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I just want to speak to the debate over the show’s intended message vs the audience’s reaction — so some of the stuff @thedarkonedearie was bringing up. Any text (citing RG’s broad use of the term here) anticipates its own reception. As in, any work of fiction (or non-fiction) is going to have not just an intended audience, but a kind of inbuilt “script” for how it’s meant to be read/viewed/consumed. Another way of putting it, say something reaches its intended audience. Now, if you’re a text, you want to control for how that audience experiences you. The best example I can give is a scientific argument. If you’re a scientist writing an article, you have to convince a potentially skeptical audience of the arguments you’re laying out, while precluding them from going “Wait a second, that assumptions seems totally bogus”. So you sort of “argue” with your anticipated critics before any critics have even piped up or know you exist. That’s the “script.” For fiction, there’s another kind of script. Say, if your text is a drama, you don’t want your audience to accidentally think it’s a subtle parody, so you “coral” them in the right direction (through pacing, language, style, plot points etc).
In this sense, nothing is ever JUST a text (or TV show). There’s nothing that doesn’t have a “script.” Things can have ineffective scripts, but you can’t have something without one — simply put, we wouldn’t be able to make sense of it. (There were literary and cultural experiments that did try that, of course. Postmodernism for example. But that’s a totally different conversation).
Regarding Hook and many of the other villains, OUAT has at least two contradictory scripts: the one that RG, POM, Bar Farer, and many folks here in SF are pointing out — that has to do with rape culture, misogyny, seemingly condoning reprehensible actions and never having to take responsibility for them etc. That’s mostly done through “showing” , to borrow POM’s contrast set. And then there’s another script, that’s mostly what the show “tells” us, and that another faction of the fandom obviously finds convincing — that’s the CS=epitome of romantic love script (and so forth). The particularly outrageous part of this is that early in S1 OUAT was promoting itself as a feminist show.
I don’t exclude the possibility that this tension is deliberate, but whether it is or not, I think if we take a reception studies approach, and look at how the audience is divided, then you just have to assume that’s what the show does, pragmatically. It’s peddling 2 mutually exclusive messages at the same time.
[adrotate group="5"]All fair points. He obviously does things that are not great. And although I think you are quick to jump to things like emotional manipulation when Hook says things like he’s afraid he’ll revert back to his old self if it wasn’t for her (because I don’t see that as emotional manipulation if he truly is afraid that’s what will happen and if Emma truly has that kind of affect on him), he certainly cannot be defended all the time and I’m not going to try now.
Of course they do. But you can find stuff villains do offensive. I’m offended when people murder, rape, maim, or otherwise injure another person. The fact that “horrible people do horrible” things isn’t justification. They don’t get a pass because “oh, villains.” Especially when it doesn’t get treated as a horrible thing by the writers…it gets treated as romantic.
However this I just don’t understand. If the bad guy is supposed to do bad things, how can you find that offensive. It is logic. They don’t get a pass. We are supposed to hate them, not get offended. Being offended to me, sounds like you are taking it personal. But I don’t get what kind of behavior you are expecting from a villain.
I think the point people are making here is not about the defensibility of this particular line, but about the defensibility of romanticizing a character who says such lines. In other words Hooks S2 portrayal simply burned too many bridges for a chunk of the audience to easily accept claims about his supposed later redemption.
Simply put, I find Hook as Emma’s love interest and the character whose story now drives much of the show to be utterly unconvincing, and morally distasteful. 😀
But to lighten the mood, does anyone remember Dr Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham? I’ve been reading it to the little one and it just struck me that this is CS in a box
i do not like green eggs and ham
i do not like them Sam I Am
would you like them here or there?
i would not like them here or there
i would not like them anywhere!
would you like them in a box?
would you like them with a fox?
And on and on it goes like this until the poor protagonist finally relents under the onslaught of nonsensical pestering (and arguably kidnapping)
Joss knew that it couldn’t be romanticized and he didn’t try to. Spike didn’t get the girl in the end. The girl recognized that it was unhealthy and terrible for her, for him.
Yes. I think what was so beautifully done with Spuffy is this idea that where Buffy and Spike are with each other is largely a symptom of where they are with themselves, and this absolutely comes across. Both become deeply unlikeable because of the way they treat each other, but it’s written with enough complexity (or simply enough “meta”) for the audience to realize that this isn’t because they’re horrible people, but because they’re both in a deep dark emotional hole, and latching onto each other largely out of desperation and desire to feel better at the expense of someone else because that’s all they have the energy to do. They have good chemistry, and Spike could be woobified, but the show is steadfast enough in its politics to go to all sorts of lengths to not make Spuffy “shippable.”
Similarly, with Jessica Jones, the show leaves you 0 room to want to “ship” Jessica and Killgrave. It constantly works really hard to bring the audience just to the brink, then yanks it back and goes “no no, don’t go there. Your instinct was right. Stay with Jessica.” It’s done so well.
