August 2002 Archives - Page 14
Existential Much? The search for the authentic self (Season 6 spoilers) -- Slain, 08:45:12 08/26/02 Mon
It's been a while, I know, and this has been a while in the making, although the actual writing didn't take all that long. Pretty version is on my website, at http://www.daydreamnation.co.uk/buffy/existentialmuch.html. Literary references have been avoided, by if anyone's interested I can make the parallels later. Anyway, enough with the preamble!
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Existential Much: Buffy, Spike, Willow and Xander and the Search for the Authentic Self
Buffy Season Six has been the season when the group dynamic finally broke down. In Season Four it became fractured, as Buffy moved away from her friends and towards the Initiative and Riley, Willow for the first time had a significant relationship outside of the Scooby Gang, and Xander felt like his status as non-super guy was becoming beyond a joke. But while in Season Four the breakages it were quickly healed, by Season Six it was completely different. Buffy began to feel no one understood her, Xander was unable to commit to Anya or tell her how he felt, Willow had been drawn into dark magic and couldn't even confide in Tara, and Giles was up and leaving. The Season was about individuals, about the difficulties of adulthood and responsibility, and about the pressures of living in the world with others. Existential much?
Existentialism is virtually impossible to define completely, partly because it's so deliberately vague and complex (possibly so academics have something to talk about). However it's possible to broadly sum it up as a way of viewing the word in which the focus is always on the individual, on a personal morality, and on a desire to search for an authentic self not bound by the constraints of society, and only defined by the individual. For existentialists, there is no great meaning in world which can be defined by religion or philosophy, or if there is, then it's impossible to grasp. Existence comes before essence; that is, we exist before we have anything determined in us, in the way of values or morals. Therefore because we aren't born with an essence or a moral complex, it's up to us to make up own minds about how we want to live our lives. Conventional philosophies and religions try to formulate systems of belief which would apply to anyone; existentialism says there is no one true belief, and that all meaning there is in the world can only be understood through individual experience. Freedom is vital, and ethically so is protecting the freedom of others, and anything which limits individual choice limits free will.
Existentialistim always denies any certainties of religion or philosphy, so that first this might seem to contradict with the Buffyverse, which has a clear mythology; there is an afterlife, and there is a soul. In existentialism, existence precedes essence, and no one is born good or evil. A new human is blank canvas, and it's up to that person to determine the essence of their being. Yet in the Buffyverse, the presence of a soul seems to determine whether someone is good or evil. In fact, however, this is not the case. A soul isn't an essence, a soul is simply the thing which makes someone a conscious human, as opposed to a walking sack of meat. No human is born good or evil. But, on the other hand, the soul clearly does give a kind of empathic feeling for other humans; Angel and Darla both feel guilt only when their souls are restored. But the soul is still a blank canvas; plenty of humans can be good or evil, and fate and predetermination and not as important as phrases like 'the Chosen One' or 'you can't love without a soul' would make them seem.
DEATH IS HER GIFT
For many existentialists, death is a choice; no matter what, you can always choose death, and it represents the only certainty in life. No one can take your death away from you, so it represents an ultimate freedom. An existentialist might well make the choice to accept death, if it were to protect the freedom others. Buffy does this in 'The Gift', and while she says that death is not a gift, it becomes one; she is given the opportunity to save the world and save her sister too, by sacrificing herself. She does so not knowing if there is an afterlife, or if there is only oblivion; while the Buffyverse mythology seems to have a clear structure with forces of good and evil, in reality little is clear. There is no obvious God, or Gods, and neither Buffy nor her friends believe in a structured religion. So when Buffy accepts death, she does so not because she knows there is an afterlife, but because she has chosen it through her individual choice.
Buffy is not as simple as other Slayers; while she was born to her calling, with little choice whether to accept it or not, later on these was given that choice. Her own death at the hands of the Master (Season One) represented an opportunity for her to escape from fate, bring on two new Slayers who could have taken her place; but, both times, she chose to remain the one true Slayer. Buffy does not fight the forces of darkness because she has to, she fights them because she chooses to. In this way she is an existential heroine; and rather than following the morality of the Watcher's Council, she has made her own, in which demons and humans are not so black and white, and family and friends are always to be protected, even when it would seem more prudent to sacrifice them. With this security, Buffy is able to sacrifice her life.
However, Buffy's gift of death is taken away from her. The one apparent certainty, that life can be lost, is lost itself. 'The Gift' represented the completion of the life of a hero, and the afterlife an affirmation that her life hadn't been wasted. Buffy had found her authentic self, the Slayer, her essence, and had achieved what is the goal of all existentialists: to make some sense of the world through individual choices. But Buffy had this certainty torn from her. In the afterlife, she achieved a state of bliss, in which she no longer had to care about her place in the world, and about the point of existence. Being brought back, the certainty which had allowed to live and die as the Slayer was destroyed, and, behold, Big Existential Crisis.
I was always brave and kind of righteous.
Now I find I'm wavering.
Crawl out of your grave,
You'll find this fight just
Doesn't mean a thing.
(Buffy, 'Once More With Feeling')
Through resurrection, Buffy had lost the ultimate freedom, to die, and she had also lost the clarity of the afterlife. Instead of living in the world again with the knowledge that there was something after death, and that there was some meaning to life, Buffy felt that life was suffocating her. Other people, and the pressure of having to exist in the world, was weighing down on her. She felt that the certainty of being the Slayer, that she would live a short life and die saving the world from demons, was stripped from her Added to his were new pressures; for the first time on a day-to-day level, she was forced to cope without a mother, and later without a surrogate father. The morals that she had decided upon herself seemed to be no longer relevant. Living in the world becomes a torture, existential angst. Hell is other people; a meaningless job, an interfering social worker, friends who don't and can't understand Buffy's individual feelings.
One character who does seem to understand is Spike. In many ways, Spike could be seen having followed an existential way of life. While other vampires have been tied to an established mythology in which humans are there to be destroyed, and have been easily controlled by figures like the Master or Adam, Spike is an individual. He seems to make a his own morality, and not be concerned with society, even if that society means the rules of other demons. For Buffy, Spike represents an escape. Spike believes in creating his own meaning in life; he calls it darkness or evil, but by this he means anything which is against Buffy's worldview, the morals she has lived by.
Buffy no longer feels that the authenticity and certainty she thought she had found has any value; so, instead, she falls into Spike's world. From an existential point of view, nothing Buffy is doing is 'wrong'. She turns her back on her own morality, in which humanity and having a soul are the same thing, and no longer feels constrained by society's rules. However, existentialist believes no one can help you through your own life, so Spike can't help Buffy. She doesn't achieve greater meaning in her life, she is only escaping from her responsibilities, and an escape from coming to terms with the loss of her old self-assurance. Family and friends had become distractions to her. It's her almost-death which brings her back. Buffy assumes control of her life again, and becomes the Slayer, no longer going through the motions. The events of the end of the season confirm her place in the world, and also confirm the importance of her family and friends. From an existential point of view, she regains the authentic self that she had found before her death and resurrection.
THE AUTHENTIC EVIL EXISTENCE
Spike, meanwhile, finds that his own Existential Crisis is brewing. With Buffy, Spike finds himself questioning what he views as his basic essence; that he is evil. Spike has always believed that he is a rebel, an individual who makes his own way in life, rejecting the clichés other vampires live by. But, in fact, he has never questioned that he is incontrovertibly evil, and has never considered that he should feel remorse or guilt. Loving Buffy makes him question these things.
I died so many years ago.
You can make me feel like it isn't so.
(Spike, 'Once More With Feeling')
He hates his love of Buffy for making him feel human, and for making him question the authenticity of his own evil existence. His song, 'Rest In Peace', represents his desire to return to the simplicity of his old life. Yet in this crisis, it could be said Spike is not following an existential path. Instead, he's exchanging one external morality, a life as an evil vampire, for another: Buffy's hero-morality. Spike feels weighed down by the pressure to conform to Buffy's old morality, and that his true essence lies in his old life as an evil vampire. He feels that Buffy is responsible for this crisis; and in an act of hate he attempts to rape her.
His reaction, when he realises what he's done, is guilt, though not true human remorse. Spike feels that this guilt is artificial, however, and decides that he is the victim, that he has tried too hard to mould himself to fit Buffy's worldview. He feel his true authentic self was his time as a mass-murdering vampire, free from any kind of guilt and living by his own personal morality. Is this the essence of Spike? Vampires are different to conventional existential characters, in that while the newly-unborn vampire has no essence, they also have the memories of the human. For vampires, existence doesn't necessarily come before essence, as every vampire enters its human host and takes on the ghost of their personality. I would argue that this is what is happening with Spike; there is a split between his new, vampire self, and his old human self (William). William was a gentle man, and essence stills lives own; this is contrasted with Spike, whose true essence is evil, a vampire, who has chosen to become a killer not simply from the necessity to survive, but also because he likes it. Spike feels that his Initiative chip is responsible, and that its removal will remove all feelings of guilt. In fact, the chip was only a catalyst for something already there; the essence of William, and his human feelings. So it's no wonder that when Spike asks to be restored to how he once was, it is his soul that is restored.
ESSENCE OF WILLOW
Willow has often been a character unsure of herself, worried about her place in the world and constrained by the expectations others. However, by Season 4, she was gaining confidence outside of the Scooby Gang, coming to terms with both her sexuality and her magical powers. However, her dream in 'Restless' was a foreshadowing of events in Season Six. In her dream, the self which she had built up was suddenly stripped away, revealing the nerdy, Season One self underneath. While Willow was apparently in control of herself and her power, in reality she was not, not entirely. The self she showed to the world was not authentic, creating a tension.
While Buffy used Spike as an escape from coming to terms with her life, Willow used magic. For most existential characters, an authentic self and knowledge of the world is virtually impossible to achieve, and for some their own death is the only genuine moment in their existence. Because Buffy is in its own fictional world, it is possible for character to find a cosmic purpose, and a kind of authenticity; Buffy is the Slayer, Angel is a Champion, and Willow is a Witch who has dedicated her life to helping Buffy save the world. For Buffy, crisis comes when she loses her conviction that being the Slayer is what she is meant to be, and that the world is worth saving; Willow's crisis comes because she tries to hide from herself by creating a wall between her confident, wicca-witching self and her 'old self'; or at least that she believes that she has.
In 'Restless', the clothes of her new personality are stripped away, to reveal the Willow beneath. This is Willow's fear, that her perceived inauthenticity will be revealed to her friends and loves; Xander, Oz, Tara and Anya all seem to be conspiring again her. Willow has always been concerned with what people think of her, and from an existential point of view, this is her problem; because she doesn't want to drop the facade of the leader of the group in Buffy's absence, and of someone capable of controlling powerful magic, she denies herself the opportunity to be herself. Magic becomes an escape, because it frees her of the pressures of living in the world. It gives her the illusion of having control of a world any existentialist would tell you is completely uncontrollable.
Like Buffy, Willow cuts herself off from her friends, and from Tara. Willow originally began to use magic to help others, to protect the freedom central to existential ethics. But magic is an external force, in the same way that Spike's morality was external to Buffy; it does not help her gain knowledge of herself, but only control of other people. Like Buffy, it takes an extreme moment (the car crash in 'Wrecked') for Willow to realise that she is hiding from her true self. Willow attempts to return to some authenticity; she helps Buffy again, makes up with Tara. This is quickly shattered, however, by Tara's death.
Tara's death has no meaning or purpose, unlike Buffy's two deaths; it is an absurd event, it simply happens. This causes Willow to believe there is no longer any point living in the world, or in following any of the rules and ethics that she has lived by. Willow gives herself up to a consuming external force: dark magic. It could be said that she is then free; she is free, after all, of worrying about other people. But in fact this is not the case; through the magic, she becomes aware of all the other humans on the planet, like Buffy in 'Earshot'. This is an existentialist's nightmare; to be completely subsumed in other people's pain, and to have your own consciousness and free will buried in other people's lives. Hell becomes other people.
Willow decides to take the final step; the end of all of human suffering, death for everyone and an end to the meaningless absurdity of the world. But it's Xander who brings her back through absurdity itself: Willie E Coyote jokes during the apocalypse. He reminds her of her old self, crayon-breaky Willow, and of the fact that the world is nonsensical, and that meaning in life or in death is not always there to be found, even through magic.
EXISTENTIALLY EXTRANEOUS
Xander has always felt like he's somehow extraneous, that he has no real value. Because the Buffyverse is supernatural rather than realist, it's possible for characters to make more sense of the world, and of their place in it, than in other existential texts. So for Xander his general lack of direction is show in stark relief compared with Buffy chosen calling, for example. As a result, Xander is always looking a meaning to his life. In his love for Anya, and in his work, Xander initially feels that he has found some authenticity; somewhere that he fits, and something that he's good at.
However Xander is always indecisive, and fears commitment or, as he sees it, entrapment. For an existential character, institutions of society such as marriage and the family can sometimes be seen as taking away free will from the individual. Xander feels that he doesn't sufficiently know himself yet, and that marriage to Anya will somehow stop him from finding authenticity; he will be constrained, and forced into becoming his father. Is he correct? Probably not. But it's his fear which drives him, the fear of having his choices in life limited; and, perhaps just as important, the fear of limiting Anya's own choices, and her personal freedom.
Other characters seem to find some resolution at the end of the season, and does Xander? His place in the world is never exactly clear and, perhaps because he is the least supernatural of the Scoobies, this makes him more like other existential characters. Buffy finds her essence is to be the Slayer, but the best thing Xander does is be a friend to Willow. The difference between Xander and many other characters is that society doesn't frustrate his desire to find a purpose, he does.
LIKE, EXISTENTIAL MUCH?
So is Buffy, strictly speaking, an existential show? Not really. Its focus is always on the group dynamic, not on the individual. Existence, however, does generally precede essence, with humans and demons both often living by their own moral codes, rather than those of their respective societies; and Buffy and her friends fight evil because they have chosen to, often going against the grain and doing what they feel is right, rather than what institutions such as the Watcher's Council do. Season Six, and previous episodes such as 'Restless', were existential. Season Six showed the split of the Scooby Gang into its component parts, becoming a group of individuals trying to understand with their lives. The morality of good and evil was different in this season, and less black and white than ever; instead the emphasis was on personal morality, and on what individuals viewed as right and wrong. The season has been a personal journey for the main characters; no one was able to help them through this, it was up to themselves, sacrificing relationships, to do so. Existential? Totally.
[> Excellent -- Rahael, 09:09:37 08/26/02 Mon
Thanks!!
Thanks for posting this here. Much to think about.
The short response - really well argued and with great clarity too.
[> oooh... an essay to link to from my site! Cool! -- Masq, 09:12:29 08/26/02 Mon
[> Brain a-whirring, but for now just wanted to say that was great! -- ponygirl, 09:19:51 08/26/02 Mon
[> Existentialism in "Bargaining" -- cjl, 09:42:29 08/26/02 Mon
Excellent S6 review through the existential lens...
And if I may say, the ME brain trust obviously had this season set up as an exploration of existentialism from the beginning ("Bargaining"). When Willow gears up to bring Buffy back from the dead, everyone--and I do mean everyone--tells her this is a BAD idea, it's against the will of the Gods or the powers that be. Willow bulldozes ahead anyway, and just as she reaches the apex of her spell, Razor and his boys roar into town and smash everything to pieces.
Translation: Willow, in an act of hubris, defies the gods (in fact, substitutes her own will for that of the Gods) and effectively breaks the unspoken link between the Scoobies and the PTB they had in Seasons 1-5. The calm, placid facade of Sunnydale, Calif. immediately shatters into pieces. Abandoned by the Gods, the Buffyverse is immediately rendered Absurd in the classic existentialist sense, leaving the main characters to fend for themselves in the resulting chaos.
The events of Bargaining are a symbolic representation of the remainder of the season.
[> [> Re: Existentialism in "Bargaining" -- Slain, 11:59:38 08/26/02 Mon
That's true - I remember people talking about how Season 6, possibly because of Buffy's resurrection, was cut off from the PTB, fate, and usual sphere of Big Bad fighting. You could even say it was transferred over to Angel to an extent. Events no longer seemed to happen for a reason.
I'll add something more about Willow and the idea of her following her own path - that is, the way that, existentially speaking, her ignoring Giles and others could be seen as a good thing; making her own personal choices.
[> [> [> Minus 365, and still absurdly counting... -- KdS, 04:36:44 08/28/02 Wed
I think there's (albeit tenuous) evidence in the show to suggest that Buffy personally, not the season as a whole, is in the existential state after "Bargaining". In the dream sequence in "GD2", immediately before the first ever "Miss Muffet" reference (the image of) Faith announces "Miles to go". This echoes the Robert Frost poem quoted shortly before in "The Prom" in which "Miles to go before we sleep" is often interpreted as a reference to the temptations of death and the moral need to continue one's life to its preordained end. Given the juxtaposition to the first "730" reference, I think it's being hinted that Buffy's preordained destiny was to sacrifice herself for Dawn, and that Willow's very human decision to bring her back means that she is now an existential figure in a thoroughly predetermined world.
