Arcane: Themes, American Media and Discourse
Spoilers Ahead for Arcane Season 2.
In light of the release of season 2 of Arcane, a show I believe is stunning on both a visual and narrative level, I've been noticing a lot of discourse that suggests many people are missing the whole point of the show.
To preface this, I will be discussing American media in general and why I think people's interpretations may be missing some critical analysis elements.
American film has for a long time been through a lot of phases of either censorship or simple regulations that have a tendency to limit what content is available to the masses. On cable the restrictions are far worse than say on a streaming service. Cable means passing ratings and scrutiny from the public in ways that do not apply nearly as strictly on streaming services.
One notable aspect of this that has repeated itself over the course of American film and general media history is the idea of "what is appropriate" and usually the first things to be cut during periods of censorship are things that are sexual, violent, or contain morally grey areas (this is important).
A lot of Americans (myself included) were raised on the Disney formula. Meaning the ending is usually positive, the characters are clearly cut as being good or bad and there isn't a lot of room to debate what the right thing might be.
Arcane is one of those pieces of media that would have never passed any of the prior censorship periods. The obvious "why" is clearly the violence content and sexual elements, but more than that it's the open endedness and morally grey themes that make it unlike most American mainstream media.
If you're at all familiar with the graphic novel "Watchmen" I would say Arcane rings quite similar in its approach to moral ambiguity. All the characters in "Watchmen" are flawed and do morally reprehensible things. Yet, the takeaway is not that people are all horrible and deserve to die (which is the villain's main belief). Instead the point is that morality, redemption, and the idea of "who is good?" is a nonlinear concept. It is rare that anyone stagnates entirely in their growth. Some people take years to come into themselves.
On a writing front, the show is exceptional. In screenwriting you are often challenged to find the balance between the dialogue and the visuals. The dialogue is ONE tool of many in visual media. In Arcane so much of the story (as it should be) is told through character reactions. If you only watched the reactions you can parse the whole mood of each scene and get a sense of each character's state of mind.
In many shows (especially animation) in the US the dialogue is heavy. It's wordy and used as a crutch when a subtle emotive reaction in the character's acting would be far more powerful. I love films that make good use of silence or gut punchy pieces of dialogue that say so much without saying more than a few words. Arcane is a rare US based show in how it makes use of negative space in the moments so to speak.
In my screenwriting classes we talk about how Hollywood likes its media to be tied up neatly and often there is a hard push to make stories happier when it can compromise the essence of a story.
To bring us back to Arcane: The show thrives off of subtlety and subtext. Everyone in the show is trying to do what they believe is "right" but many go about it in varying levels of failure or success. And it is that fumbling, that messiness, and devastation in the face of closure that isn't typical for what some viewers might expect.
Keep in mind: a story can be complete even if the character(s) are unhappy. What matters is that there is a sense of closure. That closure can be a classic tragedy where everyone dies (ie Shakespeare's tragedies). Sometimes an ending is abstract and that is okay too.
It is important to watch media from other places because it expands one's ability to interpret non linear stories and better understand complex characters.
Arcane is chock full of complex characters and subtext. Which is not to say I don't think there is room to improve. I do wish there was one more season to give the arcs room to breathe. But all in all, Arcane exceeded expectations.
Now to jump into my breakdown...
I am looking at this as a piece of media. Meaning that I am analyzing the arcs and dialogue as an animator and screenwriter would. This is a piece of fiction at the end of the day.
Each character has their own morally grey arcs I will examine here.
Vander is seen as an icon of the Undercity. A man who represented where they wanted to go to gain their freedom. In season 1 we open to see the results of Vander's attempt at fighting for that freedom on the bridge. While he had good intentions, the result killed Vi and Powder's parents. This decision leads to Vander becoming more passive and losing the respect of the people who used to idolize him.
We see his slow descent in those early episodes. Again, Vander acts out of love and compassion for his adoptive family and his people. But in the end Silco's version of the Undercity, of Zaun, is what survives in season 1.
