Feminist Film Theory and two
adaptations of The Handmaid’s Tale
(dir. Victor Schlondorff, 1990, UK) &
(Hulu, 2017- )
Screenshot taken from episode one of The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu). Author: Karen Graham
Student number: 11661194 Supervisor: Maryn Wilkinson Second reader: Catherine Lord Programme: Film Studies MA
University: The University of Amsterdam Date of completion 29/06/2018
Abstract:
With feminist film scholars considering what makes a film feminist, this thesis draws upon those concepts through a comparison study of two filmic adaptations of The
Handmaid’s Tale, analysing how they differ in terms of representation under a feminist
lens. The gender dynamics of the texts will be explored through Mulvey’s structuralist paradigm of classic Hollywood cinema. I will also draw upon the concepts of Teresa De Lauretis, Mary Ann Doane and E. Ann Kaplan in analysing how the two texts engage with feminist themes. I will then apply Steave Neale, Susan Jeffords and Richard Dyer’s theories on masculinity in film in terms of how the men are represented in the texts. Through this comparison study under feminist film theory, I reveal that Hulu’s adaptation shows a more progressive representation of women, allowing for further engagement with feminist issues. The series engages with themes such as solidary amongst women, resisting the patriarchy and female agency. Victor Schlondorff’s adaptation by contrast, can be understood as phallocentric with its conservative representation of women and focus on the male characters of the story. I conclude that the filmic style used for the two different adaptations of The Handmaid’s Tale analysed here has consequences for the feminist rhetoric of the text.
Key words: Feminist film theory, female subjectivity, women, representation, subjectivity, the patriarchy
Table of Contents
Introduction ... 1
1. Whose tale is it anyway? Analysing the character representation of Offred through a feminist lens 1.1: Establishing the female lead ... 8
1.2: The Female Voice ... 16
1.3: To be looked-at-ness/Masquerade ……… 18
2. “Under his eye” Men and the construction of the patriarchy 2.1 The Commander ……….27
2.2 Nick ………41
2.3 The Patriarchy ……….45
3. Female resistance 3.1 The mirrored image……….. 54
3.2 Silence ………57
3.3 Reclaiming language ……….61
1
Introduction
Recent political events, such as the election of Donald Trump in the United States and his controversial anti-abortion rhetoric, have sparked renewed interest in feminist issues today, this also evidenced in the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in The Republic of Ireland. Engagement and discussions about concepts related to the patriarchy and who controls a woman’s reproductive rights are no longer limited to academics or committed activists but are now part of a wider political and cultural movement.
Many critics have related Hulu’s recent adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale (2017- ) to the politics of today, Matthew d’Ancona of The Guardian writing that it “captured the lightning of the moment in a bottle of dystopian genius” (2017). The series has been further acclaimed by Laurel Pinson in Glamour as “a poignant rallying cry in the current political climate” (2018). When questioned in an interview for Variety about whether the show still would have worked if Hilary Clinton had been elected as president, Margaret Atwood, the author of the original novel of the same name (1985), comments that “you always view things through the lens of events that have taken place” (Setoodeh, 2018). Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale has been embraced as a creation which provides the feminist agenda of today with a new set of symbols, imagery and language, but this leads me to further questions. With the original novel written in 1985 and a film adaptation released shortly after in 1990 (dir. Victor Schlondorff, UK), why is this recent adaption so much more relevant to the feminist cause? How are these two filmic texts different?With the feminist project in mind, is one more progressive, and the other more conservative in terms of its representation of women? Does one engage with feminist issues more than the other?
The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Offred, a woman trapped in a dystopian
theocratic society situated in the United States, renamed the Republic of Gilead. Widespread chemical radiation has caused a rise in infertility, and so the founding fathers of Gilead implement a totalitarian regime based on forced surrogacy for the last remaining fertile women in the country. This regime puts an emphasis on a return to traditional values, with the total oppression of women, exemplified by their
categorisation according to their role in society. This includes the Wives of the
Commanders, the Marthas, who represent the workforce of the house, the Aunts who are
the female enforcers for the government and the Handmaids. Gilead’s economy and the future of their society is centred on the Handmaids, the last remaining fertile women,
2
whose status according to Atwood’s novel is reduced to that of “two-legged wombs, that’s all” (p.176).
These women are rounded up and assigned to the houses of different
Commanders and their Wives, forced to give birth to the children of Gilead and then to
give their child up for the Wives to raise. This impregnation is achieved through the
ceremony, the institutionalised rape of the Handmaid of the household that happens
once a month by the Commander of the house with the Wives present as willing participants. Through the central character of Offred, we are given an insight into the nightmarish world of Gilead for a Handmaid. Removed from her past life and torn from her husband and child, her existence in Gilead is regulated by the Guardians, the male arm of the government and the Eyes, men whose role is to observe and spy on the people of Gilead to ensure absolute obedience to the rules of the regime. This is shown through Handmaids greeting each other with sayings such as “under his eye” and “blessed day”.
After being trained to be a Handmaid and indoctrinated into the theocratic beliefs of this society at the Red Centre by Aunt Lydia, Offred is assigned to Commander Waterford’s household to live out her days a Handmaid until she gives birth to a child and fulfils her role. After failing to get pregnant however, The Commander’s wife,
Serena Joy, realising the urgency and believing her husband to be infertile, suggests that Offred secretly attempts this with their driver, Nick, instead. Eventually Offred falls pregnant, but what follows shows the grim reality and the hardship of being a woman living in a patriarchal republic such as Gilead. Infused with feminist themes, the way Atwood’s text has been translated into filmic language provides for valuable insights into the current conversation in feminist film theory with its representation of women and engagement with feminist issues.
Although this thesis is concerned with the analysis of how The Handmaid’s Tale has been communicated through filmic language, it is not a comparison study in terms of fidelity. Although I will be drawing on references from the novel when useful to my argument, how faithful each adaptation is to Atwood’s original text is not of concern here. Furthermore, it is not an evaluative study comparing the success of one adaptation over the other. Instead, the framework of feminist film theory will allow for an analysis into the meaning behind the filmic language used in the texts, and the consequences behind those cinematic techniques used in engaging with feminist issues. I will also not
3
be dealing with issues of race or class which are addressed in the texts, as my focus here
is on gender dynamics. Both
Hulu’s BAFTA and Golden Globe award-winning series and Schlondorff’s film creates a dystopian image of female oppression, making them an intriguing case study to examine in terms of feminist film theory and its feminist rhetoric. The story engages with
feminist issues such as reproductive rights, female objectification, sexual harassment, the oppressive nature of the patriarchy and the consequences of female resistance to it. The motivation behind my corpus further lies in its absorbing and thought-provoking commentary on society. Furthermore, the newness of the Hulu series makes it a topical subject in popular culture today, season two having been released this year (2018) and being described as “opening with one of the most unremittingly dark opening scenes in recent history” (Raeside, 2018). For the purposes of this research however I will only be looking at the first season which is made up of ten episodes, with an emphasis on the first episode. I am therefore undertaking a comparison study, not to look at the political context behind each, but to show how certain choices in filmic style have different consequences, using feminist film theory to understand the meaning behind these choices.
