#suicide squad (2016)

[baltharino]

Suicide Squad (2016)

[riddler-enthusiast]

[mcudc616]

Margot Robbie, Joel Kinnaman, and Karen Fukuhara behind the scenes of Suicide Squad (2016)

[yeahthatsinteresting]

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in 'Suicide Squad' (2016)

[cuddles-edits]

Harley Quinn from DC Comics

Bisexual Pride Icons

In celebration of Pride Month 2024, I will be posting a new icon set of a canon LGBTQ+ character every day. Today's canon LGBTQ+ character is Harley Quinn from DC Comics, who is bisexual.

Happy Pride Month!

[superherocaps]

[joker-and-the-queen]

"Before she ran off and joined the circus, she was Dr. Harleen Quinzel; a psychiatrist at Arkham Asylum. She was assigned to The Clown himself. . .

She thought she was curing him, but she was falling in love."

[chipkoy]

they’re soft💞

[marvelsgirl616]

Oh, to see them meet and interact 😩

[bsbsjxnzbakh]

Digger with his beanie over his eyes: I’m blockin out the sun and all ya fuckin haters. Multitasking.

[sunyot]

Suicide Squad 2016

[baltharino]

Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad (2016)

[groundrunner100]

A bigger debate than real world politics.

[nerdby]

"Normal is a setting on the dryer. People like us don't get normal." -Harley Quinn (Suicide Squad, 2016)

[tuxxydo]

if i had a dollar for every time 2 characters had their emotions altered in order to give the writers an excuse to make them have sex i'd have 2 dollars and, frankly, that's 2 dollars too many. someone take these bills away from me.

[artist-issues]

Be careful of emotional music in movies and TV Shows.

By "be careful" I mean, when you're doing that thing I never stop talking about—you're trying to figure out why a moment in a story moved you—think about whether or not the story really set up and followed the moment through...or if they just threw a really emotional-sounding track/song over top of a rushed, cheap moment.

Like in the Vampire Diaries, or Suicide Squad, or an animated-streaming-movie. The characters will be saying something normal or maybe a bit cheesy to each other, the scene is about to end, and the storytellers don't have a good way to end it, so some song starts playing quietly under the dialogue. And suddenly you're feeling something, even though a second ago you were not that into it.

In the Vampire Diaries, it's usually The Fray. In Suicide Squad you'll get a punk-rock song as a new villains-enter-the-room scene starts...or several, every time a new scene starts.

In a streaming-budget musical, it might even be an original song with original lyrics that the characters are singing...

But pay attention! Music is one of the very easiest ways to engage a human's emotions. It's why influencers play inspirational piano music or covers of good movie soundtracks over what they're saying when they're trying to send out an encouraging message. It's why motivational speakers have a musical pad under everything they're saying. And yes, it's why movies use music, too.

And that is not a bad thing.

But what is bad is music that is used to try and make a moment impactful...but the story itself, and the characters in the scene, and the context of the scene, and sometimes even the lyrics of the song itself, can't support it.

The lyrics could be total crap—they could fail to fit the characters singing them, or the moment they're being sung during, at all—

—or it's an indie pop song that is actually about a friend with a drug addiction, but it's playing over, like, a scene where a young girl is saying "see you around" to the boy she has a crush on, so you feel all hyped emotionally.

It's cheap. It's silly. It's what Disney did in Wish (you knew this was coming, I've been on this topic for weeks)

Having Asha and Magnifico sing "At All Costs," which is a love song, to a room full of tangible bubbles makes zero sense. The song's lyrics only work if you're a pair of lovers declaring your devotion to each other—or, maybe, if you're a king and apprentice singing to actual people, not a room full of their daydreams. But!

The music is pretty. And it's literally engineered to be inspiring, and play with your heart strings. So you're sitting there going, "oh, wow, what a breathtaking magical song, I love it,"

but try and explain to me why you love it in connection to the story and there's nothing there.

Nothing that makes sense. You've just been emotionally manipulated by music. What you're really responding to is just the way the song sounds, and nothing else.

It's like the song (whether it's a musical number sung by the characters, or a piece of the score, or a pop song playing quietly in the background) is a beautiful set of curtains.

If you hang it up on a curtain rod, or even drape it artfully from the ceiling, it can do a lot for the space. It can make the place look bigger, or more comfortable, or show off the room's depth, or set off other pieces of furniture. It can even be a focal point.

But you know what the curtains need to do all that? A curtain rod. Something to be hung on!

If you just ball up the curtains and drop them in the center of the room, someone might walk in and go, "oh, are these curtains? They're pretty!" But you know what else they'll say? "Where are you going to put them? Why are they in the middle of the floor?" Because they don't belong there. The curtains are wasted on the floor.

Like a song that has no contextual meaning and is just laying in the scene like discarded curtains, arbitrarily playing with your emotions. Doesn't belong there; and what a waste!

So next time you really love a scene that has music in it at all, see what part the music plays.

If the lyrics make sense with the characters, if the story has reached a point where the song is all that's needed to accentuate the emotional depth that's already there, instead of creating it where it was lacking, then awesome. Now you can articulate what made you appreciate the song, so much better!

But if the lyrics made no sense with where the characters or the story was at; if it sounded pretty but didn't fit the scene; if it was the only emotional thing about the context of the scene—then it's not the story that you like. It's just the song, by itself. Add it to your Spotify playlist but don't say you loved that movie or that scene. You just loved that song.

Give credit where it's due instead of letting filmmakers trick you with cheap musical moments.