#two episodes very centric on the idea of chloe TRYING to be better
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Related to the Zoé ask you responded earlier: what’s your opinion on Chloé? Do you think she can still become a better person?
Because, personally, I do. And just as you, I hope Zoé can help her in that.
I just think people take Thomas Astruc way too seriously. I’m not arguing whether you should like him or not, he’s just a normal person after all and it’s fine if you dislike him.
But he’s trolled us a lot of times. When people asked him about Felix, he always said his concept get dumped. Instead he was recycled as Adrien’s cousins.
Or, like, before the firsts “hints” of Chloé humanity, he always said on Twitter she was just a bad person. But I think it’s more complicated than that, otherwise why show her struggle with her mother?
I was skeptical when we found out Zoé is Chloe’s half-sister, but I gotta say I like the idea. She seems very sweet and I hope they can get along eventually.
What are your thoughts on it?
I absolutely agree with you.
People take what Astruc says on twitter way too seriously, considering he’s constantly playing devil’s advocate, trolling, and straight up lying to us about things in the show. That’s all not even mentioning language barriers and the like. It’s his way of combating spoilers, and just because he implies something, doesn’t mean at all that it’s true.
I find it kind of frustrating that everyone is hating on Chloe’s arc when we have absolutely no idea where it’s going. We DON’T know that she wont get a redemption, but everyone acts like that’s definitely the case and attacks the creators of the show over it.
People act like her betrayal was completely out of left field, as if it wasn’t HEAVILY foreshadowed in Miraculer and just..... made sense.
Like, who cares about what the guy on twitter who constantly lies to us says? Let’s look at the ACTUAL TEXT of the show.
Chloé didn’t just randomly turn against Ladybug. Hawkmoth, a grown ass man who has known her since she was a toddler, decided to specifically prey on her insecurities and weaknesses. He tried it in Miraculer, and it didn't work (which took SO MUCH WILLPOWER FROM HER??), so he planned it out more thoroughly and tried it again... after making sure she was feeling as vulnerable as possible.... by akumatizing her parents.
Her turning point was choreographed like an akumatization! The grunting, the trying to the resist, the shot of the person's head being hung.... and then looking up at the camera and agreeing with Hawkmoth.
And why? Because that's basically what happened to Chloé, just without the magical assistance. Akumatizations happen when Hawkmoth preys on people's emotional vulnerabilities when they're at their weakest..... and that's exactly what he did to her.
Chloé isn't a great person. And yes, she is a brat..... but that doesn't mean she's incapable of change. It doesn't mean she can't try to be better. She was trying! But the fact of the matter is that trying is hard, especially when the supervillain of the series is a man who is a master of manipulating people at their lowest. Chloe's attempt at being a better person was put to the test, and she failed.
But she wasn't happy about it.
Once Miracle Queen failed, Chloe stood there and let Ladybug pluck the miraculous off her head.
And then, in her shame, she tried to flee the country.
Really, I need to emphasize this. When Miracle Queen lost, Chloé let Ladybug take her miraculous off and then declared that she would flee the country. She didn't swear revenge on Ladybug. She didn't declare herself a threat. (and no, saying “im not your fan anymore!” is not declaring yourself a threat). She just seemed....... angry, yes, but mostly ashamed.
She tried to be a better person and failed, yes. But that just means she has to try harder. And maybe she'll never be Queen Bee again, but she'll have to accept that she doesn't have to be a superhero to be a good person.
Literally the scene Chloé’s in right after her betrayal is THIS:
The ACTUAL TEXT of the show portrays what is at worst a tragedy (a young girl being manipulated by a man at her most vulnerable to do something she regrets) and at best a redemption in the making (remember how the Ba Sing Se arc ended for Zuko?).
.... But everyone ignores it because....... “thomas astruc, the person who constantly says weird things on twitter, said some weird things on twitter". And honestly that makes me sad, because I think this is a really interesting and engaging arc so far.
Chloé’s a brat. She’s been a brat the entire time. She doesn’t want to be a brat anymore. She was relying on being Queen Bee to be her big break, but she lost that privilege..... and now she has to rely on herself to get her out. She wont get better instantly. I’m sure she’ll continue to be a brat for a while— but, to me, the show always has and still is implying that she’s trying.
And, I dunno, Zoe’s inclusion in the show sounds to me like their way to move Chloé’s arc forward.
