#Netflix we are out here BEGGING for scraps of content | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

matchstickdolly · 3 years

Text

Lucifer 5B: Cutting off Touch to Spite Your Fans

Spoiler warning: This post assumes you've watched all of Lucifer, season 5, part B.

CW: There's plenty I like about season 5, but this is a negative post. I know not everyone is up for negativity about the things they love. I also generally avoid it and (try to) keep my mouth shut about things I don’t like in most spaces. It’s good etiquette. But this is my space, and I have thoughts specifically about purity culture and the treatment of sexuality and trauma in fiction. You’ve been warned!

---

I'm a professional writer (not in TV). I've worked with enough bad clients, editors, and other writers to recognize some hallmark behaviors in how both Fox and Netflix gave Lucifer's writers incredibly difficult, unfair, and frankly weird situations to create through.

Fox did them dirty, interfering and ordering too many eps in S3. Netflix did them dirty, ordering 10 eps for S4 when it clearly needed ~13. Then Netflix ordered 10 "final" eps for S5—then, just kidding(!), 6 more after they'd done their writing for the 10. (What the fuck?) And then Netflix ordered 10 more for a "final-final" S6 after the writers had done their best to tell their whole story in S5. (MORE what the fuck.)

Talk about whiplash for creators, and half of those who consume content don't even care to understand such creative pain.

So, there are problems on multiple fronts. There's much I'll forgive writers, accordingly. I go into most shows expecting plotting/pacing issues. I look, instead, for characters and relationships that will triumph over those issues.

Heart is what the show Lucifer has always had in spades, both in its characters and in the immensely committed, wonderful ways the actors have tried to realize the characters' humor, love, trauma, and—most importantly—struggle to find healing. Yet, when given the opportunity to show health alongside another in a relationship, the writers/directors of 5B chose to remove most sexual humor and physical intimacy from their female lead and bi/pan characters to, I feel, sanitize them and troll fans. What happened?

Well, for one, say hi to showrunner Joe Henderson bragging about how the writers decided to be colossal dicks to the fans who helped secure their jobs:

From CBR's 'Lucifer Showrunner Joe Henderson Dissects Season 5B's Chaos'

Have we not suffered sidelined/repressed female characters, "bury your gays," and, oh, Chloe fucking a serial killer enough? Must we also say hello to neutered relationships once characters find stable love (whether same or opposite sex)? The result of withdrawing more sexual humor and physical intimacy from paired characters is an uncomfortable suggestion that they're reformed by "pure" love—more chaste and aloof, more acceptable in polite society. This is only done to end-game committed relationships.*

The writers seem to think they're edging the viewers, but the reality is they're taking traumatized minority characters who rejoiced in sexual freedom, but lacked and craved an emotional connection, and showing they can't have both, or, if they find both, it will never last. They've taken hypersexual characters and said, here, even they can have the love and commitment they desire, but some physical intimacy, especially sexual intimacy, is what they must trade for it.

There's always one more case, phone call, or coincidence interrupting intimacy. Traumas or deaths deserving emotional and physical comfort go on to receive none or only one aspect. Done sometimes, it's fine. Done always, it's sick. Dan dies, and there's no hugging? Really?†

Don't craft characters who crave a full range of emotional and physical intimacy, only to rob them of related scenes every chance you get. That's not complexity. That's bad writing. To even achieve this in 5B, they must squash banter and sideline their female lead yet again.

What a gift to purity culture, which tells us to be more palatable by bottling and buttoning up. That sex should be taboo, but violence glorified. That there is no heated desire among "Good Women," that sexual minorities of all genders shouldn't experience it much at all.

5A is so good. At the very least, it's on the right path (clearly, since the plot payoff from 5x01 to 5x16 is great). It shows a couple working through difficulties and trauma, toward each other emotionally and physically. It even pokes fun at people who think an established relationship means the death of romantic and sexual appeal (a tired and hugely sexist trope). And then... And then 5B reverses that, pretending established relationships are barely physical during emotional struggle and that the honeymoon phase doesn't exist. It robs characters of joy and comfort through physical intimacy when they need it to move through or push beyond trauma.