Hence her S6 jitters derive at the deepest level from the fact that, to reverse usual existential dogma, her existence has outlasted her essence.
Of course, this does potentially creat a horrible intellectual mess as to whether Willow's decision to resurrect her was predestined or not, but it's a thought-provoking idea.
[> [> [> [> Of course it was predestined. Joss signed this huge contract with UPN, remember? -- cjl, 09:07:02 08/28/02 Wed
[> Great essay Slain! -- shadowkat, 08:27:17 08/27/02 Tue
Possibly the best I've read in long time. You do a good job of explaining existentialism, an topic I'm embarrassed to say I never really understood until I read your essay.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on Willow. Am a little on the fence about whether the writers intend what you think they do on Spike, I hope you're right. But will have to see to be sure. I am still afraid that we are reading too much into the rape scene and it really was just a way of showing us why Buffy could never be with Spike. I keep hoping they were going for something more interesting than the bad boy cliche by ensouling him, but remain unconvinced. LEt's pray
Season 7 proves you right.
But on the whole? Including the Spike part? I loved this essay.
[> Re: Existential Much? The search for the authentic self(Season 6 spoilers) -- Sofdog, 09:24:44 08/27/02 Tue
I like your essay. I disagree with two points: [i]There is no obvious God, or Gods, and neither Buffy nor her friends believe in a structured religion. So when Buffy accepts death, she does so not because she knows there is an afterlife, but because she has chosen it through her individual choice.[/i]
Religious practice has been largely downplayed on the seires. However, Buffy has celebrated Christmas (Amends) and Willow has staunchly promoted her own Judaism at Christmastime. This, I think, implies that at least one of them adheres, however loosely, to an organized religion.
As for Buffy having no knowledge of an afterlife (not stated so much in the above quote as in the passage it's excerpted from), well Season 5 alone contradicts that. Buffy has previously invoked the spirits/powers of all Slayers past. She has also encountered the First Slayers spirit (Restless). And Angel's existence proves there is an afterlife. Otherwise, how could his soul have ever been restored in the first place.
The nature of the afterlife is an uncertainty. Buffy couldn't know if she was going on to rest, reward or a new form of service. But I think she clearly knew there was something beyond this life when she made that leap.
Just some thoughts that popped out at me.
[> [> Personal Saviours -- Rahael, 09:40:59 08/27/02 Tue
BtVS has a highly complex attitude toward organized religion - it just side steps it altogether. I would not want to say with any certainty that Buffy is a 'Christian' and I think the show dances around this. What exemplifies it to me are these lines from the "Freshman":
Girl: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?
Buffy: Uh, you know I meant to and then I just got really busy.
(Quotes courtesy of Psyche.)
The irony of this exchange in the Freshman is that Buffy is feeling all alone - she wants to be rescued, whether it's from the Vamps or social insecurity by Willow or Oz or Xander or Giles. But in the end, she saves herself. She is her own personal Saviour. She's too busy to wait for JC or for Judgement Day. Because in Sunnydale, it's her job to STOP the apocalypses, not eagerly await them as a sign that the second coming was nigh.
Season Four continues this ambiguous questioning of Organised religion in a variety of ways. Riley, associated with Authority is also the regular Church Goer. Adam shows the Vamps that the Cross has no special power against them, nor a Church. He tells the Vamps that though they are immortal, that just makes them even more afraid of death (so they are stuck, unchanging, in a painful state of lifelessness, deathlessness). That church is the arena for a fight between two lost souls (lost from their bodies), Buffy and Faith
The Cross is both a symbol of death and life, and BtVS plays on this. But I don't regard Buffy as Christian.
[> [> [> Playing with symbols -- redcat, 10:09:27 08/27/02 Tue
"The Cross is both a symbol of death and life, and BtVS plays on this."
I would go a bit further and argue that the show plays across a fairly wide range of meanings for most or even all of the religioius symbols it employs. While there are no direct or specific connections or references made in the show (that I can remember at any rate, please correct me if I'm wrong here) to the ancient, pre-Christian meanings of the cross, the show IS rife with the active existence of ancient meanings, ancient ties, links to notion of "the ancient" itself. The First Slayer, The First Evil, the PTB, the worlds of prophecy and myth, all suggest the ever-present probability of multiple frames of reference for "sacred" images and symbols, whether those originate in organized religious traditions or more eclectic ones, i.e., Christianity (both Protestant and Catholic), Buddhism and Judaism, as well as Wicca, all of which have been referenced, often quite powerfully at the visual level in the show.
ME's consistent linking of ancient beings, meanings, powers, etc., with the notion of The Primal (and often a feminized, pre-verbal one at that) may be problematic in it's own rights, but that's a different discussion...
[> [> [> [> Re: Playing with symbols -- Rahael, 10:25:06 08/27/02 Tue
Food for thought. Thanks for enlarging. I agree with you about the First Slayer/primal-ness, but must think on that some more.
[> [> [> Buffy is Christian -- Cleanthes, 14:08:28 08/27/02 Tue
I would not want to say with any certainty that Buffy is a 'Christian' and I think the show dances around this.
Because it fits well in this thread, I will weigh in and opine that Buffy IS Christian, albeit, she's an austere, existential Christian, one unwilling to place demands on the Deity and one fully following Matthew 13 and the requirement that one realize that the kingdom of heaven can only be understood through parable. (hey, she knows from direct experience!)
She considered joining a nunnery, for example, only worrying about the "abjuring men" part - NOT about the religious angle... (and, judging from her longterm relationships with Angel & Spike, I think she abjures men, as opposed to vampires, pretty well)
More than a few existentialists have been Christian - Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky, for example. Sartre claimed atheism, but he worshipped Stalinism until even he had to see the stupidity of that. All the time, though, you could tell he walked past Notre Dame with awe.
Among Christians, opinion differs regarding the freedom that people have. To existentialist Christians, any demands on God amount to inauthentic belief. This is kind of an anti-Pelagianist way of looking at things that Buffy fully embraced when she took the mystical words of "god" in the form of the first slayer to mean that Buffy could choose whose death was the gift.
All of which is my way of saying that Buffy did not commit suicide when she jumped, in any Christian meaning of the word "suicide". She jumped to save Dawn and ... AND to prove her own freedom.
That God would provide - well, she expected that, just as she "expected" the snow in Amends.
Even though she had no right to expect it; indeed it was illogical to do so.
Buffy's treatment of organized religions tracks with her treatment of the organized watcher's council, the organized Initiative, the organized child-care services, the organized fast-food industry, etc., etc., etc.
[> [> [> [> Re: Buffy is Christian -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:16:48 08/27/02 Tue
However, Buffy asked her "Do you have to be super religious (to be a nun)?" She was wondering if she could be a nun without having to be all faithful and worshippy.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy is Christian -- Cleanthes, 14:45:10 08/27/02 Tue
However, Buffy asked her "Do you have to be super religious (to be a nun)?" She was wondering if she could be a nun without having to be all faithful and worshippy.
True, and I should give this point some thought.
There's "super" religious and there's religious. I submit Buffy's far more Christian than many a church-goer, because Buffy doesn't play games with the supernatural.
For many, being "super" religious is a sham way of pretending to know God. Buffy could never do that.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Doesn't Christianity Demand Monotheism? -- Sergio, 16:30:49 08/27/02 Tue
Which means she either did not believe Glory was a God, or believes that more than one God exists (which I think is her belief). Does that by definition eliminate Christianity as her religion? It certainly makes Willow a woman who was born Jewish, but is no longer Jewish.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Doesn't Christianity Demand Monotheism? -- Cleanthes, 06:11:15 08/28/02 Wed
It's long been a charge by both Jews and Muslims that Christianity is way too tolerant of polytheistic ways of looking at the world, from "Maryidolatry" to the way that many of the "saints" are just pagan dieties Christianified. (all the classical gods, for instance, show up in Milton)
Glory can be a "god" and still fit in Christian thought because "God" is, in St. Anselm & Boethius's formulation: id quo maius cogitare nequit "something than which nothing greater can be conceived". Glory was not any such thing, was she?
Ooh, my little website offers a further explanation of how Christians can believe in other gods while remaining monotheistic in existential certainty -- indeed, the belief in Kokopilesobeh, "the one god", is, I submit *necessary* to be truly Christian, rather than being a marked-for-hellfire fundamentalist like, say, Jerry Falwell. (cf. Matthew 13:42,43 for what happens to fundamentalists and Pharisees, kingdom come)
[> [> [> [> Buffy is Christian? -- Arethusa, 15:20:06 08/27/02 Tue
Wouldn't "existential Christian" be a contradiction in terms, like creation science? I didn't see any indication that Buffy thought of the First Slayer as anything but the First Slayer. Could you elaborate? She expected Angel to die in "Amends"-she kept begging him to go inside.
Buffy fired the Watcher's Council, and fought the Initiative. Both were patriarchial secret societies that demanded unquestioning obedience, had their own belief systems, and treated her like a small, dispensable cog in a very large machine. It is very debatable that Buffy would accept organized religion. (Fast food restaurants would qualify too, actually.)
Joss is not Christian, and has gone to great legnths to not identify Buffy as one-or Joyce, for that matter. In fact, the some of the basic tenets of Christianity-only God can take a life, turn the other cheek, judge not lest ye be judged-it seems Buffy violates these all the time. I think the nun comments were a joking response to men troubles, another issue to look at-Buffy has said premarital sex is her own business, and did not seem to consider a religious approach to sex at all. Buffy and the Scoobies have discussed fate, heaven, hell, good, evil, right, and wrong many times without mentioning God or religion at all. The closest she's come to discussing it is saying that killing humans is wrong, which is a belief held by many non-Christians, as well as atheists. The fact that she accepts the idea of multiple heavens and hells shows she accepts ideas antithetical to Christianity.
I can't say for she isn't Christian. She could believe deeply in Christianity, without actually practicing it. But her actions are not necessarily those of a Christian, and certainly not those of a devout one.
Arethusa, who because of her ignorance debates religion with fear and trembling.
[> [> [> [> [> I agree, Arethusa -- Sophist, 15:55:36 08/27/02 Tue
I think Cleanthes has assumed that certain common cultural norms imply particular religious beliefs. They don't. For example, I know of Jewish and atheist households which put up Christmas trees and exchange gifts. They have no trouble separating the cultural practice from any religious beliefs.
If we were to draw conclusions about religious beliefs from the show, I'd expect there to be some fairly direct evidence in the canon. I don't recall any now.
I personally think it would detract from Buffy's universal appeal to ascribe particular religious beliefs to her.
[> [> [> [> [> [> On Christianity In North America -- Finn Mac Cool, 16:32:45 08/27/02 Tue
Ask the average North American what religion they are, and 87% will say Christian. However, in my experiance, people often either lie to this question or don't give it proper thought. There are a number of people who, while they may be very familiar with and respect the Christian faith, only pay lip service to it without actually having faith and many times not practicising. My guess is that Buffy is this kind of "Christian".
Another option is that Buffy having seen the real supernatural, is unlikely to believe in supernatural things like Jesus, Buddha, or Shiva that contradict her experiences with greater powers.
[> [> [> [> [> As a practicing Christian, I agree. -- HonorH, 16:43:30 08/27/02 Tue
She may identify with the "Christian" culture and value some Christian beliefs, but I've never seen her do anything that would indicate she's a part of any organized religion at all. I realize this is a hot button, but really can't understand why. I'm not being judgmental here; it's just that I could protest all day I'm a Hindu, but as I don't practice the Hindu religion as evidenced by my life, you'd be right to be skeptical. I don't see Buffy as being a Christian by the way she lives her life. And you know what? That's between her and God.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Or between her and Joss (which I suppose is the same thing!) -- Slain, 17:29:10 08/27/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [> [> Joyce's funeral -- leslie, 11:42:16 08/28/02 Wed
I'd just point out that Joyce had a Christian funeral service, with a minister reading from the Bible and everything. Also, in their Something Blue madness, Spike specifically ruled out a church wedding from Buffy's list of things to do, implying that she was assuming that a church wedding was an option. On the other hand, there is no indication that Buffy or anyone in her family is a regular church-goer. I would take from this that they are technically Christian but non-practicing, the kind of people who go to church for baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and little else. What their personal spiritual beliefs are is another matter.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Joyce's funeral -- monsieurxander, 12:59:06 08/28/02 Wed
Also, in the episode where Joyce is in the hospital, Joyce asks if Buffy would rather spend time with Riley, and Buffy replies: [paraphrased, not quoted] "Nah, he'll probably come over later, looking for a little..." [look from Joyce], "Er... Bible Study!" Joyce: "Well I'm glad you two are spending time... with the Lord."
This is evidence that the Summers' are Christians, but slack off on the actual worshipping. Buffy tries to substitute something perceived as extremely good (Bible study), with something seen as somewhat shameful (sex), if only to her mother.
Also, in one of the Season 4 Faith episodes, it is revealed that Giles is a regular church goer.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Giles a churchgoer? -- Vickie, 16:03:15 08/28/02 Wed
What episode was this? I just checked the transcripts on Psyche's site for This Year's Girl and Who Are You?, and there is no mention of this.
Those are the only Faith episodes in S4.
Did you mean season 3? Or, perhaps, Riley and not Giles? Or have I simply overlooked something, as usual?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Giles a churchgoer? -- monsieurxander, 20:33:28 08/28/02 Wed
Hmm. I looked over the transcript as well, and couldn't find it. It's been quite a long time since I've seen this ep, so my mind is probably playing tricks on me. I guess I was wrong. Sorry.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Riley -- monsieurxander, 20:43:48 08/28/02 Wed
Twas Riley I was thinking of, not Giles. Blasphemy to some, to confuse the two, but I apologize.
[> [> [> [> Cleanthes, you just crack me up.......;) -- Rufus, 00:08:55 08/28/02 Wed
She considered joining a nunnery, for example, only worrying about the "abjuring men" part - NOT about the religious angle... (and, judging from her longterm relationships with Angel & Spike, I think she abjures men, as opposed to vampires, pretty well)
So, you trying to say that Buffy is a selective slut??? Having a giggle fit here.....and I should be painting....bad Cleanthes...;)
[> [> [> [> [> Register with the Selective Sluts -- Cleanthes, 06:35:21 08/28/02 Wed
You have me giggling with "selective slut" - anyone here remember General Hershey? They used to have mobile army whorehouses in the French and Italian armies, so I'm picturing what might have happened back in the day if only General Hershey had had to draft for the American version.
Well, that's off-topic, I guess.
Buffy does not abjure concupiscence. This puts her at odds with Catholic orthodoxy. On the other hand, the whole of her relationship with Spike this last season (and all threads lead to Spike) has involved her lust for him which opposed her rational and free decision making. Existentially, she was in bad-faith with regard to Spike.
But to say that, one takes a ground of individual responsibility toward even one's lusts. So, the fact that she felt bad about what she was doing with Spike means something, I'm not sure what, but I'd say she wants to be, ahem, ''' selective '''.
This whole red herring of Spike's soul, could, I'm thinking and maybe hoping, just work as a means to allow Buffy to make choices.
[> [> [> [> Buffy's Leap of Faith -- Rahael, 05:30:30 08/28/02 Wed
Interesting points, Cleanthes. I don't know if I don't agree with you - you'll notice that that I used words such as 'certainty' and that I talked about a critique of Organised Religion rather than Religion per se.
I think you choose a good example with the Gift. Buffy is at peace at that moment (not suicidal) because her leap is trusting.
I would not want to argue "Buffy is not a Christian because she does not behave in the way that 'Christians' should". In behaviour, I think Buffy is extremely 'christian'. I think she is self sacrificing, I think she forgives, I think she does turn the other cheek. She gave up everything for the world, even Angel. She is as meek as the Little Lamb, as ferocious as the Tyger. Controversially, I don't think Buffy is judgemental either. I think she is Just. And even when she was tested and tempted, she proved true every time (well, until Season 6, anyway).
I especially don't want to argue that Buffy is not a good Christian because she doesn't subscribe to the tenets espoused by the Church (with a capital C) because I've lost count of the times I've been told I'm not 'a good Christian'. Ranging from such reasons as 'not believeing every single word in the Bible is the literal truth' to 'not believing in Heaven'. I also don't think I'm on a one way trip to hell because I've told a lie or two (as I was assured I was, by someone).
I'd say that what consitutes a 'good Christian' is up for debate. For me, it pretty much adds up to a certain standard of ethical behaviour, which is easily found in other religions too. And this is why I say 'I cannot say with certainty'. And I think that ambiguity is absolutely purposeful. Firstly, I think using Christian themes and symbols are very effective in a culture which is absolutely saturated with them. It just works. All of us can recognise the Christ like pose on the Cross, whether we are Christians or not.
Secondly, I think ambiguity is the point. There is no certainty in the Buffyverse. That is enshrined in Sunnydale. Everything is a paradox - dead people who live. A girl whose entire past life wasn't real. And that's why I think BtVS is playful about using Christian themes. The 'Angel' who comes to help Buffy against the very demonic Master. The innocent child who leads Buffy-the-lamb into hell. The self-sacrificing Hero, who runs away to the desert, returns, wracked with doubt, and who dies at one with the universe. But who may very well just be a patient in a mental institution. And it's instructive that the girl who sings about once having duty and purpose, when she loses her memory swiftly aligns herself with the intensely religious Joan of Arc. Joan had a certainty, the fire, that Buffy felt the lack of in Season 6.