OUAT is the opposite. It absolutely does everything to enable “shipping.” I think the main problem is not even the ships — though they are a big part of it — it’s how OUAT comes off as incredibly judgmental, while totally lacking any sort of reliable moral compass. It presents its audience with shades of (increasingly darker) gray, but insists that some of these grays are actually whites, and some are blacks. Unless this is actually some sort of brilliant meditation on the hypocritical nature of humans, that essentially all these characters we’ve come to know for years now are just in the grips of complete and utter dissociative psychosis and have no sense of what way is up.
If that’s what’s up, then alright. I could live with that.
OUAT = where fairytale characters come to die.
Just now i was re-reading a TV line gos article made by Matt around the TCA time and there was a comment there, that said that even tho the story looked good, she/he was not fan of the actors, especially MRJ ( since ouat) bc he is a bad actor, i mean, really they actually hate an actor bc he the character he played on the previous project was in the middle of their ship
This, right there, boggles my mind. How old are these people? I mean, seriously. I don’t mean to be ageist, but sometimes it sounds like the OUAT fandom is simply overrun with middle-schoolers.
@PriceofMagic – You make some excellent points. But I think there are two main differences between Spuffy and CS. First, Spike had relationships to other characters in the show. Spike was an arrogant, impulsive loudmouth, but he was also occasionally capable of empathy, and the writers interspersed his usual comic relief dialogue with some pretty insightful lines. He was sympathetic despite being an anti-hero.And second, despite the physicality of their relationship, Spike didn’t really come across as an inherent sleaze bucket. And at no point was he, or Buffy, or Spuffy sugar-coated. It was a bad situation all around that had a fairly bad ending, even though it was also one that had an emotional resolution.
OUAT did an extremely shoddy job at integrating Hook into the fabric of the story, and in combination with Hook coming off as completely scuzzy half the time, it just raises all kinds of red flags. Essentially, I think the secret “wish fulfillment” aspect that’s powering these really bad writing choices is that Hook is meant to be a reformed pick-up artist. But it just doesn’t work. There’s always going to be a segment of the population that’s going to look at this particular portrayal of masculinity, and reject it, not matter how much we’re being told he’s a different man. I think it’s probably about one’s gender ideology and personal politics. I’m pretty sure for my personally there is nothing that I will ever like about Hook — I suppose that’s a form of bias, but I just can’t get over the disgust over his sleaziness. It’s not because he’s a “sexualized” character, whatever that means. It’s because the character, at its very core, derives his own identity and self-worth from “adding notches to his belt”.
It’s probably also why I find Rumple, with all his ForTheEvilz ridiculousness, a lot less loathsome than Hook. Say whatever you will about DO!Rumple, he never came across as a lecher.
Ok, a slightly off-topic theory about Rumple/Neal/Underworld. Sorry if someone already posted something to this effect:
Ok, we know that Rumple’s now DO on steroids, which has been explained as him having the power of all the DOs combined. But does that also mean he’s hosting all their souls (the same way that Hook was hosting Nimue)? If so, then would these souls be “tradable,” from Hades’s perspective? Technically, depending on how Hades’s accounting works, he’s N=[however many DOs there were] souls short, now that all those DOs are “archived” with Rumple. Unless the souls got distilled into pure power, but I don’t think there was anything in the script that suggested this. If leaving the Underworld is all about a soul for a soul, I wonder if this might be one way in which our “heroes” bust people out — instead of sacrificing one of the group, they might have Rumple give up some of the souls/powers (but not necessarily all) — whether for Neal, or for several people (Hook? Cora?). This would allow the writers to keep Rumple a magic user, while returning him to a moral gray area, rather than all black — which is sort of where they seem to like him. Or they also might make a deal with Hades to kill (or try to kill) Rumple to release the errant souls back into the Underworld, thus brokering some sort of arrangement for whoever is coming back. Thoughts?
Too much of a harrowing morning at work to post anything intelligent or take up the discussion. But here, I’ll leave this here–
How I feel about the recent OUAT “scoops”:
Also, don’t y’all miss Jefferson? I miss Jefferson.
I just don’t understand why you guys still watch the show if you hate it so much. I’ve never seen so much negativity in a forum about a show that we all still watch. I personally still think they can turn things around and get back to telling the stories properly, mainly because they have always said that they have an end game. So once they stop stalling with story lines they clearly were never planned in advance, I think the final half season or season or whatever could be really great. But for those of you who feel like Neal’s death killed the show and it’s past the point of fixing it, I don’t get why you still watch it. Despite it’s huge flaws, especially in this last half season, I still enjoy it, so I’m still here. Are you guys just determined to finish it out because you’ve invested all this time already?
