#jacketposting

[jamjacket1992]

[archietransdrews]

Clothing As Fate On Riverdale? SAY MORE

this #theory hinges on a reading of riverdale as comic, or at least riverdale as a show that still operates fundamentally on comic book principles.

in comics, appearance is everything. i mean this in the sense that characters are given distinct looks so that the viewer can easily tell them apart when scanning strips; i mean it also in the sense that since comics are largely a visual medium, we learn who characters are not only by analyzing what they say but also and principally by analyzing how they look. comic characters’ outfits rarely change, because their appearance is how we recognize them, and yet those outfits are significant despite being stable precisely because of what they indicate about different characters’ personalities. think of pierce from zits or pigpen from peanuts or nermal from garfield or — you get the picture; in a comic, appearance IS character and vice versa.

because we need characters to look distinct in order to tell us what they’re like, there are plenty of pieces of clothing in comics whose only function is to communicate something about a character’s personality; this is true in riverdale as well. jughead’s hat is a perfect example of this, given that the show is aware of its purpose — have you ever seen me without this hat on? that’s weird! but the place it’s not weird for a character to literally never be seen without the same hat on is in a comic strip; jughead just doesn’t know that he’s from a comic (yet).

in comics perhaps more than any other medium, clothes and physical traits are chosen to efficiently communicate characters’ existing personality traits, and so it follows that the reverse is true as well, in the sense that donning a certain piece of clothing can also serve to influence or alter a character’s personality or behavior after the fact. this starts to get at the idea of clothing as fate — the idea that wearing something particular has the power to influence or predetermine future events. we see this frequently time in riverdale when characters dress up like fictional characters only to begin experiencing the same plots that those characters did, e.g. betty dressing up as laurie strode and then immediately living the events of the movie halloween or archie wearing a superhero costume for one night and then becoming a vigilante or like. every musical episode. riverdale fundamentally cannot or will not distinguish between a character and someone who is dressed up like them, so dressing up as someone else triggers a narrative shift.

we need characters to look distinct when reading comics in order to be able to tell them apart, so it follows that when characters in the comic that is riverdale come to resemble each other too closely they begin to merge, which is to say they begin experiencing similar plotlines and ultimately similar fates. i have been mostly paying attention on this rewatch to the jasonification of jason’s doubles, particularly archie, cheryl, and chic, but there is also a lot to explore with regard to characters dressing like their parents while in the process of becoming them. (jughead putting on the serpent jacket is the first moment we know he is going to join the serpents; veronica ripping off her pearl necklace communicates more urgently than any words might how strongly she doesn’t want to end up like her parents.) we might even argue that using the same actors in the midnight club sealed the riverdale teens' fates as they became physically and therefore narratively indistinguishable from their parents, doomed to repeat their mistakes.

in summary, pretending to do something on riverdale is the same as doing it for real because everything on the show operates on an equal level of (un)reality; sartorial choices in particular take on additional consequence owing to riverdale's archie comics heritage. thus, in riverdale, dressing up as someone is not fundamentally distinct from becoming them, or at least taking on their narrative role. in this sense, then, clothing is a primary vector through which fate exerts itself on the characters, forcing them to experience plotlines that correspond to what they're wearing even if it was only supposed to be a costume.

[archietransdrews]

when you live in riverdale, putting on a jacket is something that can be so fraught :)

[archietransdrews]

oh?

[archietransdrews]

and if i said archie was marked for death from the very beginning? and if i said that whenever he wears the letterman jacket the narrative starts treating him like jason, which is to say it starts trying to bury him alive?

[archietransdrews]

shedding skin just really is like one of the main things snakes are known for

[archietransdrews]

i love you edgy teen program <333

[archietransdrews]

theres something else about this where like. acknowledgement of jason's jacket and archie's bow as actors in their own right produces a reading wherein people who are silenced and objectified -- jason through filicide, archie through csa and grooming -- find unexpected agency in that place of objecthood and abjection because in becoming objects they invoke solidarity with other things which in turn begin to act on their behalf. jason couldn't speak to accuse his murderer, having been killed so thoroughly he can't even be represented in the narrative; his jacket spoke for him. archie can't yet speak about what happened to him because he still doesn't fully understand it; it will take him years to smash the cello and trash ms. grundy's office. his bow knew what he couldn't yet bring himself to know; it exacted revenge on his behalf.