#Anonymous#chloe bourgeois#ml spoilers#and this is all barely mentioning miraculer and ignoring malediktator#two episodes very centric on the idea of chloe TRYING to be better#and yes. astruc had a hand in ALL OF THESE EPISODES
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What is your favourite henrik centric episode? Also what do you make of the way that holby made it seem like self harm is something that goes away as soon as you speak out? like it wasn’t ever mentioned again and just dropped as a story line
Favourite Henrik-centric episode... hm. Well, Group Animal is my favourite episode of the show ever, but I think it's more of an ensemble piece.
So my favourite episode that's actually focused on Henrik... that would probably have to be If Not For You. It's such an underrated episode, people don't talk about it a lot, but I think it's brilliant: it captures what it's like to be someone who's both autistic and mentally ill very well, and it's quite a quiet episode in terms of plot - there's no big reveals going on or anything like that - so the writing is very character-based, and said characterisation is absolutely perfect.
Guy Henry's performance in the episode is fantastic, too. The sensory overload scene is great, and the scene near the end of the episode where Henrik talks about losing his patient and admits he really thought he could save him... gaaah, it's so good (and heartbreaking).
Also, I just really love Karol Nowak the porter. I'm forever sad that they couldn't get him on as a regular character (they planned to, but the actor was busy with other projects, so alas, it was not to be).
Close runner-ups are One Man And His God (if that counts as Henrik-centric), Report To The Mirror, Black Dog, Hanssen/Hemingway, Never Let Me Go, The Cost of Loving and Like A Prayer (they're a two-parter so I'm counting them together), Blind Spot, No Matter Where You Go There You Are part 2, In The Right Place, and We Need To Talk About Fredrik.
With regard to the self-harm thing - it's disappointing, but not surprising. Holby (and Casualty, tbh) have a history of throwing away characters' issues like that. (The same thing happened to Jac when the writers decided they were done with her breakdown storyline.)
In general, I really hated S23E07. Guy Henry's performance was brilliant, one of his best ever, and the scene where Henrik argues with Josh in the basement is incredible, but those are about the episode's only two strengths. I despised the whole plot with the schoolkids being brought into the hospital. Sorry, but there is NO WAY the boarding school Henrik went to was in Holby. That's one of the biggest, most glaring, most continuity-breaking issues with the storyline (other than having Reyhan be the abuser in the first place, which was also stupid). I can buy that Henrik was abused at boarding school, they've been foreshadowing that for years - but I can't buy that it was by Reyhan Shah, and I can't buy that the school was in Holby, because if it was Henrik wouldn't be on the show in the first place. This is Henrik we're talking about, one of his most consistent character traits is that he runs away from places that remind him of his trauma (e.g. when he fled the hospital a few weeks after the shooting, because he couldn't bear being constantly reminded of Fredrik). There is absolutely no way he would have taken a job in the same city where he was raped.
That slightly off-topic rant aside, the way Henrik's issues were basically immediately resolved by him talking to Lucky once infuriated me, as did the show trying to push Henrik into a "recovery" narrative in general (the whole point of Henrik's character is that he's chronically mentally ill, something which is very very rare to see on TV - you can address the fact that he needs support and better coping mechanisms without pushing him into the same old "mentally ill people are broken and can never be happy unless they miraculously recover" narrative!).
The idea these writers have that mental illness is something that just goes away the moment you talk to someone... it's laughable. They did the same thing with Chloe and her self-harm a few years back, too. She was just magically fine and it was so insulting.
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Lucifer Season 5 Episode 6 Review: BluBallz
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This Lucifer review contains spoilers.
“I did go to Hell and back for you, twice, but who’s counting?”
It seems I was a fool for love thinking that somehow Chloe’s relationship with Lucifer, incredible as it is, could forge smoothly ahead. With some of the strongest writing of the season, “BluBallz” finds Lucifer going face to face Chloe’s with romantic past when her first love turns up as the central figure in the murder investigation. However, it’s the thunderbolt at episode’s end that puts Dan in an extraordinarily difficult position and figures to jeopardize the couple’s burgeoning happiness.
While Lucifer routinely weaves investigation details along side the issues the principal characters face in their private lives, “BluBallz” goes a step further dredging up not only someone from Chloe’s past but also the ensuing jealousy that Lucifer brings to the conversation. Once again, there’s nothing terribly complex about the motives behind the killing of DJ Matt Pexxa, but the jealousy, resentment, and self-doubt sprinkled throughout the story set up a compelling case that Chloe solves while Lucifer allows his immature angst to get the better of him. Electrocution by headphones might be one of the most ingenious murder weapons we’ve seen on Lucifer, but it’s Chloe’s immediate attraction to and comfort level with the audio equipment that lets us know we’re about to learn something new about the detective.
