movie name : The Cleaning Lady
actress name : Elodie Yung
character name : Thony
year : 2022
I will try to talk about the potentials the show have to relate to people and how by turning some characters good they lost the audience they are targeting and who the show was initially made for, my focus will be on Thony character, and some scenes that I find problematic.
What makes movies and shows so different from any other form of media isn’t how it looks or it says, but it’s how it feels, if your characters feel nothing, why would anyone watch them, because they are attractive? I think social media have models who are as attractive and even more attractive, it’s not about graphic and CGI either, as unlike early 2000s the technology became available to everyone, let alone AI, and not just you can generate photos that look so professional, but even videos, what makes movies and TV shows relevant is how it feels, how the audience feel towards a scene or towards a character, the whole point is to channel a certain feeling, to make the audience share a feeling the show creator have, so character should feel something and people should feel something towards them, and the writing is just a tool to deliver a certain feelings towards your audience, how people feel towards a certain character depends on the individual, that’s why you should have a target audience, you can’t make something that everyone feel the same towards, you can’t have a character that is loved by everyone, trying to make a character have characteristics accepted by everyone will only end with a character everyone feel apathy about, which is the worst thing you can do, apathy is dehumanizing, no matter such character is heroic or villainous, you should never write a character people feel apathy towards it.
That being said, let me explain why Thony had the potential to be one of the most relatable character and how by making the show good, it became bad..
Now let’s see what characteristics Thony, have and how such characteristics can relate to the show target audience and how the show didn’t exploit such characteristics to its full potential, and how it could’ve defined the direction of the show.
We have Thony, the mother, the worker, the villainess and the Doctor.
In heroes’ shows I focus on the best moments of the show, which for me the villainess’ moment, but since this supposedly a villainess show, I will focus on the worst moment in the show for me, or moments that doesn’t make sense for the characters..
I think the show started to go in the wrong direction starting from episode two, when Thony went to Arman Morales played by actor Adan Canto asking him to help her son, the problem isn’t that she asked him to help her, but him accepting to help her, by making him help her, it kind of started a pattern broke his character from being a true villain, not only such action of good harmed Arman Morales, but also harmed the show, making the character of Thony less relatable to its target audience, don’t get me wrong the show still good and probably still have big audience, I just think it could’ve been better and I will explain how turn the characters from being bad into being good wasn’t good for the show.
*****
The mother..
*****
It doesn’t matter what the plot is or what the character do or say, the most important thing about the character in the show is how it feels, and if you want a character to appeal to a group of people like in this case mothers, the show have to share the same feelings that the mother have, even if it shared it using a secondary character, even using a totally different situation, what matters is the whole experience should relate to the mothers, that the events of the show produce a feeling that mothers can relate to, so here why I think Arman Morales not helping her would help the show would help the show to relate more to the target audience.
Let’s say Arman Morales, refused to help her, she find another way, and have to get the money by anyway possible to help her son, she go steal someone, she manged to do but got shot while escaping, then manged to return to her son, and saved him, then after she made sure he’s ok, cops come and arrest her and the episode end with this, then she’s pressured to turn against Arman Morales, but she refused, Arman Morales then mange to let her out of prison..
Yeah, Arman Morales helps her, but this time is different, as he do it as a business, a villain who look after himself and saving her make sense as she may turn against him, and her not turning against him, make her more trustworthy, then their relationship in the story makes sense from a villain point of view.
And here’s how this can relate to mothers, the villainess risking her life is allegory of pregnancy and how mothers risk their lives for their children, being imprisoned can be allegory of how she take care of children afterwards.. so by Arman Morales staying a villain, it helps the story, and both Thony and Arman Morales character, make it more humane and relatable, and the most importantly channel the emotion of motherhood to the show target audience, even if it means using a totally different situations of what happen in real world, the most important thing is to use all the show capabilities to channel emotions and feelings being shared by the audience.
Similar example to this the Arabic movie Induced Labor aka Talq Senai which is more about fatherhood with Maged El-Kidwani as the villain and the main character of the movie, and it actually manged to deliver the feeling of fatherhood, even if the events of the movie itself is unrelated to fatherhood, but the movie manged to channel such feeling to the audience towards the end of the movie.
Won't update the rest, as the show runners decided to turn it into another cop show, you can still enjoy the show watching its main villainess tho, unless they turn her good too LOL..