Now if we consider Vander and Silco side by side we see Vander is someone who tried to fight but saw what it did and tried to become a peacekeeper. On the other side Silco is the violent result of the events on the bridge.
Neither character is portrayed as being wholly correct. Vander's non-violent approach is what helps him protect his family but it doesn't address the true source of the conflict between Piltover and Zaun. It rather treats the symptoms in a temporary way. This is a flaw that other characters share.
And of course the thing that ties all their motives together is FAMILY.
So morality in American media tends to be very binary. Even within Arcane you have Vander and Silco who represent the non-violent and violent approaches to solving the conflict.
In the end of season 1 Vander gives in to his violent side to protect his family. He takes shimmer, the thing that he KNOWS will violate the peaceful moral code he's kept since the events on the bridge. Unwittingly, it is his passiveness that causes a chain reaction of events.
Again, he is trying to do the right thing through the wrong methods.
However, Silco's extreme solution isn't much better. His methods result in a mass spread shimmer addiction epidemic. The whole undercity is overrun by his chembarons and factories. Factories, we learn later use child labor in addition to ravaging the population through its control.
There is also no doubt that Jinx was a part of enforcing that. Something Silco roped her into but she continued to follow even though it went against her original ethos as Powder.
She is the master of the split between violence and non-violence represented in a character. Powder is the side that wants to invent and build things to help her family. However, even in season 1, we see her inventions are largely designed to explode (even if they are at the early stages unsuccessful).
In the timebomb episode in season 2 we see Powder as she could have been if she never turned out like Silco: using her inventions for destruction and not caring who gets hurt.
The timebomb Powder is stuck. She can't see to move past her grief of losing Vi.
One thing I love about this show is that it shows us the different ways grief can manifest. Sometimes grief is quiet and unsettling like Powder's is in the timebomb universe. It disables her ability to DO things.
Then there's the uglier or less pleasant sides of grief. The kinds that rip people apart.
Even Silco in the flashback with Felicia is a warm and calm character. Not the manipulative cold heartedly unhinged man we see in season 1. The loss of Felicia set off both Vander and Silco's grief. One chose vengeance and violence, the other chose to step back.
Both ended up killed protecting their daughters. Again, the motivation is FAMILY.
As an audience we can see Powder's descent into her worst side in season 1. Though some of it isn't fully shown we get the gist of how she fell in the six years Vi was away.
PARALLEL TO CAITLYN AND VI: In a sense both Vi and Jinx were captured and forced into the worst versions of themselves. Vi spent time in prison (because Silco told Marco to remove Vi from the picture).
Jinx is similar to Caitlyn in how both were picked up and manipulated in a moment of vulnerability. Both had lost so much and since grief can often lead to rage- both Silco and Ambessa did whatever it took to feed that rage.
Silco's arc is one we only get glimpses of, but is very connected to the core themes of moral ambiguity in Arcane.
We learn in season 2 that it was Vander's snapping out grief that caused him to lash out at Silco. Up to that point they shared a dream. Felicia's death was the breaking point for both of them. Silco sinks into a darker place while Vander tries to find a new way of life.
Vander keeps his promise to Felicia to protect Vi and Powder. Silco abandons that for the pursuit of vegeance on Piltover and the poisoning of the Undercity.
The line "Is there anything so undoing as a daughter?" speaks directly to the family theme. Family can make or break a person. It isn't until Silco realizes how much Jinx means to him, when he is forced to consider the same question as Vander did with letting Vi turn herself in, that Silco chooses family.
Again, is Silco a "good" character? No, not in the strict sense. But he is a compelling character whose arc ties deeply into the themes of the main storyline.
I've written and thought a lot about Caitlyn as a character because she is so often oversimplified and underappreciated.
The Caitlyn we see in season 1 is the girl who wants to believe in the better outcome. She is pure in ways other characters are not. Because she wholeheartedly thinks that by being an enforcer and having good intentions she can solve a conflict older than herself, Caitlyn fails at that.
This is not to say she is a bad character. Many characters who are pure often run into the age old "is it possible to solve things without violence?"
