Emmy Nominee The Handmaid’s Tale shows us how to tell a story when characters can’t say what they mean. The show is a masterclass in using audiovisual techniques like framing, color, music, flashbacks and voiceover to express what characters are thinking and feeling.
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Transcript provided by Youtube:
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The Handmaid’s Tale — based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel — is a show about
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strong, dynamic women. But it’s set in a world where women are enslaved heavily
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restricted in what they say or do. So, much of what we learn about these women
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has to be communicated through other means than dialogue. Let’s take a look at
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the cinematic techniques: framing, choreograph,y color, voiceover, music and
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flashbacks that allow the show to include us in its characters inner
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worlds, as they confront the very wrong outer world that’s closing in on them.
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[Blessed are the meek.]
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[And blessed are those who suffer for the cause of righteousness.]
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Closely framed shots of the show’s female characters — particularly Elisabeth Moss’s
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Offred — show the complex range of emotion experienced by these women. So we can see
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on her face when Offred is lying, sarcastic, or in deep emotional pain.
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Remaining close with them is a way of visually making us feel their emotions —
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what they’re not able to say or express.
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[I have found happiness. Yes]
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The claustrophobic close-ups reinforce that they’re trapped in Gilead, just as
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they’re trapped in the frame. Some of these shots place the women on the edges
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and in the corners of the frame, literally marginalizing them. And shots
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looking down on the women are putting them low in the frame, emphasizing their
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powerlessness. And the framing tells us it’s not just the hand mates who are
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victims. Yvonne Strahovski’s Serena Joy, the commander’s wife, is part of one of the
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leading families of Gilead. But the close-ups on her face mirror those have
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Offred. Even if one has a higher status, both are slaves, marginalized in the
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corner of the frame instead of central and actively in control of the
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composition. The contrast between the oppressed, terrified women in the
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close-ups, and the obedient, efficient handmaiden Army in the wide-angle shots
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is striking, and it shows how much humanity can be lost in the transition
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from personal to abstract collective; from valuing individual lives to valuing
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only the greater good. Many shots are also obscured in some way because we
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share in The Handmaid’s point of view. Things are hidden from us; we’re denied
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information. The ceremony scenes — which show the rape of the women by the
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commander’s — are shot clinically. The first shot — a bird’s eye, or gods eye view —
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feels like a comment about the fake sanctity of the ritual. They are under
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his eye, then the scene strings together moving portraits of each of the three
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participants filmed from the shoulders up. Their disembodied faces emphasize the
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disjointed unnatural nature of the procedure. Just as the framing is awkward,
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everyone here is hellishly uncomfortable. So the visuals are very effective in
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getting across that this combination of artificial insemination and
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institutionalized rape couldn’t be less sexy or intimate. Color functions to
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highlight the categories or roles the women are sorted into. A woman is quickly
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defined by the color she wears and reduced to that function. Forcing the
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women to wear different colors is a strategic move, keeping them apart and
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distracting them with internal rivalries. The fertile women hand mates wear red.
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Red symbolizes fertility and menstrual blood, and it sets these women apart as a
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prized rarity. Yet a woman wearing red is traditionally associated with desire and
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sin, like a Scarlet woman, or the Bible’s Mary Magdalene.
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And these connotations clash with the official rhetoric of devout
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sacrifice surrounding The Handmaid’s position.
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[We aren’t concubines or
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two-legged wombs.]
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Against the oppressively desaturated gray world of Gilead, the
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Handmaids’ red stands out just as these women stand out as the one vibrant life
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force that remains in this drab world. Red is also the color of the bloodshed
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that Gilead uses to keep the handmaids enslaved. And as an aggressive color of
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action red can symbolize power and rebellion since they’re the only fertile
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women they still have a source of power if they could band together society
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couldn’t kill all of them as Gilead and perhaps most of the world is unable to
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procreate without them.
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[Red’s my color.]
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[Well, that’s lucky.]