Once it becomes clear that the intended target in this case is actually Chloe’s pre-Dan ex, DJ Karnal, aka Jed Moore, the plot thickens, and Lucifer reverts to behaviors that threaten to derail the relationship he worked so hard to recover. From a narrative standpoint, however, it is a bit odd that the hottest DJ in town doesn’t recognize the owner of the hottest club in town, but that nitpick is easily set aside. As soon as Lucifer sees Chloe and Jed reminisce, it’s game on for the prince of darkness, though we worry he’ll muck things up so soon after getting back on track.
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Lucifer Season 5 Episode 5 Review: Detective Amenadiel
By Dave Vitagliano
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Lucifer Season 5 Soundtrack: Complete Details and Playlist
By Dave Vitagliano
Jason Bruening (Good Behavior) settles into his role as the engaging DJ turned social activist perfectly, and the combination of good looks with his celebrity status gives Lucifer a run for his money from the start. We don’t often see Lucifer on the defensive, but the series continues to effectively use relationships to examine the larger themes of trust, loyalty, and honesty. Though the romantic side of their relationship is new, their history together at the LAPD should be enough to carry the pair through the rough patches if both acknowledge how they feel. And while the final scene certainly indicates they’ve weathered this first relationship storm, we know a more familiar ex-partner faces a watershed moment.
Of course, there’s no getting around the fact that Dan stands at a crossroads after witnessing Lucifer’s devil face, and we have to question whether Lucifer allows this reveal intentionally. The evening has played out wonderfully as the women head to Lux in search of the killer, and the men stay home and try, for the most part unsuccessfully, to calm baby Charlie. But it’s Lucifer’s call to Dan asking him to return to Amenadiel and Linda’s place that poses the problem.
Once the brothers learn that Lucifer’s devil face produces a calming effect on the child, there’s really no need for Dan to return unless Lucifer simply wants to mess with his head, and if that’s the case, we have to wonder why. On the surface, Dan and Lucifer seem to be getting along as well as they ever have, and while it’s probably too soon to call them friends, they continually find more common ground between them. Does Lucifer feel it’s time to bring Dan into the celestial family along with Linda and Chloe, or is something more sinister afoot here? Will Dan confront Lucifer and the others about what he’s seen, or will the sight of the Devil send him into a downward spiral as he remembers despicable things he’s done in his past and see this as foreshadowing?
It seems unlikely that Lucifer feels threatened by Dan when it comes to Chloe, but the appearance of Jed does appear to have shaken him a bit. Nevertheless, it’s now up to Dan to make the next move, and it will be interesting to see whether he confronts Lucifer or seeks Chloe’s advice. On the other hand, he has to know that what he thinks he saw doesn’t make sense and fear that his claim will paint him as a person in serious need of psychiatric help which then points to Doctor Linda as a potential confidant. Regardless, it’s a turning point, and though we’ve been down this road before, here, it feels very different.
Nonetheless, as Dan is thrown into the celestial abyss, the others take steps toward putting their own lives in order. After a brief foray into the world of the bad boy, Ella may have found someone more in tune with her true sensibilities. She’s endured moments of spiritual doubt before, and though she did seem to have her life back in order, the connection with Dirty Doug implies she was slipping. But when she encounters a reporter (Adam Korson) at the initial crime scene, it appears at first that he’s simply trying to use her to get a scoop. In the end, though, Ella decides to take a chance after Pete insists that “when you finally show someone how amazing you are, you’re going to find your soulmate.” Her reply remains a bit troubling and sounds like something Maze would say. “Can’t find your soulmate if you don’t have a soul.” Another crisis of faith or something much deeper?
And what of Maze? She asks Linda how to “not end up alone,” and fully recognizes that she has the tendency to scare people away. Showing up at the precinct dressed to emulate Ella’s low-key, open-book style definitely produces a smile, but there’s also something sad about it when we consider the radical differences between the two women. Confronting her mother doesn’t appear to have really helped Maze, but once she gains some distance from the situation, she might see things differently. Still, even as Dan talks to an exasperated Amenadiel, it’s clear his advice applies to Maze as well. “What’s important is that you care; you’re trying your best.” Maze does care about those around her and wants to find a soulmate; whether she’s trying her best is up for debate.