Such examples in cartoons include Ang from Avatar: The Last Airbender. He truly doesn't consider that killing Ozai is the expectation until the last season. But Ang struggles with GRIEF over the genocide of his entire people. His anger shows up multiple times throughout the show and each time Ang is disgusted and dissociated from himself when he enters the Avatar State in a fit of rage.
Again, this grief is NOT pretty. Ang is wrecked by it. Because it is fundamentally not who he is as a character. Ang as a character would not kill Ozai.
The same can be said of Steven from Steven Universe. His whole character is a shield. He is a kid who deeply loves his family and wants to protect them.
How he goes about that is flawed, but that's again, why we have a fucking story. If the characters never fucked up nothing would happen.
Now, for Caitlyn, her arc needed to be set in a way that when she falls, it makes her question her methods. Up to the end of season 1 she has done everything she can to help people. She goes into the burning building on Progress Day to save the same fellow enforcers who hate her whether she does a good thing or not.
All she is to them is a name. A piece of an outdated system.
Then Jinx blows up the Tower (a symbol of the broken system) and Ambessa takes advantage of Caitlyn's pain to mold her into a puppet tyrant. But the thing people seem to miss are those small moments where Caitlyn hesitates or questions what she's doing.
Even in the scene where Caitlyn is named as commander she doesn't immediately accept it. Ambessa plays off the fact that Caitlyn is running on raw emotions. She is NOT thinking clearly.
Again, if any of you have ever lost a loved one, I doubt you can say all your emotions are neat and tidy. Even in the most typical circumstances, grief can turn us into things we aren't.
In complicated circumstances, like Caitlyn's, her relationship to her mother is tied to that of the Kiramman name. She may hate what her name stands for, but that is because it has never been hers alone. When Cassandra is killed in the Tower attack, Caitlyn feels like she has to preserve her mother somehow. And she does so by hunting down the only thing that remains of her mother.
Caitlyn's plight for vengeance is not unique to her within Arcane either. To reiterate:
●Vander: marched against Piltover and then later turned to violence and vegeance to save his kids.
●Silco: Also marched against Piltover. Turned to violence and revenge after losing a loved one.
●Jinx: Lost her whole family and found one in Silco. Seeks revenge against Piltover and the enforcers for her family. Also takes her revenge out on Vi for abandoning her family.
If we consider other pieces of media in terms of portrayal of revenge we get the positive one (that is largely a binary example yet a fantastic one nonetheless): Princess Bride.
Inigo Montoya's whole character is focused on revenge. Yet it is never seen as something off, even by Count Rugan who killed Inigo's father. It's EXPECTED.
Yet when we come across the revenge arcs in Arcane, people are unable to see the nuances within Caitlyn's character or how simple her motives are.
Caitlyn wants to kill Jinx.
By the end of Season 1 Jinx has:
●Helped Silco control the Undercity through shimmer addiction
●Killed anyone who gets in her way or the way of Silco's machinations.
●Tried to kill Vi multiple times
●Kidnapped and tortured Caitlyn
●Kidnapped and killed Silco
●Killed half the council (including Caitlyn's mother)
Putting aside Caitlyn's personal motives, she has every reason to fear and loathe Jinx. She has done so much to hurt others in the short period Caitlyn is aware of the specifics. And the deeper Caitlyn dives, the worse it looks.
However, this is where the brilliance of these crisscrossed arcs comes in.
Both Jinx and Caitlyn operate by biases older than themselves. Most of it isn't even conscious. Remember in season 2 the mention of "The cycle of killing only ends when you walk away"? That right there is a core theme.
Both Jinx and Caitlyn need to walk away. Vi needs to walk away. But for most of the show they keep walking back into the conflict whether they do it with the intention to fight or not.
Caitlyn is just as mixed up as Jinx or Vi. But for different reasons. It is important, again, to keep in mind that the arc Caitlyn has isn't the writers saying "oh she's horrible for blah blah blah" it's a reinforcement of the idea that killing is a cycle that starts with grief and only ends when love is chosen.