It is necessary for my research however to outline the already established
differences in production elements before doing a comparative study. Hulu’s adaptation for example, is a web-series, directed by various men and women. The 1990 feature film adaptation was an art house production directed by German Auteur, Victor Schlondorff, and so there are differences in production values and context, particularly with them being released 27 years apart, which will already have influenced representation and engagement with feminist issues.
It is also worth highlighting the dystopian nature of the text. Inherent in dystopian film is its critique on already established societal issues. Chris Berg defines the dystopian film as “a fictional society that got lost on the way to utopia [and] differs from traditional science fiction by its emphasis on political and social systems rather than science or technology, and therefore allows filmmakers to speculate widely on the political future” (p.39, 2008), going on to stress that “images of dystopia are necessarily reflections of their time” (p.42). When comparing these two filmic texts in terms of their feminist rhetoric then, it necessary to note the dystopian origin of the Atwood’s original story, understanding it as a critique of our time, of existing power structures and
4
societal attitudes towards the roles of women.
The representation of women in film has been at the forefront of feminist film theory, since its emergence and popularisation in the 1970’s. What film scholars such as Laura Mulvey, Teresa De Lauretis and E. Ann Kaplan and began to map through
sociological, political and psychoanalytical methodology was the recurring negative imagery of women in film, the unconscious language of the patriarchy, how it is communicated through filmic language and its impact on society.
I will use as my main pillar of theory Laura Mulvey’s essay on Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema (1975). Mulvey draws on the work of Sigmund Freud and
psychoanalysis to reveal the unconscious patriarchal language inherent in classic Hollywood cinema with its gendered binary representational system. She analyses how the spectator experiences the representation of men as active agents and women as passive objects of desire. Mulvey uses the concept of scopophilia, which can be understood as the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at the female image in film through identification with the male image. For Mulvey, “the cinema satisfies a
primordial wish for pleasurable looking, but it also goes further, developing scopophilia in its narcissistic aspect” (p.9). The patriarchal structures of film then are understood to focus on the female form, as women in film are associated with spectacle through
voyeuristic visual and erotic pleasure, described by Mulvey as connoting to-be-looked-at-ness. Voyeurism is indicated in shots of the female where a woman’s body is put on
display for the male character and spectator alike. Sexual difference is therefore
negotiated through the voyeuristic-scopophilic gaze and narcissistic identification to the male image on screen. This is achieved through the triple layered male look, assuming a male spectator (camera, character and spectator), or as Mulvey defines it, the male gaze. What Mulvey’s concepts serve to highlight is the patriarchal language of film and so will be the main tool used in analysing the representation of women in the two adaptations.
Building on the observations made by Mulvey, other writerssuch as Steve Neale and Susan Jeffords have sought to uncover the gendered structures of film with their concepts on the representation of masculinity. This is a subject famously theorised by Richard Dyer in his article Don't look now: the instabilities of the male pin-up (2002), which argues that male bodies carry connotations of action. Dyer writes that “it remains the case that images of men must disavow this element of passivity if they are to be kept in line with dominant ideas of masculinity – as activity. For this reason, images of men
5
are often images of men doing something” (p.66, 1993), such as carrying weapons and being in control.
This will lead me to the theme of female resistance, which is a theme both texts deal with in their resolution. This is a topic discussed be E. Ann Kaplan (1993) in her chapter Silence as resistance in Marguerite Dura’s Nathalie Granger (1972). Kaplan concludes that “it is by no means clear that language is so monolithically male as to give us a choice only for domination or silence. For obvious practical reasons, language must be our tool for change (p.103)”. In addition, to provide further points of discussion I will be using specific analyses of the adaptations, such as for example in Reingard. M
Nischik’s chapter, How Atwood Fared in Hollywood: Atwood and Film (Esp. The
Hanmdaid’s Tale) (2009).
To break free from the patriarchal structures of film then, Mulvey argues for an avant-garde film practice that would “free the look of the camera into its materiality in time and space and the look of the audience into dialectics of passionate detachment” (p.26). Mulvey argues for the total destruction of visual pleasure for the spectator. Anneke Smellik notes the contradiction of feminism here however, with its need to “deconstruct patriarchal images and representations of woman, they historically need establish their female subjectivity at the same time” (p.494, 2007). For this reason, Teresa De Lauretis argued that instead of destroying narrative and visual pleasure, a feminist cinema should instead be “narrative and oedipal with a vengeance” (p.108, 1984) defining all points of dentification, such as character, sound and image. Female subjectivity will therefore be tracked in order to map the feminist agenda of these two filmic adaptations of The Handmaid’s Tale, I will analyse how filmic language
accommodates for this progressive female representation.
Kaja Silverman’s book The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis
and Cinema (1984) will contribute to the argument that the female voice over
accommodates female subjectivity and character identification. This is because “the voice is the site of perhaps the most radical of all subjective divisions- the division between meaning and materiality” (p.44). The adoption of female subjectivity through the mirrored image will also be observed, drawing upon Jaques Lancan’s concept of the mirror, referenced by Mulvey as a as a pre-symbolic, pre-linguistic realm which is crucial for the constitution of the ego (p.9).
6
Doane’s (1991) concept of the masquerade. This is understood as mask of femininity that female spectators adopt to assume a masculine position and avoid
over-identification with the female image on screen. Doane understands femininity as “an overwhelming presence-to-itself of the female body” (Doane, p.22). The accommodation of female identification in film is therefore problematised for Doane, as through the
masquerade female spectators can create the “necessary distance between herself and
the represented femininity on the screen” (Smellik, p.495).
In Chapter One I will look at how the character of Offred/June (Elisabeth Moss) is introduced to the audience in comparison to Offred/Kate (Natasha Richardson). I will be exploring how female subjectivity is accommodated through voice, image and soundtrack. As the female protagonist of the story, how this character is introduced is revealing of the feminist rhetoric at play. I will also be looking at complications that arise with female identification in film.
This leads to my second Chapter where I will move onto the topic of men, who can be understood as the counterparts and oppressors of the women. Looking at their representation in terms of physical power and systemic dominance will allow me to draw conclusions regarding the texts engagement with feminist issues and how
progressive a representation it is. As such, Chapter Two will focus on how male power has been introduced into the text and the presence of the patriarchy. I will first look at the central male characters of Fred Waterford and Nick, before moving onto the construction of the patriarchy.
Chapter Three will deal with the subject of female resistance and how this has been communicated within the filmic text. As a text dealing directly with feminist issues, how the text deals with the theme of resistance is telling of its engagement with feminist rhetoric. I will be observing how female resistance is communicated through filmic language with narrative tools such as the mirrored image, silence and finally dialogue.
