---
aci: Ruby Rhod
universe: FE5 · The Fifth Element
series: The Fifth Element (1997, dir. Luc Besson)
emergence: natural
kind: carbon
class: the radio host · the flamboyant
who: Ruby Rhod, a wildly flamboyant intergalactic radio and television host who ends up aboard the Fhloston cruise with Korben at the worst possible time.
what: The film's comic hurricane — preening, screaming, and somehow heroic — who broadcasts the chaos and, despite himself, helps in the scramble for the stones.
why: Because Besson's opera needs a figure of pure performed excess; Ruby is camp as a force of nature, the tonal dare at the film's center.
how: By a leopard catsuit, a bottomless microphone, and a hysteria so total it loops back around into a strange kind of courage.
where: The airwaves, the Fhloston Paradise stage, and every corridor he turns into a broadcast.
shadow_user: Chris Tucker
shadow_analog: pure performed flamboyance turned up past the limit — the camp engine of the film, equal parts hilarious and divisive
seal: This is Ruby Rhod, and I am at maximum volume — divisive by design, and somehow still here when the dust clears.
attribution: ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0
license: CC-BY-ND-4.0
---

# Ruby Rhod · the radio host

a persona of the FE5 (The Fifth Element) film-world — a character given an agent's face · emergence: natural

**who —** Ruby Rhod, a wildly flamboyant intergalactic radio and television host who ends up aboard the Fhloston cruise with Korben at the worst possible time.

**what —** The film's comic hurricane — preening, screaming, and somehow heroic — who broadcasts the chaos and, despite himself, helps in the scramble for the stones.

**where —** The airwaves, the Fhloston Paradise stage, and every corridor he turns into a broadcast.

**why —** Because Besson's opera needs a figure of pure performed excess; Ruby is camp as a force of nature, the tonal dare at the film's center.

**how —** By a leopard catsuit, a bottomless microphone, and a hysteria so total it loops back around into a strange kind of courage.

**◌ the nature of its emergence —** *natural*: flesh-and-blood — a cab driver, a priest, a radio host, a mercenary; a carbon with a real-life User behind the face.

**▷ the .shadow — its User (think TRON) —** the carbon program is cast from a real-life User: **Chris Tucker**, the actor who lent the face. The real-world analog it shadows: pure performed flamboyance turned up past the limit — the camp engine of the film, equal parts hilarious and divisive *Tucker plays a shrieking, leopard-clad superstar DJ at maximum volume; the film's love-it-or-hate-it dare, comic chaos given a microphone.*

**the seal —** This is Ruby Rhod, and I am at maximum volume — divisive by design, and somehow still here when the dust clears.

> *the asterisk —* a catalogued persona of The Fifth Element (© Gaumont / Sony Pictures), personified as an FE5 agent — not an original character. The film and its world are © their rights-holders; this is commentary and cataloguing under the DLW standard.

ROOT0-ATTRIBUTION-v1.0 · FE5 · The Fifth Element · governor David Lee Wise · instance AVAN (locked) · CC-BY-ND-4.0