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The name Offred — while
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literally a patronymic of Fred referring to her commander — also sounds like of red
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which could be a hint that in the story she represents the universal experience
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of this red abused and eventually rebellious woman. The wives’ turquoise — in
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contrast to the red of a Mary Magdalene — alludes to the blue garments of the pure
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Virgin Mary. The blue is symbolic of companionship, admiration, and loyalty. Yet
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it’s sexless and muted, masking the dissatisfaction of a wife who’s reduced
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to a virginal state. The red and blue contrast with each other showing that
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the system is intentionally placing the wives and handmaids in opposition to
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keep all women down. Martha’s unmarried, non-fertile women wear khaki green to
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blend into the background. They’re viewed as servants, given little more respect
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than furniture. Aunts — women who train and control the handmaids — wear brown. The
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brown’s reminiscent of military dress, and according to Atwood, the color was chosen
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to be vaguely reminiscent of Nazi Germany which adds another layer to the
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subconscious foreboding we feel.
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[Blessed are the meek dear.]
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Men wear black, a universal color which allows them to be viewed as more whole,
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not defined by a function. However they are still dressed in uniform so they’re
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not entirely free either. No one is in a system like this. At the end of the last
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episode, Offred remarks:
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[They should have never given us uniforms if they didn’t
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want us to be an army.]
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Cleverly reversing the intent of the colored uniforms to
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reduce and separate the women as the red of the handmade suffering has brought
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them together. The show and Gilead are full of contrasts: the stated virtuous
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sounding outer reality and the brutal inner one. Truth is filtered through the
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false embroidered vocabulary of the state:
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[You are hereby sentenced to the
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common mercy of the state.]
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And almost everyone we meet is a terrified slave
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who must praise the tyrannical totalitarian government. Because spoken
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words don’t say what they mean, Offred’s voice over is crucial.
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[I don’t need oranges, I need to scream.]
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Mimicking the feel of the novel, the
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narration reveals June’s private mind — the only place where she is free.
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[Going shopping?]
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[No Nick. I’m gonna knock back a few at the Oyster House bar. You want to come along?]
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[Yes.]
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Her candid speech reminds us of the person she still is behind the
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facade — educated, sarcastic, honest. And her blunt commentary can provide humor.
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[Ten ways to tell how he feels about you. Number two: he keeps finding ways to
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accidentally run into you.]
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In the very first episode Offred’s misjudging of
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Ofglen
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[I kind of want to tell her that I sincerely believe that Ofglen is a
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pious little shit with a broomstick up her ass.]
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[Under his eye.]
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[Under his eye.]
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helps us grasp how effective the world’s strict
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regulation of speech and behavior is and separating the women.
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[I always thought
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you were such a true believer.]
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[So are you.
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So freakin pious, they do that really
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well — make us distrust each other.]
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As we
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observe the choreographed scripted world of Gilead, we’re trained like the
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Handmaids to quickly perceive detours from the repeated rituals,
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and expect these detours to receive punishment. And we wonder about
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the other handmaids’ true personalities hidden inside this cage of false
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behavior. Flashbacks to the woman’s pasts highlight the wrongness of the present.
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Here, the content of the past and present situations is drastically different and
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so is the framing. In the present, the Handmaids are usually low in the frame,
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or to the sides and corners, visually oppressed. In the flashbacks, June and
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Moira occupy the middle of the frame. These interplays between past and
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present help us grasp on a visceral level how much has changed and how these
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characters arrived where they are. The flashbacks resemble our world and show
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us how the nightmare evolved step by step from a place that we recognize,
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unsettling us with the understanding that this could all conceivably happen.
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[When they slaughtered Congress we didn’t wake up; when they blame terrorists and
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suspended the Constitution we didn’t wake up then either.]
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Flashbacks also make
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us come to like — or at least pity — Serena Joy. Even though she’s Offred’s enemy, we
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realized that she was a career woman, far smarter than her husband, who’s now had
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to retreat into a domestic role that doesn’t at all satisfy her.
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[You don’t need to worry about this. I promise we’ve got good men working on it.]