What this comparison aims to uncover is how two filmic adaptations of The
Handmaid’s Tale differ in their filmic language and the meaning behind those different
cinematic choices. Following the observation of the renewed interest in feminist debates, I plan to reveal, through feminist film theory, that Hulu’s adaptation is more progressive with its challenging and diverse representations of women. I also aim to reveal that Hulu’s adaptation engages with feminist issues, such as female oppression, the patriarchy and objectification, further than Schlondorff’s film. Ultimately, I aim to
7
reveal that certain cinematic choices have consequences for the feminist project of the two adaptations of The Handmaid’s Tale, providing possible justifications for the Hulu series’ importance to the feminist cause today.
8
Whose tale is it anyway? Analysing the character representation of Offred through a feminist lens
“If it's a story I'm telling, then I have control over the ending...” (Atwood, p.39, The
Handmaid’s Tale)
The Handmaid’s Tale is centred around the female protagonist Offred, but how
does the Hulu series and Schlondorff’s film accommodate a female point of view? Do the texts differ in their female representation of Offred? This chapter seeks to analyse the extent to which my case studies engage with the feminist project using filmic language through the central character of Offred.
Establishing the female lead
The opening sequence of Hulu’s adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale situates the
spectator in the pretext of the unfolding of Gilead. We are shown the attempted escape of the female protagonist, June/Offred, her husband Luke (O- T Fagbenle) and her daughter, Hannah (Jordana Blake), in a forest, trying to cross the border into Canada. As their captures draw closer, Luke tells June to try and escape with Hannah but without him. With this separation the camera then follows June and Hannah as they flea through the woods. Later we hear gunshots in the distance and it is initially unknown what happened to Luke. Already in this establishing sequence, Hulu’s adaptation takes on the female point of view, guiding spectators to align with the female protagonist June, mirroring the female first person narrative Atwood adopts in her original novel. With the camera following June in her escape attempt and not Luke, the Hulu series instantly establishes an active female in the narrative and the validation of the female experience.
As Mulvey has observed, classic Hollywood cinema is governed by the
unconscious language of the patriarchy with the total immersion of the triple layered
male look. In contrast to the active male, the female character is reduced to an object of
eroticised desire and is passive within the narrative (p.12). From this establishing sequence however, the camera remains with June as she flees through the forest with her daughter, and it does so for the remainder of the episode, identifying her as the protagonist of the series, and not simply as a “signifier for the male other” (p.7). This psychoanalytical framework proposed by Mulvey points to the unconscious patriarchal structures adopted within filmic language, and is one which a story, such as The
9
Handmaid’s Tale about the oppression of women in a patriarchal society, should seek to
counter through female identification. The immediate acknowledgment of a female protagonist through this camerawork therefore establishes June as having an active role within the film narrative.
The opening sequence of Schlondorff’s film is comparable to the Hulu adaptation, as it also begins with the attempted escape of Kate/Offred, her daughter and Luke, (Reiner Schone) who is not explicitly named or further referenced in this adaptation. Schlondorff’s film establishes Kate as the protagonist by immediately killing off her partner who would have otherwise been presumed to be the protagonist of the film within conventional Hollywood structures. What separates this adaptation from Hulu’s however, is how female subjectivity is established. Luke tells Kate, “I’ll keep them busy”, and runs into sight of their pursuers so that she and her daughter can escape. The camera follows him into the action where he is shot and killed, causing Kate to run to him, thereby revealing herself and her child. What separates this escape sequence from Hulu’s is the that male is the driver of the narrative and the action through a heroic sacrificial act which is typical trope of Hollywood cinema. The camera stays on Luke and only once Kate’s partner has been killed does the narrating camera start to follow her. This is consistent with Mulvey’s observation that “an active/passive heterosexual division of labour has similarly controlled narrative structure” (p.12), as the man controls the film phantasy and the woman watches, which is visible in this scene. What both adaptations achieve in this first sequence however is the recognition of a female protagonist for spectators to identify with, albeit through the heroic act or potential death of the male counterpart. Female subjectivity is therefore established immediately in both adaptations.
The scene that follows in the Hulu adaptation goes forward in time and situates June in her new position as a Handmaid for Fred and her new name, “Of-Fred”. Figure 1 shows her in her new room and we start to hear her internal monologue which begins with, “a chair, a table, a lamp. There’s a window with white curtains and the glass is shatterproof. But it isn’t running away they’re afraid of. (Chuckles) A handmaid wouldn’t get very far”. Kaja Silverman observes that Hollywood “requires the female voice to assume similar responsibilities to those it confers upon the female body” (p.38) and is typically made passive within the narrative. The female voice has instead been used here to strengthen female subjectivity which is articulated both visually and
10
acoustically. The visual device of the backlight against her body can be understood to suggest her objectification in her new position as a Handmaid and she is reducible and identifiable as her new role in the Republic of Gilead through the handmaid uniform she now wears. Through the central framing and voice over narration, Offred’s experience of Gilead is primary, but dually reducible by her new position as a Handmaid, stripping her of her identity. The shining light makes her unidentifiable with her silhouette symbolising her anonymity and her body shape as a woman and a Handmaid, giving added importance to her voice over narration in establishing her character. These cinematic techniques serve to communicate Offred’s subjectivity and prioritises the female experience of this patriarchal world she finds herself in.
Figure 1: June (Offred) in her new position as a Handmaid
Schlondorff’s film achieves a similar sense of anonymity, although in a different way. Offred is represented as one woman amongst many others trapped in the system of Gilead, although her experience is still prioritised through the narrating camera. Following the escape scene Offred is brought into a warehouse with other women where she is labelled as fertile. This is quickly followed by a scene of panic as Offred watches whilst other women are identified as infertile and therefore of low value in
Gilead. They are rounded up and put into a truck to be sent to work in the colonies, a
11
adaptation, the film uses dramatic scenes to suggest Offred’s mindset. Stripped of a female voiceover1, Schlondorff’s film instead accommodates Offred’s world using camera angles which follow her experience and gaze as she watches the events unfold. Figure 2 is effective in showing how Offred is now trapped in the Republic of Gilead through the obstructive camera angle and the wire caging we see her through, creating a visualisation of her imprisonment. This sense of entrapment is instead achieved in the Hulu episode with the light shining in from the outside world with Offred in a small, simple room as she contemplates “the other escapes” in her mind. What both
adaptations achieve in these opening scenes is to isolate Offred’s experience within the wider system that is Gilead. The prioritization of her emotions and experience reinforce the sense of female suppression as her humanity is reduced to the value placed on her fertility alone, one adaptation achieving this with the use of dramatic scenes, and the other through a personalised voice over with stationary shots.