It's telling that so many fan wishes for Deckerstar are about healing touch and existing in each other's spaces: amending Chloe's spicy PDA history with Cain, Chloe caring for Lucifer's wings, soft family scenes a la Monopoly night and shared meals, morning-afters, etc. Reasonable fans aren't asking for porn; they're asking for connection and humanity. They're asking for writers not to forget characters (and, yes, including hypersexual characters) on their way from Point A to Point B.

That 5B lacks these things isn't a "tee-hee frustrating" slow burn or a cockblock. It is, in so many scenes, excising from characters a core part of what nearly every human and fictional monster craves. And it's a slap in the face to the "found family" trope. When you remove or tamp down a casual physical intimacy that was previously there, characters and their relationships fall flat, even if only partially. They become blunt weapons creators wield against watchers or readers begging for scraps of warmth.

Minorities shouldn't be killed off with ease, and they shouldn't be stifled with ease, either.‡ And maybe there shouldn't be deep trauma driving a wedge in a romantic relationship if you're not going to explore it through that relationship, too—physical intimacy included.

I'm still reserving some judgment. I loved the family drama and the end. (Although, again, where was the physical intimacy? No intimacy when Chloe or Lucifer return from the dead? Really?) I see where they could do awesome things, and could have done more if not for network BS.

But I no longer trust Lucifer's writers and directors. They thought S5 was the end. And what they gave us of Deckerstar, of the relationship that symbolizes health and healing in their fictional world, is this: cold distance. And they got a kick out of doing it, apparently.

If this is a "love letter" to me as a fan, I'm burning it. I can only hope S6 course corrects. If not, the writers who made these choices shouldn't write sexual minority and/or traumatized characters again. If you don't understand most of us, you should stop fucking using us.

---

* If you don't believe me about the differences between casual/short-term relationships and end-game relationships in Lucifer, go back and look at how Lucifer and Maze are with strangers in all the other seasons. Look at Chloe's sex dream, her propositioning of Lucifer in a library, her sex with Pierce in the evidence closet. Look at how much physical intimacy there is between Lucifer and Eve, and then between Eve and Maze (if only as a ploy). Across seasons, there are sex/kink jokes and scenes galore.

Compare this to how these same characters are portrayed when with their end-game loves. Notice the gentle pecks on the lips and the huge general drop in sexual humor between 5A and 5B. How boring. Where's the spice these characters had? Also, give me a damn break. Buttoning up in a relationship is contrary to four and a half seasons of emotional character work that's been communicating security in our relationships is personally freeing.

† I'm not just talking about sexual intimacy in this post, though that is a big part of it because of the characters. 5B lacked crucial found family scenes, too.

Chloe should have been at God's family dinner, but being so would have prevented more ham-fisted angst. Chloe never even has a one-on-one with God, probably because that would demand a straight answer about her miracle status, which I would guess will be used to drive yet another wedge between her and Lucifer next season, but we'll see.

In multiple before- and after-work scenes, there was no reason for Lucifer and Chloe to be apart more, even, than they were in S1 and S2. Monopoly night was in S3, for crying out loud. Most horrifying of all? No one touches Chloe after Dan's death, but Trixie. Meanwhile, Linda, Amenadiel, Ella, Maze, and Lucifer all receive physical comfort. No wonder Chloe's tired of being strong.

‡ If you don't think it's offensive that they stuffed all their wlw content for two hypersexual characters into a few clunky, irrational, and chaste scenes that rushed I love yous, a marriage-like proposal, and the mention of soulmates, I don't know what to tell you other than get off my lawn.

77 notes · View notes

pebz-art · 7 years

Text

Let’s Talk About Movies: Why “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is a Fantastic Dramatic Comedy

by: C.E.Parker

Movie: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Rating: PG

Release Date: February 13th, 2009

Genre Listed on Popular Platforms: Romantic Comedy, Family

My Argued Genre(s): Comedy, Drama, Romance(Sub-Genre)

Film Duration: 1hr 44mins

Word Count(For My Review): 2,727

Yes, you read that title right. A Dramatic Comedy - also less popularly known as a “Dramedy”.

