The Handmaid's Tale

Synopsis

The Handmaid's Tale is a television show based on the 1985 speculative fiction novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. Currently in its third season on Hulu, the show follows Offred through her time before and during the totalitarian theocracy of Gilead. Set in what was once Boston, the Republic of Gilead has designated fertile women as Handmaids and uses them for procreation with the ruling elite, the Commanders, after the world experiences a drastic decline in fertility rates. June, renamed Offred, was forced to become a Handmaid after being captured with her husband, Luke, and her daughter, Hannah, as they tried to cross the border into Canada in the time before Gilead. Her goal is to survive under Gilead and someday be reunited with them.

Writer's Note

I'm currently reading The Handmaid's Tale in Mr. Prescott's PHR513LA2: Margaret Atwood class. In that class, we examine Atwood's work from social, political, and religious perspectives.

For my critical media study, I'll be taking a step back from the theoretical workings of the novel to focus instead of the technical and artistic mechanics of the show. Rather than "reviewing" The Handmaid's Tale with emphasis on the plot and characters of the story, I'll be dissecting the implications of the production choices and the show as a visual medium beyond just the literature.

For clarity, I will be referring to June/Offred as June when she is not a Handmaid and Offred when she is a Handmaid.

Key:

• Timeline 1 - before Gilead, earliest in show's context
• Timeline 2 - the Red Center, between Timelines 1 and 3
• Timeline 3 - present Gilead, most recent in show's context

An inquiry I started out with was the importance or value of making fictional work about justice and oppression when there is so much in reality that can already be drawn from. I guess, in response to myself, I would say that fiction is sometimes easier to stomach than reality, even, or maybe especially, when that reality so closely mirrors fiction. While it retains the weight of the messages and themes of movements in our real lives, audiences can temporarily remove themselves from their realities. Fiction can offer an element of escapism. In this sense, if a documentary is a mirror, speculative fiction is a photo, and sometimes it's simply easier to look at yourself in a photo, or a photo of a photo, than it is to face the mirror directly. That's not to say the photo isn't as effective as the mirror, it's just effective in a different way.

I hope viewers of my critical media study will enjoy reading and interacting with my critical study of The Handmaid's Tale, Season 1. My goal was to challenge myself to watch this acclaimed show not only for the sake of being entertained, but also to gain a deeper understanding of what makes a good show truly good. I want to encourage all of us to engage with the media we come across, whatever that might be, with a more critical, discerning eye--when we know not only what a piece is doing but also how it's doing what it's doing, we can better incorporate those findings into our own work.

Episodes 4-6: "Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum," "Faithful," "A Woman's Place"

Visual vs. Narrative Juxtaposition and Nonlinear Storytelling

[Content warning: rape, sex, violence, mature language]

Once the audience is familiar with the social functions of Gilead and world-building in The Handmaid's Tale, we can start paying more attention to the show's visual storytelling and narrative structure. Episodes 4-6 are also much more thematically-focused than Episodes 1-3, which are more plot-driven and expositional.

In her novel, Margaret Atwood frequently uses nonlinear storytelling to draw attention to the differences between pre-Gilead and Gilead. She writes three distinct timelines for June: 1) life with Luke and Hannah, 2) life in the Rachel and Leah Center (Red Center), and 3) life as Offred with the Waterfords. Timeline 1 represents life pre-Gilead completely, Timeline 2 a transitionary stage between pre-Gilead and Gilead, and Timeline 3 full Gilead. Despite adding certain events that do not take place in the novel, Hulu largely attempts to preserve Atwood's chronology, cutting between the three timelines explicitly.

By having the ability to move across timelines, the show is able to take advantage of visual juxtaposition through some clever editing, giving the audience an added layer of visual information that a solely-written medium cannot. Episode 4: Nolite Te Bastardes Carborundorum uses juxtaposition in the form of visual symbolism to draw thematic parallels between multiple timelines.

"Nolite te bastardes carborundorum" is a faux-Latin phrase that translates roughly to "Don't let the bastards grind you down." This phrase is carved into Offred's room by the Handmaid that served as Offred before June, seen in the left frame at 4:17. The right frame at 6:08 shows Moira carving "AUNT LYDIA SUX," a similarly-defiant phrase, into the stall of the bathroom in the Red Center. Both of these graffitis were created at high risk to the writers because writing is illegal for women in Gilead. Since Offred in the left frame from Timeline 3 is the reader and Moira in the right frame from Timeline 2 is the writer, the left frame almost acts as a future proxy for Moira's "reader" and the right as a past proxy for June's "writer." These two scenes represent June's understanding of the power of language, both its meaning and its mere existence, to inspire hope and resistance.