AtS plays around with this in much the same way. "God doesn't want you. But I still do!" proclaimed Darla. Darla who was fascinated by a picture in Rome, by an artist who was famous for painting Madonnas. Darla who had a miraculous pregnancy, and died for that child. Angel, when trying to 'save' Darla, is tortured in the ultimate Christ pose.
Rahael, still thinking more about this.
[> [> [> [> [> Minor correction! -- Rahael, 05:52:54 08/28/02 Wed
This paragraph should read:
"I'd say that what consitutes a 'good Christian' is up for debate. For me, it pretty much adds up to a certain standard of ethical behaviour, which is easily found in other religions, *and in those who do not have any faith.* And this is why I say 'I cannot say with certainty'. And I think that ambiguity is absolutely purposeful. Firstly, I think using Christian themes and symbols are very effective in a culture which is absolutely saturated with them. It just works. All of us can recognise the Christ like pose on the Cross, whether we are Christians or not. "
Okay, that's really a major correction!
[> [> [> [> [> [> Ambivalence is key (no Dawn-like pun intended) -- Thomas the Skeptic, 08:02:21 08/28/02 Wed
In several interviews over the years, Joss has discussed the fact that yes, he is an atheist, but when you work in genres like Horror or Fantasy, christian imagery and themes are inescapeable. I get the feeling that he is still working out to his own satisfaction how much of the implied ethical system(s) of religious belief are relevant to a non-believer. This internal debate carries over in obvious ways in his work.
[> [> [> [> [> Organized Religion -- Cleanthes, 06:20:19 08/28/02 Wed
Before I get into too much trouble, let me say that I fully agree with Rahael's distinction between organized Christianity and what Buffy is. I doubt she could be a nun any more than she could be subserviant to the Watcher's Council!
(although, she *certainly* would appreciate St. Theresa of Avila, and the show has made pretty direct comparisons between Buffy and St. Theresa, as long-time readers of this board know)
Secondly, I think ambiguity is the point.
This thread is about existentialism. I opine for myself that Buffy is indeed an existentialist Christian, which is far, far from fitting in with the Southern Baptist Convention, but which is still recognizeably Christian in an ecumenical, ambiguous kind of way.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Organized Religion -- Rahael, 06:45:06 08/28/02 Wed
Just a quick reply to say that I think I mangled what I was trying to say when I said:
"I don't know if I don't agree with you "
What I meant was "I think I agree with you! Somewhat!"
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Organized Religion -- Arethusa, 07:27:05 08/28/02 Wed
I think Rahael's right-the ambiguity is the point. What matters is what Buffy does, not what Buffy calls herself. Wedon said he deliberately created his own mythology, one open to interpretation. For me, pinning Buffy down as Christian, atheist, or anything else distracts me from the purpose of the show-examining our world and our place in it, through a different and highly engaging point of view.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Organized Religion -- Cleanthes, 07:52:47 08/28/02 Wed
For me, pinning Buffy down as Christian, atheist, or anything else distracts me from the purpose of the show-examining our world and our place in it, through a different and highly engaging point of view.
Even though I'm the one claiming Buffy is Christian, I pretty much agree with your point here as far as having a distaste for "pinning down".
In my defense, I'm making this claim in a thread about Existentialism! (and a fine essay Slain has done, sorry for not commenting directly about it!)
Buffy, in my view, has taken the leap of faith necessary to know Grace. That's what it takes to be an existentialist Christian, on my reading of Kierkegaard & Dostoyevsky, the two examples I have in mind. This is why I cited "Amends" where she knew something would happen even though she knew Angel would burn up. And why she jumped into the hole in the dimensions to save Dawn. And why she knew the first Slayer gave good advice.
She does not follow the strictures of any of the organized Christian religions, as far as I can see, and I'm glad Whedon has it this way, although it's a prudent choice, TV marketing being what it is.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Hmmmm. -- Sophist, 08:27:29 08/28/02 Wed
Buffy, in my view, has taken the leap of faith necessary to know Grace. That's what it takes to be an existentialist Christian, on my reading of Kierkegaard & Dostoyevsky, the two examples I have in mind.
Well, I don't know. This reminds of the struggle Christians always have with those who lived before the time of Jesus, or those who never heard "The Word". I've seen lots of intellectual gymnastics to label such people "natural" Christians (or some other such term) in order to avoid the theologically unpleasant consequences.
In my view, it's rather distasteful to claim someone as a heretofore unknown member of "your" group: all good people are, by definition, Christian. That's a bit too convenient.
I'm also a little skeptical of using the presence of certain Catholic imagery to assert that Buffy is Christian in a way that only a fairly esoteric form of Protestantism would recognize. Calvin and Luther certainly would not agree with the label, nor would any Pope.
I think we should give labels only to those people who claim them for themselves. Until Buffy herself makes such a claim, she's not Christian to me.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Narratives -- Rahael, 09:19:02 08/28/02 Wed
I tend to regard Christianity as a major narrative that is used again and again in Western literature and art, and BtVS is no exception. In fact, BtVS and AtS is particularly fond of using all forms of religious narratives - the figure of Shiva dancing that used to stand on Giles' desk; the crosses; the Buddha sitting in the Magic Box.
I think it's better to be concious about the use of these narratives, than not. Most particularly when it comes to the discussion of souls, sinning and redemption. Though "redemption" seems to be used very sparingly by ME themselves.
Again and again, BtVS is a product of its cultural environment, and it tends to fall back on Western European narratives with a smattering of Eastern.
After all, look at its portrayal of the primitive, non verbal First Slayer. The one that's all about the Kill, as opposed to the modern day, European Buffy who's all about friendship and love?
I tend to view culture as something you interact with, rather than 'belong' to necessarily. I am culturally a mixture of Hindu, Buddhist, Christian and atheism, and I wouldn't be unhappy at being called any of those things. Which is why I think religious faith/culture/vocabulary/mentalite's are about more than belonging to a Church. It's possible to participate in a way of looking at the world without having time for Christ to be your personal saviour.
And I think BtVS and AtS participate in a culture and vocabulary which is laden with religious narratives and symbolism.
Or as Redcat once said, "I don't believe in Redemption, but I'm afraid that Joss Whedon does." (sorry if I've misquoted from memory!)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Narratives -- Sophist, 09:30:15 08/28/02 Wed
I'm sure you'll be disappointed, but I agree with you. :)
Christian symbolism is integrally part of Western Culture. That was the point I was (obscurely) making in my original response agreeing with Arethusa. I just think that such symbols are being used on BtVS in their cultural sense, not to make a specifically religious point.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Narratives -- Rahael, 09:48:19 08/28/02 Wed
Crestfallen! ;)
I think it's when you look at eps like "Amends" with the miraculous Christmas snow, and the end of "Grave", and the whole debate about souls/redemption, that it becomes difficult to separate culture from ethics. From Values.
I mean, I realised with a slight shock during the debate about "forgiveness" that my value system, immersed as it is in Western European Christianity did in fact have some crucial differences.
So I'd say that when you rely strongly on one particular narrative, some of your conclusions get thrust upon you - though I take fully on board Thomas the Skeptic's point about what Joss is going to do.
Rahael
Obligatory poem below.
"AS kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies dráw fláme;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves‹goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I do is me: for that I came.
Í say móre: the just man justices;
Kéeps gráce: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is‹
Chríst‹for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Narratives -- Sophist, 10:37:18 08/28/02 Wed
I think it's when you look at eps like "Amends" with the miraculous Christmas snow, and the end of "Grave", and the whole debate about souls/redemption, that it becomes difficult to separate culture from ethics. From Values.
Yes. But of course, shared ethical systems don't require shared religious beliefs.
I think ME does like to maintain the ambiguity. For example, Amends certainly has Christian associations, but AtS makes constant references to the PtB (ironically, a New Testament phrase) in contexts which have nothing to do with Christianity. Leaves us in doubt just who did send that snow.
Similarly, we can discuss the issue of rehabilitation of wrongdoers without necessarily importing Christian notions of redemption.
As I said before, ME needs to preserve that ambiguity in order to maintain a universalist message. When it moves too far in one direction (and it did, IMHO, in Grave), it risks not just losing some of its audience, but offending it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Musing brought on by poetry about narratives... -- redcat, 10:59:32 08/28/02 Wed
Wonderful posts, Rah and Sophist! Rah's first post here is also a more elegant statement of what I
was trying to say in my post on JW's visualized "play" with religious symbols (above). I
absolutely agree that the basic underlying cultural narrative of the show derives from the
western, specifically Judeo-Christian, world-view, overlaid with broad washes of Eastern
philosophy (both Buddhist and Hindu, and especially as represented through Giles), along with
a sometimes-hazy-sometimes-precise set of references to pre-Christian European pagan
traditions. Further, the presence of the silent First Slayer supports the argument that the show
fundamentally grounds itself in a concept of historically linear "progress" from a "primitive" past
to an "enlightened" present, with the strongly implied possibility of some truly Edenic (post-
redemptive?) future. In effect, this reflects a type of "post-Christian" Enlightenment narrative,
one whose own historical influences came from both Judeo-Christianity and (newly re-
introduced into Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries as a by-product of late European
colonialist expansion) Eastern philosophies. Given the strong argument Slain makes for an
existentialist reading of the show, and what others have argued is an even stronger case for
this reading of S6, it would seem that either an overly-rigid Judeo-Christian or Enlightenment
narrative would be disrupted (although perhaps not completely subverted) by competing
existentialist narratives and questions.
This is, in fact, what I think we see happening when we consider the slayers as a group, and
especially remembering fresne's fabulous post of a few weeks ago, which noted that all the
slayers we have seen or been told about other than Buffy, have been silent women of color.
The First Slayer sets the template, but the Chinese Slayer of the Boxer Rebellion speaks in an
untranslated (on the screen) language that her killer does not understand; and we never hear
either the Korean slayer in Chicago in the 30s, or Nikki, the African-American New York slayer
in the 70s, speak directly. The sharp break between these previous Chosen Ones and Buffy
("I'm gonna to be a fireman when the floods roll back") argues for a consciousness within the
show's broader play of narratives of something other than the necessarily incremental
progress of the Enlightenment's linear notion of history, as well as something less dogmatic
than Christianity's fixed traditions of a pre-specified heaven and hell.
By remaining ambiguous about any one belief system, even as she claims for herself the
mandatory existentialist act of self-identification ("I'm Buffy. And you're history."), Buffy looks
back across that dark abyss and demands of God/the gods not to be lied to, because she will
not suffer herself to be silenced. However, does her sharp cracking of the code of silent, and
thus unreflective, unself-identified, slayers represent Joss's existentialist repudiation of the
very foundational epistemologies within which all western cultural narratives must engage,
because, as Rah notes, they "participate in a culture and vocabulary which is laden with
religious narratives and symbolism"? Or is that act of repudiation merely a subtle confirmation
of the indelibility of the underlying narrative-of-progress? By the very act of refusing the First
Slayer, and claiming instead her own power, her own values, her own name, does a Euro-
American Buffy wind up merely re-inscribing the west's putatively linear progress from Silent
Primitive to Rational Post-Modern?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Eden, lost and reclaimed -- cjl, 11:26:07 08/28/02 Wed
Love this sub-thread.
Joss seems to draw upon many religious archetypes and complementary and divergent religious viewpoints, but he always seems to be extending back to a commonn "ur"-narrative: the Eden myth. The creation of the first vampire seems to match up with the expulsion from Paradise, with the players in the Buffyverse continually trying to recapture the lost state of grace.
Of course, the competing existentialist narrative tells us that Grace or Damnation is what we make it, but I don't find the two mutually exclusive. Joss' mythology is so rich, it allows room for both interpretations...
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Eden, lost and reclaimed -- rc, 11:34:25 08/28/02 Wed
...perhaps not mutually exclusive because the characters' each coming to their own existentialist understanding that Grace and Damnation are what they make of them is inherent in, rather than contradictory to, their progress toward an Eden reclaimed...?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Eden, lost and reclaimed -- Arethusa, 12:18:25 08/28/02 Wed
Or instad of making linear progress towards an Eden, they potentially progress to perfect self-awareness-a peaceful understanding and acceptance of who they are, and the context in which they live. We saw perfect self-awareness with Adam, but he did not project this to those outside his own consciousness. Sometimes I think truely accepting and understanding ourselves, and thereby others, is the closest we will ever get to union with God.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> And what's more -- Rahael, 03:51:44 08/29/02 Thu
Joss' twisting of Genesis underlines redcat's point about a linear progression. The Biblical Genesis shows a world of grace that was lost by man, through his seeking of knowledge.
In Sunnydale, we know that the beginning was no paradise, but a hell. Man didn't fall from grace. He escaped from hell. So unlike many early modern Europeans, who regarded the past as a holy, more pure place (and let's include the Greek philosophers as an inspiration for the Renaissance), and who saw the drawing on of time as taking them *away* from paradise, Sunnydale is literally trying to move onward from hell.
And Buffy and the Scoobies move onward from the hellmouth of Sunnydale High, their version of the hellish garden of Eden, and end up in that symbolic version of the tree of knowledge, UC Sunnydale. Where they encounter a new enemy, which is both modern and ancient. Walsh talks about the primitive desires of mankind. We get constant reiterations of the idea of Eden (see Ete's excellent essay on this in the archives) and ideas of what constitutes self identity. This is where Buffy encounters and rejects the primitive past (the First) and the techno-modern, horrific future that Walsh offers.
But, Season 6 I think does undermine the linear progression of Scooby progress. The characters regress. And it's so interesting that it is tied to Buffy falling *down* (rather than up) to Heaven, and *rising* back to the world. This topsy turveyness fatally infects Sunnydale Season 6. The characters move backwards. They unlearn the lessons they learnt before.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: And what's more -- redcat, 08:39:43 08/29/02 Thu
I think Rah has identified something here that might be quite important to this over-all
discussion. While I think the evidence is quite strong, incontrovertible even, for what cjl calls
the edenic "ur-narrative" as a foundational construct in the show, the above post reminds me
that it's just that -- "a" foundational construct, but perhaps not "the" only one. I think our
collective acknowledgment of the multiple religious, spiritual and philosophical traditions that
weave through and around the show's predominantly western-Judeo-Christian frame should
perhaps extend to looking at other ur-narratives within which Joss seems also to play. S6,
more than any other season so far, has elicited in me a sense of Joss' fascination with the
work of Joseph Campbell (go ahead and grit your teeth, Rah, you know what's coming...).
What I have argued elsewhere in this thread is a linear progressive thrust in the show overall,
after The Gift, seems to turn in on itself, "twisting," as Rah calls it, into a oddly "backward"
direction. Or perhaps it's really a circular one.
If Buffy is simultaneously moving forward toward her edenic just reward, while also circling the
"Hero's Journey," S6 begins to make a deeper kind of sense. (As always, I use the Inanna
myth cycle here as my primary model for understanding the Hero's Journey.) Using a
Campbellian interpretation, before the Hero can return to the World and bring to her people
and/or companions the "truths" learned in the Otherworld, she must generally fight out
of/past/through a set of gates/blockages/armies on the way back "up" to the "normal" world. If
Buffy's leap off the tower is read as the progressive result of her just life which thus leads her
into Paradise, *and simultaneously* is made to stand for that moment at the central point in
the Campbellian Hero's Journey at which she triumphs over the Otherworld's dark forces and
thus gains her freedom from them to begin her return to her own world, we might expect a
sometimes uncomfortable clash of ur-narratives. Rah points out that much is topsy-turvy in
S6's backwards circling. Perhaps it's taken a whole season to work out the ways in which
these two underlying mythic structures function together in the show's macro-mythology and
S6 is evidence of the difficulty of trying to do that.