To some extent, yes, but, with all due respect, I think the argument of “if you hate it so much, why do you keep doing it” is spurious. Let me illustrate with a quick example. Back in grad school, I had a professor who said that if you never pick up a book that, upon reading it, you wanted to throw across the room or out the window, you weren’t doing your intellectual job. I think what she was saying was 2 things: first, that if you only consume things that make you feel warm and fuzzy, or that you agree with, you run the risk of becoming intellectually complacent. And two, if you aren’t occasionally having strong reactions to some things, then maybe you’re not using your critical thinking abilities as much as you could or should. Granted, she was talking about Nietzsche or Marx 😉 But I think the point applies to fiction, even pop fiction too. Which is to say, there is both a utility in, and a pleasure to analyzing, critiquing, picking apart — and yes, reacting with strong dislike, especially if this motivates you to unpack what that reaction is caused by. It’s like doing sit-ups, but for your brain — whether you’re doing them at a fancy gym, or on a mat at home, you’re still exercisinge.
I think there’s another aspect of your post that’s a lot more compelling, and that’s the question of balance: i.e. should it all be negative, and is there maybe a value in giving the other side its due? There are other sections of this forum where people are called upon to voice some positive things about the show. And they do. Or share their craft work. Or talk about other books, shows, and movies. The SF thread, as others here have said, is a slightly different conversation, and one that is ongoing and therefore, like any long conversation, builds on itself. So I think one gets a better sense if you’re reading it as a cumulative, long-standing dialogue, rather than taking its more immediate manifestations. I mean, this thing is massive! Taking its particular peaks and valleys (say, periods that have more critical content) isn’t necessarily a representative sample of the whole thread.
If I were to qualify what seems to bring and keep people together here in SF is actually a very strong attachment to and nostalgia for a show that many feel has disappointed them. But I’d say nostalgia — and a sense of intellectual companionship — is the primary emotion. See my upthread “zombie relative” comparison. That’s why one the verbs that seems to crop up in so many responses to your post is “analysis.”
As to why I watch it — and I’ve been plenty negative about it too — for the longest time I watched because it was something I got to do with my kid niece (a card carrying SF-er at the time). In fact, I think a conversation I was having with her about the treatment of class in OUAT got me started posting on this forum. She’s now a teen, and has dropped the show after 4B because, to paraphrase her, she didn’t want to squander her TV allowance on something with offensive gender politics. Good for her. But I also miss these conversations, so here I am.
I truly have no idea whose the biggest victim on this show?
All THIS.
It also drives me nuts the way they give away one character’s storyline to another character, and then retcon the original character. Hook = Mashup of Emma and Rumple at this point.
A ridiculous side thought: I wonder if we got Vampire Diaries to blame for Hook. Colin looks vaguely similar to Ian Somerhalder, and it was also a “villain flip” sort of thing. I can just see the ABC execs take a look at CW’s success with VD, and go “Hrrmm. They’re doing really well with their 18-34 female demographic, and recruiting teens too. Oh look, this Damon character, he is popular. Why don’t we have one of those?”
Just kidding. Sort of.
After all, I heard A and E handpicked him and Belle
They had worked with EdR in Lost. I’m guessing that’s why. Same reason they got Elizabeth Mitchell to play Snow Queen.
Don’t know about MRJ.
I know that everyone wants MRJ’s new show to go well for him, but honestly i don’t think it looks very good. If he wasn’t in it then i wouldn’t even try it
I think it’s definitely a “niche” show — but then again, so is OUAT. But I bet it’ll bring in fans from different fandoms. It’s from the same execs as Saturday Night Lights, and that has a serious audience and was very very well received by critics, so I bet at least some of those fans will give GoS a whirl. Didn’t they also do CSI?
Suskunlar’s plot isn’t all that original, but every time it’s been done, it’s gotten critical acclaim: (similar plot lines were in The Sleepers, Mystic River… and maybe a stretch, but The Kite Runner has some of the same themes). I’m gonna guess they changed things up for the American version, but I’m betting that the network picked it up because that sort of story has done pretty darn well with both critics and audiences in the past. I know it’s based on a foreign show, but the formula is well-tested on a US audience.
Everything just seems unplanned – which it is, they just want to keep their job, which I get, I don’t have a problem with that, but they should just stop lying about everything just to make excuses for their lazy writing, they should just stop talking and avoid social media.
What I personally don’t get is, if they were drawing up at least one 5-year long contract (if the rumors about Bobby’s contract are indeed true), how in the blue hell did they not plan this further ahead than 2.5 seasons? I mean, that math just doesn’t add up — that’s only half way. And really, 3B is when they started “improvising.”
If they were reasonably confident that they could stretch the show to 5 seasons, you’d think they’d have done their homework, and planned ahead far enough to not have egregious plot holes, character assassination, and just an overall mess. We should have seen a quality drop in Season 6, not half-way through season 3. Ugh. It just seems irresponsible. I sympathize with a “pantser” writing style, some people really do think as they write, but they have a whole team working on this, and bouncing ideas off each other. You’d think it’d be enough brain power to at least get all the world building straight and eliminate most plot holes. Unless they don’t talk to each other, which I think is really likely.
