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@AKA – Thanks for the suggestion to read ScrewBallNinja. I had also given up on her blog, but I think I’ll give her another try. I found her essays about Emma to be especially good. She says that Emma and Hook this season have been continuing with with Dark Swan arc in S6, which I thought was insightful. She has another recent essay about Emma that uses GIFs to show Emma’s progression from heroine to dark swan. Also, here is a link to a GIF set comparing and contrasting Emma’s reactions to people in need of help from S1 to S6. *sigh* What happened to Emma Swan?!
I actually kept on with Screwball — I think her analyses are insightful and her general model for how the writers intermittently turn up the dial on Rumple’s darkness depending on the quality of the seasonal villain is dead on. I don’t know if she has a film studies background, but the ways she approaches OUAT not just as written text, but as a whole package is really useful — this is what makes her Dark Swan theory have legs, I think.
I am not saying we can’t discuss matters about the show. I am saying that this is by and large pointless because no matter how many times we are called bitter, no matter how many times we explain feminist critique or no matter how many times we are told that we’re too harsh on Hook/Emma/the writers/the show we’re never going to get anywhere.
For what it’s worth, I actually don’t mind the circularity of the debate — it can be helpful to have someone stick to an opposite position in an argument, since it allows you to clarify your own thinking. For this reason, I actually appreciate @darkonedearie ‘s contributions, though I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the times we agreed 🙂 Of course, once the conversation gets shaped around trolling for lulz — which is what I think this last iteration is — there’s nothing particularly interesting about it.
[adrotate group="5"]With what we know now, maybe Blue was also trying to get rid of Black Fairy’s son.
It would be interesting if it turned out that Blue was playing the same long con using Rumple as Rumple was playing using Regina (a kind of nested doll of long term manipulations) — essentially aligning events in such a way as to achieve the confrontation between Emma and BF. Maybe she has a lost child out there in BF’s realm. 😉
I see nothing wrong with a strong female woman falling in love with a guy who has a bad past but Emma, being the good person she is, turns his life around. I mean, Hook would still be bad Hook if he never met Emma. That in and of itself is great story
Ah, see, I think maybe that’s the core of our disagreement. I don’t find that to be a great story, but a pernicious and potentially nefarious myth that misrepresents what actually happens in actually existing relationships.
@RG already said everything I would have in relation to missing the point of the feminist critique — and how the girl who saves the bad boy is its own species of misogyny. But there’s something problematic that’s gender-neutral here.
Just to clarify, it’s not that no one can ever change — or that a relationship can’t serve as a catalyst for change. But no, I’m sorry, love can’t change you. Not in the long run. Maybe love for your children, but even that is tenuous. The change itself has to be initiated internally to the person in question — the rest is just wish fulfillment. You yourself are stating that Hook would have stuck to his ways had it not been for Emma. If his change is contingent on his feelings for Emma, then should those feelings change — and in most relationships they will over the long term because no one stays “in love” forever, those feelings necessarily morph over time — then there’s zero guarantee that Hook won’t just revert as soon as the hormones fizzle out.
For the opposite story, we don’t need to go looking for a hypothetical Mr Emmett. We have Regina and Robin. Regina’s redemption and growth started very much internally — though it was catalyzed through her shifting relationships with different people: Emma, Snow, Henry, and a bit later Robin. Robin was key to her transformation, but not its primary cause. He certainly helped her on her path, but he had his own story and his own issues to deal with. And before you tell me that Robin and OQ were boring — it wasn’t for me. I though that relationship was underdeveloped and given short shrift by the writers, but it had a lot more to hold my attention than CS.
For a counterexample, look at Rumple. This is a cautionary tale about how difficult it is to change your ways even if you do love someone — Rumple struggles with changing his very nature over and over, and slides back over and over again. In part, it’s plot of course. But in part it’s also that it’s hard. So we have 2 very complicated, psychologically rich, and not entirely happy stories about people trying to change. And then you have CS and Emma being a variation on Magical Girlfriend.