Just a thought --- perhaps this struggle between ur-narratives can also be understood as a way
of thinking about some of the show's other internal philosophical struggles that we've been
discussing. Can we say that the Inanna-ian Hero's cycle reflects the existentialist experience,
being imbued with what Arethusa calls the search for "perfect self-awareness" (and, of course,
the concomitant non-"western" and pre-Christian influences active there-in), while the search
for Eden reflects the almost fatalistic linearity of the Enlightenment worldview against which the
existential hero struggles?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Progress -- Sophist, 13:18:13 08/28/02 Wed
the presence of the silent First Slayer supports the argument that the show fundamentally grounds itself in a concept of historically linear "progress" from "primitive" past to an "enlightened" present
This conclusion may be too quick. There is a big debate in anthropology about when humans (or hominids) acquired speech. I wouldn't doubt that the writers picked up on that and made the First silent (or at least with limited speech) without intending to send a message about progress by that fact alone. OTOH, Buffy's rejoinder to the First in Restless certainly supports your interpretation.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Progress -- rc, 14:24:20 08/28/02 Wed
Agree about the ambiguity of the First Slayer's silence, especially as it's reflected in the differently-imagined silences of the other three (non-Buffy) slayers, and perhaps even more interestingly as it is subsumed within the Spirit Guide's use of the silent First's "voice." And the Guide's message certainly seems to suggest that Buffy is being invited to come to full self-awareness, as Arethusa speculates above. Whether even that scene, however, effectively subverts the ur-narrative's progressive, even evolutionary ("Love. Give. Forgive.") march toward Eden is debateable. I'm not saying I'm committed to that interpretation, I'd just want to see some real textual/visual evidence within the episodes that contest the point before I'd be willing to abandon it.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Individual growth or social progress -- Sophist, 16:28:03 08/28/02 Wed
The reason I brought up the point is that I've always seen Buffy's interaction with the First as a vehicle for Buffy's personal growth. I understood you to refer to a larger, social sense of progress. I can see your view, but I prefer mine. :)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> silent women of color? -- Vickie, 16:43:30 08/28/02 Wed
You have a great point that we can learn a lot by considering the slayers who we have seen as a group. I don't, however, entirely follow your conclusions. The slayers we've seen are:
Buffy
Kendra
Faith
Nikki
the Chinese slayer (Boxer rebellion era)
the Korean slayer (Sorry, don't recognize this reference)
the Primitive (the First)
Leaving the Korean slayer out, because I'm ignorant on her topic, we have six slayers, four of whom have been active characters in the shows.
Nikki does not speak in her single scene. Spike speaks over the scene, and as this is his version of events, that's appropriate. My impression of Nikki is of a woman of strength and determination, who knows her job and how to do it. There's no indication I see that she is at all less conscious than Buffy, or less of an individual. I'm not claiming you are incorrect, I just don't see the evidence you are using for this point.
The Chinese slayer speaks in her own language, untranslated in the show and not understood by her killer, who is, again, Spike. Again, I find this appropriate. This is Spike's version of events. I don't see any evidence on the screen or in the script to indicate that this girl is unaware of herself or not individuated. Given her geographical and cultural location, and period in history, she is likely to be less obsessed with the individual than the typical Westerner--at least I think so. But again, I don't see the on-screen evidence.
Kendra was by no means a silent woman. Though she certainly had been trained to a deference that we find startling, she had a backbone and her own points of view. She expressed them even in the face of Buffy's disagreement. Kendra is a non-silent slayer of color.
Finally, the Primitive. She is not silent. At first (in Restless) she speaks through Tara or Tara speaks for her. Eventually, Buffy insists she speak for herself, and she does.
This is Buffy's dream. Though the Primitive is in some sense objectively there, all of the images are being processed through Buffy's psyche. My initial reaction to this sequence is that the Primitive initially expresses herself through the Tara guide, in order to associate with a trusted advisor. Buffy's subconscious places this filter on the Primitive's words to send a message to the conscious mind: "Hey, listen up! This is important and true." Or the Primitive makes this association in order to gain credibility.
When Buffy insists on the return of her friends, the Primitive is clearly able to speak, albeit in a harsh voice. The two still do not agree, of course, but there's nothing in Buffy's dream that I can see to support the idea that the Primitive is not an individual. On the contrary, she insists on the individual aloneness of the slayer. "I am destruction. Absolute...alone.....No ... friends! Just the kill." Buffy is the one to insist on her existence within the group, and on her right to participate in the joining spell that has angered the Primitive.
The harshness of the Primitive's voice may be an indication that she doesn't use it much. This doesn't necessarily mean that she cannot. She speaks when she wishes. But if she walks alone most of the time, there's no one for her to talk to (unless she talks to herself, like me, but she's clearly not that crazy).
I don't think that the lack of speech in a particular situation indicates the clear lack of a voice and the ability to use it as desired.
So, redcat, please help me follow you to your conclusions. I'm clearly missing the evidence you have found compelling.
-V.
P.S. fresne's post doesn't appear to be in the archives, so I couldn't check into it for context. Sorry.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> What race was the first slayer? -- Cleanthes, 18:48:43 08/28/02 Wed
The first slayer's skin color had more to do with her placement in time than with the modern-day politics of race, IMO.
In the 19th century supposedly scientific theories of racial origins purported to prove that the original "true" race was Caucasian; indeed, it's these now totally outdated theories that stick with us through the word "Caucasian". With the overthrow of racism as official science, people have actually looked at the evidence and found that ALL people, red and yellow, black & white, descend from a common African ancestor.
A Victorian racist could not possibly imagine that his forefathers were anything other than noble, long-skulled white men. To suggest that he had Africans in his family tree would irretrievably stain his escutcheon; unacceptable, unacceptable!
It is in opposition to THIS that the First Slayer's racial characteristics ought be considered, if they're considered at all. She isn't black rather than white, she's ALL.
As to why the Primitive doesn't speak at first, I attribute this to the language problem. Tara speaks for the Primitive, as you say Vickie, to give voice to her from a trusted advisor, and, IMO, to allow for English.
I think they changed this later both because Buffy now knew the First Slayer, and possibly, because of criticism. And they kinda suggested the First "spoke" to Buffy telepathically.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: silent women of color? -- redcat, 20:24:11 08/28/02 Wed
"Though the Primitive is in some sense objectively there, all of the images are being processed
through Buffy's psyche."
Aloha e Vickie,
These are great questions. If we add "and Joss' psyche" to the end of your sentence above, I
think your statement really dances around, and maybe even sashays straight through, the
heart of the ways I was thinking about the other-than-Buffy slayers when I framed them in my
post (above) as operating at the philosophical, metaphoric, meta-narrative and symbolic levels.
On those levels, I see them as representing multiple contact points in a complex set of
interlocking narratives, whose sometimes-bumpy weaving together allows Joss to question the
reality of existence and the authority of individual morality, which I see as among the critical
issues being played out by him through BtVS.
So you are absolutely right when you describe the Chinese and African-American slayers as
being silenced only because they don't tell their own stories, Spike does. And to support your
point further, the quote below shows us the reason we neither hear nor even see the Korean
slayer directly. We know about her only because she's described by Sid, the undead demon
hunter who's trapped in a wooden puppet's body, when he says to Buffy:
Sid: (surprised) "You?! You're the Slayer?" (Buffy nods) "Damn! I knew a Slayer in the
30's. Korean chick. Very hot. We're talking *muscle* tone. Man, we had some times."
(Quote from Psyche's transcripts, "The Puppet Show," S1, ep. 9. - thanks, Psyche!)
Like the other two, and like the First Slayer in Restless, she's a part of someone else's story
which is at least part of my point, as I think it was at least part of fresne's earlier IIRC (sorry, I
wasn't able to find the archive address for that post, either -- but it was great!). On the
symbolic, rather than plot or character-development, level, all four of these slayers can be
"read," using a specific kind of analytical lens, as representing the image-through-metaphor of
a type of pre-modern consciousness that Buffy's individuation seemingly breaks through.
On the strictly plot or character-development levels you're primarily speaking of, however, no
character can be said to "represent" anything. As you argue, the Chinese slayer herself, when
considered as a "real" person rather than a symbolic character, does not seem to be "unaware
of herself or not individuated."
Her symbolic place in the story, however, may allow a different reading, like the one I've
attempted above. In that type of reading, both her obvious ethnicity and her
silence-within-the-realm-of-the-story intersect with a set of questions about the relationships
between larger culturally-sanctioned narratives, those narratives' foundational assumptions
(about history, progress and white folks' place in same), and individual cultural productions like
BtVS. My thinking on this is probably also influenced by the work of Black feminist critics like
Toni Morrison, who in her (IMO stunning) collection of essays, Playing in the Dark, discusses
the consistent presence of the "absent African" in American literature and art, whose dark
silence, she argues, outlines in stark relief (and thus gives a specific type of meaning to) the
actions of modern (and so also post-modern) white characters.
But I absolutely agree with you that considerations of Kendra's space and roles within the
Buffyverse goes a long way to contest any simplistic schemata into which one would try to trap
the show's meta-narratives. I'm glad you brought her up, as I had not considered her before.
However, I'm still not convinced that Kendra's character completely subverts my argument
about the interplay between post-modern existentialist and "progressive" linear Enlightenment
narratives in the show. As I tried to say not too long ago in my review of academic critic Lynne
Edwards' argument that Kendra reflects the Tragic Mulatta trope, while I personally don't see
either "race" or that trope as the most effective lens through which to critique the show's use of
that specific character of color, I also cannot deny the consistency with which the show clothes
relatively minor characters who's metaphoric "job" in the show can be seen as representing a
fixed, rigid or even "primal" past, as people of color. Nor can I deny that, as Morrison would
argue, such racialized characterizations are consistent within Enlightenment narrative
traditions.
Kendra's growth as a character towards the kind of self-defined individuation that's central to
Buffy's characterization is cut short by (what is, IMO) her plot-driven (rather than trope-driven)
death. Whether she would have been able to develop as a fully engaged character into
someone who could make the types of difficult decisions we've seen Buffy be forced to do
within Joss' increasingly-morally-grey universe is something we will never know.
And in that sense, Kendra is not much different *symbolically* from the unnamed Chinese and
Korean slayers, Nikki the African-American slayer (whose name we know only from the
shooting script), or the First Slayer, who, as Tara's voice tells us for her, has "...no speech. No
name." "I live," says this Slayer's Buffy-dreamed voice, "in the action of death, the blood cry,
the penetrating wound." And when Buffy's psyche does finally force the First to speak in her
"own" harsh voice, she confirms herself as representative of something Buffy must refuse - the
"we" of undifferentiated, primal consciousness.
BUFFY: (firmly) Now give me back my friends.
(The First Slayer speaks in a very low, hoarse voice.)
FIRST SLAYER: No ... friends! Just the kill. (Shot of Buffy watching her.)
FIRST SLAYER: We ... are ... alone!
(The bald guy leans in between Buffy and the First Slayer, holding up two slices of
cheese. He grins and shakes the cheese at Buffy, then retreats offscreen.)
BUFFY: That's it. I'm waking up.
It is at this metaphoric level that I DO think the First, and perhaps the other slayers of color as
a group, can be seen, **in relationship to Buffy**, as representative of a "past" Buffy must
grow, and has grown, beyond. And it is at this symbolic, philosophical and metaphoric level
that their presence in the meta-narrative remains at least a teensy bit problematic for me.
Does any of this help answer your questions, or am I just confusing things even more? It's
wickedly interesting to me that in a sub-thread on philosophical ambiguity, it is the realist's
questions that have popped the bubble of inflated theorizing....
malama pono,
redcat, thanking Psyche for all quotes
PS -- fresne has also done some extraordinary posts on Faith as Buffy' symbolic "dark"
other-half/sister/lover --definitely worth searching the archives for!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: silent women of color? -- Vickie, 21:54:09 08/28/02 Wed
Greetings back at you, redcat.
Thanks for trying to pound your points into my thick skull. Your additions and explanations do help, though I'm still not all the way there. I hope you'll forgive/enjoy another round? (If not, just ignore me.)
I'm having trouble regarding some characters as symbolic in relation to other characters (who are considered as actual people). How do you determine which character is a symbol and which is a person for whom the symbol has significance?
Clearly, Buffy is a person. She's the protagonist. Therefore, whatever mythopoetic significance she has, she is also a character in the drama.
But I'm uncomfortable considering the slayers of color (Kendra, Nikki, the Chinese and Korean girls) symbolic because they are women of color, and then turning around and building a theory of their symbolic significance based on their color. That's circular, unless I've missed something serious in your discussion.
However, if we consider the symbolic significance of the women who are never truly actors in the drama, then I might be able to follow your critical lead. With this criterion, we have:
Nikki
The Chinese Slayer
The Korean Slayer
I maintain that the Primitive, while clearly having many resonances, cannot be considered purely symbolic. She is an actor in the drama. Otherwise, there is no outside threat in Restless, just the overactive workings of our main characters' stressed out psyches. I love your idea that the Primitive is in some way ALL slayers and all humankind. But again, I'm uncomfortable treating her as purely symbol or metaphor. She's real in some important sense.
What do these three women have in common? They are former slayers, two of whom Spike killed. None of them speaks in our drama, and one of them doesn't even act. Two of them fail. All three are "of color", and so, in a drama with Caucasion perspective can be seen as exotic, other, and possibly even images of the shadow. They are indeed "silent women of color" as you said in your original post.
What evidence do we have that these women are meant to represent "a fixed, rigid or even 'primal' past"?
The Chinese girl during the Boxer Rebellion almost certainly had a traditional upbringing, which would be fixed and rigid by our standards (dangerous assumption that we share standards, but I digress). She would have been taught to defer to all men, to older women in her family, and to anyone of a higher social status. Social mobility was pretty difficult and unusual in that culture. It's amazing to me to contemplate what she must have gone through, trying to develop the kind of initiative and confidence a slayer needs, in so contraty an environment. Maybe she didn't; maybe this is why a young and cocky Spike could kill her.
Definitely, the Chinese slayer could represent a fixed and rigid past.
Nikki, on the other hand, just doesn't work this way for me. She's a 1970s New Yorker for gosh sake. That's pretty recent past, and I'm working hard to think of ways that our society has gotten less rigid in the past thirty years.
Ok, women have made some incremental progress, particularly in the realms of reproductive rights and employment opportunties. We've made some advances on our race issues, too. (Certainly not far enough in either case, but that's not my point here.) So in that sense, Nikki also represents a more rigid past.
The Korean girl I cannot even attempt. We only have that one line of Sid's (thank you for reminding me). I remember thinking at the time "BS. He probably never met her, just knew who the slayer was at the time." But even if he's being straight, we know nothing about her except she was Korean in the 1930s. We don't even know where.
Certainly her lack of definition lends credibility to a symbolic interpretation. She's certainly not presented as a whole person. She also qualifies, in the general sense of being a person of her society and time.
What do these women represent to Buffy? Are they images of a more rigid and restrictive past? I prefer to think that they are images of women, of slayers transcending the societies and times and upbringing they were given, to become heroes in their own right. Each of these women was The Slayer in her time. Each of them fought the demons (yada yada, I'm not Giles). It is important to realize is that these are Buffy's sisters. Buffy, too, is working to transcend the limits of her own time and place, in order to fulfill her heroic duty and destiny.
It may be that I tend to see the more pleasant interpretations of these characters precisely because I am not sensitive to mistreatment of characters of color in these dramas. I'm pretty white bread, and I live in a very diverse community where most folks (at least, the ones I spend time with) consider it ill bred and indicative of ignorance to express racism, regardless of what one may think or feel. I've noticed that others on the board notice offensive treatment of people of color in the Jossverse long before I wake up to it. So maybe I'm just not equipped to grok the interpretation you prefer.
V.
P.S. Brilliant though she certainly is, fresne is not the only one to have discussed Faith as an image of Buffy's shadow self.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: symbolic versus literal interpretation -- aliera, 06:20:41 08/29/02 Thu
Thank you redcat and Vickie and others for intriguing sets of subthreads. Just a stray thought. We purposefully deconstruct the different elements of the show into limited pieces and examine them in isolation; but, I think our arguments tend to break down when we talk about how these pieces function *only* as one thing or another because the show is written multi-level. They generally function both as symbols and as ways to move the action/character growth forward and as individuals in their own right with their owns stories (some very brief at least to date). This crossed my mind in Sophist/redcat's discussion above and again here because I don't usually see the different views as mutually exclusive; but, rather I see the show as written specifically to allow for a richness of interpretations on different levels. I am very open to others ways of viewing this. I am probably to much in my own bias which is more geared to the forest rather than the trees. Thanks again for the interesting discussion. :-)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: silent women of color? -- redcat, 11:40:26 08/29/02 Thu
Aloha e Vickie,
Thanks for continuing the discussion. However, I certainly don't mean you to feel that I'm
"trying to pound" anything into anyone's skull. Hope that was just a metaphor, Œcause I'm just
here having a conversation. And I'm sorry if you think I was purposely ignoring or dismissing
any posters' work on Faith other than fresne's. Obviously, several posters have done
wonderful work on the character and her symbolic role as Buffy's shadow, most notably of
course, shadowkat. My post-script was simply meant to point you toward the rest of fresne's
insightful work IF you had not already seen it.
As for the gist of your two posts here, I think both Rahael's and aliera's responses address
most of the major issues. However, there are several points you make that I'd like to respond
to directly.
1) Vickie: "I'm having trouble regarding some characters as symbolic in relation to other
characters (who are considered as actual people). How do you determine which
character is a symbol and which is a person for whom the symbol has significance?"
This is a great question, and I think it gets to the heart of what constitutes the practice of
literary/media/cultural analysis. All analysis is an act of interpretation and as such **always**
depends on the analyst's POV. If the person to whom the symbolic interpretation is significant
is the viewer/critic, as opposed to a particular character within the text, clearly the level at
which that analysis occurs begins from "off the page," i.e., from an objective position "above" --
and certainly omniscient to -- the fictional universe of the text. From that perspective, all the
characters, including Buffy, can be "read" as symbolic in some ways, e.g., Buffy as "the Hero,"
vampires as "arrested adolescence," Xander as "the heart of the gang," etc.
