Jinx’s psychosis comes through in these quick film scratched doodles. Whenever a flash of her unstable personality leaks out Arcane presents them as if Jinx herself took the film stock out of the projector and madly scratched these doodles into each frame before haphazardly stuffing the film reel back into the projector.
You could look at the entirety of Arcane as if it was a show that was filmed and edited by someone trying to tell a story, but then Jinx (as her own character) has found the film reels of the show and is actively interacting with it to tell her OWN side of the story. These scratches and doodles are essentially Jinx’s commentary track.
But what’s interesting to me is HOW her doodles often represents WHERE in her arc she is.
For example. Early on these doodles are deliberately being used to BLOCK out scary or unnerving imagery. The soldiers on the bridge, the bad memory of her sister yelling at her. Jinx chooses to draw OVER these moments. Literally trying to scratch them out from her memory. Because she’s a child here and Jinx’s personality has always been about protecting her child self, it makes sense that even as a commentator she is choosing to block out these moments to protect her child side.
But as the story goes along, her doodles take on a more narrative function. She starts doodling characters talking to her from the sides. She’s not blocking out the memories, she’s actively using the doodles to help give form to the formless voices in her head. She’s saying “see? I’m not crazy, Mylo was telling me shit! Look, there he is behind me!”
Near the end of Season 1 this narrative storytelling choice Jinx is doing starts to become even MORE clear. Now these doodles aren’t just to represent the voices in her head, they are used to re-contextualize her own memories. So as she thinks she sees Caitlyn laughing at her, she literally draws devil horns on her head, reframing this moment of Caitlyn’s fear as mockery.
And of course when Vi triggers Jinx in the climax of the season, her scratches become MUCH more visual and representational. These doodles don’t look like the usual film scratches we’ve seen up till now. If I were looking at this from a filming perspective this would be more like they were literally projected into the set Jinx is acting in. They’re multi colored. They look more pencil like than film scratched. They’re not as bloom heavy as previous scratches, and the film doesn’t jostle about as much indicating Jinx isn’t drawing these directly on the film stock like previously shown. I would say these look more like she’s literally surrounded by her doodles in-camera.
And this continues into season 2. She’s still surrounded by her demons, and it’s filmed the same way as in season 1. The only major difference is that now her doodles are interacting with each other. She draws Isha running around shooting away the bad doodles and trying to protect her. Once again this is Jinx telling her story through these doodles.
When Jinx loses Isha and is contemplating suicide, jinx’s doodles are ALL that remain. The screen turns black and nothing but Jinx’s doodles comes through. This is almost like the memory of her is so overwhelming that she literally blacked it out, and the only way to reinsert this moment into the show is for Jinx to draw it frame by frame. Up until now the doodles have always been drawn on top of the frame. And while Jinx is often in the shots and can appear small and overwhelmed by the doodles, she’s never just outright been blocked out by them. I think that’s what this moment represents. She is so lost that she can only recall this moment after the fact and redraw it. It’s not perfect, it may not have even happened this way, but it’s the only way she can piece together what happened between shots.
And finally… when Jinx enters the final battle, something different happens. Up until now Jinx’s doodles have been used to block out memories, draw the voices in her head, reframe moments from her perspective, etc. They’ve been abstracted and rough and off to the side or drawn haphazardly over the stuff she’s blocking out. She never draws it on herself. So what happens here?
She draws an accurate representation of what she looks like in that moment on top of herself.
This is Jinx FINALLY coming to terms with who she is. She’s showing us that in this moment THIS is who Jinx is. It’s not abstractly represented. She’s not blocking anything out. She’s not reframing the moment. Shes not recreating frames that were missing. She’s just drawing what is represented in the shot and who she is now.
If these doodles are Jinx adding commentary after the fact then this flash is her putting a punctuation on the end of her arc. Up until now these doodles could be seen as her showing HOW she became Jinx, but this final moment is her saying this version of her is the TRUE Jinx.
And of course, there’s the “THE END” shot. That is Jinx literally signing out her story. If you ever needed proof that Jinx is alive, the fact that Jinx doodles all over the show is proof of that. Arcane is Jinx watching back the story of her life and adding her own notes and commentary to the film reel itself and that is what WE, the audience, are watching.
pixelskylines
dailybridgerton
tangentwithtanner
prguitarman
germansingergirl