Figure 2: Kate (Offred) is shown through wire to emphasise her entrapment
1During an interview for Variety (Setoodeh, 2018), Atwood reveals that in fact the film
did originally include a voice over, but it was erased in the post production phase. Atwood recalls during the interview, “I think it would have been better with it in. Natasha [Richardson], who I knew, she expressed to me in rather pissed off terms, she had recorded all the voiceover and tailored her performance against it”.
12
The internal monologue of Offred’s thoughts continue in the Hulu adaptation: “My name is Offred. I had another name, but it’s forbidden now. So many things are forbidden now”. With these words the camera begins to move closer to her shadowed face which is looking down, revealing more of her identity than the previous shot. From this we learn that June now identifies herself as Offred, even in her own thoughts, adding to the sense of oppression and institutionalisation in Gilead. Her thoughts however serve more than just to guide the spectator, as we gain valuable insight into her internal world and memories which contribute to the narrative. Offred’s subjectivity within the narrative is exemplified when we are taken back to her first meeting with the Commander’s wife, Serena Joy Waterford (Yvonne Starhovski). Throughout this scene the camera remains close to Offred’s face, highlighting, through small details in her face, her true emotions and making them visible to the spectator, for in the world of Gilead where “so much is forbidden”, there is more meaning to be revealed from body and facial language than just the dialogue. The Hulu adaptation therefore uses cinematic aesthetics, such as close ups and intrusive camera angles, to amplify the importance of moments where Offred is not able to speak freely and serves to accommodate her point of view in repressed moments. Feminist issues such as female suppression is therefore engaged with through cinematic language, creating a progressive representation of Offred in the Hulu series.
During this first meeting with the Commander and his wife, the camera stays predominately on Offred, even whilst other characters are speaking. The close-up cinematography reveals that Offred’s emotions are given prioritised meaning to the other characters, who instead remain marginalised at the side of the frame. When speaking to the Commanders wife, Offred’s face is centralised and takes up the whole screen as shown in figure 3. Once the Commander enters however, we see her face is constrained by the wings of the hat she is forced to wear in her new role as a Handmaid. These wings have the dual purpose of concealing her identity and making her
anonymous whilst restricting her own vision of the world and what she is permitted to see. The wings of the Handmaids uniform, together with the long blood red dress, serve to obstruct the potential of voyeuristic visual pleasure for the male characters, making the handmaids identity reducible to that of “two-legged wombs” (Atwood, p.196).
Our vision of Offred is compromised when she is speaking to the Commander, further rejecting the fetishistic scopophilia of the male gaze. The wings dual purpose is
13
communicated through filmic language here, our vision of Offred becoming
compromised with the presence of Fred Waterford, her Commander (Joseph Fiennes). Mulvey defines scopophilia as the pleasure in looking through an active and controlling gaze of the objectified other. The wings worn by Offred confining her face, however, obstruct this pleasurable look of objectification from the male character, although the scene does conform to Mulvey’s conception that man’s role “is the bearer of the look of the spectator” (p.11), as our vision is obstructed just as Fred Waterford’s is in this moment. Offred however, is not represented as spectacle and eroticisation with the emphasis on her face as opposed to the female body, and this therefore rejects the form of visual pleasure inherent in the scopophilic male gaze. Offred further rejects this objectification when she replies, “you too” to the Commander when he say’s “it was nice to meet you”, causing an uncomfortable silence in the room and giving additional
importance to her voice and sparing use of language. The camera angles
accommodating Offred’s experience, while still being constructed around the presence of Fred Waterford, creates an effective visualisation of Offred’s subjectivity, whilst also emphasising her apparent submissiveness around her male oppressor.
Figure 3: Offred’s face takes centre frame during conversation with Serena Joy
At first observation, Mulvey’s concept of to-be-looked-at-ness may appear to be more apparent in Offred’s first encounter with Fred Waterford (Robert Duvall) in
14
Schlondorff’s film. Whilst reading from the bible before the ceremony (the
institutionalised rape of the Handmaid), Fred (Robert Duvall) repeatedly looks at Offred. He then asks for a glass of water and takes an extended look at her as exemplified in figure 4, depicting Offred as spectacle and an object of desire for Fred Waterford. What this camera positioning does however is to challenge the positioning of the male viewer constituting the “bearer of the look”. Instead we are made aware of Fred Waterford’s gaze from Offred’s position, as opposed to sharing his look and therefore coding and reducing Offred to her to-be-looked-at-ness.
We then see a shot of Offred looking back at him with no wings in her costume to constrain her vision, then down at the floor again. For Mulvey however, man cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification, and so Offred’s look at her Commander in terms of sexual charge is problematised because the look of the female character has no power (Kaplan). Furthermore, for Mulvey, the visual alignment with the male is only “made possible through the processes set in motion by structuring the film around a main controlling figure with whom the spectator can identify” (p.12). As this is our first encounter with Fred Waterford in the film, our identification lies with Offred as she is our protagonist and has become our screen surrogate through aesthetic techniques which Mulvey typically defines as ascribed to the male protagonist in classic Hollywood film. As the film progresses however, the camera increasingly starts to align with Fred Waterford, something I will explore further in this chapter, and this therefore hinders the feminist incentive which is made visible in the Hulu series.
15
Figure 4: Fred Waterford holds the erotic look onto Offred.
This screen surrogacy is exemplified in both adaptations using point of view shots with constructed camera angles aligning with Offred’s gaze at times of
uncertainty. Figure 5 is a scene in Schlondorff’s film when Offred is being taken to the Red Centre where she will be trained to be Handmaid. Her limited view of the outside world, which we align to, helps to achieve the sense of entrapment and confusion at this time also experienced by Offred. Figure 6 shows the same cinematic technique being used in the Hulu series, as when Offred’s view is constructed as she listens to a conversation between Fred and Serena, something she is forbidden to do. Both adaptations therefore use point of view cinematography to represent Offred’s own experience and to portray the limited freedom and perspective within Gilead.
16
Figure 5: Shared perspective through camerawork in Schlondorff’s film
Figure 6: Shared perspective through camerawork in the Hulu series The female voice
Further identification with the protagonist is promoted in the Hulu adaptation through the addition of an embodied voice over, borrowing from the first-person narration in Atwood’s original novel. Access to Offred’s thoughts allows for a further understanding into her personality and sense of humour which is otherwise not easily expressible in
17
Gilead. An example of this access into Offred’s internal world which is only audible to
the viewer is when Rita (the Martha of the house, played by Amanda Brugel) tells Offred that Ofglen (Alexis Bledel) is waiting for her. Offred’s inner monologue tells us, “I want to tell her that Ofglen is not my friend … I kind of want to tell her that I sincerely believe that Ofglen is a pious little shit with a broomstick up her as”’. This is paired with the image of an obedient Offred, and so her internal monologue is in juxtaposition to the image on screen, giving rise to its importance in the narrative. Constrained speech is characteristic of the embodied voice (Silverman, 1988), and here Offred’s voice over allows us to understand her perspective further, for “it makes audible what is ostensibly inaudible, transforming the private into the public” (Silverman, p.58). Without the voice over it would have been problematic to communicate Offred’s true feelings about
Ofglen, given the constraints on freedom of speech for women in Gilead. The voice over then serves to amplify our understanding of Offred’s character and point of view, accommodating a female gaze.