Here's another great example of visual juxtaposition being used in a similar way in Episode 4:

The left frame is at 50:41, the right at 51:04. On the left, June has been returned to the Red Center after an attempted escape with Moira, which was successful for Moira and clearly unsuccessful for June. After being tortured, she wakes up to an unpleasant surprise and a pleasant one, respectively: bloodied feet and the other Handmaids bringing her scraps of food saved from breakfast. On the right, the Handmaids are going shopping like they do every day. While they normally walk in pairs, the frame positions them so each pair comes together in a crowd of Handmaids. In her voiceover at 51:04, Offred says, "We are Handmaids. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum, b*tches." Both scenes represent female solidarity, and, when added to the pair of scenes from 4:17 and 6:08, Episode 4's overarching theme of defiance. The visual juxtaposition of similar events from different timelines shows the audience how certain forms of defiance are possible in any stage of a tyranny.

In this scene at 42:13-43:00 of Episode 4, juxtaposition is being used a little differently. Rather than solely serving as visual symbolism, juxtaposition is combined with nonlinear storytelling to become narrative juxtaposition.

We start in the Commander's study immediately after Offred has asked about the meaning of "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." In a steady voiceover, Offred wonders, "Has she been here--my predecessor, Knower of Latin, Scratcher of Words? Am I not the first he's invited to this room? What happened? Did she say the wrong thing? Did she displease him, the divine emperor of this house? And what price did she pay for her insolence?" But as her voiceover continues, the Scrabble scene cuts to one of June's own punishment. Although Offred is speaking about the previous Offred, the audience sees June on the screen answering her own question with her own experiences. This narrative juxtaposition reflects the indirect nature of information in Gilead, and the constant need for extrapolation and inference by both Offred and the audience.

Episode 5: Faithful is, ostensibly, one big use of visual and narrative juxtaposition. Jumping between Timelines 1 and 3, Episode 5 engages thematically with love, sex, and (in)fidelity. Mrs. Waterford, desperate for a child, asks Offred to sleep with Nick, the Commander's driver. Although Offred agrees, she feels like she is cheating on Luke. Her relationship with Luke, however, was also a product of cheating (Luke on his wife). Let's look at 23:02 (left) and 23:42 (right).

Less than a minute apart, these two scenes are both similar and intensely different. On the left, Luke is about to cheat on his wife for the first time with June. On the right, Offred is about to cheat on Luke with Nick for the first time. The difference is that Luke and June are together out of love whereas Offred and Nick are together out of obligation, and this difference manifests visually in the camera angle (close-up vs. wide), the lighting (soft vs. hard), and the blocking (two people vs. three people).

Offred operates under the assumption that obligatory sex without love is not adultery to assure herself she is not cheating on Luke with the Commander. At each Ceremony, Handmaids are required to let the Commander have sex with them in the presence of the Commander's Wife. By Gilead's definitions, this is not technically rape because Offred has willingly accepted the position of Handmaid. In Gilead, a Handmaid during a Ceremony is automatically consenting to her Commander. (However, she never provides verbal, or even mental, affirmative consent during Ceremonies, so this is clearly rape by our non-Gilead definition.) She applies this same philosophy, that she is not being unfaithful by having loveless, obligatory sex, to her situation with Nick.

But this is not the only time Offred sleeps with Nick. She goes back, and the next time, it is of her own accord.

The left is still the frame at 23:02, but the right is at 51:35. Visually, these two scenes look a lot more similar now in terms of camera angle (both close-up), lighting (both soft even though left is daytime and right is nighttime), and blocking (Mrs. Waterford isn't there). This complicates the issue of whether or not Offred is cheating on Luke, because the visual juxtaposition implies there is an element of love. Now, Mrs. Waterford's absence creates a different kind of intentionality, she might not necessarily love, or be in love with, Nick, but the sex is not entirely loveless.

