The A reveal
Aug. 27th, 2015 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lokifanI suddenly realised I wrote this massive reaction post and then failed to actually post it. SO.
Many spoilers, because this is a reaction to the Pretty Little Liars A reveal.
WELP.
On the one hand, I’m pleased because I thought CeCe was the most likely Charles candidate, and it worked for me better than the Mona reveal did way back when – it tied back to things we’d seen of Ali and Cece, their similarities and how they played with each other. The trans issue was also much less awful than I was worried it might be.
It’s still a big issue though – not merely that their sole (as far as we know) trans character was the main villain, but that she's also crazy and a master of deceit. Narratives of trans women lying about who they are and fooling everyone around them are already so prevalent – and the idea of them using sex appeal in manipulative/evil ways against men, and/or tricking men into loving them or having sexual relationships with them – having a trans girl as a villain is one thing, but this specific type of villain? Yeah. That's fucked up.
However, I was also pleasantly surprised? Because Cece’s trans-ness wasn’t the central point of her narrative at all, and really only came up to make her more sympathetic, in terms of the reactions of her father and Radley staff. And the fact that – okay, she’s clearly kind of nuts, but that also very much seems to be something that happened because she was sent to an asylum as a child, because her father sent her off and thought she was crazy mostly because she was trans. Given how much the programme could have lingered on zomg how ~creepy and ~significant that she was trans, I was actually pleased that it didn’t do that at all – like, Cece’s sex life is briefly raised but it’s not remotely brought in that she’s trans.
I mean, there’s definitely an element of... she’s still a broken, villainous trans woman? And I'm not sure how much ‘she was mistreated largely because she’s a trans woman, and being mistreated made her kinda nuts’ avoids ‘she’s nuts because she's trans’? IDK. The Autostraddle recap deals with this really well. It also makes the point that Pretty Little Liars will live on in discussion of feminist and queer telly for as long as Buffy has. I'm hoping that’s true, not least because it would be so nice if the amount of positive trans representation grew enormously, so that I could rewatch this programme in fifteen years in a context that made this less dodgy.
Also, the Autostraddle article notes – and I’d forgotten this – how fucking awful Hanna's “he/she/it/bitch” line (said long before she knew who A was) is when it's about a trans villain. :(((
On the other hand, the girls all seem to accept Cece as a girl without missing a beat, and Ali has a moment when Cece's about to commit suicide – “Charlotte, please don’t!” That line startled me, because Ali has a long-standing relationship with Cece so why call her that? But it shows Ali accepts who she ACTUALLY is. Which is lovely.
And Cece got probably an even more sympathetic hearing than Mona did, despite having been way more actively violent than Mona, so. Yeah. There was also a lot of emphasis on Ali and Cece as sisters and this relationship between two women, and Ali’s line about having to think about their friendship differently was so clearly about Cece’s being A but also them being sisters... so yeah. Comparing it with Jenna’s many ~sinister blind person shots, in particular, is telling.
I liked that it’s another villain where non-romantic jealousy between women is the motivation – how dare you steal my friend. I just love that that thing is baked into the programme’s DNA, because of course – the raison d’etre of PLL, especially in the early seasons, is examining these complex relationships and power dynamics between young women. And that family, and possessiveness and power and lies and need within family, is so central because that’s also been a crucial theme. My BFF and her husband are finally watching it, and we keep talking about how much we love that the girls’ families are so significant.
Like, I get people being all “but... why did Cece target the girls for being happy Ali was gone, yet torture Ali herself?” I do. But that illogic actually strikes me as plausible given Cece's desperation to be part of her family, her love for Ali, but also... well, her desperation and resentment. Rejected romantic love goes toxic in exactly this way all the time, so a sisterly version seems appropriately nuts but not, like, absurd to me?
It’s also... now it does this without victim-blaming, and Cece's obviously desperate to get back to her family in general. But I do love that our new A, someone who was even more entangled in Ali and inclined to take on her personality, is also someone who reflects the warping effect of Alison's charisma. Like, I’ve said before I don't think Alison's a sociopath or evil. But I do love that the effect of her charisma, her ability to tell lies and make herself believe them, to make people feel special and draw them into a world she created, to manipulate social interactions and power dynamics like breathing... seeing all those ripple effects down the years is so cool sometimes. And it really does fit.
It’s also kind of cool seeing Ali, the threatening ghost for so long, come face to face with a dark mirror of her own.
I’m super into the Gothic elements of PLL, which for me stand out even more than the noir stuff, and so the spectre of incest being raised again – especially amidst the Delaurentis family, this central and fucked-up family – fits in a cool way. (I want to headcanon that Cece’s lying when she says they never had sex? I mean I think that’s more likely than not, for a few reasons.)