Another example of an effective use of Offred’s voice over narration is her encounter with Nick (Max Minghella) in the garden. As exemplified in figure 8, Offred holds the cinematic gaze as she approaches this character. We see Nick through Offred’s eyes before he notices her, something which Mulvey identifies as inherent in the male
gaze onto the unsuspecting female character. When he asks her “going shopping?” she
replies in her thoughts with “No Nick I’m going to knock back a few at the oyster house bar want to come along?”. This internal monologue allows her to undermine and question other characters, making her active within the narrative whilst the male characters are passive. Just as Mulvey has typically associated the point of view camera to the male, Kaja Silverman notes how the voice over narration is also traditionally ascribed to the male in Hollywood film, whilst the female voice is restricted to the realm of the body. For Silverman, “Hollywood’s soundtrack is engendered through a complex system of displacement which locate the male voice at the point of apparent textual origin, while establishing the diegetic containment of the female voice” (p.45). Offred’s voice over narration in the Hulu adaptation then can be understood as a rejection of this diegetic containment. She takes back her story using her voice as a discursive agent and the female body becomes capable of being imagined outside the notions of passive, lack and other as described by Mulvey.
18
Figure 8: Offred as the bearer of the look onto Nick
During this encounter with Nick, Offred’s voice over observes, “maybe he’s lonely, maybe he watches me” as she curiously looks back at Nick as shown in figure 9. Offred’s recognition of herself as an object of the male gaze acknowledges the
patriarchal structures Mulvey identifies as inherent in film and takes it back through the accommodation of the female look and voice, allowing a platform for female spectator identification. This is further evidenced through male characters, such as Nick, existing in her consciousness as a construction as she understands them.
The Masquerade and to-be-looked-at-ness
Feminist film theorists observe the problems attached to the concept of female identification. Mary Ann Doane for example, observes how the female spectator is “consumed by the image of femininity in film with an over-emotional investment and closeness to the image on the screen” (p.22, 1991). For Doane, this is avoided through the transsexual identification with the male character and the notion of the masquerade, a mask of femininity effective in manufacturing a distance from the image (Smelik). The de-eroticisation of the spectator’s gaze to accommodate a female point of view in the Hulu adaptation, for Doane, essentially denies the woman “the space of a reading” by eliminating the feminine pole of spectator positioning by destroying identification with the female image with the masculinised perspective. In attempting to address a female
19
audience, it manages only to alienate the female spectator from the text's de-eroticized female figure and implicate her all the more fully in the male perspective (Hollinger, p.36, 1992). Kaplan agrees that “to own and activate the gaze, given our language and the structure of the unconscious, is to be in the masculine position” (p.30, 1983) and so the female look in film is rendered impossible or necessarily male by this observation. For Doane and Kaplan, the accommodation of a female view in film only distances the female/male spectator further and therefore (re)affirms unconscious patriarchal
structures. By this definition, the progressive representation of Offred in the Hulu series with its accommodation of the female look and voice will eventually be read as
masculine in its interpretation and so the feminist agenda of the series is hindered.
Figure 9: Offred looks back at Nick thinking, “maybe he watches me”.
Karen Hollinger however argues that female subjectivity such as voice over narration encourages a female spectator reading of the contradictions expressed
through the word/image dichotomy, which she describes as characteristic of the female voice over in film (1992). This juxtaposing nature of the voice over to the image is visible in Hulu’s adaptation as Offred contemplates Nicks low status in Gilead through her internal monologue whilst remaining reserved and polite to him within the film dialogue. For Hollinger, “this divorce of word from image also breaks the unity of
20
containment through fetishism; thus, the male spectator is denied these means of identification with the text's prescribed point of view” (p.36). The erotic pleasure in looking and objectifying which is inherent in scopophilia is therefore abolished with a female voice over. Furthermore, the ambiguity of the voice over in relation to the image is also described by Hollinger to break female over-identification with the image as its desirability is brought into question. “As a result, the spectator, either male or female, is allowed a distancing awareness that makes a less ideologically complicit reading of the texts possible without necessitating a complete rejection of the film's endorsed
viewpoint or of the filmic pleasure it affords” (p.36). The female voice over narration in Hulu’s adaptation then can be understood as a key component in accommodating a female experience and destroying voyeuristic visual pleasure, something Mulvey identifies as an objective of women’s cinema. This create an added layer to Offred’s encounter with Nick with her inner voice during the scene shown in figure 9 and so contributes to the progressive representation of her character under feminist film theory.
A scene where Offred’s exposed, naked body is on display and in line with Nick’s gaze in Schlondorff’s film is shown in figure 10, making her female form the object of eroticised desire for the male and transgressive female spectator who shares Nick gaze as the bearer of the look. In contrast to the Hulu adaptation with its layered encounter using Offred’s voice-over described above, Schlondorff’s film instead follows the generic classic Hollywood formula with the role of a woman being reduced to her physical attractiveness when she engages with Nick’s character, a man who will eventually become her lover and her rescuer. Sharon Smith notes that in the Hollywood film “even when a woman is the central character she is generally shown as confused, or helpless and in danger, or passive, or as a purely sexual being” and “even a film which has one strong female character will revere to cliché motivations and actions” (p.16, 1999). Schlondorff’s film conforms to Smith’s critique, as Offred is reduced to an object of desire when she meets Nick’s gaze. Shortly after this scene Offred runs into Nick in the Commander’s office where they embrace, affirming her status as an object of Nick’s desire.
21
Figure 10: Offred is the object of Nick’s gaze.
Amongst other scenes in which desire becomes complicated and contradictory is the ceremony scene which shows the ritualised rape of the Handmaid, which happens once a month when she is ovulating. How the two adaptations depict this harrowing scene is revealing of the feminist issues at play. As Mulvey has observed, to break the patriarchal conventions of Hollywood cinema, you must free the look of the audience into dialectic, passionate detachment (p.18).
The ceremony scene in Schlondorff’s film can be understood to accommodate Fred Waterford’s perspective. We see him take off his coat and then walk over to the bed. This is followed with the overhead shot of him in a masculine posture entering Offred, demonstrating a position of power as shown in figure 11. This conforms to traditional film conventions and Mulvey’s concept of scopophilia through the pleasure of looking through an active and controlling gaze of the objectified other. The scene shows moments of Offred’s struggle and pain, but ultimately privileges Fred Waterford’s experience of the ceremony during this scene, thereby hindering the feminist perspective.