“BluBallz” also does a nice job tying in a number of other recurring thematic ideas Lucifer has introduced throughout its run. Lucifer’s preoccupation with his Father’s manipulations persists to this day, so his contention that Jed orchestrates the murder and its subsequent investigation works well. Most importantly, though, is the revelation that it was Chloe who ended their prior relationship, and Lucifer now fears any missteps might send him on his way.
Lucifer approaches its mid-season finale with the ability to go in a number of narrative directions, and though Chloe and Lucifer seemingly have a chance at some modicum of happiness, the same may not be said of the others. “BluBallz” sets up a fascinating Dan-centric follow up as we wait to see whether he’ll challenge what he’s seen or withdraw into a more comfortable reality. Either way, they’ve got my attention.
The post Lucifer Season 5 Episode 6 Review: BluBallz appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Running with Wolves, Somaticizing the Text: Revisionary Feminism and Contemporary Dance by Dr Catriona McAra
Below is a paper presented by Dr Catriona McAra, introducing my solo The Mountain and Other Tales of She Transformed as part of the Edinburgh College of Art ‘The Woman’s Work: A Kate Bush Symposium’ on Dec 13th 2019.
“There is an old woman who lives in a hidden place that everyone knows but few have ever seen” (p.27)
The Mountain and Other Tales of She Transformed is a solo by the Leeds-based choreographer Hannah Buckley. I want to position it in close dialogue with Kate Bush and the American Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés, the author of the renowned cult classic and revisionary feminist study, Women Who Run with the Wolves (1992).
“I call her Wild Woman, for those very words, wild and woman, create […] the fairy-tale knock at the door of the deep female psyche… No matter by which culture a woman is influenced, she understands the words wild and woman, intuitively” (p.6)
The bone woman fairy tale, which comprises Chapter One, ‘The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman,’ has become something of an ur-text or blueprint for Buckley, a found script for her body, voice and gesture. She first read the book while a student at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, and claimed that the book found her.
This short experimental paper intersperses quotations by Pinkola Estés in order to get inside the theory/practice structure of her book. I interconnect Buckley’s research-practice alongside leading, iconic, cultural women that drive an investigative revisionist model. We are, therefore, specifically interested in how Kate Bush informs a new generation of contemporary practice:
“In mythos and by whatever name, La Loba knows the personal past and the ancient past for she has survived generation after generation, and is old beyond her time. She is an archivist of feminine intention. She preserves female tradition. Her whiskers sense the future” (p.29)
Kate Bush has certainly had an effect on a next generation of dream pop and folktronica. Journalist Laura Barton reveals that Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes considers Pinkola Estés book to be among her favourites, and Barton goes on to link Khan with Florence Welsh as “wild wolf runners” – a particular style of singer-songwriter working through the legacies of Kate Bush (2011).
“The archetype of the Wild Woman and all that stands behind her is patroness to all painters, writers, sculptors, dancers, thinkers, prayermakers, seekers, finders – for they are all busy with the work of invention, and that is the Wild Woman’s main occupation” (p.12)
Pinkola Estés and Bush have much to say to one another; both use the motif of the she-wolf or hound to characterise a revisionary stance. Putting them into further dialogue with Buckley who was born the same year as Hounds of Love came out, creates a compelling sense of intergenerationality as we come to terms with the practical application of 80s feminist theory.
Buckley has been using lyrics by Kate Bush since 2014 when she performed Woman with Eggs, an episodic narrative sequence which uses Eartheater’s ethereal and slower-paced cover of ‘Babooshka.’ For Bush, Babushka is a shield-maiden disguise, the inner world of a scorned woman externalised. Buckley playfully revises this costume or “pseudonym to fool him” to investigate female lifecycles and a safe space for women in an age of #MeToo.
Buckley begins her Woman with Eggs with a folktale: “long ago women got their children by digging around in the ground.” The choreography is then augmented with intergenerational audio interviews from Hannah’s nana, Elsie, and a child called Bo. Buckley then moves into a poignant sequence about a woman who chose not to have children. After reading this confessional, Buckley dances vigorously while trying to balance a clutch of delicate golden eggs in her palms, which quickly fall to the ground and smash, somewhat symbolically.