And that is why it makes sense for Vi to come into play because while the love in Arcane is not exclusive to romance, it is important to pay attention to all its forms to fully understand why it works.
Another character that is oversimplified and reduced down to the minor plotpoints and ignoring the nuances of her character.
Vi is also morally gray. She starts out innocent like Powder and Caitlyn. They are all just kids existing and surviving until the lab is blown up thanks to Powder dropping the hex gemstone.
As season 1 unfolds, Vi teeters on the same precipice that both Vander and Silco did years ago. Like the Vander of old, Vi feels a responsibility for the Undercity and a visceral need to take revenge.
"You know but you don't know," is what Vander tells Vi. He explains that if Vi keeps down her road of anger she'll end up like those who died on the bridge.
Vi doesn't stop because she is a character who leads by action. Which is why she works well with Caitlyn, who is also a character who prefers action.
Vi's thematic need to protect her family lands her tragically in the opposite place she had meant to be. Now without her family, Vi is alone in prison for six years. All she knows is hurt, pain, loneliness and violence. Again, THEME.
Caitlyn is the one who digs up the threads and evidence to link (unintentionally) back to Vi. The only reason Caitlyn has that connection is because Vi attacks another prisoner (Caitlyn's source/lead).
After seeing how Vi is treated Caitlyn forges the documents to get Vi released. Caitlyn didn't have to do that necessarily to achieve her goals. But here we have an example of two levels of goals:
1. Primary Goal: Find Jinx and hold her accountable.
2. Sub goal: Help Vi escape a shitty environment.
Vi's goals in this instance overlap with Caitlyn's. Though Vi at this point is hellbent on finding "Powder" someone that even Caitlyn realizes well before Vi does is dead/gone. But because Vi's biggest flaw is that she is not capable of accepting that people change, Vi is continually railroaded by her rose tinted lenses.
While Vi grounds Caitlyn in confronting her internalized biases, Caitlyn does the same for Vi. Their fight in S2E3 isn't over anything new. There's the larger theme of classicism and biases represented in them at play. And then there's the fact that Vi is losing her ability to fight. She is tired of it. Of the cycle. Vi has been in it her whole life and when she is faced with the same choice as Vander's years ago, to kill a sibling, Vi can't do it. It's reflective of Vi's acceptance that yes, Powder is gone and all that's left is Jinx. But also that Vi doesn't want to keep fighting.
In this moment Caitlyn and Vi switch roles. Caitlyn loses sight of the vision she has for the world they live in. She decides killing Jinx is the solution to ending the suffering on a larger scale. In a sense, Vi can only see the smaller personal picture and Caitlyn is always focused on the larger issues. It is when Vi loses Jinx and Caitlyn that Vi regresses to her violent outlet through pitfighting.
Caitlyn also regresses by resorting to anger and violence (theme anyone?). No one is exempt from the violence in this show. There are degrees of moral righteousness but for every good mark, each character has a negative one.
Even Ekko, who is arguably one of the most morally sound characters, gave up on Powder when she started to change into Jinx. In the Timebomb episode Ekko sees the Powder that could have been. The one he is so sure is the right one because she never becomes violent and doesn't suffer from mental breakdowns/hallucinations.
This ties into another thing Arcane does super well is showing that loving someone is sometimes hard when they change in ways you don't understand. And losing pieces of yourself to disease, injury, mental illness can be challenging when the world tells you that you need to be fine.
Arcane takes Vi, a woman with her traumatized past self and says it's okay to not know how to heal.
Arcane takes Jinx, another traumatized girl who is haunted by her mistakes and says "you are still worth loving."
Arcane takes Viktor, a man with a chronic pain condition and disability and says "imperfection is still beautiful."
Arcane takes Caitlyn, a woman who wants to break free of her namesake trapped in an endless cycle of corruption and untenable expectations and says "You don't have to wear the crown. You don't have to be a part of something big to be loved."
Ekko comes back because he realizes he also needs to accept Jinx as she is. Just like Vi.
