Blueprints: "The Handmaid's Tale"

As we approach Emmy season, Jorge will take a look at the scripts of the pilot episodes for television’s hottest contenders...

Voiceover narrations are usually a way for characters to express things to the audience that they would not be able to learn otherwise, mainly inner thoughts with a heavy helping of story exposition. It’s an easy way for us to understand the emotional place of the characters and fill in the blanks of what we’re seeing. 

But what if voiceover were to be used for a time when characters need to express things that not only cannot be said otherwise in the story, but are actually forbidden to be spoken at all? The Handmaid’s Tale portrays a world in which society has become so repressed that the only way for the protagonist to freely speak her mind is, well, in her own mind…

The Handmaid’s Tale
“Pilot” (a.k.a “Offred”)
Written by: Ilene Chaiken & Bruce Miller
Based on the novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood
[You can read the whole script here]

The pilot for The Handmaid’s Tale had a lot of heavy lifting to do. Not only does the audience need to be introduced to a world with several layers of complicated social hierarchies and learn how they each operate, but they also need to understand how society got to that point, and what our protagonist’s role in the story is. It required an enormous amount of world-building and establishing of the emotional stakes and character arcs.

Voiceover is a device that is immediately ingrained as an essential part of the show: something that will allow us to move through and understand the world and characters in a way that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Through the series, it will serve as a guide to let us inside the thoughts and motivations of characters that had their thoughts and motivations stripped away. 

In the pilot of the series, voiceover serves two main functions: deliver exposition and world-building, and establishing Offred’s character journey. 

When we first meet Offred, she goes by June. Her character name points out as such. She will be our entrance and main anchor to the story. June eventually becomes Offred (her character description changes as her identity is stripped), and she explains to us through inner dialogue how the world got to this state; how it operates, what’s allowed and what’s forbidden, what are her roles and obligations. 

Many passages of this narration were most likely lifted straight from Margaret Atwood’s novel. While voiceover as exposition can sometimes come off as a cheap way to deliver information, it is vital in how we will be moving around Gilead and its machinations, since the story throws us in the middle of it.

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Internal monologues are also an element that is deeply tied to Offred’s character. It’s a way for the show to explain to the audience what has been happening, but in the world of the show, it is also the only way Offred has been keeping herself sane and congruent.

We see how her attitude and behavior in the outside world differ widely from the thoughts she is having. What she is saying is completely different from what she wants to be saying. Because of the oppressive circumstances she finds herself in, these monologues are the only way for us to dive into her true and authentic self; the woman she was before she was stripped of her identity.

These thoughts are the link between June and Offred; they are actually the only thing that remains of June, and what will keep Offred fighting. The last scene of the pilot mirrors our introduction to her; in a domestic environment, seemingly submissive. But her thoughts at the closing tell us another story. She is ready to fight. Right now, her thoughts are all she has. But she will hang on to them for dear life.

Few writers have found truly innovative ways to utilize voiceover narrations in a way that serve and further the purpose of the story. In The Handmaid’s Tale, the voiceover is ingrained into the fabric of the characters and (at least in the first episode) it is their only weapon. It is how they are telling us how they got there and how they intend to get out.

It may not be the main preoccupation of the show, but it is a way of saying that the last thing you can take away from someone are their thoughts, their ideas, and their words. Blessed be the fruit.

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