‘Sharp Objects’: All of the Hidden Words You Missed

 


"The HBO mini-series Sharp Objects is full of shadows and echoes and things you can’t quite fully glimpse — mysteries you know are there but can’t yet see, stories with contours you can’t totally make out. The hidden lines of history lurk underneath everything, but it’s also a show with words scratched on its surface. Sometimes they’re pitch-black, slantwise jokes about femininity and social expectations, sometimes they’re warning signs, and sometimes they’re straight, uninflected daggers of self-loathing.

As we discover in the last shot of the premiere episode, Camille Preaker literally carves words into her skin, turning herself into a lexicography of pain. She writes the inside words on the outside, naming and defining her story on her body. If Sharp Objects is an extension of Camille’s own self, an indication of how much its camera is also Camille’s eye, it makes sense that many of those words are also scratched and painted on the show itself. They hide in plain sight, suddenly visible in one frame and disappearing in the next.

Many of those words are hallucinatory, appearing in places that words wouldn’t otherwise show up, or you can only see them for a moment. Beyond Camille’s own hallucinations, Sharp Objects extends her fixation on words into a broader visual style, often using signage and lettering as a wry commentary on characters and their actions. These uncanny, hallucinatory images are a huge part of the show’s meticulously off-balance, unnerving feel, but they are insistently not clues — not in the traditional sense, at least. You don’t need to see them to anticipate what’s coming, nor are they a bread-crumb trail of tips to lead viewers to a hidden riddle. Their meanings are not hard to interpret: They are words from Camille’s mind, from how she understands herself, from the narrative of herself. They’re barely visible versions of everything Sharp Objects is already showing us, made explicit in language. Don’t think of them as hints; think of them as labels. Troubling, alarming, deeply scarring and scarred labels."

see them here...

‘Sharp Objects’: All of the Hidden Words You Missed: