in which I hate a thing everyone else loves, NO ONE IS SURPRISED
I'm coming up on a middle of my Supernatural finale reaction post, and I got sidetracked in squeaking with joy at how the show is deconstructing something I have come to hate with a passion: to wit, the sanctimonious emotional torture porn currently known as a "redemption arc." But it got too long for an episode review, though it's still much shorter than the post I've been itching for a while to write on the topic so I hope this will end up being a placeholder.
If I never hear the phrase "redemption arc" again it will be too soon. I SPIT ON IT! And here's why: because it's just never goddamn enough. It turns actions into chips you can turn in for other actions. You're so deep in the hole. The house always wins. (Sometimes narratives will make a gloomy self-congratulatory statement to that effect, but it's just a fatalistic acceptance of being defined by one's own past.) But you play, because you have to, because if you give up then you're just a loser who lost a game you couldn't possibly win.
Bad enough. But then usually - plot is plot and the world is the world - you were playing a shitty hand, and casinos are set up to keep you from understanding the rules very well (indeed, counting cards will get you out of the game very quickly). So in order to prop up a redemption arc, you have to be rooting for suffering for the sake of suffering, in service of some cosmic scorecard that doesn't exist, and way more likely than not, doing some massive victim-blaming.
And the gloomy, fatalistic never-endingness of it all, aside from being tiresome and a narrative cop-out in order to smugly feign darkness, basically ensures sucking other people in, making things worse, eagerly tipping over dominoes of self-loathing - ie, human suffering.
I don't like that. I believe in trying to treat people with compassion, even people who aren't real, or, failing that, to realistically root for the world to become a safer place and do our best to minimize harm on the way there, which necessitates not being sadistic. I think bad people are the same as good people. I think people are people. I think the best we can do is to strive to be honest with ourselves as to how we can do better. And that applies to all of us.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/297522.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
If I never hear the phrase "redemption arc" again it will be too soon. I SPIT ON IT! And here's why: because it's just never goddamn enough. It turns actions into chips you can turn in for other actions. You're so deep in the hole. The house always wins. (Sometimes narratives will make a gloomy self-congratulatory statement to that effect, but it's just a fatalistic acceptance of being defined by one's own past.) But you play, because you have to, because if you give up then you're just a loser who lost a game you couldn't possibly win.
Bad enough. But then usually - plot is plot and the world is the world - you were playing a shitty hand, and casinos are set up to keep you from understanding the rules very well (indeed, counting cards will get you out of the game very quickly). So in order to prop up a redemption arc, you have to be rooting for suffering for the sake of suffering, in service of some cosmic scorecard that doesn't exist, and way more likely than not, doing some massive victim-blaming.
And the gloomy, fatalistic never-endingness of it all, aside from being tiresome and a narrative cop-out in order to smugly feign darkness, basically ensures sucking other people in, making things worse, eagerly tipping over dominoes of self-loathing - ie, human suffering.
I don't like that. I believe in trying to treat people with compassion, even people who aren't real, or, failing that, to realistically root for the world to become a safer place and do our best to minimize harm on the way there, which necessitates not being sadistic. I think bad people are the same as good people. I think people are people. I think the best we can do is to strive to be honest with ourselves as to how we can do better. And that applies to all of us.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/297522.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.