<p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>Anyway, I think you’re confusing bitterness with critique. Just because people criticize something, it doesn’t mean that they are doing it from a place of bitterness. I personally am doing it from a place of absolute glee and enjoyment.</p> <p style=”box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, serif; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.74902);”>CS is just a symptom of the show’s overall bad writing and narrative deterioration, which is what most people here critique. I suspect there are many reasons why people end up here — for me it’s because there’s a certain level of intellectual discussion about the show in general that keeps my attention more than the habitual breathless squealing in fandoms (of whatever shipping persuasion.)</p>
I say all this as I post in the Emma/Neal thread which at this point should be just titled the anti CS/OUAT thread. I’m sure if this was Emma/Neal “oh the story that was intended” cause that doesn’t reek of bitterness, you would be as “critique” as you are cause the story is CS.
I’m afraid I am having trouble parsing the grammar of your sentence, such as it is. Do you mean that I wouldn’t be as critical if the story were still about Neal/Emma? Or that I would be? If it ended up being equally badly written and peddling equally retrograde cultural representations, I assure you I would. See, I’m an equal opportunity hater that way. ?
but yeah I’m HOPING we get some little tiny hint at what’s to come at the end of the next episode that explains the musical for the one after that. But I am Moreno than positive it will be some random new magic mcguffin or curse that we have never heard of that does the damage
Unfortunately, yeah, I suspect you’re right — likely caused by more magical flora. Are the sirens the only part of OUAT mythology that have anything remotely to do with voice? I can’t think of anything they’ve had on the show that’s about sound/music/voice or anything like it that they could bring back, so I’m guessing it’ll be something out of left field.
This is a media/cultural problem.
My hunch is that it’s also a Hollywood problem (so, very specifically high powered US movie industry. Other cinemas have different sensibilities). But you are absolutely right that the trope of the strong female character is first and foremost a product. It’s definitely a marketing category, and not just in TV but in most of our entertainment industry.
if people deeply care about Emma, if they see themselves in her, then why in heaven’s name do they think her current relationship is good for her?
I think maybe the trick here is that people might like Emma, but not necessarily identify with her. I don’t know, but I’m going to guess than demographic, what might matter here is gender identity.
Although I have to say I love the B.I.T.T.E.R in here over the focus on CS
Is spelling bitter with dots between each letter kind of what you do when you want to say a word your toddler knows, but you don’t want them to hear it, so you spell it instead? Like, I don’t know, i.c.e.-c.r.e.a.m.?
Yall should have just accepted it in S3, but instead here we are end of S6 and still can’t let it go. And so b.i.t.t.e.r
I know! The pagans are always very hard to convert. It’s a thankless task.
Anyway, I think you’re confusing bitterness with critique. Just because people criticize something, it doesn’t mean that they are doing it from a place of bitterness. I personally am doing it from a place of absolute glee and enjoyment.
CS is just a symptom of the show’s overall bad writing and narrative deterioration, which is what most people here critique. I suspect there are many reasons why people end up here — for me it’s because there’s a certain level of intellectual discussion about the show in general that keeps my attention more than the habitual breathless squealing in fandoms (of whatever shipping persuasion.)
Edited to say: Anyway — musical episode thread! The poster’s fine, though I would have also liked the sort of retro pulpy look a la Buffy.
Emma is not an actual person. Emma cannot be happy. She doesn’t have feelings. She is just written certain ways.
I think we all know that. @Slurpeez gave a much more detailed and thought out response on the psychological and biological mechanisms of empathy than I could, but the point is that, yes we can take a step back and recall that she’s a fictional character, but humans have been using fiction to hack their brain and emotions probably since we developed symbolic language, so I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss the legitimacy of people getting genuinely invested in the well being (or lack thereof) of a fictional character (this is, originally, sort of the meta-point of OUAT, no? That fictional characters feel just as real to us as living ones.)
Also, it’s not just writing. In written fiction, the author controls the narrative and the reader’s experience of their characters a lot more directly than with film, I think. You’re not stuck in 3rd person limited, for one — you could manipulate voice to create all sorts of effects, including letting the reader inhabit your character’s interior emotional world. You can’t do that in the same way in film. So a character’s internal state is conveyed differently: here you also have the actor’s interpretation of the script, verbal and non-verbal cues, you have all these other aesthetic choices — montage, lighting, costumes etc — that make up the sensory language of film, and are used to make the character come across in a certain way. I think what makes Emma’s portrayal interesting to analyze is the seeming discrepancies between these different layers — the written script and all the other stuff that frames it.
