Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
Question the third: If you believe that Emma is NOT a strong character anymore and that she has either not progressed or regressed, what can the show do–if anything–to make Emma more palatable.
I wanted to sleep on this question before I tried to answer it. It would be, I think, too easy to say that the solution is for Emma to simply break up with Hook. While I am certainly no fan of the relationship, I am not naive and understand that TV is a business, specifically that ABC thinks CS is selling their product. And, like @thedarkonedearie said, Emma could be a strong woman and Hook’s girlfriend, I just happen to think she’s not right now.
I think the first and most important thing is basically what @nevermore said: the show needs to realign Emma’s story so that it’s about finding her community–the large, extended, unwieldy at time community. Her story needs to refocus on Emma’s relationship with Snow, Charming, Henry, the town of SB, her role in the cosmic universe. I expect that Emma will have a romantic love story, that she’ll date and fall in love and probably even get married before the series ends. But I don’t want her story to just be that romantic love story–that’s not how any of this started and it shouldn’t be how it ends. I think Emma really needs to take a long hard look at her past, the things that have happened to her and the things that she herself has done and examine her interpersonal relationships and question if they are healthy, mutually beneifical, and ask if there isn’t room for improvement. Girl needs a self-evaluation cycle into her life, in other words in which you look honestly at your life choices and their outcomes and try to figure out what you could do better. How else do human beings learn anything?
I also think the show needs to do a radical realignment of the power dynamics between Hook and Emma. The story can’t be about him anymore. Yes, he can have centrics and plot and development, absolutely. But I think that while Emma’s story focuses back on her community, Hook’s story needs to focus inwards and really and truly redeem the pirate but without the magical use of some Emma Swan lovin’. He has to be a good man for the sake of goodness, not the sake of not-losing-his-girlfriend.
More than anything, I think the show needs to pull Henry back into the story as more than a prop for (both, really) his moms. You can complicate the mother and son dynamic and still have it be powerful. Think back to S1, the relationship between Henry and Emma was actually really complicated with Henry loving and believing in Emma from the start and Emma trying to not fall for her kid. It was sweet, frustrating at times, beautiful. Henry’s now a teenager and during what should be an even more complicated time in their lives, has been reduced down to really simplistic terms. I promise you, A and E, your audience can handle complexity.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Thanks everyone for a lively and fun debate. Obviously when it comes to Emma–and by extension the people that surround her–there are a lot of opinions.
This is the next question, just because I think we’ve covered a significant amount of ground with question #1 and question #2
Question the third: If you believe that Emma is NOT a strong character anymore and that she has either not progressed or regressed, what can the show do–if anything–to make Emma more palatable.
OR, conversely, if you believe that Emma is STILL a strong character and that she has made great progresses, where should the show go next in her character development? What would you like to see?
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I honestly don’t want to belabor this because obviously there are a lot of different opinions and paths here. But I do need to point out a few things
She never told him not to intervene either.
This bothers me because not saying NO does not mean saying YES.
And this is such a large part of rape culture–that just because a woman hasn’t said NO explicitly, she’s automatically saying yes. And, of course, even when she does say NO, she doesn’t really mean it; she’s conflicted and unsure of her feelings and if she just gave the guy a shot, she’d really like him.
This is much larger than Hook and CS. This is much larger than OUAT. This is even much larger than media. This is the world we live in. So because this is so all encompassing, I’ll leave it with what I said above.
(If you want, here’s a really thoughtful recent article on the difference between “rape culture” and “nurturance culture,” written by a guy as a matter of fact, and it’s really insightful)
Thank you for that
There’s a famous feminist statement, I think by Catherine MacKinnon, which I will PG for the sake of this forum. It goes like this “Man takes woman.” Subject verb object.
Yes. Read local newpapers the next time you have a few lying around. 10-1 odds that any rape story line will be headlined as follows:
“Local Man (subject) Accused of Raping Local Woman (object)”
It’s rare (unless the writer and editor is very conscious of gender politics and language politics) that it’s the other way.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Eddy: “He let her go because he wanted her to find her destiny but he’s always felt the guilt of letting her go and the way he let her go”.
Yeah, because Neal was a GOOD GUY.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Why is it bad to take control and be the “agent.” Maybe he thought she wouldn’t be able to direct her own story and still not succumb to the darkness
I think I’m going to let @nevermore and @slurpeez handle this one because honestly this statement baffles me to the point of silence. No one ever has the right to take over your story (read: life) because they don’t think that you can handle it. That is not a decision they get to make. If you, your very self, turns to someone and says I can no longer handle the day to day living of this world, please direct me henceforth, then okay. You’ve made that choice–and it would be your choice to back out of that decision as well. But, Emma never did that. She never asked Hook to be her agent/dictator of things/controller/whatever word you want to use here.
