weirddyke:

dramatic irony (n) in which the audience knows more about a character’s situation than the character does, foreseeing an outcome contrary to the character’s expectations, and thus ascribing a sharply different sense to some of the character’s own statements

Chris Baldick, Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms

When a line is repeated four times in scenes featuring the same two characters in the space of less than a year, something is up.

As the audience, we have a distinct vantage point when engaging with a text. A lot of the time we are given information within the story that the characters themselves aren’t privy to. Sometimes it’s something obvious – it’s the audience knowing that Juliet isn’t really dead when Romeo kills himself over her sleeping body out of grief. But sometimes it’s more subtle than that. Sometimes we only get a hint of the information that the characters don’t know, but that hint is enough to make something feel slightly off, or like it’s more significant than it seems at first glance.

Something’s up between Kara and Lena, and I think it lies in the dramatic irony at play throughout the continued repetition of the line “That’s what friends are for.” and its variations in scenes featuring the two of them.

If we look at the first use of the line in Luthors, we can track how dramatic irony is working in their dialogue. The unspoken act that Kara referred to when she said “Well, that’s what friends are for.” is her striking out against the people who she loves and trusts the most to defend Lena. The unspoken act was Kara ignoring seemingly concrete evidence of Lena’s guilt because of a look she saw in her eyes, despite knowing her for a fraction of the time that she’s known someone like James or Alex. The unspoken act was Kara risking her own life in Lex’s bunker to save her. Because we know all of this, “friend” in this context registers immediately as an understatement, but despite not knowing the full picture, Lena herself highlights that it’s an understatement in the following line:

No. I’ve never had friends like you before. Come to think of it, I’ve never had family like you before.

“No.” As in, No, that’s not what friends are for. Even Lena doesn’t know how to explicitly say that, though. This line, and its repetitive and dramatically ironic nature, represent their relationship as a whole. From the start, this line is established as a way to emphasise the fact that Kara and Lena are going above and beyond the bounds of friendship to care for each other, but are unaware of it, leaving the implications of their actions unsaid.

From our vantage point we can see their dedication, we can see the lengths they continue to go to in ensuring each others safety and happiness. Working from Baldick’s definition, because we know more about Kara and Lena’s situation than they do, the statement is “ascrib[ed] a sharply different sense” than it ordinarily would. Each time this line is used, it begs a lingering question to the audience: “Friend” just doesn’t really begin to cover it, does it?

There’s something slightly heartbreaking in that discrepancy between action and words. There’s bittersweetness in the contrast between what should be an earnestly platonic statement from Kara and the fond, wistful smiles she and Lena exchange as she says it. It’s as if the immensity of their feeling for each other is too much to make sense of, too intense to examine – and, in turn, too steeped in distinctly romantic implications for the text to fully recognise if they intend for Kara and Lena to just be “friends”.

[gifs by @redkrypto]