.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 6
“it allows you to fully enjoy No you get to do a fantasy of how kind of like fun it would be to be enslaved in that manner.”1:26:18 Heaven: Out of Order feat. Slavoj Žižek | Chapo Trap House | Episode 582 FULL2021-12-08 · 1:31:42
“all my friends are secretly enjoying it: 'My god, how wonderful they treat women like this.'”
“I was secretly enjoying oh my God now they invent this the bad guys in power that's how they screw women”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
contents · one story, 3 jobsuses
surplus enjoyment
×3
economy of transgression
×1
theft of enjoyment
×1
Its cast and sources
populated by
Georgi Dimitrov1Isaac Deutscher1Pippa Malmgren1Aung San Suu Kyi1Laura Poitras1Roger Waters1Linda Tripp1Sarah Silverman1
alongside works
Every retelling 6
1:26:18 Heaven: Out of Order feat. Slavoj Žižek | Chapo Trap House | Episode 582 FULL2021-12-08 · 1:31:42
Žižek criticizes The Handmaid's Tale for allowing viewers to enjoy the fantasy of enslavement under the pretext of critical distance, noting the failure of its sequel to find a new formula., illustrating cinema-art-culture,ideology
Žižek claims friends confess to secretly enjoying The Handmaid's Tale, fascinated by the patriarchal ritual they are supposed to be horrified by, illustrating the criterion that the limit of horror-comedy is crossed when depiction feeds obscene enjoyment rather than horror., illustrating surplus enjoyment,law and its obscene underside,limits of representation
Reading Atwood's Handmaid's Tale before the TV series, Žižek caught himself, beneath the conscious horror, secretly enjoying the invention of new ways women are humiliated and tortured, evidence that ideology works through disavowed enjoyment, not belief., illustrating theft of enjoyment,surplus enjoyment,fetishist split
Žižek admits he and his friends secretly enjoyed the detailed imagination of the torture and restrictions in The Handmaid's Tale, despite knowing it was horrible, illustrating how ideology penetrates jouissance., illustrating jouissance,ideology
Žižek confesses he caught himself enjoying The Handmaid's Tale too much, not critically but with a strange fascination for how that totalitarian world functions in detail. He links this to Wall Street's Gordon Gekko, whose 'greed is good' lines are the only fascinating moments, suggesting cinema often secretly enjoys the evil it officially condemns., illustrating surplus enjoyment,ideology in cinema,jouissance and fascination with evil
Žižek and Assange share a deep distrust of The Handmaid's Tale: while officially a critique of Christian fundamentalist patriarchy, the show seduces viewers into enjoying the details of female subjugation, functioning as pseudo-critique., illustrating pseudo-critique,ideology,enjoyment of what one officially condemns