Tear My Life Apart: Truth Through Queerness in The Handmaiden
This paper compares two related sequences in Park Chan-wook’ 2016 film The Handmaiden using a theoretical lens that reconciles the writings of two preeminent scholars in the field of queer studies. At the start of this film, neither Tamako nor Lady Hideko understands the web of manipulation and lies in which they are entrapped. Both have some key knowledge, but the film’s male characters work hard to safeguard the gates of their knowledge in a desperate bid to prevent females from attaining agency. Yet by the film’s conclusion, it’s the men who realize their hallowed knowledge allowed them to glimpse but a shade of the women’s true capabilities. Thus, when Tamako and Lady Hideko finally embrace queerness to access the truth of the world around them, they also tear down the superficial facade of knowledge that the film’s male characters passed off for truth, even as they build their own identities anew. The film introduces its audience to the gates of male knowledge very early on, ar