Meanwhile, within the text, while others may see Buffy, vampires and Xander in these ways on
occasion, as you note, "Clearly, Buffy is a person. She's the protagonist. Therefore,
whatever mythopoetic significance she has, she is also a character in the drama," -- as
are Spike, Xander, etc. We can all, I'm sure, think of times when, considering them only at the
level of character development or plot, they don't "fit" their symbolical associations at all. Buffy
acts non-heroically, Spike is much more than simply a metaphor for arrested emotions, and
Xander doesn't always love and trust deeply enough. But to suggest that *because* they are
fully-developed and developing characters we cannot also read them symbolically misses, I
think, the whole point of cultural analysis, which is to enrich, enlarge, expand and contribute to
our collective greater understanding of the text.
Further, there are clearly times WITHIN the text that some (usually minor) characters are
presented in or act in symbolic ways towards another (usually major) characters, and also
times during which major character recognize and address their own symbolic roles and
relationships to each other directly or indirectly. Tabula Rasa is, IMO, a fabulous exploration of
the show's conscious play with it's own mythopoetic intertexts. For example, many posters
have dismissed the "loan shark" of that ep as being too childish or crude a representation, but I
think perhaps that interpretation misses the subtlety of Joss' own sense of self-critique. I
thought it was a quite interesting way to graphically comment on the show's practice of
embodying-as-imagined-metaphor the "real" issues and problems of our/his world.
2) Vickie: "But I'm uncomfortable considering the slayers of color (Kendra, Nikki, the
Chinese and Korean girls) symbolic because they are women of color, and then turning
around and building a theory of their symbolic significance based on their color. That's
circular, unless I've missed something serious in your discussion."
You know, I might think that reading the slayers of color as symbolic of something linked to
their racialization would be a problem for my argument IF we had a plethora of non-women-of-
color slayers to talk about. But in fact, as you point out in your previous posts, out of the six
non-Buffy slayers in the whole show, we have five women of color, and one (dark-haired,
even) white slayer who is so obviously symbolic of blond Buffy's "darker," "shadow," "Other"
self that a number of posters have written brilliant critique about that subject. I think NOT
asking questions about the very fact of the overwhelming presence of slayers of color in the
show would be irresponsible IF one is working at the level of cultural criticism.
However, I don't think the answers to the questions one might pose from that level are
simplistic, determinative, or necessarily condemnatory of Joss. In fact, as I've made quite clear
a number of times now, I don't see a racial analysis as either the beginning or the end of any
discussion of BtVS, but I DO see it as an important part of any larger, collective practice (which
is what I understand us to be doing on this board in threads like this) of cultural critique and
analysis of the show.
As for your concern that my argument is teleological, I think you're misreading both my
intention and my actual analysis here. I didn't create the fact that five of the non-Buffy slayers
can be *extremely* easily read as women of color (in fact, it would be clearly incorrect to read
them as not-women-of-color) and the sixth as representing "the dark." I am neither stretching
the facts nor "building a theory" based on some specious claims or data. Again, I think it would
be irresponsible to engage in cultural critique that does NOT pay attention to this set of very
obvious characteristics in the representation of non-Buffy slayers. And I do think that an
assessment of the relationship between the visual presentation of these slayers' as persons of
color, and notions about the possible (and *always* multi-valent!) meanings about color as a
marker of difference in the broader culture may well be an effective tool to help us understand
WHY all the other slayers exhibit certain culturally, socially, psychologically and metaphorically
consistent markers of difference from Buffy herself. I think this is part of Rah's point that Buffy
breaks the pattern of silence when, in FFL, she neither seeks death from Spike nor allows him
to silence her. Instead, she has the final words "You're beneath me." She not only denies
him the power to define her, in some ways, she also can be seen as refuting his narrative
containment of the Spike-silenced Chinese slayer and Nikki.
3) Vickie: "I maintain that the Primitive, while clearly having many resonances, cannot be
considered purely symbolic."
I maintain the same. As I've repeatedly stated in my posts in this thread, I am NOT arguing
that assessing characters or representations in symbolic, metaphoric, philosophical or any
other exegetical way is or should be the ONLY, and certainly not some "pure," way to read the
show. Although you haven't said it directly, I keep getting the feeling that you're arguing that
I'm arguing for a closing down or limiting of interpretations, that I am promoting one way of
viewing the text over all others. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you read me
carefully, I believe that I'm quite clear that I'm discussing only one particular way of thinking
about BtVS, not the "only" or even a "primary" way. I have consistently grounded my
discussions in my strong sense of the show's intriguing ambiguity, which is a huge part of what
makes the analysis interesting for me. Personally, the primary way I actually approach
watching Buffy is through my emotions. I initially ask of it only, "does it touch my feelings?"
But since my brain and my heart are closely connected and both work just fine, thanks, I also
don't shut off my strong sense of analytical assessment just because I'm emotionally or
narratively engaged in the characters and their drama.
As aliera notes, "We purposefully deconstruct the different elements of the show into limited
pieces and examine them in isolation; but, I think our arguments tend to break down when we
talk about how these pieces function *only* as one thing or another because the show is
written multi-level." I couldn't agree more, and I'm very sure that what I'm NOT doing is
promoting any one analytical framework that argues we can, should or even might be able to
contain the show within any one type of analysis. If you're still concerned about this, please
reread my statements copied below. What I see when I read them is a series of carefully
constructed qualifying statements that invite a dialogue between different ways of looking at
the show rather than an argument for only a "purely" symbolic analysis, to wit:
redcat: "On the symbolic, rather than plot or character-development, level, all four of these
slayers can be "read," using a specific kind of analytical lens, as representing the image-
through-metaphor of a type of pre-modern consciousness that Buffy''s individuation seemingly
breaks through." "Her symbolic place in the story, however, may allow a different reading, like
the one I''ve attempted above. In that type of reading...." "I absolutely agree with you that
considerations of Kendra''s space and roles within the Buffyverse goes a long way to contest
any simplistic schemata into which one would try to trap the show's meta-narratives." "It is at
this metaphoric level that I DO think the First, and perhaps the other slayers of color as a
group, can be seen, **in relationship to Buffy**, as representative of a "past" Buffy must grow,
and has grown, beyond."
If all those "may allow" and "can be read as" statements don't make my perspective on this
point clear, then I really should retire from at least this part of the discussion!
4) Vickie: "I prefer to think that they are images of women, of slayers transcending the
societies and times and upbringing they were given, to become heroes in their own
right."
You may, of course, prefer to think of them any way you like and I would certainly be the first
to encourage you to do so. Your vision is particularly appealing. However, I prefer to think in a
more multiple, complex, less limited and more ambiguous fashion. I seem to be able to
simultaneously hold in my head a number of putatively competing interpretations of the
characters, plot, metaphors, narrative, ur-narratives and the show in general. I very much
enjoy that jabbering multiplicity of perspectives in my brain and often find myself delighted
when they begin to connect in previously unthought-of ways, as they have done for me in this
thread. What seems to be your more pre-determined approach is probably a great deal more
comfortable, but I wouldn't give up the messy pleasures inherent in complex cultural criticism
for **any** single POV. Which is why, although there are surely some interpretations I find
stronger or more compelling than others, there is no one interpretation that I prefer over all
others, regardless of you characterization of me or my posts in this sub-thread (cf. the last
sentence in your post above).
Finally, IŒd like to leave you with an image from my life that helps me understand what it feels
like to actively engage in complex cultural critique. When riding a motorcycle down a long
stretch of big-chunk gravel road, you can't over-control the bike. You have to sit very lightly, if
at all, on the seat. Unlike normal riding on paved road, riding on gravel requires that you allow
the bike to find it's own perfect relationship between vertical balance and speed. You can
direct the bike with your hands and arms, and help steady the bike with your thighs, calves,
feet and even butt. But like a jockey riding "up above" his race horse mount, you really need
to lift yourself up off the bike enough so that it's not burdened by your weight or your attempts
to control it that will inevitably counter the bike's own necessary, constant and minute
corrections of speed and verticality. Learning to ride like this is VERY scary!! Giving up your
sense of fixed, uni-valent, dominant control over a machine whose crashing could potentially
severely injure or kill you requires a leap of faith, on two levels. You have to trust that your
bike was correctly made at the factory in the first place, and that its forks are still straight and
its tires balanced. You also have to have a leap of faith in yourself as its rider, that you will be
able to direct the bike and feel, well below the level of conscious control, how to integrate the
shifting of your weight and the pressure of your arms and hands on the handlebars with what
the bike needs in order for you both to make it across that long stretch of gravel alive and safe.
Reading "above the text" feels, to me, like a similar process. It requires a lightness of touch
linked to a clear sense of the direction one is heading toward and a deep respect for the
vehicle (the text) on which one rides. Too much literalism will crash an fruitful and insightful
analysis faster than chomping on the brakes before that perfect moment when you finally hit
the pavement.
malama pono,
redcat
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: silent women of color? -- aliera, 13:53:19 08/29/02 Thu
"If all those "may allow" and "can be read as" statements don't make my perspective on this point clear, then I really should retire from at least this part of the discussion!
No retiring, of course not. I'm sure it was my reading not your writing redcat.
"Reading "above the text" feels, to me, like a similar process. It requires a lightness of touch linked to a clear sense of the direction one is heading toward and a deep respect for the vehicle (the text) on which one rides. Too much literalism will crash an fruitful and insightful
analysis faster than chomping on the brakes before that perfect moment when you finally hit the pavement."
Guess I'll end with a "Whoops" then and pay more attention to the trees! ;-)
Song of Myself 26
"I think I will do nothing for a long time but listen,
And accrue what I hear into myself...and let sounds contribute toward me.
I hear a bravura of birds...the bustle of growing wheat...the gossip of flames...clack of sticks cooking my meals.
I hear the sound of the human voice...a sound I love,
I hear all the sounds as they are tuned to their uses...
sounds of the city and sounds out of the city...
sounds of the day and night;
I hear the chorus...it is a grand opera...this indeed is music!
WW again.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> aliera, sweetie, my comments weren't directed at you... -- redcat, 14:04:18 08/29/02 Thu
My post above is a direct response to Vickie's post. I'm not sure what do you want me to do here? Did you read my words as a response to you? Because they certainly weren't intended that way. Sorry if I was unclear.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> No worries... -- aliera, 14:59:19 08/29/02 Thu
No worries...just wanted to recognize that you had a good point in your response...that you had made reference to symbolic and literal reading of the text which I didn't recognize in my post. Too much poetry, perhaps; better get back to my lite-science reading again. By the way, I am truly fascinated by the way these threads are developing off the original essay and wish we had a way to pull this together to essay form and retain it somewhere. A phenomenal group of sub-threads.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> I think I'm with Aliera -- Vickie, 17:28:55 08/29/02 Thu
And will sit and listen again, rather than trying to participate. I, too, thought we were having a conversation rather than arguing, but apparently my more vigorous prose style gives offense.
The "pounding" was meant to refer to the obduracy of the material being pounded, not your technique.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: -- aliera, 18:43:45 08/29/02 Thu
No you don't want to be fence sitting with aliera! If I ever put a clear post together I will frame it and send it to everyone I know as recognization of the divine intercession it probably was!
I really do need to stop posting poetry and take a writing class. Can't put a foot down without somehow getting it caught between my dental work (good to know that the orthedontal work was good for something). I was really directing it at myself because I've had a tendency too often skimming posts and need to take the time the posts deserve. It was meant to say that I should take the time to listen and to also recognize the beauty and the size of the discussions.
Totally OT and of interest to no one but myself is that I've been reflecting quite a bit lately on the subject of the board... how it has opened up in me a need to learn again and challenge myself and also be more in the moment in my non-virtual life, to explore why it is that the conversations have importance to me and to try to strike a better balance on a personal level. I don't think I have ever felt so challenged and at times at so much of a loss...all very odd and disconcerting and well, my head feels very full at times (but in a good way). I can't really express in words the depth of respect and affection I seem to feel for all of you in a way that would have meaning but I do feel this.
To me this attempt to create understanding is very difficult and yet at the heart of the board and very important and to be Hopkinslike, again, very difficult. Anom asked me back in June are the words I post a part of me or once posted a part of you also? I think they become both but sometimes they're not the part of me I most wish or intend to give.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Ideas, words and understanding -- ponygirl, 07:34:49 08/30/02 Fri
It's interesting that with all the sub-threads swirling about on communication and silence that you give us a post on the difficulty of understanding and being understood! I agree totally with your feelings about the board, it's reawakened a desire in me to learn and express myself, but also made me wrestle with the difficulty in conveying deeper ideas in a coherent ways. And I'm supposed to be making my living in words...
I can only turn of course to Joss to express this fascination with communication, and the limitations of the ways we express ideas, not only to each other but to ourselves:
"It's about inspiration, not the idea but the moment before the idea when it's total, when it blossoms in your mind and connects to everything, before the coherent thought that gives it shape, that locks it in and cuts it off from the universal. When you can articulate it, it becomes smaller. It's about thoughts and experiences that we don't have a word for." (Hush shooting script, courtesy of Psyche of course)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Lovely, this describe so well why I love this board as well -- Ete, 08:03:33 08/30/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: -- shadowkat, 09:46:49 08/30/02 Fri
First, so happy this baby got pulled back from archives so i could respond to this amazing post.
1."Can't put a foot down without somehow getting it caught between my dental work (good to know that the orthedontal work was good for something). I was really directing it at myself because I've had a tendency too often skimming posts and need to take the time the posts deserve. It was meant to say that I should take the time to listen and to also recognize the beauty and the size of the discussions. "
I feel as if you have pulled from my heart what I've been feeling the last few days. And it got me to thinking about how often I scan stuff on the board and react without thinking it through first, too busy responding emotionally to some point I caught in the post or just getting wrapped up in my own words. (I may be doing that now.) My essays are actually much better because I really do check things out on them and rewrite etc, careful not to quote or use words I don't know the meaning of, or be sloppy. (I really have looked up seemingly archaic words prior to using them in an essay. Some were incredibly hard to find and even harder to remember how to spell. Which is why I hate archaic academic words - I can never figure out how to spell them and they play havoc with my head.)
Anyways...I've been lurking mostly on this thread and in doing so...have found some truly lovely posts, this amongst them. Posts that have made me think about things. Sometimes saying nothing and letting things wash over you works best. Instead of skimming, reacting and putting my proverbial foot in my mouth. Something I've done quite a bit in my life.
Now to your second point which oh lord, aliera, you say so well and once again hit me to my core because it's what I wish I could grok to a few people.
"To me this attempt to create understanding is very difficult and yet at the heart of the board and very important and to be Hopkinslike, again, very difficult. Anom asked me back in June are the words I post a part of me or once posted a part of you also? I think they become both but sometimes they're not the part of me I most wish or intend to give."
"Sometimes they're not the part of me I most wish or intend to give."
yep. That's me last week. And off and on this year. Feeling like a clumsy ox, afraid to take a step forward without screwing up my life. I was terrified of posting the S&M essays I did recently. Afraid of the response. Afraid my words would be misread. (They weren't, well not by most people anyway.)
I'm not sure if this is what you meant...(so forgive me if I misinterpret, or go way off topic I can do that at times)..but I've experienced this lately in my life, both online and offline.
Where I've had people horribly misunderstand what I meant to say, and I was left stuttering helplessly wondering if
somewhere along the line I had stopped speaking English and had begun to speak Greek. Words are such fragile yet powerful things. My younger brother and I argue all the time, what we argue about interestingly enough is not the subject but the words. We argue about the meaning the semantics of the words we are using. And since we both inherited a type of dyslexia from our mother - we do have a tendency to mispronounce or mispell or switch the meanings of words.(Visual and Audio Coordination Ephasia (sp?)for me - according to the Menninger Clinic, I had it tested in law school when I finally hit the proverbial wall...apparently I'd found a way to compensate up until then, but it does crop up in the oddest ways - one example is my mind refuses to remember yin =female and yang= male, I keep flipping them, that's a teeny tiny example. It's the sounds of words that will often confuse me.) A frightening handicap for someone driven to write. So I work really hard to pick the right words and well often make mistakes. I mention dyslexia not to garner sympathy - over 10% of the population has it - but to show one of the many obstacles that get in the way of being understood. My dyslexia tended to be more auditory than visual in form, so it took me a long time to talk or make myself understood. It wasn't until I started acting in plays in grade school and high school that I overcame a lisp. And it wasn't until my school moved away from phonics that I was able to learn how to read. The reason I'm so driven to write - is I always found it an easier form to communicate in. Just for the reasons you mention above:
"Sometimes they're not the part of me I most wish or intend to give."
When we write - we can usually go back and correct the words, before they go out. Double check. Make sure the tone is right. When we speak - we can't take them back. We can't erase them. Except...with email and spontaneous posts and well chat rooms - written words have a tendency to become like speech but forever preserved electronically. I remember a friend once telling me that at least when you speak, no one has a copy of it to throw back at you at a later point. So in reality? Writing can be far more precarious than speaking. How ironic. I'm more comfortable writing because I feel I have control over it - yet I don't.