Also, warning: Spoilers are ahead.

For my first official movie review, I’m going to talk about the 2009 film “Confessions of a Shopaholic”. However, let me tell you a bit about me before jumping into the actual review.

First off, I’m writing an informal essay because there should never be a formal review of anything. This is just me, getting real with you, and telling you my thoughts and opinions of things. You can agree with me, or you can feel the exact opposite. In fact, if you feel differently about anything I say, feel free to let me know - I love hearing other thoughts and opinions.

Another thing to know about me, I hate romance movies. I hate the romance genre as a whole. It should never be considered a stand-alone genre because romance is just a type of platform for character development, and relationship development. Romance is a sub-genre. It should always stay in the sub-genre category because the main genre is what’s supposed to define the movie/book/etc.

Here’s some ground rules I have for aspiring writers who plan to write a story that’s entirely based around Romance:

DON’T.

Just, no. Scrap that and throw it in the fire if you have to.

A story should never just be about a character’s relationship with another character (or characters). A story needs to have something that drives the protagonist on some sort of journey, whether it’s trying to save the world, or just self discovery. “Fifty Shades of Grey” is arguably the worst book ever written, because the story drives around a romantic(?) plot.

Let me explain: Anastasia Steele; what do we know about her? She’s a grad student, and she interviews Christian Grey for her friend who is unable to do it. She bites her lip a lot, and is easily manipulated into questionable situations, and that’s about it. That’s all we know about her. Sure, she likes to read and write, but what else is there? She has no personality. Every time there’s an opportunity to learn something about her, the story takes a U turn back to her relationship with a hot rich guy who’s into some weird kinky stuff. Christian Grey is more fascinating than Anastasia, and she’s supposed to be the goddamned protagonist - not him.

Sure, maybe if you don’t want to read quality content with proper development, then go ahead and read that book. Some people prefer to only read about romance and nothing else, but I personally can’t stand it. I can’t tolerate them because suddenly the protagonists of these types of stories become Mary Sues.

Anastasia is the definition of a Mary Sue, and Mary Sue’s are the worst. If you don’t already know, a Mary Sue is basically just a perfect character with very little or no flaws, and no conflicts that they have to concur - or goals they need to achieve. Anastasia has no goals in life - at least, none that we know of - and her only flaw I can think of is that she’s easily manipulated.

But the protagonist in “Confessions of a Shopaholic” is the exact opposite of a Mary Sue, and that’s because the romance is kept as a sub-plot. I’ll say it as a cliche so you can understand what I’m saying: Romance is supposed to be like the icing on a cake. So when romance is used as the main plot, you’re just eating a cake made entirely of icing - and that gets unbearable after a few bites.

Now that I got all of that off of my chest, let’s go onwards to my review!

I was pleasantly surprised when I scrolled through Netflix and found a movie I once enjoyed as a kid; Confessions of a Shopaholic. I decided to watch this movie out of curiosity, to see if I only liked it back then because I was willing to watch anything in front of my face at the time. Now that I’m older and have seen too many movies to count, I have more acquired tastes than I did as a child.

After watching the movie a few nights ago, I turned it off and laid down in my bed, ready to wake up at 5:30am for work the next morning. However, I couldn’t sleep. An irrelevant fact about me; I have insomnia, and one of the reasons why I might have it is because I’ve always over analyzed the shit out of everything. So when I was in bed that night, I was stricken with the epiphany that I loved this movie. I was trying to mentally argue with myself, but I’d always be able to rebuttal my own argument with but’s and well’s, and eventually I succumbed to accepting that this movie is arguably one of my favourites of all time.

So here I am, ready to argue to you that this is the best Dramatic Comedy ever made. Why? Because the romance is a sub-plot.

The movie is about Rebecca Bloomwood (Isla Fisher), a journalist who aspires to work for her dream fashion magazine called Allite. This idea is relevant to the year the movie was released. But if it were released in 2017, it’d be about a woman wanting to work for a platform like Buzzfeed or something.