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[Praise be.]
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Even if she’s a victim of her own ideology
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[Do you ever imagine a society
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like this?]
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[A society that has reduced its carbon emissions by 78% in three
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years?]
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[A society in which women can no longer
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read your book.]
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From the information given us in flashbacks and other scenes
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we gather that the Handmaids aren’t just casualties of this new society,
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they’re the foundation of Gilead’s economy and existence.
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[Do you think they want to
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trade oranges?]
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[Don’t be an idiot. Gilead only has one thing
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to trade that anyone wants. Red tags.]
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Offred and we start to realize
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that while The Handmaids have been reduced to a commodity,
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this means that Gilead will collapse if they all refused to obey.
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The arc of the first season of Handmaid’s Tale is Offred’s journey from
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not being one of those people who protests and rebels
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[There’s a network.]
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[I don’t know. I’m not that kind of person.]
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[No one is until they have to be.]
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to step in forward as the leader of a rebellion.
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We experienced her transformation through camera and sound,
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slow-motion, her opinionated inner voice, music, and specific
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framing and blocking, all of which helps us to see her reach her breaking point
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and understand why there is no other way. Close-ups allow us to sense her
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intensifying defiance and hatred of the commander and Serena Joy. Contrasts
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between her facial expressions and her words start to reveal the increasing
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falseness and daring of her dialogue. Here, Offred’s close-up plus the point of
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view shot tell us exactly what she’s thinking. While speaking words of calm
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and obedience she’s contemplating bloody murder of her captors. The visual calls
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back to the thoughts she shared with us in a previous voiceover:
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[How hard would I
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have to press those sheers in her neck before seeing blood?]
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Here the intense
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close-ups of her mouth and eyes convey her visceral disgust after she’s kissed
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the commander. The threatening score makes us feel constantly on edge; it saws
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at us like this world is constantly attacking Offred.
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But moments of other music and key scenes, and often at the ends of episodes
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express Offred’s inner world when it’s out of joint with her outer. As if coming
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from within Offred’s thoughts or memories, invigorating pop songs punctuate moments
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when we realized that she’s still June inside and her hope is still alive. We
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get this for June’s good feeling after the first time she plays Scrabble, only
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for the music to be abruptly cut out when she realizes Ofglen has been
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replaced. After Offred’s heartened by the secret message she finds from the
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previous Offred, the music is uplifting too. While Offred walks in slow motion,
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and behind her the other handmaids enter the frame and fall in step, as if
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she’s their leader.
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With her bold voiceover, Offred reclaims the handmade title. To
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her being a handmaid now means being part of a community of women so strong
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that even the most inhuman conditioning won’t stop them from being kind to each
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other. We again get hopeful music when Ofglen or Emily steals a car and runs
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a man over. And the music transforms the bloody scene which is sure to be swiftly
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punished into a moment of inspiration for Offred. And after Offred refuses to
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stone Jeanine — another slow-motion moment to emphasize the gravity of her defiance —
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we again get her internal soundtrack as Nina Simone expresses how good it feels
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to start a revolution. In the final scene of the series Offred is escaping the
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commander, escaping Gilead, and for a second it even feels as though Offred
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is escaping the camera. When the camera lingers on an extreme close-up of Offred’s
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red dress, we have the feeling that she’s literally climbing out of the frame to
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where our eyes can’t follow her. The very last song over the season finale and
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credits, Tom Petty’s American Girl, ironically reminds us that the story is
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after all set in the USA. But it also alludes to Offred’s unbreakable spirit.
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June’s inner world has finally been expressed and the hope of rebellion is
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alive. With no characters able to act or speak freely, the inventive audio-visual
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world of The Handmaid’s Tale allows us to witness women growing strong,
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rebelling and expressing themselves. These techniques help us connect
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emotionally to this nightmare, to feel what these women feel in a world that
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treats them as less than human.
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[Now I’m awake
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to the world. I was asleep before. That’s how we let it happen.]
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This post was previously published on Youtube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video