Change is an important theme, not only in Netflix’s phenomenal animated series ‘Arcane’, but in life. The only thing that is permanent is impermanence.
I had a thought while, of all things, doing yoga with my wife. The yoga instructor (Julianne on Boho Beautiful, for you yogis) was talking about the symbolism of breath, taking in vitality and life, and exhaling what you no longer need, and it opened a door in my mind about this amazing show.
To preface, I believe this show is a masterpiece. It has one of the most satisfying traits a show can have to me, which is great writing. This is not to mention the amazing work the animators produced in telling that story, and the musicians who emoted that story in such an intangible way. A lot of things I see today just are not stretching their arms as far as this show did, and it shows in the excellence of the story, character, visuals, and musical composition. I think there is something in this show for everyone, thought sensitive viewers should beware that MANY episodes made me cry in ways I hadn’t gotten from recent media.
Now let’s get back into breath, significantly the importance of breath to one of the show’s major players, Silco.
Obvious spoilers are obvious, but this warning makes them more so.
Silco, in the cold open for Episode 3, is one breath away from being drowned by his brother-figure, Vander. His chilling voice-over asks if “you” know what it feels like to drown, the “you” here almost definitely being Vander. This near-death experience is foundational to Silco’s entire philosophy, as it is the turning point that he sees as “the monster coming out”; Vander lets his monster out on Silco, almost killing him, and Silco’s monster decides he hasn’t had enough and comes out of the water. The typical analogy here is a baptism, of being washed anew by the water, but in this case it is a little twisted, like everything Silco does. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think many of us would find being drowned by a family figure to be all that enlightening. But for Silco, this moment of betrayal is the linchpin of every decision of his that follows. Like baptism, he understands new things about himself, and therefore it changes the way he acts.
We see breath used in extremely subtle ways in Arcane, but this is by far my favorite way that we see it used. He literally swallows what he needs to “survive”-in this case survival being his adaptation from someone Vander could call a brother to the man we see throughout the course of the show- and lets out the old him; the one that needed to breathe the same air as the rest of Zaun. It even physically marks him, in the change of his left eye.
Silco’s baptism scene with Jinx always has left me wondering. Why is this necessary to show? It seems very much reminiscent of the Sith in Star Wars; showing a moment of great weakness becoming strength to an apprentice, which doesn’t really fit the tone of the relationship between Silco and Jinx; father/daughter, in some twisted way, sure, but not apprentice/master. And while some of those undertones remain in this scene, I think it becomes far more woven into the tapestry of such an intriguing character, if we look at it through his eye. Silco lost everyting, but it wasn’t a loss of anything that he thinks he needed. He lost what he didn’t need, and gained a new perspective on what truly matters. As he says in Episode 3 “The only way to defeat a superior enemy is to stop at nothing. To become what they fear.”
Silco isn’t showing the moment he became the crime lord, he is showing the moment that the other things were stripped away. The monster was always there, and he just needed to shed his outer appearance to see it. And now, he is passing on the knowledge to his daughter, who needs to understand that she isn’t becoming Jinx. She was always Jinx, she just needed to understand it. Baptism is a moment of self-understanding, not of core change.
This scene then, with this new perspective, lends more clarity to Silco’s final words to Jinx. “You’re perfect,” he says, telling her that she is perfect; she always was this, she just needed to let her monster out to see it. Silco sees in Jinx a pure reflection of the city he loves; people who, if allowed, can do great things. It just so happens that Silco’s perception of “great” things doesn’t always line up with what our moral compass would consider “great”.
There is so much beauty in everything in this show, and this all comes from just a few snippets in a 9-episode television series. Breath is such a subtle theme in this show, and I only touched on one facet here, but it is used everywhere.
I have many more things to talk about with Arcane, so I will try to sparse them out with other reviews and essays, so you don’t get Arcane-exhaustion. I hope I shed a little light here on how in-depth writing can really be, and how much we all miss on a first viewing, and I hope I expanded your mind.