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If he was always abusive, but just controlled it better when he wasn’t the DO, then ok. But he was not like that with Emma pre DO.
Yes he was. There are too many instances of Hook being emotionally, mentally, and physically abusive to Emma for me to list–the onus is on someone else because I’ll likely get ALL CAPS as I type because Hook’s interactions with Emma over the years makes me *twitchy^
But there are many instances of him using that wheel I posted against Emma pre-DO-status.
[adrotate group="5"]"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Maybe, I just think that’s a little harsh
Hook and Emma are not the only example. They are the ones that get talked about most here, but there are plenty of others. How about Zelena and Robin? Regina and Graham? How about their treatment of rape in general? Of POC? Of the LGBT community? How about Emma and Regina’s main storylines getting reduced to their love stories? How about the latest episode with Rumple and Belle?
Like, Emma truly feels like it’s her fault that Hook did those things as the DO (he did tell her not to make him one), and she truly feels what he said and did as the DO was not his fault and that it was simply the darkness. We are not supposed to view it as emotionally abusive if he couldn’t control what he was saying/doing
Of course we’re not supposed to view it as emotionally abusive. That doesn’t mean it’s not. Just like the writers killing off, making evil, making white, or making irrelevant the various PoC characters they’ve had isnt intentional racism because A and E hate PoC. It’s unintentional and uniformed racism. Just like their treatment of CS falls into the rape culture traps—but, just so you don’t misunderstand me–it’s also the same traps that a lot of media falls into. The conversation being had by on social media sites and by concerned individuals and groups isn’t just OUAT related, it’s media related.
But as a fan, I’m trying to look at it the way the writers want us to look at it, otherwise the show won’t make sense.
And sure that’s one way to view media. But I personally don’t think it’s a valid one. It’s fine to be a fan, but it’s another to be a fan and to try and rationalize some truly appalling decisions. For example, I am an avid Doctor Who fan. Have been for years and years–classic and NuWho. I do not approve of a lot of the most recent seasons. I have been pointing out the show runner’s (Steven Moffat) faults in story lines, misogyny, and disregard for canon, emotional resolution, ect for quite awhile. Same goes for me and Sleepy Hollow–a show I adore with all my heart, but have NO problems pointing out that they’ve got a bit of a white-woman fetish when it comes to “spicing” it up with their otherwise diverse cast who do no need any interjection from other characters.
But I still watch, love, and analyze both shows.
If I were to look at OUAT only the way the writers want me to, then I’m only getting one half of the conversation. It’s a one sided conversation because it means that my input and critique (or praise!) means nothing. We’re back to the reason why we still watch–because I think this show speaks to a lot of social problems in our world and I like to talk about those.
I guess it comes down to where you stand on the philosophical question of it the author is dead or not and what is text. For me, text is everything that is written about the show including this comment right here. A and E (and other writing staff) are not “gods” (in terms of the philosophical question, not an infallible sense) who have the final word on what is good, bad, and appropriate in their show. They might create the original text but everything that exists around it is text and equally valid.
What you depicted here is the “battered wife syndrom”. She did something that pissed off her boyfriend, and he becomes violent towards her or other people, instead of putting the blame on him, she blames herself for making him angry. This is a syndrom that is common in abusive relationship. (Speaking on Buffy, they did an episode about it -304)
I don’t know how many times we’ve posted this in various places but: the abuse wheel
I won’t bother making a list of all the times we’ve seen Hook use some of these on Emma. It wold be far too long. But, for what it’s worth, not all of those instances happen when he’s the DO.
I don’t think they even put any thought to it. I’m calling what I saw on screen, what other people saw and what younger people see as a relationship that the show depicts as ideal.
For me it’s far more than that they don’t even think about it. You can’t think about something you don’t realize is a problem. They have fallen into pretty typical depictions of men and women that exist in media. They are problematic depictions. Greatly problematic. But until they recognize that these depictions are problematic, then they won’t course correct. I don’t want to start talking about privilege because that’s a whole other issue but in media like TV it is often very hard for white heterosexual men to write compelling healthy relationships because they don’t understand that some of the things they’ve been shown and told are romantic…aren’t. But they sit in a place of privilege and don’t have to confront what it feels like to be stalked, abused, toyed with, made into objects.
Again, I point to Jessica Jones as something everyone should be watching. (broken record, I know)
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Didn’t he like kill some people in the woods in an episode where Bae realized that kids wouldn’t hang out with him because they feared his father so much? Maybe I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure he killed people.
Re-read what I wrote:
After the initial taking on of the DO’s curse and the first few months, Rumple did not murder anyone to our knowledge
*AFTER* he took on the curse and the first months, he stopped murdering (ie: he killed in the initial few months). Specifically after he lost Bae, he stopped.