Actually less in some ways then if I spoke. When I write something and send it out over the internet, I have no clue who will read it, how they will use it, or interpret it. I have no control over that. None of us do. Joss Whedon has the same dilemma. When he writes, produces, and films an episode of BTVS he has no control over how we will interpret it, view it, use it, interact with it. He doesn't even own the rights to it (as far as I know) - Fox does.
At least i own the rights to my post, but under copyright law that does not prevent someone from quoting me or interpreting me in a way I did not intend. This is rather frightening. What's even more frightening at least to me is the possibility that I could inadvertently misunderstand or misinterpret someone else. And I have many times, not deliberately of course, I thought i understood. Or I did understand but I used the wrong words to convey this understanding and the more I tried to fix it...the more confused it got. Until I finally realized the best approach was to pull back and be silent. And now I have decided only to quote dead scholars and those? sparingly. So don't worry no more posts will be quoted in my essays, if i can help it.;-)
Bringing this back, sort of on topic, I think Whedon feels the same way. The fan/critical reactions to Season 6 must have frustrated him. Their interpretation was not the one he intended and no matter how many times he attempted to tell them this, they twisted his words to support what they felt. I remember his reasons for doing HUSH as a silent movie - the critics told him he was great at dialogue, silently implying he couldn't do anything else. So he thought, let's see what happens when I remove dialogue.
In the commentary to Hush the thing that Joss said which haunts me (again thanks to Doc for providing me with the opportunity to view this commentary) is that communication starts when the talking stops. When they can talk again?
The communication stops again.
I'm wondering if that may not be the biggest problem we have in our world, we talk too much. Instead taking in the information, letting it ferment, we are too eager to add our voice to the malestrom, to be the one who screams the loudest, writes the best, or says the most. I know I'm guilty of this. When sitting on the fence or just listening, might not be the best approach?
I don't know if any of this made much sense...but these were the words that have been fermenting in me since about Wed of last week. Hope it did.
At any rate, thank you aliera for saying for more succintly and beautifully what I've been feeling.
best,
Shadowkat
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> ho'oponopono -- redcat, 07:23:39 08/30/02 Fri
Aloha e Vickie,
I'd like you to know I wasn't offended by anything you wrote. I thought (and hoped) that we
were having a discussion, a vigorous one to be sure, but still a meeting of the minds across
time, ether and critical approaches to a text. I generally don't respond to people I don't respect
or find interesting, and not only do I respect you highly, I thought your questions and
comments deserved a sincere reply, which is what I tried to offer. I felt you had some
interesting questions and an intriguing comment (about circular reasoning), but that you had
also either misread or misunderstood my approach to critical analysis on the whole, which I felt
needed to be addressed. And as you had left me with the wonderful image of the silent
slayers each being a hero in her own untold story, I tried to leave you with a similarly insightful
image of a way to think about the practice of critical theory by "riding lightly" above the text.
I'm sorry if now my own too-vigorous prose style has offended you. That was certainly not my
intent. I sincerely hope that you will not stop participating in this or any other discussions on
the board, and I especially hope that you will not do so because of something I wrote. I,
among many others here, value your contributions. You enrich this community by your
presence. Although I am someone who truly treasures silence, I do hope I have not unduly
helped to create it here.
And I want to thank you for engaging me in this set of exchanges and pushing me to clarify my
comments about the silent slayers of color. Your questions and responses have encouraged
me to more carefully think through my initial analysis of these characters, and to more
rigorously consider them as individuals, as a group, and as they can be seen to function
symbolically in the show. I hope these exchanges have helped you in this sense as well.
I'm struck by your comment about the obduracy of the material. I think issues of race and the
practices cultural criticism are often both difficult things to discuss in our society. As aliera
notes in her lovely Hopkins-esque way, however, working through those difficulties **together**
are at the heart of this board.
So please do not go away to only sit and listen. I, for one, am grateful for the vigor of your
mind, your heart and your prose.
malama pono,
redcat
"ho'oponopono": to seek reconciliation through mutual goodwill and discussion
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> No, that's my head I'm talking about there! -- Vickie, 15:56:48 08/30/02 Fri
Red, the obdurate material is my thick skull! Once again, trying to be creative, creating only confusion. (me)
It's so easy to give offense in this medium. I'm glad you didn't take any this time. And certainly none taken by me.
I wouldn't have challenged your reasoning if I didn't think the reasoning worth it. I don't normally join in conversations I consider banal or worthless or boring. So, ironically, if I'm causing trouble in your thread it's a sideways compliment, of sorts.
Anyway, thanks for the opportunity to clear up the misunderstanding (I just typed "misdunderstanding", which is certainly true on my side).
Now back to the interesting stuff!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> which slayers are silent -- anom, 15:34:54 08/30/02 Fri
There's another possible way of looking at which Slayers are silent. I don't mean to challenge the perspective discussed in this subthread, just raise an alternative one. I'm enjoying the discussion. Thanks, Masq, for bringing the thread back! & Vickie, please don't stop participating!
Looking over the list of non-Buffy Slayers we've seen or heard about, it strikes me that the ones who are "silent" in various ways can also be described as the noncontemporary Slayers, if "noncontemporary" is narrowly defined so that it excludes Nikki, the slayer in the 1970s. Both of the Slayers who are contemporary w/Buffy have no problem speaking, & speaking out. It's the ones who preceded them who we never hear, at least in a way we can understand, directly. If we categorize them this way, how does it affect our understanding of their silence?
Certainly Buffy can't talk to them (if you don't count dreams & visions); they all died before she was born, so they're silent to her. I don't know if there's any more to be said about this aspect, but if there is, I'm sure other posters will say it!
Are they women of color in order to be symbolic? Or is it just to show us that Slayers have been called all over the world? (The case of Buffy & Faith--2 Slayers from the same country separated only by one other--is probably very rare.) Are they "silent" to an audience mostly of English-speakers because they're women of color? Or is it because of who they were as individuals? The Chinese Slayer has been called "silent" because she speaks Chinese, which Spike doesn't speak & we understand only through a subtitle, but why would a young Chinese woman living at the time of the Boxer Rebellion speak English? The First Slayer speaks first through Tara, then for herself at Buffy's urging--but it's Buffy's dream, so is the First Slayer really speaking English? She wouldn't have in her lifetime--English didn't exist. We only hear about a Korean Slayer--we never see or hear her, so we don't even know if she spoke English or lived in Korea. Nikki is the only one we see & don't hear, in what is clearly a deliberate choice. From what we see, she doesn't look exactly docile--she's an Afro'ed black woman at the height of the Black Power movement, & I can't believe her Watcher never had any trouble getting her to toe the line. (I can picture her asking why she should bother protecting white people when they have the entire power structure to protect them--I'd love to know more of her story!) She fights aggressively, confidently, creatively...right up until Spike kills her. Her silence is literal, & a lot harder for me to understand, even though she's there to illustrate Spike's story. Maybe her silence is more indicative of Spike's attitude toward her.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> on Nikki -- Vickie, 16:03:33 08/30/02 Fri
Yay, anom! I really like your concept of Nikki the Vampire Slayer!
Perhaps the reason Nikki doesn't speak in that scene is that there really is NO dialog? Spike doesn't speak to her either. The only talking is effectively a Spike narration. He even speaks directly to the camera (and presumably to Buffy) from the subway car.
It's as though the storytelling approach in FFL becomes more and more modern as the time portrayed does. William's vamping is very traditional and linear camera work (if I recall), while the Boxer Rebellion feels a little more choppy, as if the camera has started giving me a more subjective POV. By the time we're in the NY subway, Spike breaks the fourth wall and addresses us/Buffy directly. Maybe OnM or another cinematically inclined board denizen could comment--I'm definitely out of my depth here.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: on Nikki, et al -- redcat, 22:11:07 08/30/02 Fri
anom and Vickie, these are great posts! anom, I love your description of Nikki -- got a wickedly
delightful image of her poor watcher... (grin). And Vickie, I think what you note about the
camera work in these scenes is very, very interesting!! Good connections here to some of the
other posts lower down on the thread re silence, speech and POVs.
There are many interesting points throughout both of these posts. One comment of anom's
sparked me to think through something.... here's the result...I'm not sure that it really
addresses what you were saying though.... but maybe it's another piece of the puzzle?...
anom: "Are they women of color in order to be symbolic? Or is it just to show us that Slayers
have been called all over the world?"
I'm not sure this has to be an either/or situation, just as I'm not sure Joss initially (or for that
matter, ever) intended them to be symbolic, even though they can be interpreted
that way. I think socially "meaningful" markers of difference, like skin color and ethnicity,
necessarily work on many levels at the same time. They carry multiple messages, are rife with
sets of linked attributes that have historically been meaningful in the broader culture.
Audiences seem to learn to "read" these visual markers consciously or unconsciously, we learn
to "see" their supposedly-linked attributes in complex, multi-layered ways as we engage our
society's literature, media, art, political speech, etc. It's part of our "cultural literacy" as
westerners (this is different but also similar to what fresne writes below about the different
ways that memory/learning/understanding work in literate vs oral cultures).
So casting women from various ethnic groups to represent slayers from different time periods
and global regions, and then costuming and choreographing them to accurately reflect those
times/regions -- or at least to reflect what most of the show's viewers will likely assume is
accurate for those times/regions -- makes sense dramatically and visually on the screen. It's
an effective and appropriate way to graphically represent the historical and global reach of the
Slayer/Vampire dynamic, and helps create a relatively realistic and - importantly - recognizable
"universe" within which Buffy's story can occur.
But the specifics of these slayers' physical presentations, their ethnicity and skin color, the very
things that help make them such effective visual markers for those time periods/regions, the
very things that help make the slayers seem so "real" to us, are also deeply tied, at least in
western culture and in most Euro-American societies, to a whole range of other cultural, social
and historical "meanings." Some of these other "meanings," or perhaps "correlates" might be a
better word, are linked to symbolic value systems that are very hard to disrupt. That is, it's very
hard for an artist to divorce what he intends the representation to mean from its associated or
correlative constructions, either in his own text or in the minds/eyes of the viewers.
I think things like skin color and ethnicity are so deeply ingrained in western culture as markers
of social and cultural (and perhaps even historical) difference that they inevitably wind up
"working" symbolically AS markers of difference whether the artist consciously intends them to
or not, and perhaps especially so in not-well-developed characters. The power of the symbolic
presence of color as a marker of certain kinds of difference is so strong in our culture,
however, that it's actually difficult to construct a story about almost *any* kind of difference that
doesn't play, in some ways, on the culturally-assumed bi-polarity of black and white. It's no
accident that Faith isn't blond or that we can talk about her as being Buffy's "dark sister."
So when a serious, thoughtful artist like Joss winds up making a whole series of creative
decisions over a fairly long period of time that collectively result in 5 out of 6 non-Buffy slayers
being visually displayed as having exactly that one physical characteristic **other than
gender** (which is already in play in the story as a marker of difference since, hey, Buffy's "just
a girl") which, within western culture, has traditionally had the strongest, most difficult to
artistically disrupt, and most fixed set of correlate social attributes -- non-white skin -- then I
think it's reasonable to look simultaneously at that characteristic as being a not-very-
meaningful attribute of each individual slayer, a somewhat-meaningful cultural or social
attribute of each slayer and the slayers as a group, and a very-meaningful symbolic attribute of
the slayers as a group. And there are obviously lots of other ways to look at it, and them, as
well.
I also think it's fascinating that the one slayer other than Faith who is **narratively** described
as being most like Buffy is Nikki, rather than Kendra or the First, even though that linking
comes only from Spike's POV. Quotes from Psyche (with thanks, as always):
SPIKE (to Buffy) The first was all business but the second, she had a touch of your style.
(Spike and the Slayer [Nikki] trade blows. This Slayer does indeed fight much like Buffy. She
runs Spike headfirst into the train car's window, smashing it. Spike looses a cry of delight and
attacks again.
SPIKE (to Buffy) She was cunning, resourceful... oh, did I mention? Hot. I could have danced
all night with that one.
I haven't thought through all of what I make of this aspect of the tale yet, but I'm continuing to
find this set of conversations about these supposedly "minor" characters ***completely***
intriguing and wonderful!!
Thanks, again, Vickie and anom, and all the other posters in these great threads!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: on et al and further OT -- aliera, 08:01:19 08/31/02 Sat
another set of intriguing posts...thanks vickie, anom, redcat.
I was rereading some essays from the cg.jung.org\articles page (particularly Sue Austin's Women's agressive fantasties, Polly Young-Eisenrath's Pandora's Legacy in a Post-Modern World and An Interview with Allan Guggenbuhl on Adolescent Violence for a non-board related essay) ...and rereading the November archives and particularly a post from Age (www.ivyweb,net/btvs/board/archives/nov01_p5.html and the p5 is misleading...at least on my printer this printed @ 136 pages and Ages essay starts around p 80) and there are a couple of stray thoughts not specifically about the voice/words of the characters; but rather about different aspects of the characters that flash-flamed as I am rereading the threads. Just something to chew on for later.
1) Redcat mentions that Buffy is seen as a girl. All slayers are rooted in a concept of "taking back the night" and Buffy as a reversal of female roles in horror movies. I'm not sure about the choice for the boxer rebellion slayer (interesting that she has no name) but the choice of Nikki seems very timely for the period, deconstruction of more than just gender roles. They use primarily the stake (a male symbol) or sometimes Buffy uses the sword. Fun that we often see the double-headed axe (goddess) in the hands of men too. The slayers powers are displyed in the physical. As I said this doesn't actually relate to the words but the role and methods which struck me again when reading redcat's post. They have assumed male role and they are powerful. Age mentions that she sees this as a deconstruction of the power play between sexual predator/emasculator and the feminine in a patriachal society. There roots seem to reach to the heart of deconstruction. (This is on my mind because of the search for the feminine not as an assumption of the masculine but needing to go beyond that, probably very OT). If season six was a further deconstruction of this; season seven should be very interesting especially because Buffy is appearing as an adult not a girl. I will be very interested to see how ME trys to handle this given society's current struggles in this area.
2) We see two of the slayers only in the moments leading up to their deaths and we have no sense of their words before that (anom alludes to this with Niki). I also had the sense that Niki would not have been silent. Progression of the feminine role throuh time? Not much to work with here and of course we see these two scenes only through the eyes of the agent of their deaths; but I still sense that Spike got a piece of the slayer puzzle right although colored through his lens and understanding. I also find it interesting that he defines a reason for their defeat beyond his own abilities in terms of his own character. He needs to believe that he defeated them because they wished for death? Buffy's journey this season was in part about that wish also and again Spike was involved in her reconstruction.
3) I enjoyed Vickie's mention of the set and camera work. I hadn't been thinking about that aspect. The fights take place in enclosed spaces cavelike or that's my subliminal *feel* in trying to remember then. What room was the fight with the chinese girl? I remember it was dimly lit. dojo-like? There's fire of course but the room seems to eveoke earth to me. The train (subway?) is a very interesting a choice also; if subway, underground, female and earth/death/ rebirth comes to mind although train would invoke male and movement (and also memories of Risky Business but that's just me.)
3) I agree with redcat on the use of color as symbol; I think we've seen this type of thing often in the series. Sometimes the writers admit to intent sometimes not. And by the way does anyone remember who the boxer rebellion slayer apologized to? If it was her mother I think that is important. But the Primal Slayer seems in a category of her own. I see Kendra/Faith/Buffy as in one set, the boxer rebellion slayer and Nikki in an another because we only know them through Spike and the Primal slayer we know best through Buffy's eyes but revealingly through Buffy's dream and vision. To me this suggests an archtype interpretation for her and thus her *words* may really be Buffy's (or the words of Buffy's Other). This is supported by the use of Tara in Restless as the mediator between self and Other. In Intervention don't we have the cat (I apologize for faulty memory on this, perhaps someone else could add to it) and doesn't the First Slayer's message change? Archetype, I feel. Also, it would be interesting to take a look at Buffy's dreams in general over the course of the seasons; but that's for another thread.
This is all of the track of course. Thanks for your patience and the great posts. Just some stray thoughts I had while reading the above that I wanted to get down before they got lost.
best...angela
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> which slayers are silent -- anom, 15:38:42 08/30/02 Fri
There's another possible way of looking at which Slayers are silent. I don't mean to challenge the perspective discussed in this subthread, just raise an alternative one. I'm enjoying the discussion. Thanks, Masq, for bringing the thread back! & Vickie, please don't stop participating!
Looking over the list of non-Buffy Slayers we've seen or heard about, it strikes me that the ones who are "silent" in various ways can also be described as the noncontemporary Slayers, if "noncontemporary" is narrowly defined so that it excludes Nikki, the slayer in the 1970s. Both of the Slayers who are contemporary w/Buffy have no problem speaking, & speaking out. It's the ones who preceded them who we never hear, at least in a way we can understand, directly. If we categorize them this way, how does it affect our understanding of their silence?
Certainly Buffy can't talk to them (if you don't count dreams & visions); they all died before she was born, so they're silent to her. I don't know if there's any more to be said about this aspect, but if there is, I'm sure other posters will say it!