Anyways, Rebecca Bloomwood is working for a gardening magazine when we see her at the start of the film, and she’s on her way to an interview with Allite. Oh, and she’s obsessed with shopping. She has too many credit cards, and she buys anything she sees since the store mannequins come to life and call her in like a siren. I could make a whole theory about how she might be schizophrenic, but that’s not really the focused subject-matter for a movie review.

On her way to the interview, she sees a beautiful green scarf on display, and the mannequin sells it to her. She’s easily convinced to buy it, and uses all of her credit cards and a fifty dollar bill to pay for it, and yet she still doesn’t have enough to buy it. She runs out to the street, and asks the hotdog guy to spare some cash for her - completely cutting off everyone in line. After begging for money and making up a bullshit story that it’s for her freezing poor aunt, a 20 dollar bill is shoved into camera view. The man she cut in front of offers her the money just to get her out of his way so he can get his precious hotdog. She buys the scarf, and goes to Allite, but the job was given to a taller, blonde, and perfect woman before she even got a chance with an interview.

Rebecca is given advice from the male secretary to go to another magazine that’s a part of the same branch. That way, she can work her way up to Allite by starting off somewhere less appealing to her. The magazine looking for journalists is a savings magazine (the irony is hilarious) and she finds out that the editor is a man named Lucas Brandon (Hugh Dancy) - who just so happens to be the hotdog guy who gave her 20 bucks for a scarf she was trying to get for her freezing aunt.

She has a horribly awkward interview, and it ends with him scribbling her name off of the sheet, and her leaving shameful for lying to him about the green scarf.

The garden magazine she works for shuts down without telling their employees, so now she’s unemployed and drowning in debt. Her roommate and best friend offers her help, and she ends up drunkenly writing two letters. One, is a detailed piece on clothing prices being inconvenient addressed to Allite in hopes of getting a job. Two, is a twenty dollar bill and a detailed description on how Lucas can “stick it up his ass”.

Rebecca gets a call the next day from Lucas from the Savings magazine, saying how he loved her piece on clothing prices and offers her a job. She instantly freaks out, realizing she mislabelled the mail and accidentally sent Allite twenty dollars while telling them to stick it up their ass.

She gets the mail back before the woman in charge can read it, and she accepts the job offer at the Savings magazine.

Now, I don’t want to just explain the entire plot step by step, but that is essentially the first thirty minutes of the film - AKA, ACT ONE. What do we learn about Rebecca? We know she’s a writer, and that she’s also willing to lie to get what she wants. She’s quirky and awkward, but she also has a horrible addiction to shopping that has driven her to be over ten thousand dollars in debt. She’s also a hard worker and knows her goal. The choice she makes to drive her journey forward is accepting the job at the savings magazine. Rebecca Bloomwood is fascinating because she has a personality.

Throughout ACT TWO, we find Rebecca building up her career as she becomes the famous “Girl In The Green Scarf” - the name chosen by her boss, Lucas. She writes good financial advice for the readers of the magazine, and ends up becoming a worldwide phenomena. Her relationships thrive as she builds a strong friendship with her boss. Eventually, her friendship with her boss turns into romance, and it’s done so naturally. (SIDE NOTE: The scene where Lucas confesses his feelings for Rebecca is extremely cheesy, but it’s the only thing slightly unbearable to watch in the entire film.)

While this is happening, her shopping addiction is getting progressively worse. The movie portrays it as humorous, but it’s no longer funny when she hits rock bottom - losing everyone but her parents.

This movie is extremely funny, but it has a dark undertone about a person trying to get over a mental addiction. Rebecca is obviously depressed, and she uses shopping as a way to bring a brief moment of bliss. It’s like taking a drug injection. She gets a moment of high, but then it immediately goes away, making her feel worse than before she took her dose of pure bliss.

But then she saves herself by selling all of her unneeded clothes (she even sells the famous green scarf) to make enough money to pay back her debt. She turns down a job offer to Allite because she learns that she never truly wanted that job since it was just like shopping - it would make her happy for a moment, but then her bliss would soon disappear.

