Okay I am mad about everyone bashing this painting.
This painting is supposed to be ominous! Yes there is a part of it being “Rue in hell “ but there is so much more.
The painting shows Rue in a laid back euphoric sensation. She looks like the epitome of freedom and sensation, the state Rue looked for her entire life: calm. Rue didn’t seek the thrill of drugs, she searched escape. The way in which Jules poses her suggest that she may finally found that calmness in her last trip and in death.
Rue does, at the same time, look severely exhausted and almost unhealthy. She is very skinny and lanky and there is something hauntingly sick about her face. Rues entire life was a battle and Jules knows that because she tried so hard to not be collateral damage of that fight. Her coping mechanisms were unhealthy. Rue was sick. Her entire life she battled with that her own mind. Jules is showing the battle wounds from that fight: a deteriorated body.
Now let’s get to the colours because there is more to it than “she’s in hell”
Yes the colours are reminiscent of flames, but that doesn’t necessarily mean hell. The flames also stand for the passion she carried within her. Her courage at the end of her life. It is worth noting that her hair also looks a bit like a bush, pointing to her Moses Arc and her religiousness. Rue spoke truth like god spoke through the burning bush, maybe Jules perceives Rue as a calling, not necessarily to religion but for the value Rue stood for: Freedom. The one think Jules always searched in previous seasons and then gave up in Season three.
Now let’s go down the hell route. Because EVEN IF Rue is drawn in hell, Jules has first of all every right to do that, after all Rue put her through and secondly Rue still looks at peace, not in pain. Jules and Rues relationship was unhealthy and deeply so. Jules suffered under Rues codependency. And Jules is not the only one suffering under Rues actions, and Jules knows that. Rue is not an angle. Maybe she didn’t make it to heaven. But she is not in agony. She already lived through the greatest hell: living in a mind that is not made for the world around her. Jules perceives death as a release for Rue, no matter how that looks for her. Jules wished Rue this release and calmness and manifests it in her painting.
Long story short: no matter how you look at it. Jules is not bashing Rue or wishing her hell. She is portraying a complex character and a complex part of her life in a way that gives way to both sides of Rue: Her passion and her loss, her courage and her cowardice, her goodness and her sin. Because Rue is gray, deeply deeply gray. And Jules does not owe her peace but still gives her the most compassion she has in herself.
But apparently media literacy is dead and no one got that…