But it would make sense to me, I think, for Hook to be worse, not necessarily because he is still a bad man, but because he once was, and the DO brings out the worst in you, and Hook was always way worse than Rumple pre DO.
I certainly don’t deny this. But one of them is being lauded as a hero and worthy of saving. That’s the issue. Not that Hook is worse than Rumple or vice versa. But that one of them-we are being told– is a hero and in a relationship with the heroine, a relationship that is being touted as healthy and something we should all strive for. That’s my issue. They want this emotionally abusive relationship to be seen as romantic. It’s bad writing, as you say later, but it’s not just that. It’s being totally disconnected from any sense of feminism, morality, or understanding of current discourse in our society viz a viz the intersection of media and society.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"The darkness obviously affected him. He went from being a coward, but otherwise a good father, to not only a coward, but a ruthless human being
The darkness did clearly affect Rumple, no denying that but look at the degrees. You called Rumple ruthless but I strongly disagree with that, especially in terms of Rumple vs Hook. After the initial taking on of the DO’s curse and the first few months, Rumple did not murder anyone to our knowledge (you can speculate but canonically within the story, he did not). Instead he chose to make deals. He chose to give people what they wanted (or thought they wanted) in return for other favors. Yes, he manipulated the HECK out of people and situations but always played into what those people claimed to have wanted and always gave them a choice.
He did not summon up a bunch of Former <del>Jawas</del> Dark Ones or open the <del>Hellmouth</del> portal to the Underworld. He did not mark anyone for death. He did not use the combined forces of the Dark Ones for any nefarious purpose. Hook, within about 10 mins of becoming the new DO plotted to betray his girlfriend, betray his girlfriend’s family, and committed cold blooded murder. Once he remembered he was the DO, his emotional attack on Emma was far worse than anything we ever saw from Rumple or Emma–at least subjectively, in my opinion. I can never forgive Hook telling Emma that she’ll always be an orphan and Emma just standing there taking it, being his emotional punching bag. Rumple could be cold or manipulative but you never saw him talk to Belle that way when he was the DO, either in the EF or in SB. In fact, in a lot of the instances of interaction between them, Belle had the power by standing her ground and standing up to Rumple, calling him on his nonsense. But the message OUAT wants us to take away is that only one of these characters is “good” and “worth saving” and that the CS ship is healthy and laudable.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I wonder if she’s talking to Rumple; they found a way to communicate across worlds again.
I bet it’s that plot-driven telephone box.
Bingo
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"I wonder if she’s talking to Rumple; they found a way to communicate across worlds again.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"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.
I could live with that but I also believe that the show/writers aren’t capable of being that deep and contemplative.
This is just hopeful thinking which I know won’t be true cause “Hook is the best, he’s hot”.
The only way “The darkness made him do it” excuse works is if the show applies across the board. But they don’t. For Rumple, he is simply a bad man. It’s never “yes, he tortured Robin Hood, but the darkness made him do it because that’s how insidious it is.” It’s “Rumple is power obsessed and can’t give up his grip on the darkness.” But for Hook it’s “he didn’t mean to almost kill all of Emma’s family and send them to hell. The darkness made him do it.” It’s very much a double standard but with Hook, like you said, it gets washed away in order to sell the narrative that he’s a good guy.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"It was a bad situation all around that had a fairly bad ending, even though it was also one that had an emotional resolution.
This, for me, is the biggest and most important difference. 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. One of the best moments fro S6 is when Buffy asks Tara, tearfully and full of self-loathing and disgust, why she “lets him do those things to me.”
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.
Same. He makes my skin crawl; he reminds me of men out there in the real world who believe that women should fall into their arms (and other body parts) simply because they are who they are. (RG points to all the Killgrave commentary she’s done in relation to CS and Hook; and I know I’m a broken record at this point, but in media this type of character can really resonate-when the writers are conscious of what they are doing, when the writers make that privileged part of their narrative and combat it within their story; but that’s the point. A and E aren’t aware of what their show is saying).
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”.
Yes this. Being sexualized isn’t necessarily a bad thing; human beings are sexual creatures by and large. But it’s far more nuanced than what OUAT does. OUAT doesn’t really do this and tends to categorize their characters in binary terms: You can be the Madonna or the Whore. You can be the Sweet Guy (which usually means either virgin or sexual but with no outlet because women apparently reject those kinds of guys in favor of the second type) or the Predator who has had *tons* of women but none of them lasting longer than a few knocks of the boots. (Note: in a lot of stories, the Predator is only tamed through the Madonna which is a whole other disturbing thing).
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Well, at least that silences everyone who thought Belle wouldn’t be in the 100th
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"Here's a tiny #OnceUponATime #scripttease — hope to see ya March 6th! #OnceTurns100 pic.twitter.com/jOkwGPI7aL
— Adam Horowitz (@AdamHorowitzLA) February 8, 2016
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"
