#*the handmaiden

[lady-arryn]

Love? What does a crook like you know about love? THE HANDMAIDEN (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

[elletao]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

[wlwanakin]

at the end of the day when it comes to padmé i think it’s really important to remember that her closest friends are literally her employees. her only other friends are her coworkers. her closest friend for years was a girl she met at 14 whose job it was to pretend to be her and potentially die about it. another friend with the same job died in her arms while pretending to be her. she does not have friends outside of her squad of employees who pretend to be her and sometimes die about it and then her politician coworkers. too many of you are way too surprised that this woman is not normal about love or relationships or her own self considering all this

[title]

“May I rest my weary head on your shoulder?” (insp.)

In the Mood for Love (2000), Rafiki (2018), Cold War (2018), Your Name Engraved Herein (2020), But I’m a Cheerleader (1999), Moonlight (2016), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), And Then We Danced (2019), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Anatomy of a Fall (2023), Lovesong (2016), God’s Own Country (2017), The Handmaiden (2016), Notorious (1946)

[yimmygee]

the handmaiden

[elainiisms]

y'all are always complaining about how gay rep has to be perfect and unproblematic like speak for yourself i personally love it when they try to murder each other

[northsonic]

If the ship doesn’t have high obsession & ‘ high codependency.. do I even want it?

[sailermoon]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook / Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) ep. 38 "End of the World"

Inspiration

[dramaintherain]

KIM MIN HEE & KIM TAE RI ⬥ The Handmaiden 아가씨 (2016)

[possession1981-moving]

Will he be as gentle as you?

KIM TAE-RI and KIM MIN-HEE as Sook-hee and Hideko THE HANDMAIDEN dir. Park Chan-wook, 2016

[lady-arryn]

You think you're tricking me? You're the one being tricked. THE HANDMAIDEN (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

[elletao]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

[indigomood]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook

[onenicebugperday]

Blue handmaiden, Eriphioides ecuadoriensis, Arctiini, Erebidae

Photographed in Ecuador by belowbluewaterdiver

I could only find a couple photos of this species that I could legally share, but I can link this better photo here! The iridescent blue is beautiful :)

[bevsi]

quick study from the handmaiden

[shesnake]

The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan-wook // Interview with the Vampire episode 11 (2024) dir. Levan Akin

He lost his Hindu-originated name “Arun” when he was trafficked from Dehli as a child, was renamed “Amadeo” by his paedophile Maker the vampire Marius, then finally assigned “Armand” by the Roman coven before they sent him to France. He’s also lost his voice in a way, shown code-switching and adopting different accents in different settings. Throughout world history, colonised peoples have often been forced to adopt the languages and names of their oppressive colonisers as a way to erase their cultural identities.

Armand’s history was essentially colonised. His personal sexual trauma is an allegory for wider colonial trauma. This idea was explored similarly in Park Chan-wook’s 2016 film The Handmaiden, where the character Hideko’s forced exposure to pornographic Japanese literature as a child is meant to parallel the colonial oppression of the Japanese occupation of Korea.

The only evidence remaining of Armand’s experiences of sexual and colonial violence is this painting The Adoration of the Shephards With a Donor that hangs in the Louvre. Another cruel irony here is that ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ is an episode of Jesus’s nativity. Arun as a (presumably) Hindu boy was used as a prop in a Christian narrative. The one historical document that exists of his mortal life is a depiction of his religious assimilation. Completely divorced from his roots, with no identity outside the roles his abusers assigned him, Armand, Amadeo, and Arun “were cut loose and dead like children turned to stone.” Being immortalised, “donated”, and placed on display in a European museum, a space he’s not even really allowed to access, for the mostly-white gaze is a clear metaphor for colonisers’ persisting theft of cultural artefacts belonging to their victims.

The only consolation this journey has for Armand is creative inspiration. He took Amadeo, trapped in the horror of his youth for the entertainment of others, and transferred that idea into the play My Baby Loves Windows to torture Claudia.

Armand, colonialism, and the weaponisation of anti-Blackness by Deah