(technically she asked Regina if anything…and then decides she doesn’t like that and takes back the dagger,which Regina freely gives)
But I should point out that your argument contradicts what Hook says to Emma in 501; that to go dark or not should be her choice, he can’t make it for her (a moment in which I actually raised an eyebrow and said, “wow. that was…okay. that wasn’t actually horrible”) And then he spends the entire rest of the season in the driver seat so there went that moment….
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I mean, did she even stop to ask if her parents were okay about the almost going to Hell thingy? Instead her selfish need to have Hook in her life is driving the story. Question one and question two rest on that idea.
I should note here, before Matt comes in and yells at me, that Adam did release a piece of the script from the finale in which Emma does say that her family doesn’t have to go with her–and they say they will. However, canon is tricky and until it’s on the DVD’s then it’s not canon yet. If it does, we’ll return (I’m sure) to this question. But for now…not in show, not canon. (And here comes @hjbau to explain why even if it’s on the DVD, it’s not canon…)
Narrative and canon are….tricky.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"You are definitely right here. Why she is so intent on saving Hook, but was willing to let Neal die makes no sense. And the only thing I can think of is the fact that maybe Emma assumed it wasn’t possible back then when Neal died. Did she know about Snow splitting her heart then? I don’t beleive so. Did she know about the UW and that they could easily access it through Rumple? I’d like to think that is he had all the information she has now back then, she would have tried to save Neal too. But alas, I’m speculating.
The most OOC moment in the history of Rumple’s character is him drinking that potion when Emma (who, to Rumple at that moment, was perfect stranger) told him to. He insists that he could find a way to save his son, to prevent his death and Emma insists that Neal stay dead. I’m not naive. I *get* TV and business. I know that this was the writers telling the audience “it’s not going to happen!” (the same can be said for S4 ending with Henry and the Apprentice and the snapping of the pen–again, it’s the writers telling “its not going to happen!”). But the fact that now we’re watching Emma go save a guy who tried to send her entire family to Hell—forgive me if I can’t swallow that, Neal factor totally aside, it’s an odd narrative that speaks not only, IMO, of Emma’s shift in character from strong woman to “Hook’s girlfriend” but the entire shift of the show from family to romantic love.
But again, if you look at it like it is Emma’s fault and that none of this would have happened if she just did the “heroic” thing and let Hook die, then you could see Hook’s actions as not entirely his fault.
Then Emma never learns–which goes back to my second question about her character progress. She didn’t learn from her mistakes. She continues to be foolhardy, rush into action, and put her own selfishness before the concerns of others. I mean, did she even stop to ask if her parents were okay about the almost going to Hell thingy? Instead her selfish need to have Hook in her life is driving the story. Question one and question two rest on that idea.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Once again, if saving someone’s life is giving into the darkness, then idk anymore
But that is literally what the show told you! Literally, Emma saves a life and goes Dark Swan and the darkness is doubled over. You don’t know anymore, and neither do I, but it’s exactly what the show showed and told. And then proceeded to tell us that this is the mark of love.
I get others should have helped more, but that’s more of a knock on their behaviors than Emma’s.
Except Emma shuts the others out, refuses to talk to them (Snow and Regina even call her on this in episode 510), BLAMES the others (claiming that they let HER down), and stole their memories. Snow and Charming lament, the entire season, that Emma won’t talk to them, that she won’t open up, that she distanced herself, that whenever they do try to talk–she vanishes, run, makes a bad comment, ect. Even in the end, she won’t go to Granny’s to be with them.
I can’t help but think that if Neal was doing this instead of Hook, you wouldn’t think this way.
Well thanks for putting words in my mouth instead of asking me. Really, that’s the best way to go. Because I really love when people speak for me.
So instead, I’ll just repeat what I said once.
There is something so insulting about making Emma’s hero journey, her path from darkness back to the light, all about her love interest. Now, would I say the same thing if it had been Nealfire? Maybe, but with a caveat that if it had been Neal, the narrative would have been weightier and more poetic. Nealfire turning into a Dark One at the hands of his true love, another father having to deal with being a Dark One to his son? Emma and Neal trying to work together to save each other? Henry and Rumple working to save both of them, their father/son and mother/Savior? That’s poetry. That’s storytelling that touches on so many of the themes this show began with, like family and sacrifice. But like so much this season, it felt as though the story was given to Hook only because the real character it was meant for is six feet underground. Now, I would have had issues with Emma’s journey centering around a love interest and a man, even if it was Neal, because Emma is her own woman and her decision to go villain should rest on her own impetus, not born out of her role as a lover (as opposed to a independent woman, daughter, mother, savior or really any combination of those elements).
Sure, Emma fought it herself in Nimue, but you are right, Hook helped a lot. But I just don’t automatically associate that with weakness.
I’m only going to say this once more: He’s not helping her–he’s the agent. There’s a big difference. One is being a support system but letting Emma direct her own story. The other is actually being the director while Emma takes a proverbial backseat. One is acceptable. One is not.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