Are they women of color in order to be symbolic? Or is it just to show us that Slayers have been called all over the world? (The case of Buffy & Faith--2 Slayers from the same country separated only by one other--is probably very rare.) Are they "silent" to an audience mostly of English-speakers because they're women of color? Or is it because of who they were as individuals? The Chinese Slayer has been called "silent" because she speaks Chinese, which Spike doesn't speak & we understand only through a subtitle, but why would a young Chinese woman living at the time of the Boxer Rebellion speak English? The First Slayer speaks first through Tara, then for herself at Buffy's urging--but it's Buffy's dream, so is the First Slayer really speaking English? She wouldn't have in her lifetime--English didn't exist. We only hear about a Korean Slayer--we never see or hear her, so we don't even know if she spoke English or lived in Korea. Nikki is the only one we see & don't hear, in what is clearly a deliberate choice. From what we see, she doesn't look exactly docile--she's an Afro'ed black woman at the height of the Black Power movement, & I can't believe her Watcher never had any trouble getting her to toe the line. (I can picture her asking why she should bother protecting white people when they have the entire power structure to protect them--I'd love to know more of her story!) She fights aggressively, confidently, creatively...right up until Spike kills her. Her silence is literal, & a lot harder for me to understand, even though she's there to illustrate Spike's story. Maybe her silence is more indicative of Spike's attitude toward her.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Tangent - Spike (who else!?) -- Rahael, 03:15:53 08/29/02 Thu
Thank you both for this very interesting discussion.
Let me start off by saying that it is not only the silent slayers who get to be discussed as symbols. I want to address Spike's symbolic relationship with them, and how his voice frames them (as you both have pointed out). I think we can say that we never really know the past Slayers. We just know how Spike sees them. Silent. Seductive. Allowing him to kill them.
Many months ago I suggested that Spike could be seen as a symbol of Imperialism, of the Coloniser. Why do I think this? Well he's a white, Victorian Male, and in a seminal flashback ep, in Boxer rebellion China, we see the Fanged Four, looking very White, very European, in a country which is in the throes of colonial tension. (I'd say more if I did know more about the rebellion. Perhaps someone else could comment).
We see him battle the Foreign other. Not only in China, but also in New York, where he is the opposite to Nicky in many ways (white/black, British/American, Man/Woman, Vampire/Vamp Slayer). What does Spike do when he kills her? He steals her clothing. Does this represent a kind of appropriation of blackness? I'd say not. I'd say it's a kind of triumphant loot. The conqueror conquers and kills. Caesar didn't say "I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it".
I rewatched Pangs the other day. Isn't it interesting that the argument for "who cares, the winner takes all, this is what mankind is like" is made by Spike. Spike, who is closer to the British Empire than any of the others!! Whose family might conceivably have profited! Who might actually have an apology to make! The British Empire wasn't just built by the aristocracy. All sorts of people went over to make their fortune. No wonder Spike says "Who cares". Though he has a slightly more cynical reaction than most Victorians would I suppose they'd have justified it by saying that the Empire civilised the dark places of the world. But that wouldn't really stand up to the litany of abuses and atrocities that Willow recites in this particular case.
I'd also like to point to the way that Spike showcases his murders of the Slayers as a kind of favour to them. They wanted it. They wanted to dance with him. Many other people have already pointed out that FFL is completely from his perspective. We don't even know what really happened. This is just Spike's version of events. We catch as much a glimpse of the truth as we do of the fight scene in the flickering light of the speeding train.
These women are doubly silent.
a) Spike cannot understand them even if they speak he literally cannot understand the Chinese Slayer, and he imposes his own model on the fights (the dance of death)
b) and he silences them forever by breaking their necks, silencing the breath in their throats that might have allowed them to speak.
And Spike gets off on that silencing, and gets off on his imprisonment of these strong young women within the bars of his vision and his narrative. So we absolutely have to take the silence of the Slayers as a potent message, not about Slayers, but about Spike and the way he sees himself. It's instructive that the Ep gives Buffy the final voice. And what she does is not to dignify his self image with a fight she fatally undercuts his vision of himself. He is Œbeneath her'. He may present himself as a charismatic, fatally fascinating bringer of death for the Slayers but the final images sees him scrabbling around for Buffy's money. The dollar bills she flings at him contemptuously. I'm sure there are many who actually think Buffy's being a total bitca in that scene. How can she reject him? He's so in love with her! He's a fool for love! And she's the ice cold haughty lady that he pines after. But Buffy finally speaks for all the Slayers.
Which leads me onto the next point, which encompasses Cleanthes observation that the First Slayer is Œall'. All of mankind. In a similar way, I'd argue that Buffy is Œall'. She's all the Slayers that have come before. She has two bodies, just like the early modern Monarchs. There is the human, the Buffy who is Œjust a girl'. Then there's the Slayer. We cannot comprehend the source of her power. But by encompassing them all * within * her, and by subsuming them, and by being the greatest Slayer so far, she imprisons them in a way. She's what they've been building up to. And this progressivist idea is I think what redcat is getting at. Rather in the same way that Victorian Britain, through the school of Whig History regarded themselves as the final apogee of human civilisation. This society is what all of human history has been building up to. We're the greatest. Everything else is but a stepping stone. And all the previous Slayers are just there to teach Buffy how much Œbetter' she is than they are. She didn't get fooled by Spike. She didn't let him kill her. She doesn't sleep on a bed of bones, and has a much better grooming regimen besides (though far be it from me to look down on good self-presentation!). Even Kendra is there to teach Buffy why she's Œdifferent'. Better.
However, in that radical fusing of all the Slayers in one, there is a very * ahistorical * anti-linear trend as well. The First Slayer's cry, that she lives only in the action, that she is death and that is what she deals out into the world (echoing Hopkins' poem) is very reminiscent of Giles' observation of Buffy re her allergy to history : "History is of the then. Buffy is very much of the Œnow'" . Buffy, like all the other Slayers lives in the Œmoment'. It is hard for her to comprehend linear history because in her Slayer persona, she transcends it.
I'd say that redcat's identification of the Œprimal' Œrigidity' of the Other (oh, in so many ways!) Slayers is pretty key, because Buffy's conflict in most of the recent seasons has been an internal one, between the Œprimal/primitive/dark' power within, versus the ŒI'm just a girl who is burning with love'. The other Slayers are more rigid than Buffy, Because they are dominated by the desire for the kill and the fascination for death that Buffy manages to transcend. She transcends it by having friends and family who tie her to the earth. There's also a sense in which the First Slayer is pre-verbal because the darker forces within Buffy don't speak. They just act. The First Slayer is very much a symbol, because that's what * she * sees herself as. The First Slayer is action, not speech. She wouldn't have time to make the quips that Buffy does. The fact that Buffy frames her Slayer killings with words is in itself a very marked difference to the Other Slayers. They don't quip. They exist in and only in the action of death. The silent dance. Or maybe they did quip but Spike isn't about to let us hear them.
I don't think that BtVS present the other Slayers in a crude way, or a simplistic way or in an offensive way. I think it is quite complex and fascinating. Perhaps more complex than the writers bargained for.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Tangent to a tangent -- the brilliance of FFL -- Sophist, 09:28:29 08/29/02 Thu
FFL is completely from his perspective. We don't even know what really happened. This is just Spike's version of events.
Yes and no. Remember that the narrative begins with this: "I was always bad." And the scene shifts to a Victorian drawing room with nancy-boy William. Same thing happens with the next round: "I got myself a gang." Again, we see the falsity of this.
This disconnect provides us with some assurance that we may be seeing what "really" happened. Is this also true of the scenes with the 2 slayers? I can't say. We do have independent confirmation that Spike has actually killed 2 slayers (School Hard), so he's not just making it up. While we surely see the fights from his perspective, there just as surely is some truth to that. Of course, we need not accept his conclusion (that the slayers "wanted" to die), though it's plausible enough.
Notwithstanding my quibble over your reasoning, agree completely with your point that "... we absolutely have to take the silence of the Slayers as a potent message, not about Slayers, but about Spike and the way he sees himself."
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Buffy contains multitudes -- ponygirl, 10:00:51 08/29/02 Thu
Really fascinating stuff Rahael! It is especially interesting that you find a way around the troubling implications of Buffy being a progression from the previous slayers by suggesting that Buffy has transcended history. There are many instances where Buffy is shown to be outside the slayer tradition. In season 1 she is constantly rejecting her "birthright", Giles throws away the slayer handbook to deal with her, Buffy fires the Council, and most significantly of all IMHO Buffy is a slayer outside the current line of succession.
"But by encompassing them all * within * her, and by subsuming them, and by being the greatest Slayer so far, she imprisons them in a way."
Perhaps Buffy's true role is to end the tradition, to move completely beyond history and destiny and predetermined roles.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy contains multitudes -- redcat, 11:50:00 08/29/02 Thu
"Perhaps Buffy's true role is to end the tradition, to move completely beyond history and destiny and predetermined roles."
Which was perhaps among Slain's points when he started this thread on existentialism way up there on the board. There have been wonderful insights throughout from all the posters here, as we've collectively spiraled, circled and danced (sometimes backwards!) across these topics.
Thanks, Slain, for getting us started!!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Yes, yay for Slain! -- ponygirl, 12:14:37 08/29/02 Thu
Sometimes in these long threads it's hard to remember where it all started, we end up like the Scoobies in Slain's essay, going off on our individual paths. So many great sub-threads certainly owes to the richness of the initial post!
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Tangent - Spike (who else!?) -- leslie, 12:00:09 08/29/02 Thu
"a) Spike cannot understand them even if they speak he literally cannot understand the Chinese Slayer, and he imposes his own model on the fights (the dance of death)
b) and he silences them forever by breaking their necks, silencing the breath in their throats that might have allowed them to speak.
And Spike gets off on that silencing, and gets off on his imprisonment of these strong young women within the bars of his vision and his narrative. So we absolutely have to take the silence of the Slayers as a potent message, not about Slayers, but about Spike and the way he sees himself."
First of all, this is a fascinating reading of what Spike's *original* Slayer obsession is all about. But I think it can go further, to discuss what happens to Spike as a result of his falling in love with Buffy. Brief backtrack, though--let's not just look at Spike's relationship with Slayers, but with his lovers and *their* speech. One of the things he constantly reiterates about Dru is how he loved the way she talked--that she was completely insane, that she didn't see anything closely resembling literal reality, but she saw--and spoke--to the deeper reality, to prophecy and vision. And here we don't have to take his word for it--we see whenever Spike and Dru are together that he has an almost infinite patience for her meanderings, and when he snaps at her (because he has things to do, plans to make, information to acquire) he is immediately remorseful. In contrast, he can hardly bear to listen to a word that Harmony has to say; their entire relationship is a tension between their mutual sexual desire and her desire to talk and his absolute refusal to listen. Over the course of the series, we see Spike kill a number of other vamps, but they're always in a battle context--casualties of war; Harmony is the only one he could be said to try to murder, and he is driven to it by the need to just shut her the hell up, stop this endless stream of meaningless words--there is a sense that he perceives her constant yammering as an attack, and responds to it the way he responds to a physical attack. (The whole issue of whether Harmony has anything meaningful to communicate and what her desire to be heard means is another essay altogether.)
William is a dreamy poet who lives entirely in his head; Spike is a purely physical creature who relates to the world almost entirely through his body ("fists and fangs"); the fulcrum between these two identities and modes of being is Drusilla, whom he loves very physically but whom he values for her visionary speech. It's as though in becoming a vampire, he ceded whatever poetic talent he had to her--she was able to speak the things he was grasping for as William, but able to do it better. In a way, he thereby acknowledges her authority as a speaker--a voice of insanity.
The Slayers, charged with protecting humanity from vampires and other supernatural beings, are responsible for patrolling the borders of reason and preventing "madness" from incursing on the human world. What happens when Buffy first starts "seeing" vampires? Her parents put her in a mental hospital--thereby mistakenly equating Buffy's perception with Dru's. Although the Slayers operate under the guidance of a council of patriarchal males (and patriarchally affiliated females--the women we see in the Council are all decidedly upper-class), the Slayers themselves are marginal from this British colonialist center--black (Nikki, Kendra), Asian (the Chinese Slayer), working class (Faith), Californian (Buffy), all not just female but pre-adult, about as disenfranchised as you can get from the Council's point of view. This kind of makes some sense--the margin is being patrolled by people who are marginal themselves; they're close to "the Other" already. They're also readily expendible (except to their individual Watchers, as Giles points out when he suggests that the reason Watchers' diaries end with the deaths of their Slayers not because there's nothing more to say, but because they are so devastated that they cannot speak--they have now taken on their Slayers' silence).
Drusilla's mad speech is the essence of her femaleness. There's something about her that's like the Delphic oracle, a woman who produced mad, incoherent, prophetic speech that had to be interpreted by male priests. When Dru was alive, society tried to silence her prophetic dreams; when Angel drove her mad, he released her from her need to conform to societal expectations of proper female speech. What Dru *and* Harmony both gain by becoming vampires is the freedom to speak, and thus contrast with the silent Slayers, who by their subordination to the Council are cut off from the wellspring of female speech--framed as the supernatural, the demonic, the irrational.
But getting back to Spike, he seems initially to recognize three different kinds of female speech: the insane, visionary speech of Drusilla, the meaningless speech of Harmony, and the silence of Slayers. Part of what flummoxes him about Buffy is that she doesn't fit in to that schema, and when *speaking* with her, he speaks as he would to another man. She, for her part, prefers it that way--she wants their sex to be nonverbal, she doesn't want him to call her "pet" or "love," she leaves when they "actually have a conversation." Part of what is so frustrating about the relationship between Spike and Buffy (for them, and for the audience) is this inability for them to speak. And this is in sharp contrast to Buffy's mode of fighting, when she's talking, and quipping, all the time. Her love-making with Spike is (verbally) more like his fighting with other Slayers than his sex with Dru or Harmony.
Turning back to "Fool for Love," Spike tells Buffy a story. He tries to communicate to her what he perceives to be the truth--or what he wants to be the truth--about Slayers. She rejects, not just him, but his narrative. She refuses to hear it just has he refused to hear Harmony. He reacts by determining to silence *her* with a shotgun (and refusing to listen to Harmony's for-once-reasonable objections along the way). What stops him is not Buffy's speech, but her tears, and what he offers her is silence. He asks her what's wrong, and she doesn't want to talk about it, so he simply stays with her. Although the narrative portion of "Fool for Love" ends with Buffy having the final word, the episode as a whole ends with them both silent, both having silenced the other.
William is a product of Victorian imperialism, but Spike is a "rebel," and that Victorian imperialism is part of what he is rebelling against. The question of his "silencing" Slayers is complicated by his infatuation with Dru's mad speech, I think. He attacks Slayers as part of his rebellion, in their role as the agents of the (patriarchal, imperialist) Council. Slayers are supposed to silence the supernatural, even if it silences them along the way. I don't think Spike questions this until after Dru has left him and after he has encountered a very speech-y Slayer.
Spike wants to hear women's words, and he wants them to be meaningful. The cruelest thing Buffy does to him is refuse to speak to him. He winds up having sex with Anya because she speaks to him about her pain over Xander--he doesn't make an actual move toward her until she admits to him that their conversation has been meaningful for her. Although Spike may unreflectingly enact colonialist attitudes towards the Other in his battles with Slayers, these Slayers seem to be already silenced before he reaches them. (Think about the way that Kendra's Watcher prevents her from speaking with others, her confusion when Xander tries to talk to her, her submissive demeanour to male authority which entails keeping her eyes down and *not talking back.* And Kendra falls victim to of all people Dru, the woman who speaks, and who hypnotizes her with her words.) From the Slayers' point of view, Spike is the irrational supernatural Other that they are required to silence, and this death wish that he elucidates for Buffy is *their* "love that dare not speak its name." This isn't exactly where I thought I was going with this when I started writing, but the fact that Spike *does* value Dru for her speech seems to me to argue that his killing of silent Slayers is a warning of the dangers for women of acquiescing in their silencing, of being cut off from the source of their speech; in such a worldview, women's speech can only be insane. Things start to change when he encounters a woman who can speak and who is not insane.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> KA-BOOM!!!!! Incredible post, Leslie!! -- redcat, almost breathless and still taking it all in.., 12:10:56 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> I'm just... speechless. Leslie you rock! -- ponygirl, 12:33:37 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Magnifiscent post -- Ete, 08:02:01 08/30/02 Fri
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> The Liminal Slayer -- Rahael, 08:16:05 08/30/02 Fri
This is excellent!!
I especially love the parts where you talk about patrolling the borders of reason, and the silence that is enforced upon the Slayers. It seems to underline the liminal status of the Slayer. The fact that so many of them die so young, between the threshold of childhood and adulthood, that they inhabit a space between two different worlds, and negotiate their way through the paradox of life and death. Buffy's entry into adulthood is such a painful process, that it was metaphorically represented by the idea of dying. And it seems fitting that she was 'reborn' through the grave.
There has been discussion of historiography. One thing that stood out for me in this thread was Fresne's point: that the Slayers, like so many other women are marked only by their silence in the historical record. For their lives are delineated by their Watchers, through the Diaries.