Vi finally accepts that Caitlyn isn't who she used to be but that her actions in letting Jinx go and relinquishing her title and place on the council proves that their growth isn't linear. It's grey and messy. It's full of steps and missteps. Both Vi and Caitlyn aren't done in their journey.
"I am the dirt underneath your fingernails" is a very subtle way of Vi saying "Look, this is gonna be rough but I am okay with how we change." It's not direct. Vi is a blunt person but she is also more of an action person. Which is why Caitlyn's apology through actions is what convinced Vi that HER Caitlyn wasn't gone, just different like Powder and Jinx.
If Caitlyn had apologized outright, I doubt Vi would have accepted it at that moment in S2E8 when she and Caitlyn are arguing. Remember how many times Caitlyn says what she means in season 1 but Vi brushes her off? Vi believes Caitlyn when she ACTS like who she claims to be.
I've seen some great breakdowns of Caitlyn's "I know!" line. This is another example of subtext rather than blatantly stating an apology. In real life obviously you'd want a direct apology and ownership. But since this is fiction, you can do it in a very subtle way and get the same result (but add more tension).
If Caitlyn had just gone "I'm sorry for hitting you and yadda yadda," then Vi's response would have been another outburst of rage. Why? Because Caitlyn's actions are what Vi is questioning, not her words.
So when Caitlyn's aguished guilt ridden yell of "I know!" Followed by a quieter "I know," is more powerful than a direct apology. Caitlyn then explains that it wasn't HER choice to take Jinx away.
[source: arcanegifs tumblr]
Also, at this point Caitlyn has already turned on Ambessa, saved Vander, and seen that her anger is dying out. Caitlyn hears Vi say "save my dad" and THAT is the pivotal moment. Not the jail cell scene and not the fight/argument they have in episode 8.
[source: arcanegifs tumblr]
Vi is accusing Caitlyn of going along with Ambessa and in that moment Caitlyn lets her guard down. She lets Vi see the exhaustion, pain and remorse. Again, it's all subtext. But there.
Another element of Arcane and its morally grey structure is that people make the mistake of assuming that just because no one outright says "hey this is wrong" it's a sign of approval. Which is not true here at all.
Character arcs and gradual and often subtexual changes in FICTION are what demonstrates their values.
For Vi, this means seeing Caitlyn bounce back and start to own up to her actions and through it, accepting CHANGE.
For Caitlyn this means accepting that her best self is one where she is acting out of love on a personal level. Letting go of the Kiramman name is how Caitlyn is able to potentially look for Jinx for Vi. Because of love.
Caitlyn allows Vi to be selfish, to live for herself, and to see her own worth. When Caitlyn flounders, she makes Vi doubt it. But we see that Caitlyn never actually forgot Vi based on Ambessa's line saying "Your absence left a vacancy I could fill." The grief and rage for Caitlyn was stronger than her love and hope for Vi.
Vi resorts back to her old ways and even accidentally hits Isha. But it's Vi and Caitlyn reuniting that affirms that their pain, grief, and anger cannot be what wins the day.
In this sense, the show has every character end their respective killing and hate cycles. At no point does the show insinuate that anyone is perfect or morally sound. Because no one really is.
Where to begin with Viktor? His arc begins with him trying to find a way to help the Undercity and himself in the process through science.
Viktor can be seen as a sort of "what if" of Jinx had she been taken into Piltover. His ultimate goal is to use technology to better the world. A goal Jayce shares and sparks their dive into Hex tech.
There is always the question of how good is pure power when it can corrupt. This applies to science, moral codes, governments, and social evironments.
Heimerdinger warns that the arcane is a source of destruction. Viktor has seen shimmer evolve since he was a boy and seen that it can destroy people/life. He doesn't realize what he has seen until later but it stays with him. He sees the extremes of scientific progress through Singed and still makes his own mistakes.
Viktor's only value is seen as his contribution to science. He laments to Heimerdinger that people will remember Hextech and Jayce, but not Viktor himself.
He strives to make his mark by overworking and when he discovers that the arcane can replace his body, he lets it, believing it is the better way.
