Can I just say that I love you all here in SF? I mean, I love how I can come to this thread and have a conversation about Tolstoy or Jane Austen, while also b***-ing about OUAT’s epic fails, and getting delightful MRJ gifsets. Yay SF! Y’all rock.
By making Bella so blank, the young female reader would subconsciously insert themselves into that role and thus would care about Bella that much more and be invested in the success of that relationship.
Oh, that’s absolutely right. I suppose I was trying to point out why, exactly, the particular species of Twilight love story is so problematic. In a sense, I think it’d be problematic even if Edward were a decent guy. The problem is that a) the “oompf” of Twilight relies on the eroticization of an egregious power differential (i.e. it’s a form of statutory rape) and b) Bella is simply ancillary / an accessory to the only relationship of the books that matters, which is the one between Jacob and Edward. But it’s all packaged as if it were about Bella. So as young audiences absorb the message, what sediments is a very particular idea about gender norms, which elevates Bella’s passivity and lack of perceivable agency to a virtue of character, and a desirable trait in a romantic partner. With very few exceptions, most of the paranormal romance fiction (books or movies) share this trope. Except for Jim Jarmousch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, which , if you’re a fan of Tom Hiddleston or Tilda Swinton, and haven’t seen it, consider watching it. (Do it. Do it now!)
I disagree. I think that as long as a guy is hot, people will still ship him with somebody. Even if he is an absolute arsehole, the female protagonist will be shipped with him because he’s misunderstood, he can change for the better with love, he just needs someone to care about him, etc etc.
*sigh* You may be right. But I also think “hotness” is itself a carefully constructed project, and part of a show’s overall message about any given character. Many talented actors are versatile and can pull off any range of things, from heartthrob to repulsive degenerate. Think, I don’t know, Johnny Depp, who has done anything from straight up romance roles to utterly bizarre whacko ones. Or Charlize Theron. I mean, we don’t even have to look too far – if you look at Bobby’s career, there have been roles where he played an attractive character, and others where he played an utterly repulsive psychopath, equally convincingly.
All this to say, Hook is absolutely being “Fabio-ized” on OUAT, in a way that should be getting a good chortle out of anyone who’s at all familiar with these romance tropes. I mean, down to the costume. But that’s the point — this is a conscious project on the part of the show makers, not just an inherent feature of the actor. Might Colin look differently if he were in a different role? Absolutely. If he can land something that doesn’t typecast him as the pretty boy, I’ve no doubt he’ll rise to the occasion. That’s what these actors/actresses are trained to do — it’s their job.
Which is to say, “hotness” is itself a message. It’s — look, this character is hot, you (as the audience) will respond to him/her in a certain way. And this is where, going to @Slurpeez ‘ earlier comment about War and Peace (sorry I’m not direct-quoting), there is always a meta-message. What are we to make of this hotness? With Anna and Vronsky, or Natasha and Anatole — the meta message for Tolstoy is something like “beware of the facile, physical infatuation” (Tolstoy of course was a deeply religious man, even if his particular interpretation of Christianity was a bit peculiar by the standards of his time and society). Point is, he was preoccupied with things like desire, sin, and consequence. But OUAT, for all its “borrowing” from Christian mythology (in its unique pot pourri approach), actually has a whole range of double standards at play which essentially say what’s good for the goose, is not necessarily good for the gander. The particularly outrageous part about these distinctions is that they run along race, gender, class, age, and physical attractiveness lines. (Hence, for example, the strikingly different treatment of Hook and Rumple, for all their similarities).