Like Episode 5, Episode 6: A Woman's Place also jumps between Timelines 1 and 3, but from the perspective of Mr. and Mrs. Waterford. Rather than focusing on sex with or without love, Episode 6 focuses on marriage with or without love, and the difference between love and intimacy. When the Waterfords host the Mexican trade delegation that visits Gilead, Mrs. Waterford reflects on her life and relationship in the time before.

On the left, a scene at 16:40 in the midst of hosting the trade delegation. On the right, a scene at 17:38 after Mr. Waterford comes home from a pre-Gilead committee. In both, the Waterfords are under a lot of stress. Similar to the juxtaposition between June and Luke and June and Nick, this visual juxtaposition emphasizes differences in lighting (again, hard vs. soft) and blocking (not touching vs. touching). Even though the framing is quite similar, the body language of the actors speaks volumes. In the time before, Mrs. Waterford was still Mr. Waterford's partner in every sense of the word. In Gilead, she is a Wife, but barely his wife.

Now, on the right is a frame at 41:50 in Timeline 2, after pre-Gilead life but before Gilead has been fully established. Visually, these two frames are even more strikingly similar than the juxtaposition between 16:40 and 17:38. However, the subtle differences are still there. On the right, the light is still soft, the Commander still touches his Wife. These two frames are also much closer in time than 16:40 and 17:38, which implies that it was not so long ago that the Commander and his Wife still acted like Mr. and Mrs. Waterford. But while it is possible that they still love each other in Timeline 3, there is no longer the intimacy that existed in Timelines 1 and 2.

With the help of visual and narrative juxtaposition, nonlinear storytelling works to transcend linear chronology, representing how the things that happen to people are not restricted by timelines or even lifetimes. Yes, it makes a story more interesting and unique, but it also adds an element of consistency despite, or maybe because of, its fragmented form. Nonlinear storytelling shows audiences that although Gilead has worked so hard to erase all semblances of pre-Gilead life through totalitarianism, theocracy, and surveillance, some things, like language, defiance, and love, will always survive.

Episodes 7-10: "The Other Side," "Jezebels," "The Bridge," "Night"

Adaptation, Platform, and Industry

[Content warning: rape; no spoilers]

As the first season of The Handmaid's Tale wraps up with these last four episodes, let's move out from the fictional Gilead we have become so familiar with and back into present-day America. Like any work of media, The Handmaid's Tale does not operate within a vacuum of itself. While it is important to study the creative and technical details of the show as a visual art form, considering the show in the context of its audience and the industry in which it exists is equally as important.

One of the most important things to keep in mind is that all three seasons of the Hulu show are episodic adaptations of a single novel, not three episodic seasons based on three novels, or one film based on one novel. While Margaret Atwood eventually wrote a sequel to The Handmaid's Tale called The Testaments, it was not published until September 10, 2019, by which time all three seasons of The Handmaid's Tale, 36 episodes in total, had already been released. So, why a TV series and not a movie? And how were they able to make so many seasons based on limited source material?

Well, the creators changed and added a lot with Atwood's permission, who is credited by the show as a "consulting producer." Many events in Episode 3: Late, Episode 6: A Woman's Place, Episode 9: The Bridge, and Episode 10: Night do not appear in Atwood's novel. Since audiences tend to expect book-to-movie adaptations to stay extremely faithful to their source material, such creative liberties lend themselves better to shows than to films. (Remember the public uproar when Alexandra Daddario's hair wasn't blonde in the first Percy Jackson movie? Exactly.)

As a work of speculative fiction, The Handmaid's Tale has greater freedom to do as its genre says and speculate beyond the canon of the novel. After having read the book and watched Season 1, I personally did not feel like the changes detracted from the story in any way and only enhanced it by creating relevant, plausible new plotlines. A New York Times article published after the release of Season 1 writes,

Even when the show expands the world established in the novel and adds scenes that weren’t in the original material, they "could have been, because they have precedents," Atwood said in a phone interview.

Shows also have longer total running times (each episode of The Handmaid's Tale is around 45-60 minutes, there are 10 episodes in Season 1--you do the math) allowing them to cover more content than movies and giving them more flexibility in general. When asked about his feelings handling future seasons in a 2017 IndieWire interview, showrunner Bruce Miller said,

There’s two practical things. First is that the end of the book is universally frustrating. Everybody wants to know what happened next. So in that way, you’re doing a TV show that’s delivering a service to the people who really loved the book. You’re giving them a possible continuation of that story. And the scale of the book, even though the particular central part of it is just Offred, it goes well beyond that. There are tons of hints and pieces [in the Historical Notes] that we’ve been using to construct the story that falls into those years between the end of “The Handmaid’s Tale” in the book and the historical assessment that comes afterwards.