I’m now of the opinion that either this show is a modern critique of what happens to Katherine in Taming of the Shrew (call it “Taming of the Swan”), or this show has made no progress in how it portrays women since the time of Shakespeare (another white male). It’s probably the latter – tragically
LOL!! This right here has made my day.
And then to say that justifies Rumple behavior of cutting off Hook’s hand and then killing Milah when he realized she loved Hook and not him…..I mean come on.
You’re equating the need to apologize with justification of action. My point is simply that Rumple does not owe Hook an apology for Milah just because Hook happened to love her — which is what you said, I think. Your argument is asymmetrical: Rumple also happened to love her, and so did Bae — so by your logic, either Hook also owes them an apology for “taking her away from them”, or no one does. Rumple owes Milah an apology for sure, but not to Hook. Maybe another way of putting it is this: an apology is owed, but not owed to Hook.
And by the same token, Hook owes no apology to Rumple for Milah’s running away (Rumple’s love for Milah or Belle or whoever also entitles him to absolutely nothing). Milah’s her own person, and made her own decisions, however flawed and problematic. If he owes an apology to Rumple, it is for being an arrogant jackass about it. Hence the unspoken rule of ‘shall thee covet thy neighbor’s wife, at least have the decency to not gloat about it’. Similarly, if Hook and Rumple were to actually mend fences, Rumple would owe Hook an apology for chopping off his hand. But those two will never mend fences, so I think all this is moot anyway.
But I guess what I take issue with in your argument is this idea that somehow Hook’s love entitles him to something. It entitles him to nothing. And that’s just the problem, a lot of this show, the development of CS, and the discussions around it, seem to imply that just because Hook loves Emma (or Hook, more generally, wants [fill in blank]), he is somehow entitled to it. None of this was ever implied about Neal, no matter how he felt about Emma. Similarly, the show never implies that Rumple’s or Regina’s claims on what they might want somehow entitles them to the desired object. Quite the opposite. Villains don’t get happy endings — that’s an active theme in the show. And this has been systematically the case for even our redeemed villains. This is especially poignant with Regina, since her redemption arc is so compelling and convincing, and you want her to get a happy ending, but it eludes her, thereby reminding the audience that the past misdeeds still affect the universe’s karmic calculus, if you will. As it should be.
But never for Hook. Hook wants to be a hero — he gets to be a hero faster than you can say Pasta Salad. Hook wants the girl — he gets the girl, in spades. Hook wants to atone for his past misdeeds — he gets plenty of low ball opportunities to do so and accolades from everyone but Rumple, which makes me appreciate Rumple all the more, honestly. No one likes a Gary Stu. The only thing Hook doesn’t get is his supposed death wish.
The problem with Hook is that it is enough for him to be just perfectly adequate to be hailed as hero by the show. Like, he’s not actively killing people and seems to be doing some basically decent things that normal humans might do for each other in a normal community when someone is in trouble. I mean right, good on Hook for not being a despicable human being anymore — why is this enough to shift the karmic calculus so far in Hook’s favor, when it isn’t for Regina, for example? We can go down the rabbit hole of which villain was more villainous, but that’s not my point. My point is that for the other villains, desire for something opens a question. Do they deserve it? Will they get a chance to do it? Will they slide back? For Hook, that question is never open. He is never, truly at risk of losing his happy ending, the favor of the other characters, and his agency in the plot.
The Emma we knew in the early seasons would’ve taken Hook down several pegs instead of pandering after him and ignoring any of his misdeeds. Emma is no longer Emma.
Yes, this is exactly my sense too. To make CS work, the writers re-wrote Emma, and that’s what I find so problematic in this. The bunny boiler isn’t far off…
Let me finish by saying Rumple is one of my favorite characters on the show. But Hook deserves just as much an apology from Rumple as Rumple deserves from Hook. After all, Rumple did kill Milah (whom Hook loved) right in front of him and then chopped off his hand.
Isn’t there some kind of unwritten rule whereby if you steal someone’s wife/husband/partner who is also the parent of their child, you should avoid gloating about it or rubbing it in their face? You know, have the politeness to do it discreetly and with minimum showing off? Certainly you don’t imply that the disabled husband’s lack of virility led the wife to prefer gang rape by sailors to raising his son. Yeah, no. Hook can take a running jump on that one, I don’t think Rumple owes him a thing. To Milah, yes for killing her x2. To Hook? Pfft.