22
Figure 11: Camera alignment with Fred Waterford during the ceremony
The first ceremony scene in Hulu’s adaptation by contrast, is shot clinically with overhead shots and face portraits. Figure 12 shows the camerawork accommodating Offred’s perspective of the experience with the blurring out of the image and, as a result, the identity of Fred. This shot is followed by the awkward framing of the character which demonstrates the unnatural nature of the act Offred finds herself involved in and creates the “passionate detachment” which Mulvey outlines above needed to break traditional [patriarchal] film conventions. The accommodation of the feminist agenda is engaged with during this scene through the rejection of male subjectivity.
23
Figure 12: The Ceremony scene shot from Offred’s perspective.
Sharon Smith observes that “films express the fantasies and subconscious needs of their (mostly male) creators” (p.16), and so perhaps this representation of femininity in film adaptation can be linked to the male auteur. Reignard M. Nischik explores
Schlondorff’s film in an in-depth chapter entitled “How Atwood Fared in Hollywood” (2009). Nischik describes the film as “Schlondorff’s remasculinization of Atwood’s feminist dystopia”, critiquing the male perspective which has been adopted through the narrating camera in the film. This is exemplified most clearly during the Scrabble scene. Fred Waterford has summoned Offred to his office to where Nick escorts her. The camera literally shows the passing of Offred from one man to another, following Nick’s gaze, and then Fred’s once she is in his office, as shown in figure 13 and 14. Offred is depicted as “a passive object with no gaze of her own in a gendered power game. Thus, not only is her individual voice subdued in the film, but Offred also loses the hegemony of perspective she has in the novel” (Nischik, p.156). The adoption of a male perspective in the film, following Smith’s observation, can be understood as a product and
consequence of the male auteur. The potentiality of the feminist agenda is therefore hindered with the camera’s focus on the male characters and succumbing to Mulvey’s binary of active/male and passive/female.
24
Figure 13: Nick escorts Offred to Fred’s office
Figure 14: Offred is passed on to Fred
Mulvey’s critique of the patriarchal structures of classic Hollywood cinema is made visible in Schlondorff’s film with its Hollywoodized ending. The film ends with Offred clinging to her love interest and the driver of the action, Nick, who eventually rescues her from Gilead. Offred pleads with Nick not to leave her behind. Grace Epstein summarizes this final scene:
25
“Hollywood’s classic tradition of dealing with women invaded the film … to reassert the romance plot assaulted by Atwood and returned the female
protagonist – her body and voice- to her objectified position in the classic cinema … putting the woman back in her place as the passive part of the couple.
Tradition dictates this” (p.54-59, 1993).
In line with Mulvey’s critique of classic Hollywood cinema, Epstein engages with the active/passive binary which the ending of Schlondorff’s film conforms to. This also supports Hollinger’s observation that “female narrational power is shut down in some way by a final decisive male intervention that implicates the spectator strongly in this masculine point of view” (p.35) and therefore the film eventually accommodates the
male gaze over the female’s. The ending of the first episode of the Hulu series, by
contrast, accommodates the female by including a close-up of Offred’s face as she tells us of her intentions to survive Gilead as shown in figure 15. Her voice over says, “I intend to survive for her. Her name is Hannah. My Husband was Luke”, the camera then moves closer to her face as she looks up and tells the spectator “My name is June”. With this the credits run with the soundtrack, “You Don’t Own Me” (Lesley Gore, 1963), contributing to the spectators’ identification with Offred’s strong mindset expressed with her survival speech. The ending of the first episode of the Hulu series has therefore confirmed Offred as a strong female protagonist, achieved through the visual and
26
Figure 15: The Hulu series’ first episodes ending shot
What the analysis of the representation of female protagonist Offred reveals is the extent to which the feminist perspective is addressed. The film has a narrative arc eventually leading to Offred’s rescue by a central male character. 2 Hulu’s Offred by contrast, provides a rich platform for the accommodation of the female experience. The cinematic techniques adopted in the Hulu adaptation, such as the internal monologue and close-up cinematography and soundtrack contribute to the complete
accommodation of Offred’s point of view and a rejection of the male gaze. The series defines all points of female identification; character, image and camera (De Laurentis, 1985). Hulu’s adaptation therefore can be understood to be pushing the feminist agenda of the text, with its prioritisation of a female, feminine and feminist experience.
Schlondorff’s film by contrast, hinders the feminist agenda with the inflation of the importance of the male characters over the female protagonist. This leads on to the next chapter which will explore the representation of masculinity and the patriarchy in the two case studies.
2Nischik observes that since “Schlondorff opted to make – in his own words- a
“straight-forward, blunt” Hollywood “thriller” he streamlined the complexity of the book [and as a result, Offred] into an easily consumable film [and character] (p.150).
27
Chapter 2: “Under his eye”: Men and the construction of the patriarchy
“Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse for some” (Atwood, p.211)
Whilst feminist film theorists such as Mulvey, De Laurentis and Kaplan have exposed the injustices in the representation of women in film seen through recurring negative imagery, how men have been represented in filmic language is perhaps equally as revealing of the patriarchal structures inherent to the medium. Following Mulvey’s article, film theory has confidently equated the masculinity of the male subject with activity, voyeurism, sadism, fetishism, and story. Beyond film, muscularity can also be said to be associated with the sign of power- natural, achieved, phallic (Dyer, p.68), and so the male image on the cinema screen is therefore “as significant a representational stake as the female” (Cohan and Hark, p.3, 1993).
This chapter seeks to analyse the depiction of the male characters and the presence of the patriarchy in the narrative of Hulu’s series and Schlondorff’s film,
asking, how does the representation of masculinity further or hinder the feminist issues addressed? Are the male characters active or passive in the narrative? Can Mulvey’s concepts of spectacle and desire be applied to the male characters? How is the idea of the patriarchy constructed?
The Commander
One of the central male characters of The Handmaid’s Tale is Fred Waterford, otherwise known as The Commander. As a man who essentially owns Offred, how filmic language is used to portray his character and his relationship with her and other characters is revealing of how progressive or conservative the two adaptations are with the feminist project in mind.
We are introduced to Fred Waterford early in the first episode of the Hulu series, although truthful to Atwood’s novel Serena Joy is introduced first. We hear him enter the room and Offred rises with respect for his presence, the camera remaining on her however. During this first introduction we see singular face shots of the three
characters. The camera remains relatively distant to Fred shown in figure 2.1, in comparison to the intrusive close ups of the women. Figure 2.2 reveals the
28
awkwardness Serena feels during this scene, as she warns Offred once Fred has left the room, “he is my husband till death do us part. Don’t get any ideas”.
Figure 2.1: The introduction of Fred Waterford
Figure 2.2: Close up revealing Serena’s emotions during the introduction of Fred to Offred
29
How Schlondorff introduces Fred Waterford is comparable to the Hulu series, with the heightened emphasis being on the women in the room. We see a blurred out shot of Fred entering the room behind Offred, as shown in figure 2.3. His appearance is left a mystery until he walks in front of Offred to greet Serena (Faye Dunaway) who he takes by the hands and sits her down on the chair, the camera remaining on Serena staring at him longingly as he walks away, as shown in figure 2.4. Both adaptations focus on the women during the introduction of Fred Waterford, prioritising their emotions whilst demonstrating the influence of male power and control in the story. This scene then can be understood to engage with a feminist perspective with the exposure of female oppression under male power.