Another possible reason, though less visible, is that episodes more accurately represent the passage of time. A major theme in the novel is how Offred has nothing but excessive, boundless time and feels like she is always passively waiting for something to happen to her. The difference between a series and a film is that audiences must wait for each episode to be released to find out what happens next, and these releases are generally over a stretch of many weeks. A TV show has an element of delayed gratification that reflects Offred's condition in Gilead; she puts off her personal desires and freedoms for survival and the possibility of reunion with Hannah and Luke, the greatest reward.

Of course, we cannot talk about adaptation without also talking about casting. While Atwood reflects intensely on issues of gender, sexuality, and faith in her original novel, the one area she largely neglects is race. Canonically, Gilead is, in addition to a totalitarian theocracy and absolute patriarchy, a white supremacist state. By harnessing the Biblical story of the Children of Ham, the Commanders have worked to remove, whether through forced relocation, displacement, or other means, all people of color from Gilead.

Yet there are still a handful of actors of color in the show's principal cast, most notably Samira Wiley (Moira), O. T. Fagbenle (Luke), Amanda Brugel (Rita), and Max Minghella (Nick). The creators have often stated their intention of race-blind casting, which generally makes the casting process more equitable and reflective of a realistically diverse society.

In her novel, Atwood deliberately excludes any explicit mention of race or ethnicity. She rarely describes the appearances of characters, and when she does, she only uses vague terms to reference hair or eye color. The way the Hulu show is cast and written implies that racism is no longer a concern in Gilead, which, like the novel, also lacks any references to race or racism beyond the existence of people of color on-screen. However, because The Handmaid's Tale is informed entirely by historical events, it is impossible for people of color to exist without racism also existing, in both Gilead, a dystopian America, and our present-day America. By this, I mean it makes no sense to include actors of color in the show if it does not acknowledge the intersectionality of Gilead's oppression.

In a hierarchical society propelled by religious fundamentalism, just about everything in this history of this country suggests that racial divisions would become far more deeply entrenched.

Soraya Nadia McDonald for The Undefeated, 2017

It's a complicated discussion. On one hand, the novel is written as an intentionally homogenous white society. On the other hand, race-blind casting and an increase in diverse representation on-screen should always be championed for the entertainment industry as a whole. However, there is no way Samira Wiley's Moira, a black Handmaid, would not understand and recognize the clear connections between Handmaids, who are raped and impregnated by powerful white men only to have their children taken from them, and African-American slaves, who were raped and impregnated by powerful white men only to have their children taken from them. In order for the Hulu show to accurately and realistically depict a racially-diverse Gilead, it must also acknowledge the impact of racism on Gilead's society and individuals. As of Season 1, these acknowledgements have not yet been made, but I hope Seasons 2 and 3 will better live up to the show's promise of realism in this regard.

Speaking of Hulu, let's talk about the importance of platform. Unlike traditional network television, Hulu is an online streaming service. This distinction has both financial and demographic implications: a study done by Deloitte Insights in March 2019 found streaming is vastly outperforming pay TV, especially in younger generations.

By reaching more people, especially more young people, through Hulu compared to a cable network, The Handmaid's Tale is helping to set new industry standards. Whereas TV is often considered a "lesser medium" than film by both the entertainment industry and the general public, The Handmaid's Tale proves that shows and series can be just as cinematic, profound, and impactful as movies, if not more. Whereas streaming is still primarily for the redistribution of content from other platforms, like Netflix's vast array of movies and shows that were already commercially successful before reaching Netflix, Hulu's original series holds its own even without traditional network support, and represents a new age of streaming services becoming creators in addition to distributors.

Not only is The Handmaid's Tale a cautionary and relevant tale for the future of America, it is also a representation of the future of entertainment. Wildly successful and critically-acclaimed with numerous Primetime Emmy wins, Season 1 of The Handmaid's Tale on Hulu is truly among the best for its cinematic artistry, compelling storytelling, and industry legacy. Anyone who has not yet seen this show is doing themselves a disservice.