This escalates to a head when the core swallows up Skye and proves to Viktor he has gone too far. Yet, even after he tells Jayce to shut down the hexcore, Jayce chooses to save Viktor despite the risks on a world level.
Viktor loses part of himself and takes on one extreme as a healer and then immediately after as an overlord who wants to control people in order to prevent suffering. Sound familiar? It's a classic villain trope that they do an extreme solution that is often reasoned as "for the greater good" but is usually morally backwards.
Viktor himself is not a villain but he goes so far over the line he stops caring for people the way he used to.
Jayce is Viktor's anchor because they stand for the two sides of science: the rational/formulaic and the social/worldly impact that is more emotionally driven.
Like Caitlyn, Jayce was raised in Piltover for most of his life. He wasn't born into wealth but because of his success as an inventor he swiftly adopts the more Piltovian way of thinking.
Viktor is Jayce's check/balance point. When Jayce questions the power of his work, Viktor encourages Jayce to keep going. Jayce slips into some biases and Viktor is quick to say "I am from the undercity." To remind Jayce why they are doing this research.
To Jayce, the extent of Viktor's disease and the conditions of the Undercity aren't concrete until Jayce is directly confronted with the reality of it. First in the form of Viktor's rapidly deteriorating condition and then later when Jayce tag teams with Vi to raid one of the chem factories.
Jayce is disillusioned into inaction, which as we know from Vander can be a double edged sword. Jayce soon tries to negotiate with the council and with Silco. Both end unsuccessfully.
Jayce is swept up in the mess of the Hexcore and sent to another dimension where he is forced to confront the ramifications of his actions. He is twisted into "killing" Viktor then later deciding to stay with Viktor to end the cycle.
Both Jayce and Viktor see the world in idealistic ways that often clash with reality but they balance out when both remember that being human, being flawed, isn't bad, it's just how people are.
To truly understand Arcane and the character arcs, the ideas we carry of binary "good" and "evil" need to be discarded. That is not the point of this show.
●Family and family conflicts
●Grief and how it can change someone
●The thin line between hate and love
●Corruption in places of ultimate power ("Absolute power corrupts absolutely")
If at any point you think one character is better because of which side they're on, I would suggest rewatching the show. Because at the end it isn't about who is right.
It's literally about ending the cycle, changing ourselves and ditching a corrupted system.
The show ends with Zaun having reps on the council. Caitlyn and many other former members step away. Caitlyn is using her maps to locate Jinx. She is healing and so is Vi.
It's an open ended grey ending. I feel that people are trying to equate this to real life when it should be viewed as a piece of fictional media. We are all in this together is the message and we can't keep doing this "us and them" dance lest we repeat the cycle.
I so appreciate what Arcane has done on a personal level. Trauma is sometimes the place where we feel the worst. Regression is common when traumatic events occur (for those not familiar with the psychology term, regression means you default back to a prior state of being). In extreme cases regression can result in someone acting like their younger selves or in Jinx's case, forming hallucinated versions of her lost family.
For Vi it's not being able to accept change, even in herself. Which can be its own form of regressive behavior.
For Caitlyn it's a textbook PTSD response. Flight/fight. As someone who has PTSD it was hard to watch Caitlyn's spiral and cathartic. Her wild firing when they raid the arcade in S2 Act I is raw in a brutally beautiful way. That need to defend yourself even if you don't even know what you're fighting is captured so well by the Arcane crew. That residual fury isn't pretty. It's hard to cope with.
But I think Arcane does a phenomenal job of showing that we are more than where we come from or that our disabilities and flaws aren't things to fear or be ashamed of.
For a show to be that bold with both queer messaging and disability messaging is worth applauding.
More analytical posts from other Tumblr users I liked:
https://www.tumblr.com/breakingthebinarybubble/768557141150908416?source=share
https://www.tumblr.com/breakingthebinarybubble/768556694051684352?source=share
https://www.tumblr.com/breakingthebinarybubble/768083266644410368?source=share