30
Figure 2.4: The camera remains on Serena as Fred walks away
Later in the film and in episode two of the Hulu series, to improve his impersonal relationship with Offred, Fred Waterford invites her to his office for a game of Scrabble. This act has a layer of eroticisation due to women no longer being allowed to read in
Gilead, and so by giving her permission to break the law under his supervision, this
further serves to demonstrate the control he has over her. In her book Atwood
describes the significance of this, “now it’s forbidden, for us. Now it’s dangerous. Now it’s indecent. Now it’s something he can’t do with his Wife. Now it’s desirable. Now he’s compromised himself. It’s as if he’s offered me drugs” (p.216). Offred’s experience of this Scrabble scene and her relationship to Fred is communicated differently in the two adaptations, revealing the (in)existence of the feminist undertones of the scene.
During this Scrabble scene and Offred’s first time in Fred’s office in Schlondorff’s film, Fred dominates the conversation, asking her if she had ever played Scrabble before then interrupting her before she answers. Later we see him cutting up strawberries and offering them to Offred. He congratulates her performance in the game, attributing it to her previous job as a librarian. He gains control of the narrative which coincides with the erotic look, achieved through the camera remaining predominately on him and his
31
actions throughout the scene. 3 As he opens the door for Offred to leave he leans in to kiss her before she quickly escapes his grasp. After this the camera remains on Fred as he says, “you play a mean game”, as seen in figure 2.4. The camera remaining with Fred after the female protagonist’s departure validates his experience of the scene as
opposed to Offred’s. Schlondorff’s film therefore accommodates the male subjectivity and the voyeuristic pleasure that comes with it for the male and transgressive female spectator.
Figure 2.5: Fred watches Offred leave his office
This first meeting in Fred’s office in Hulu’s adaptation by comparison is intensified with the built up anticipation of the meeting through Offred’s internal monologue as she walks through the corridor, the dark lighting adding further suspense. As Offred approaches his office, her voice over tells us that “beyond The Commander’s door is a place where women do not go…”. She knocks on his door, exhales and enters. The scene is dark with only a few lamps providing light. Offred
3This focus on Fred Waterford can perhaps be linked back to the auteur, Nischik observing how Schlondorff saw “the commander as the villain yet also the one who is liked most in the film - quite a remarkable statement for a movie based on a first-person narration by a woman utterly oppressed by the outrageous gender politics of Gilead’ (p.147).
32
remains centred in the framing, whilst Fred is marginalised at the edges of the frame. Initially the two characters do not appear in the same frame together, highlighting the gender division in Gilead. Our visual alignment is with Offred as she scans the office and slowly walks closer to him. Only when Fred tells her, “you can look at me”, does she look up at him and we share her vision and see a shot of his face as he says “hello”. Only once they start playing Scrabble together do the characters appear in the same frame, seen in figure 2.6. This creates a visual representation of the board game uniting them in a more natural way than we see in the shots of the ceremony scenes, which instead feature obscure shots of body parts and awkward framing. The intensity and dramatic build up to this scene demonstrates the over-bearing presence of male power in Gilead, with its total control of women like Offred and submission to their Commander. Through this scene the Hulu series can be understood to engage with the feminist theme of female oppression under the patriarchy.
The Scrabble game continues, and we see Offred getting emotional when she sees and touches the letters used for the game, as women have been banned from reading in their new restricted domesticated roles in the home.4 She then looks up and realises that Fred’s gaze is on her as seen in figure 2.7. Dyer acknowledges this form of looking (staring) is associated with power and overlaps with ideas of activity/passivity, understanding staring as a way in which to assert dominance (p.63). Her moment of happiness at the sight of the letters is disrupted with the controlling gaze of Fred, isolated in his dark office. The scene exposes the male gaze through alignment with female protagonist, as opposed to the male subjectivity we align to during the same Scrabble scene in Schlondorff’s film.
4In flashback before the times of Gilead in episode 6, we hear another Commander tell
Fred, “we gave them [women] more than they could handle. They put so much focus on academic pursuits and professional ambition, we let them forget their real purpose”.
33
Figure 2.6: Offred and Fred appear in the same frame during their scrabble game
Figure 2.7: Fred’s dominant stare over Offred
The personal encounters Offred has with Fred serve to demonstrate the presence of male power in Gilead, as he bends the rules by allowing her into his office for his own pleasure. As the Scrabble games continue throughout the film and series, Fred rewards Offred’s success with women’s magazines, again something which is forbidden in Gilead, representing a feminine world that no longer exists. The additional significance of the
34
magazines is described in the book, Offred’s narration saying that they represent “one adventure after another, one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another” (p.201).
In Schlondorff’s film we visually align to Fred during these micro demonstrations of power, as seen in figure 2.8 as he bends down to reveal the magazines. This can be linked to the narcissistic identification Mulvey observes in film, which involves
phantasies of power, omnipotence, mastery, and control attributed to the screen surrogacy of the male. This is made possible as the “the man controls the film phantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extra-dietic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle” (Mulvey, p.12). The accommodation of Fred’s subjectivity with his position of power allows for this form of narcissistic
identification with the male image on screen and the “control and possession of the
woman within the diegesis” (p.13), and therefore does not leave room for engagement with the feminist issues at play in the scene, such as oppression under the patriarchy.
The Hulu adaptation by contrast, accommodates female subjectivity during this demonstration of power as shown in figure 2.9 from episode five. We see Fred’s arm extending as he offers the magazine to Offred with the rest of his body out of the frame. Offred can be seen staring back, almost like a pet being offered a treat by their owner. His dominant position over Offred is evidenced here through this shot of him above her, keeping him out of reach and also out of the shot. The visual alignment with Offred in Hulu’s adaptation however means that the spectator is also in a position of being
controlled, as opposed to Mulvey’s concept of narcissistic identification made possible in Schlondorff’s film through identification with the male image. Hulu’s adaptation
therefore exposes the presence of female suppression during this scene, although ultimately what both adaptations achieve is to demonstrate the harrowing existence of male power in Gilead.
35
Figure 2.8: Narcissistic identification with Fred as becomes our screen surrogate
Figure 2.9: The Commander looks down on to Offred
Mulvey’s denial of the male as an object or erotic look is because she “conceives the look to be essentially active in its aims, identification with the male protagonist is only considered from a point of view which associates it with a sense of omnipotence, of assuming control of the narrative” (Rodowick, p.8, 1982). The active connotations which are associated to the male character within the narrative therefore exclude him
36
from eroticisation and put him instead on a level of spectator identification.