There are plot holes for sure, including a few scenes and reveals that make literally no sense. (Especially timeline-related but other stuff too.) And the writers are full of it being all ‘we planned it all along!’ but... yeah, I’ll go with it.
The Sara reveal I saw coming but I was weirded out by how the girls reacted to the reveal? Like, obviously bad reactions are 1000% understandable and Sara was still doing bad stuff for A, but surely the obvious interpretation is that Sara had nothing to do with A before she was kidnapped, and then she was threatened and Stockholm Syndromed into obedience? IDK I just found it weird that no one mentioned that.
I’m so happy Mona was there with the girls, and omg her Little Red Riding Hood/Wolf costume. I have many thoughts. Wolves, like girls, have sharp teeth.
The line about Mrs DeLaurentis teaching Cece how to be A was great. And how much the girls didn't let Mr Delaurentis off the hook.
In negative news – nooooooooooooooooooooooooo I want evil Ezra! SO MUCH. SO MUCH. I just. Evil Ezra would be the culmination of so many of the show's best work around predatory men, around power dynamics, around how common sexual exploitation of young girls is and how often it’s not recognised. And he’s so fucking manipulative right from the start, so good at playing harmless and getting Aria to assure him he’s not a predator. And COME ON, he not only had a relationship with his sixteen-year-old student as a teacher, he also had a thing with a fifteen-year-old girl as he was finishing university! And she thought he got her pregnant and was so scared of his reaction! HE WAS THE PERFECT VILLAIN. Noir has so many re-reveals, and to my mind, the best run of the programme so far has been between the reveal to the audience and Aria finding out. I just hoped.
I mean. Cece also plays into the show’s themes – she’s another girl mistreated, a woman striving for autonomy and control of her own life and body against villainous men and a cruel system, and she had to do it largely without the loving help and support of other women, so she went dark. But Ezra does it BETTER on multiple fronts, and there have been some suggestive little hints... I yeeeearned.
Maybe after the time jump. God, can Ezra please be having a thing with yet another teenage girl and be smacked down as the very real villain he is?
TIME JUMP. I dunno what the fuck Spencer’s fringe is about, and it amuses me that Aria’s basically wearing the exact same dress either side of the time jump. But yay time jump! Excite!
Many spoilers, because this is a reaction to the Pretty Little Liars A reveal.
WELP.
On the one hand, I’m pleased because I thought CeCe was the most likely Charles candidate, and it worked for me better than the Mona reveal did way back when – it tied back to things we’d seen of Ali and Cece, their similarities and how they played with each other. The trans issue was also much less awful than I was worried it might be.
It’s still a big issue though – not merely that their sole (as far as we know) trans character was the main villain, but that she's also crazy and a master of deceit. Narratives of trans women lying about who they are and fooling everyone around them are already so prevalent – and the idea of them using sex appeal in manipulative/evil ways against men, and/or tricking men into loving them or having sexual relationships with them – having a trans girl as a villain is one thing, but this specific type of villain? Yeah. That's fucked up.
However, I was also pleasantly surprised? Because Cece’s trans-ness wasn’t the central point of her narrative at all, and really only came up to make her more sympathetic, in terms of the reactions of her father and Radley staff. And the fact that – okay, she’s clearly kind of nuts, but that also very much seems to be something that happened because she was sent to an asylum as a child, because her father sent her off and thought she was crazy mostly because she was trans. Given how much the programme could have lingered on zomg how ~creepy and ~significant that she was trans, I was actually pleased that it didn’t do that at all – like, Cece’s sex life is briefly raised but it’s not remotely brought in that she’s trans.
I mean, there’s definitely an element of... she’s still a broken, villainous trans woman? And I'm not sure how much ‘she was mistreated largely because she’s a trans woman, and being mistreated made her kinda nuts’ avoids ‘she’s nuts because she's trans’? IDK. The Autostraddle recap deals with this really well. It also makes the point that Pretty Little Liars will live on in discussion of feminist and queer telly for as long as Buffy has. I'm hoping that’s true, not least because it would be so nice if the amount of positive trans representation grew enormously, so that I could rewatch this programme in fifteen years in a context that made this less dodgy.
Also, the Autostraddle article notes – and I’d forgotten this – how fucking awful Hanna's “he/she/it/bitch” line (said long before she knew who A was) is when it's about a trans villain. :(((
On the other hand, the girls all seem to accept Cece as a girl without missing a beat, and Ali has a moment when Cece's about to commit suicide – “Charlotte, please don’t!” That line startled me, because Ali has a long-standing relationship with Cece so why call her that? But it shows Ali accepts who she ACTUALLY is. Which is lovely.