At the very end, she is no longer phased by the mannequins that scarily come to life, and she no longer sees them trying to be a siren call to her anymore. She ends up feeling eternal bliss in her personal achievement. The whole time, the movie tricked you into thinking her goal was to work at Allite, but in actuality, it was to cure her addiction problem. The joy she feels from being able to say “no, I don’t need it” lasts longer, therefore making her happy.

Then we see Lucas, who has the green scarf, and is standing there next to the stores in front of her. She ends up in a relationship with him, and describes him as being better than any store or credit card because he never denies or rejects her. She even inspired him to quit his job and open his own company that she ends up working at with him.

Why did I love this movie? Well I grade movies in three different categories:

Technical

Story

Entertainment

Technically, it was good. The movie was visually appealing with no awkward camera angles, and the performances were done convincingly well. I was surprised Hugh Dancy was the love interest in this film. I didn’t really know who he was before I saw Hannibal, So seeing this movie after watching that show gave me a whole new perspective on him as an actor. He can obviously play various roles, and is well rounded with no limits to what he’s willing to do. Isla Fisher also did a good performance buy keeping her character real and relatable. The soundtrack was very subtle and stayed in the background being almost unnoticeable/not distracting. My favourite shot was the ending where the screen fades to black, but the green scarf stays on camera, emphasizing it’s symbolism of her achievements in the movie. They seemed to put more of their focus on the other two aspects which is why I’m giving this section a 6/10.

The story was incredible, It had me laughing hysterically for most of the film. There’s a few scenes in particular I’ll never forget, like when Rebecca and Lucas were dancing, and she kept smacking him in the face with her fan by accident. Or when he first hired her and asked her to find a good angle, and immediately afterwards she Googles “What are good angles”. But, a lot of the things I were laughing at were the corny scenes. Specifically, the scene where he confesses his feelings for her. It was really rushed - not the development, per se, but the scene itself was what was rushed. It was maybe a 1-2 minute scene on the balcony of a building, and they exchange maybe a total of 7 sentences overall to each other in the scene. The scene should have been presented differently, and they maybe shouldn’t have them kiss there either. I really loved the conflict with her addiction, and that was what made me fall in love with this movie. It was showing a real person struggling with a real problem people could relate to. Another thing I loved about this was how the romance was left as a nice icing on top to a story - which is what it’s supposed to be. The love interest was, technically shoved into our face with how the 20 dollar bill took up the whole camera for a moment. But regardless of the camera technique, he was introduced very subtly. It was enough to allow the audience to know that we may see this guy again, but they didn’t shove it into your face all slow motion like, “This is the love of her life right here.” They also allowed their relationship to grow at a natural pace, but the confession scene was just a mess. I wish they put the same effort into the confession scene as they did with their development as a whole. I also love the symbolism! The scarf seems to symbolize Rebecca and Lucas’ relationship, but it also symbolises her achievements, and the overall message about consuming oneself into materialistic things. Since there were some unbearable corny scenes, I’m giving this section a 7/10.

Latsly, the entertainment value. Did I enjoy watching the movie? Yes I did. Sure, it was a bit of a guilty pleasure at times since most of the jokes were incredibly cheesy. But I really enjoyed how in depth this movie really is if you pay attention. The corniness is purposely masking the depressing aspect since that’s exactly what the main character is doing herself. She’s trying to hide how depressed she is from everyone by allowing herself to stay quirky, and giving herself a high off of shopping to keep herself happy and content. I’m giving this section an 8/10

Overall, I give this movie a 70% as my critical rating. However, this movie has slipped its way into my heart, and is now a movie I’d recommend to people. If anyone asks me some good movies with a good romance, this will definitely be on that list I’d give them.

More reviews will come, but please remember: nobody’s opinion on a movie matters except for your own. The only person who can truly convince you of something is yourself.

#movie reviews #writing #review #movie review #confessions of a shopaholic #hugh dancy #isla fisher #comedy #drama #romance #writing tips #writing blog #writing blogs #informal essay #casual review #queued post

9 notes · View notes