Again to quote Pinkola Estés:
“The modern woman is a blur of activity. She is pressured to be all things to all people. The old knowing is long overdue” (p.4)
The Bush ethos continues into Buckley’s duet ‘S/HE’ with Simon Palmer in 2017 where themes from ‘Running Up That Hill’ seem pertinent. Bush’s ‘Deal with God’ invites a switching of gender roles. Buckley develops this idea through her choreography, stressing the importance of gender fluidity and feminist men in making manifest such politics of equality. Here the pair are costumed, not in the blue iki-chic Japanese Hakama of the Bush video, but in peach-skinned, rubber birthday suits as if two newborns who have not yet assumed their gendered roles or identities. Laura Wallace compares Buckley’s costumes to the shapeshifting power of selkie skins (2019); the idea that we can throw off or temporarily stow our identities. Writing on the Bush music video, Roy Mon notes that the two dancers “coil around the musical text as well as [broach] the studio confines” (2007, p.100-101)
Buckley’s latest solo, escalates ‘Running up That Hill’ into a mountain wilderness. We begin with rebirth. Buckley’s wolfling feels into her own skin through a series of grounded, yogi movements, then gradually segues into a primordial chant that resonates throughout her body, scratching and crawling her way into Pinkola Estés’ text, and into the fantastical domain of the anima.
A summers wildlife weathers into a blustery, barren mountain side. Like Bush, this performance is self-directed. “I am the mountain” Buckley will tell us. There is a need for creative solitude. Here the mountain is a character as well as a bodily topography - Buckley’s practical research into 'feminism as the female command of space' uses the mountain in order to psychically expand and enable the possibilities of a feminist persona. There is grit and tenacity present. The megalithic is augmented by a visual component, a theatrical backdrop of chalk drawings facilitated by artist Nicola Singh, mimicking and articulating the outlines of the choreographic edgework: the bones of Buckley’s movements.
For Buckley, the wolf that dwells in such a landscape becomes the id, an inner force of unpredictability which rises to the convulsive, corporeal surface. Peter Brooks and Anna Kérchy emphasize the “somaticisation of text” (1993; 2008) a visual and textual mode of embodiment, similar to Hélène Cixous’s nottion of écriture feminine (1975), which we can possibility best understand through the transformative and body-centric medium of dance.
Pinkola Estés:
“My own post WWII generation grew up in a time when women were infantilised and treated as property. They were kept as fallow gardens […] Dancing was barely tolerated, if at all, so they danced in the forest where no one could see them” (p.5)
The iconography of wolves is worth dwelling on. For Jung, the wolf is a nightmarish presence that prefigures the death of his mother (1963). Pinkola Estés significantly revises this archetype into an arguably more positive, active, de-civilising force, yet she maintains the Jungian principle:
“women’s flagging vitality can be restored by extensive “psychic-archaeological” digs into the ruins of the female underworld” (p.3)
The she-wolf is an archetype but she is also necessarily slippery and unclassifiable – a trickster figure or category error patrolling the margins. The novelist Chloe Aridjis reminds us “There on the very fringes of tranquillity […] should be at least one or two pacing wolves” (2013). The wolf tales of the English writer Angela Carter are also interesting to ponder here; rewritten fairy tales from the same moment as Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ which re-position female protagonists as active subjects dirtied and bloodied by their experiences (Kérchy, p.4). Rather than fearing the wolf in grandmother’s clothing, Carter’s Red Riding Hood jumps into bed with them. As for Jung, the wolf for Carter is a predominantly masculine presence, hairy on the inside, similar to Joni Mitchell’s “coyote in the coffee shop” (1976). Yet for Buckley and Pinkola Estés, wolves are very much re-coded as feminine and serve as the instinctual and unpredictable beings within us. Bush’s “fox caught by dogs” uses the male pronoun “his little heart, it beats so fast” while her “hounds of love” (1985), I would suggest, represent an all-encompassing force-field relevant to all sexualities. Her canine familiar is a polymorphous hybrid, difficult to pin down, yet one which is certainly a feminist-intertextual collector of culture.
“Collecting stories is a constant paleontologic endeavour. The more story bones you have, the more likely you will be able to find the whole story. The more whole the stories, the more subtle the twists and turns of the psyche are presented to us and the better opportunity we have to apprehend and evoke our soulwork” (p.17)
Despite the ambiguous terrain, Buckley’s practice finds firm footing in the universe of Kate Bush as a kind of psychic touchstone. She stamps rhythmically to summon the animal within us. She fabricates sculptures by assembling the bone narratives she finds. This is The Mountain and Other Tales of She Transformed, and here is a final quotation from the intrepid Clarissa Pinkola Estés:
“I met a bone woman and have never been quite the same since” (p.27)
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