And Cece got probably an even more sympathetic hearing than Mona did, despite having been way more actively violent than Mona, so. Yeah. There was also a lot of emphasis on Ali and Cece as sisters and this relationship between two women, and Ali’s line about having to think about their friendship differently was so clearly about Cece’s being A but also them being sisters... so yeah. Comparing it with Jenna’s many ~sinister blind person shots, in particular, is telling.
I liked that it’s another villain where non-romantic jealousy between women is the motivation – how dare you steal my friend. I just love that that thing is baked into the programme’s DNA, because of course – the raison d’etre of PLL, especially in the early seasons, is examining these complex relationships and power dynamics between young women. And that family, and possessiveness and power and lies and need within family, is so central because that’s also been a crucial theme. My BFF and her husband are finally watching it, and we keep talking about how much we love that the girls’ families are so significant.
Like, I get people being all “but... why did Cece target the girls for being happy Ali was gone, yet torture Ali herself?” I do. But that illogic actually strikes me as plausible given Cece's desperation to be part of her family, her love for Ali, but also... well, her desperation and resentment. Rejected romantic love goes toxic in exactly this way all the time, so a sisterly version seems appropriately nuts but not, like, absurd to me?
It’s also... now it does this without victim-blaming, and Cece's obviously desperate to get back to her family in general. But I do love that our new A, someone who was even more entangled in Ali and inclined to take on her personality, is also someone who reflects the warping effect of Alison's charisma. Like, I’ve said before I don't think Alison's a sociopath or evil. But I do love that the effect of her charisma, her ability to tell lies and make herself believe them, to make people feel special and draw them into a world she created, to manipulate social interactions and power dynamics like breathing... seeing all those ripple effects down the years is so cool sometimes. And it really does fit.
It’s also kind of cool seeing Ali, the threatening ghost for so long, come face to face with a dark mirror of her own.
I’m super into the Gothic elements of PLL, which for me stand out even more than the noir stuff, and so the spectre of incest being raised again – especially amidst the Delaurentis family, this central and fucked-up family – fits in a cool way. (I want to headcanon that Cece’s lying when she says they never had sex? I mean I think that’s more likely than not, for a few reasons.)
There are plot holes for sure, including a few scenes and reveals that make literally no sense. (Especially timeline-related but other stuff too.) And the writers are full of it being all ‘we planned it all along!’ but... yeah, I’ll go with it.
The Sara reveal I saw coming but I was weirded out by how the girls reacted to the reveal? Like, obviously bad reactions are 1000% understandable and Sara was still doing bad stuff for A, but surely the obvious interpretation is that Sara had nothing to do with A before she was kidnapped, and then she was threatened and Stockholm Syndromed into obedience? IDK I just found it weird that no one mentioned that.
I’m so happy Mona was there with the girls, and omg her Little Red Riding Hood/Wolf costume. I have many thoughts. Wolves, like girls, have sharp teeth.
The line about Mrs DeLaurentis teaching Cece how to be A was great. And how much the girls didn't let Mr Delaurentis off the hook.
In negative news – nooooooooooooooooooooooooo I want evil Ezra! SO MUCH. SO MUCH. I just. Evil Ezra would be the culmination of so many of the show's best work around predatory men, around power dynamics, around how common sexual exploitation of young girls is and how often it’s not recognised. And he’s so fucking manipulative right from the start, so good at playing harmless and getting Aria to assure him he’s not a predator. And COME ON, he not only had a relationship with his sixteen-year-old student as a teacher, he also had a thing with a fifteen-year-old girl as he was finishing university! And she thought he got her pregnant and was so scared of his reaction! HE WAS THE PERFECT VILLAIN. Noir has so many re-reveals, and to my mind, the best run of the programme so far has been between the reveal to the audience and Aria finding out. I just hoped.
I mean. Cece also plays into the show’s themes – she’s another girl mistreated, a woman striving for autonomy and control of her own life and body against villainous men and a cruel system, and she had to do it largely without the loving help and support of other women, so she went dark. But Ezra does it BETTER on multiple fronts, and there have been some suggestive little hints... I yeeeearned.
Maybe after the time jump. God, can Ezra please be having a thing with yet another teenage girl and be smacked down as the very real villain he is?
TIME JUMP. I dunno what the fuck Spencer’s fringe is about, and it amuses me that Aria’s basically wearing the exact same dress either side of the time jump. But yay time jump! Excite!