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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.
But they do get a pass. Regina killed an entire village, nothing happened. Hook got women drunk as a “tactic’ to lure them back to his ship for hanky-panky (as well as all the other stuff already listed by me, Bar and POM), nothing happened. Hook shot Belle, nothing happened. Rumple killed people in his early days as DO, nothing happened (well, actually you can argue that he lost his son because of his actions, so there’s a recompense there.). The villains on this show get a complete pass except for the seasonal arc ones and they usually die because their arc is over.
I think we’re using offended in the wrong sense here. Yes, villains do bad things, but I’m allowed to find those actions reprehensible and horrifying. You’re basically saying that it’s okay that they do these things and get that free pass (which they do get on this show) because “villains.”
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Well hasn’t he apologized for his past actions and said he isn’t that man anymore? I looped everything he did back then under that category.
Nope not really, at least not without the caveat that he’s only good because of Emma–at any moment, should Emma leave him, he’ll go back to being bad! Never mind that being good isn’t supposed to be solely placed on the soul of another but because you should be good for the sake of goodness. That’s actually emotional manipulation.
But even if he has, there is an adage in TV called “show don’t tell.” Hook can say he’s not the man he was anymore and lament that he once did bad things, but the fact that he still does bad things, is still emotionally abusive, still does super problematic actions to people he claims to love….speaks more than any apology. When he tells Emma that he liked her walls because he got to be the one to knock them down (back to the Predator trope I stated a few pages back, so completely wrong given that *Henry* exists as does S1); when he tells her that he liked that she got her heart broken; when he says that he wants the Emma in the pretty dress back; when he stalks and spies on a woman he claims to love; when he prevents her from leaving a situation with an object that is used quite often as a weapon; when he wants to get her liquored up so that she’ll find him “more irresistible” after a few libations (Predator trope); when he we are led to believe that he let a man die to save his ship; when he wants a kiss as a thank you for saving a life; when his treatment of women consists of sexual harassment, beating them, manipulating them all while we are being told that he is a hero…then it’s an issue.
And as far as apologies, they tend to be of the non-sincere sort. How about his apology to Belle for beating her and shooting her. It was the most insincere apology on the show.
But at the time, when he said it, and he was a clear villain, I don’t understand how that can be offensive. That would be like being offended that Cruella manipulated dogs to eat her mother or whatever. Animal cruelty! But she was a horrible person. They do or say horrible things.
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.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"….okaaaaay
So not so dead, as many predicted. Raise your hand if you think she’s in Hugo Strange’s lab.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Now, they have tried to redeem, and he has said he is sorry and what not, etc. etc
No he hasn’t! Show me where Hook ever said he was sorry for that line, for what he did, for leaving Emma and Snow in jail to die. He was never made to apologize; it was just “he’s a hero now!” from the writers.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I think as fans we understood what she was doing was wrong. I don’t think they condoned it in any way.
That wasn’t the point of anything I said nor what we were arguing about. Of course most of the fans realized it was wrong. The writers didn’t. Which is the entire point of this current conversation, that the writers use rape, or misogyny or death of POC to advance their shiny shiny plot without reflecting on what it means socially, culturally, ethically or even to their own narrative. You can’t even get Adam to admit that Regina and Graham were sleeping together let alone to admit that he was using rape as a tool. (and continues to do so with Zelena, Arthur…)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I took it more as if I ever got the chance to sleep with you, she would feel it. Like come on baby, you’d like it type thing
They were not in a romantic relationship–they were enemies. That sort of line might be okay in bed play between consenting adults who are in a sexual relationship. Hook and Emma were not. And the idea that “come on baby, you’d like it” is EVER okay to say to someone with whom you’re not in a sexual relationship makes my skin crawl.
And the fact that there are people like that doesn’t make it okay. Ever. If a man walked up to you, held you by your wrist, refused to let you go and said “come on baby, you’d like it” how would you react? Would you think, “oh it’s okay. It’s just his character/personality.”
Rape culture, rape culture, rape culture. That’s rape culture. The idea that a woman has to passively take a man’s advances simply because they are women and he’s a man. Whether it’s us telling little girls on the playground that when a boy picks on them it’s because “he likes them” (again, learned social behaviors that continue to manifest well into adulthood) or it’s a man on TV hounding a woman for a date, for sex, for a kiss, for attention and the woman invariably giving in because “she finally fell for his charms” that’s rape culture.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
First look at B.D. Wong as Hugo Strange on Gotham this Spring
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"However I will say, and this is kind of a different topic here, I do not have any problem with television shows depicting these types of scenes if it is essential or important to the story. Unfortunately, rape happens in our culture.
I’ll just have to quote myself on this because I don’t want to re-type what I’ve said in the past.
Domestic abuse in narrative, in TV storytelling, can work. It really can. When the writers are consciously aware of what they are writing and making a commentary on the effects of abuse, the signs of abuse, and how to handle it, it works well enough on TV. The writers on OUAT are not self-aware that this is domestic and emotional abuse. They are romanticizing it. And it’s appalling.
I’m not a viewer who just wants to see happy-sunshine stories. The world is not happy sunshine. But the writers aren’t doing what they are doing with Hook and Emma for the sake of realism. They are doing it because they think it’s romantic.
And at this point, we’re going to start talking in circles because you don’t see a problem with it, and I’ll never see it as anything *but* a problem.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Unfortunately, rape happens in our culture. It is a horrible horrible thing. In the case with Regina, we were supposed to hate her. So her treatment and manipulation of Graham made us despise her.
Then go ask Adam what was going on with Regina and Graham. Regina is never brought to bear for her crimes against Graham. it’s never brought up, she is never punished for her 28 year long rape. And if you were to ask Adam (as many fans did back in s2) why that was…it’s because “it wasn’t rape because canonically you don’t know what they were doing during those ‘town meetings.” According to Adam, they could have been playing Scrabble so Regina has nothing to pay for.
And that–THAT–is maybe the best, very best, example of what I’m trying to get it: not understanding that this problem because they don’t recognize the problem in the first place.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"The moral event horizon for each viewer is likely different but mine (for Hook) is another indefensible comment that more often than not gets turned into a romantic line by his fans.
My own moral event horizon for Hook is when he pinned Emma to the ground, held a sword to her throat, and told her that when he jabbed her with his “sword,” she’d feel it. That was it for me. The writers thought it was a clever little line and really pun-tastic, and CS fans ate it up and called it witty, charming, and super hot. The CS fans also excuse it as “well, Emma and Hook were on different sides, so it’s perfectly fine to talk to someone that way.”
Yeah, it’s not, in case anyone was wondering.
To me it was one of the most offensive things I have ever heard on this show.
But it perfectly illustrates (as does @PoM’s example) of what I’m trying to say: the writers don’t recognize the problems in their show and the relationships between the characters because they don’t know *why* it’s problematic. We’re getting into learned social behaviors here. It’s not just monkey see, monkey do. It’s monkey see, monkey never learn that what he has seen is repugnant to some other monkeys, monkey regurgitate things he’s seen in the past, babymonkey pick up and start all over.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