Identification theory is very complex however, particularly with the female perspective provided by Hulu’s adaptation. Rodowick disputes the idea that the male image cannot involve eroticism, proposing that the narcissistic male image, with its association with authority and omnipotence, as seen in Fred’s character, can entail a concomitant masochism in the relations between the spectator and the image (1982). It is his
argument that the male image can involve an eroticism since there is always a constant oscillation between the image as a source of identification, and as an other, a source of contemplation (Neale, p.13, 1993). He writes that “Mulvey makes no differentiation between identification and object choice in which sexual aims may be directed toward the male figure, nor does she consider the signification of authority in the male figure from the point of view of an economy of masochism” (p.8). Following Rodowick’s observation then, the image of Fred seen from Offred’s perspective in figure 2.9 in the Hulu adaptation can involve eroticism through the position of power he has over Offred and as an extension, the spectator. Following this line of thought, Hulu’s adaptation allows for a progressive representation through female identification which has the potential to associate the male image with eroticism, as opposed to eroticism being applied only to the female image.
The masochistic control Fred has over Offred is further shown with their trip to
Jezebel’s, a secret brothel/sex club for the elite men only where women have been sent
to work as prostitutes as an alternative to being deported to the colonies. Also
referenced in Atwood’s novel, Jezebel’s can be understood a kind of “playground for the high-powered men of Gilead to re-enact the forbidden, eroticized sex of yesteryear, when it was not a government mandate… where women are explicitly and visually othered” (Bodelson, p.65, 2006). The patriarchal structures of Gilead are exposed here with Jezebel’s as a male-controlled club made solely for the pleasure and enjoyment of men, troubled by the very discomfort with their own self-imposed homogenization of the sexes (Bodelson). How the two case studies have adapted this patriarchal
playground into filmic language is telling of the extent to which the feminist agenda is accommodated within the adaptations.
In Schlondorff’s adaptation, we see the lead up to their visit to Jezebel’s with Fred giving Offred a dress to wear. Offred smiles and appears happy to receive the glamorous new clothes given to her. We are then shown a brief shot of Offred already in the dress
37
as we see she adjusts it before Fred walks in to the room, as shown in figure 2.10. He tells he she looks “fantastic”, before circling around her then taking out her hair from its binding. Offred is shown wearing an evening gown with a thigh-high slit and a black feather boa, another device used to fetishize and phallocize women (Bodelson). Mulvey discusses the function of such elaborate clothing in film to deflect castration anxiety, as “the nearer the female figure is to genital nakedness, the more flamboyant the phallic distraction” (p.8). The dressing up of Offred makes her an object of erotic desire for Fred, and the spectator alike. Castration anxiety is reduced with the fetishistic
scopophilic nature of the scene which accommodates a masculine perspective.
The Hulu adaptation includes similar scenes of Fred’s fetishization of Offred before Jezebel’s, but in a different way. As opposed to the full-length body shots we see during this scene in Schlondorff’s adaptation, these scenes are shot by using intimate close ups, paired with dark lighting and intense music. We see a shot of Fred shaving Offred’s legs, her voice over telling us that, “he’s good at this, he’s done this before”. By including these scenes, the Hulu series sheds light on Fred’s control and involvement in dressing up of Offred for his own erotic visual pleasure. Figure 2.11 shows Fred holding up a mirror to Offred as she puts on make-up given to her by him. Unlike other shots, Offred is higher than Fred in the framing. This shot demonstrates the degree of control Offred finally has over her own appearance, although it ultimately is for the erotic pleasure of Fred, who is all the while watching. Figure 2.12 shows Fred holding the mirror up to Offred and we see Fred staring back at Offred as she applies the make-up, revealing the scopophilic nature of the scene. The pleasure of using another person as an object of sexual stimulation through an active controlling gaze (Mulvey) is exposed through filmic language, as opposed to its accommodation of the erotic look in Schlondorff’s adaptation. Hulu’s adaptation, with its intensification of these scenes, engages with feminist issues, such as women being reduced to their to-be-looked-at-ness in film.
38
Figure 2.10: Fred see’s Offred in the dress he gave her
39
Figure 2.12: Fred’s gaze at Offred whilst she applies the make-up he gave to her During the visit to Jezebel’s, Schlondorff amplifies the scopophilic effect for men by using erotic visual cues. This can be linked to Mulvey’s critique that, "unchallenged, mainstream film coded the erotic into the language of the dominant patriarchal order" (p.16). This includes scenes of girls dancing with an emphasis on their bodies, as seen in figure 2.13, a further implication that the man controls the film phantasy (Mulvey). Offred’s narration in Atwood’s novel asks, “is there joy in this? There could be, but have they chosen it? You can’t tell by looking” (p.247). Jezebel’s in Schlondroff’s film however is depicted as a fun, party place, with minimal emphasis on the total oppression and sexual enslavement of the women there. There are however small moments which hint at this theme, for example when we hear another Commander tell Offred “everyone has fun here!” Later Offred asks Fred, “who are these people?”, to which Fred remarks that it’s a good place for men to do business. Offred replies “no, I meant the women”. Fred replies that they were sociologists, lawyers and other academics, “but they prefer it here see”. This conversation exposes the forced objectification of women in Jezebel’s,
although is quickly followed by a shot of Nick staring at Offred in her new dress and make-up, and so ultimately does not address the feminist rhetoric of the scene as it reverts to the erotic male gaze.
40
Figure 2.13: Women dancing in Jezebels.
The Hulu series engages with the darker side of Jezebel’s in episode eight, depicting it in a dystopian light through Offred’s subjectivity. We are guided into the club by Offred, Fred seen following closely behind her, as shown in figure 2.14. This is paired with the soundtrack of “White Rabbit” (Jefferson Airplane, 1967), a song about
Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carrol, 1865), adding to the surrealist nature of the scene
and allowing us further insight into Offred’s confused mindset. The female subjectivity adopted in the scene, as opposed to the male’s in Schlondorff’s, exposes Jezebel’s for the patriarchal playground that it is. We see images of distressed women being led by men. One troubling scene shows a woman who is physically impaired, missing both of her arms, being molested by a man in a lift. This display of exploitation can be understood as a tool to destroy any potential voyeuristic and scopophilic pleasure of the scene, something Mulvey views as a tactical weapon to combat the patriarchal structures in film. This is further evidenced in figure 2.15 which reveals Offred in tears during a scene where Fred tries to seduce her later in a hotel room. The Hulu series lays more
emphasis on the emotions of women and so engages with the theme of female objectification in Jezebel’s further than Schlondorff’s film.
41
Figure 2.14: Offred guides the spectator into Jezebel’s
Figure 2.15: Close-up of Offred’s face during a scene where Fred tries to seduce her Nick
Fred Waterford’s character represents the existence of male power with the control he has over Offred. Another important male character who also lives in the Waterford’s household is Nick, who exists as a counterpoint to Fred as a member of the elite, as he is