Well, it seems that after all the words that kept wanting to bubble out from me yesterday morning, I have no more. I'll have to return to the liminal Slayer at another date. So I'll borrow someone elses:
The Cool Web
Children are dumb to say how hot the day is,
How hot the scent is of the summer rose,
How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,
How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.
But we have speech to chill the angry day,
And speech to dull the rose's cruel scent.
We spell away the overhanging night,
We spell away the soldiers and the fright.
There's a cool web of language winds us in,
Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:
We grow sea-green at last and coldly die
In brininess and volubility.
But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,
Throwing of language and its watery clasp
Before our death, instead of when death comes,
Facing the wide glare of the children's day,
Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,
We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.
Robert Graves
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Hmmm...a post with a lot of words about silence -- fresne, 13:20:48 08/29/02 Thu
Once, again you are all too brilliant for words, which as you go further, you'll see that that is an odd place for me to begin. I'd thank you all, but I really ought to be spending my lunch sewing and not writing, and look the sun is shining even. Oh, well.
I'd offer particular (un)thanks to Rahael and redcat, but really this mélange is everyone on this sub-thread's fault. I'm an addict, I take no responsibility for my own long windedness.
It is unfortunate there is only the one scene in common between FFL and Darla. The subtle, but significant, differences between Angel's memory of the conversation on the street and Spike's, underscores how Spike's perspective and knowledge colors his narration. Not that those events didn't happen, merely that Spike, like all narrators, has a personal bias. Although, it is interesting that the Boxer Rebellion Slayer gets sub-titles. Thus we, the privileged viewer, may read what Spike - Victorian, Imperialist, Vampire - cannot hear and comprehend. And what is therefore lost, that Slayer's mother never knows that her last thoughts were of her.
As you point out, Buffy - Modern, Woman, Vampire Slayer - quite rightly takes the story back at the end of the fight scene in FFL. It is after all her story, although not in a NA (unless it really is) sort of way.
However, FFL ends not in words or silence, but on a shared exhalation of breath. A long sigh, while the background music ends on an unfinished melodic line. The sigh is interesting because Spike does not breathe for life. His unlife depends on blood not air. Buffy needs both. Tangentially more on that concept later.
However, before I get started, given some of the previous discussion of Eden, religion, Christianity, etc., I want to throw out a few backgrounding, my personal bias, thoughts on words, silence and silencing..
In medieval Western European Christianity (and probably other places, but via Dante I've actually done some reading here), there was an emphasis on the creative aspect of God's words, "Let there be light and there was light" and so forth. Sometimes the differentiation between the word of God and God as a word can get a bit sticky. Also, God breathes the breath of life into Adam and Adam lives. Because sometimes it's not about blood; sometimes it's about oxygen. To quote one of my favorite authors who's up for another Hugo (go Lois), "(air)You don't miss it until it's gone."
Words and names were perceived to have power and well, they kind of do. Otherwise, we wouldn't argue over them so much. The power to name things was and is the power to define them. In the Romance of Silence, the main character's gender is defined to others based on what name she is using. Silence (doesn't say anything), Silentia (female) or Silentius (male). When one group gets to name another, you end up with the Cymru (Welsh) being cranky because the word Wales is an old English word for foreigner or slave. OB:BtVS, as someone pointed out in an earlier thread, Restless Riley and Adam (like his namesake) name things versus Tara and Willow who allow their kitten to name itself.
The attempt to silence someone, whether we're talking Philomela in Metamorphoses, Lavinia in Titus Andronicus, or Christian martyrs in way too many descriptions of Saints lives, is/was an attempt to take away that someone's power to communicate and to defend themselves. I have, of course, stacked the deck with my examples; there are other ways to communicate.
When the Gentlemen came to town, pale rictus faced men, they stole everyone's voices so people wouldn't be able to cry out (communicate their distress) or defend themselves (scream). Buffy and Co. found other ways to "speak." After all, that's what I'm doing right now. Except of course, by the time you read this, my now won't be your then and for that matter, just who would the you be? But I digress.
Books, especially in a medieval clerical culture where books were expensive (velum ain't cheap), hard to make (books were copied by hand), and only a few people could read them, had on additional mystic significance as storehouses of words.
Suddenly, Giles' attitude towards books strikes me as very clerical as opposed to printing press. It's the difference between books a precious individuals and books as cheap (wood pulp paper), easy to make (printing presses are much faster than a guy/gal with a pen), and you know, increased literacy. After all, Giles never seems to expect anyone to come into the library to check out a book. Only the few, the proud, the Scoobies are expected to pour over the rarified knowledge contained therein.
And just for kicks, I'll throw in that there is a tension between written and spoken word. Just as there is between sound and silence. We, the few the proud, the overly literate, just don't notice it so much. However, a number of early Greek writer types wrote about their fears of the effects of passing from an oral to a literate culture. See Plato's Phaedrus (I think, it's been awhile), for a very funny discussion on the subject. Consider the differences between speaking to someone in person, speaking over the phone, writing an essay, writing a post to a board like this, and then back round the horn to chat.
So, on one hand the Slayers, mentioned in the series, and quite a few unmentioned ones, are part of an on-going written record. Their lives are recorded in the Watcher's Guides. On the other hand, their stories are unknown. They do not write their own stories and Watchers, as we are told in FFL, rarely record the Slayer's final moments. Also, there is no way for Slayer and reader to interact. It is literally a dead exchange of ideas. And on yet another hand, Buffy, generally speaking, doesn't read rely on descriptions of other Slayers. She has other ways of knowing. Dreams and flashes of intuition. Buffy doesn't need to understand all of the time, she just needs to understand at the right time. Slayers, generally speaking, never meet, never speak, and yet by instinct know how to fight, flavored with their own personalities. I wonder if handbooks aren't just wishful thinking on Watcher's parts. An on yet another hand, Buffy's tendency towards silence and repression gets her into trouble sometimes.
In a, as Existentialism has been explained thus far, way, I wonder if Buffy's problem in FFL is that she's looking to external sources rather than relying on her intuitive connection to her own nature.
Also, when I was listing Slayers who are silenced, I forgot something. As previously stated, but with more rambling this time:
" Kendra's throat (i.e., from whence the voice emergence and through which breath travels) is cut by a white woman. See, Leslie's darn cool post on speech, Drucilla, Kendra, etc.
" Nikki's neck is broken by a white man who is sitting on top of her.
" The First Slayer existed before speech. Admittedly, she can speak, but that's not how she chooses to represent herself. She self identifies by function without name. Again, I consider the irony of writers writing about how writing can be bad. If the First Slayer wants to communicate her position, speech, friends, etc=bad, she has to speak to do it.
" Boxer Rebellion, is killed by a white man who drinks from her neck and doesn't understand her speech.
" Korean Slayer, who is only known through another's narrative. What's interesting is that the demon hunter mentions her ethnicity at all and a very specific ethnicity. Not Asian, not Oriental (well, he is from the 30s), but very specifically Korean. Why? Don't know. But , there it is.
" But let's not forget some Slayers fairly central to the story, the Slayer with her own anvil. Wait, no, Faith and Buffy.
Faith, at a crucial plot point, moves from active speech to inactive coma. For a time, she and Buffy communicate. Walls collapse and it doesn't matter whose dream it is. However, Buffy wakes. Faith is left to walk and talk in dreams alone. Not that it lasts. Not that Faith does not ultimately escape the circumscription of her own mind. Lets consider it a year in solitary and move on.
In PG, Buffy journeys into the Master's womb like cave/sunken church and as is foretold in prophecy, the Master kills her. He drinks from Buffy's neck and throws her into a pool of water where she drowns. Sometimes it's about both blood and oxygen. It is at this point that Buffy breaks from the line of Slayers, which moves on to Kendra and Faith. It is also the point at which she breaks from what is foretold. When Whistler says that no one saw Buffy coming in Becoming, I take that to mean that she was supposed to stay dead. That Angel was supposed to kill the Master and then go on to do great Champion like things.
Except no one saw Xander coming. Angel may be the greater fighter, but he lacks what Xander has, the breath of life. Through Xander's breath, the Master's theft of Buffy's wit, words, life, is transformed into a baptism. With the water of her second birth expelled from her lungs, Buffy wakes stronger and with greater focus.
As a brief aside, the Hellmouth itself makes me think of (hmmm, I can't remember which First Nation group.) the origin legend in which in the beginning times, humans and these indescribably horrific creatures once lived in total darkness. The creatures preyed on the humans and it sucked to be us. Eventually, the humans were able to crawl out of that world into the light and were born into a new world. There's quite a bit more to the story, and several more worlds. However, one key point is that the creatures wait hungrily in the darkness for our return.
I'd like to briefly and faintly draw some lines (I don't think they get to be parallel at this point) between what redcat and Rahael had to say about the linear progression in the series, the MEverse's twist on humanity's origins as crawling out of hell, rather than falling from Eden with Buffy's emergence from the hell womb back into world. Not the same, but different from when she went in.
All of which is an incredibly long winded way to say, yeah, wrapping my brain around Buffy as ultimate individual, Buffy as one of many, as uncommunicative, as silenced, as speaking with and without words, makes my head hurt.
Perhaps it's time to review OnM's Kwisatz Haderach theory.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> This is indeed the sub-thread of the gods -- ponygirl, 13:49:23 08/29/02 Thu
My neck is starting to hurt from my head being snapped back constantly in amazement. All I can offer, fresne, in response to your final thoughts on Buffy as the individual who contains so many is a quote from the quiet man himself, Oz:
"I am my thoughts. If they exist in her, Buffy contains everything that is me and she becomes me. I cease to exist.
No one else exists either. Buffy is all of us. We think. Therefore, she is."
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Agreeing with ponygirl -- aliera, 14:33:18 08/29/02 Thu
Amazing!
SoM #52
I too am not a bit tamed...I too am untranslatable,
The last scud of the day hold back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadowed wilds,
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you
I would truley love to see some of these threads pulled together into one piece and saved...they are exceptional.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Okay, not sure where to go with this, but if we're talking about speech and silence: HELL-MOUTH???? -- leslie, 13:57:27 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> And Acathla -- ponygirl, 09:28:19 08/30/02 Fri
... the ultimate in waiting to exhale.
Some mouths are meant to remain closed, their messages forever unspoken and unheard.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Water, blood, earth, fire (Spoilers for all Season incl.6) -- Rahael, 08:48:16 08/30/02 Fri
So many excellent points as usual!
I particularly love the point about Faith - Faith sinks into a coma, and Buffy finally *communicates* with her as never before. They talk through dreams, through symbols, through the action of a kiss on a forehead. (Linking into the theme of silence as a potent form of communication, in Hush).
Their last significant, dramatic encounter was bloody - a bloody knife, bloodied hands. And Buffy goes back to Angel and has a silent moment of ecstasy when she offers him *her* own blood, the blood that should have been Faith's. I always saw it in a way, as a sign of Buffy and Faith's twinness. And the moment that Faith wakes up from that coma, she is drawn irresistably back to Buffy, and takes over her body.
You also point to the water that Buffy was baptised in by the Master. Buffy also has a second baptism, in Season three - "Bad Girls". Doug Petrie says that he wanted both to hearken back to the original baptism/death in Season 1, and to signify Buffy emerging a different person. More like Faith.
You also point out that Buffy is both known for her witty word play, and for her silence and repression (including the catatonia in Spiral). Leslie points out that Spike and Buffy just cannot communicate - but this is also a feature of Buffy's relationship with Riley. The two hum and haw, and are awkward around each other, until the imposed silence of Hush allows them to just kiss each other. When their voices return, they stare at each other awkwardly.
Blood, air, water - these, as you point out are the stuff of life. Then there's the image of earth, which we first see in the deserts of Restless, and in the mud that Buffy smears on her face. Perhaps it links the Slayer even more closely to the idea of 'Death'(dust to dust). And then there's the everpresent symbol of fire, as something which seems to represent life, and passion.
Just one final thought. You mention words as being powerful - and this is made explicit in BtVS because of Spells. I think of Anya, hidden, but speaking, speaking words she didn't understand, to protect the world. I also think how Willow crosses a boundary of self, by liquefiying words, and drawing them into herself.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Water, blood, earth, fire (Spoilers for all Season incl.6) -- leslie, 09:29:04 08/30/02 Fri
It strikes me that there's been a lot written about the use of language in BtVS, most of it focussing on the "slang" of the SG (not sure I would call it "slang" in the strictest sense), but this subthread makes me realize that there's a hell of a lot to be said about language and speech in general in the series. One thing that seems to get missed in the whole "metaphors made real" discussion of Buffyverse monsters is that in the Buffyverse, there is no "gap between signifier and signified" as the structural linguists put it--words really do indicate and encompass the reality of the things they label. (Quoting from memory here: Buffy: "Mom was so excited her head spun around 360 degrees and exploded." Giles: "I've been living on the Hellmouth too long. You did mean that metaphorically?")
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Water, blood, earth, fire (Spoilers for all Season incl.6) -- fresne, 12:07:30 08/30/02 Fri
HmmmŠmore random thoughts, which also somewhat tie into the "Ideas, Words and Understanding" sub, sub, sub, sub thread above.
Willow is a highly literate person and is someone very immersed in a literate way of thinking. When studying she underlines everything. She's intelligent, curious, knows lots of information. She learns. She memorizes. She looks things up.
When she liquefies the knowledge in those spell books, absorbs the spells through her skin into her eyes, the spells go from being infinitely reusable, to exhaustible when Willow when the "power" runs out. The books are empty, although the ink stains on Willow remain even when she moves from draining books to draining people.
In a literate world, knowledge stored in books has a sort of permanence. We can know more than people in oral cultures, because we (the individual) don't have to know anything. It's written down somewhere. We can have larger vocabularies because words don't die in the same way, they are recorded in documents and stories and ultimately assembled and cataloged in dictionaries.
Of course, it's a two way street, or possibly a multi lane highway with a cement spaghetti interchange. As Albert Lord discusses in The Singer of Tales, one of the consequences of a shift from an oral to a literate culture is individuals, hmmmŠhow do I put this, they aren't trained to store as much or in the same way. Most people in a literate culture could not recite the Illiad by heart, because it would require a way of thinking that we don't, as literate people, do and requires a method of interaction with information that is, well, different.
Anya can recite words that she doesn't understand because she doesn't have to understand them. She doesn't have to have a connection to them to them in order to remember them in a long term way. They are written down in a book. Read the text. Say it aloud. Repeat indefinitely. And yet the words themselves must be exact. While reciting the spell, Grey Eyed Athena cannot be interchanged with Bounteous Athena,* because the words are written down and that's the way they have to be.
*In oral cultures, story tellers use something called epithets. Basically, they are place holders in the story that allow the speaker to have time to remember what comes next. Thus saying the words wine dark sea, or wily Ulysses or Brave Diomides, allow the speaker to remember just what Ulysses or Diomides are supposed to do next.
And thinking briefly again on the First Slayer. As someone who existed before speech, whose thought patterns needs must be shaped by the absence of language, hmmmŠhow inadequate to describe anything as something to be described only by the absence, even as she speaks, she is the person whose thoughts are trained to follow other methods of communication. Just as I suppose someone from an oral culture learning to read would not necessarily cease to think like someone raised in an oral culture.
By the way, the post title is very appropriate. Tonight, at Worldcon, my friends and I will be dressed as elementals. My costume is a firebird.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> filming in tongues -- redcat, 23:40:54 08/30/02 Fri
"she [the First Slayer] is the person whose thoughts are trained to follow other methods of
communication. Just as I suppose someone from an oral culture learning to read would not
necessarily cease to think like someone raised in an oral culture."
This reminds me so much of a story I've heard a number of times in (academic) film criticism
circles. In fact, it's so much of an urban legend in those circles that I can't even remember
where/when I heard/read it first. Like all good urban legends, though, it has a kernel of truth at
its core. It goes something like this:
During the Carter administration (mid-70s), a hot young indie film-maker went to a Navaho
reservation in New Mexico (or Arizona, depends on who's telling the story...) to teach Native
teenagers to "make their own movies about their own experiences" (this is usually described in
the story as being "one of those liberal do-gooder type things"). The govt gave him a couple of
old military-surplus cameras and some black-and-white film stock. He worked with the Navajo
teens all summer filming their stories, and then they and he co-edited them into a series of
short movies. At the community's New Year's celebration, the teens proudly showed their
movies to their families and friends. The film-maker noticed that a large number of the older
and more traditional folks were politely walking out as soon as "their" teen's movie was shown.
He finally asked one of them why the people, especially the older people, weren't staying.
Didn't they like the movies? Hadn't his students captured the Navajo experience? The
grandmother of one of his students looked kindly at him and said, through an interpreter, that
the movies were great, but they were in English and she didn't speak English, only Navajo, so
she couldn't really understand them. Aha!, said the film-maker, just before he remembered
that the films were all silent....
Film grammar is as much a language as language itself. Everything from how a shot is
framed to what it contains to what kind of story it can tell must necessarily "work" in ways its
audience can understand. This is true of all art. Innovative art, art that breaks with tradition,
must simultaneously teach its audience *how* to see it, as well as *what* they are seeing with
that new way of looking.
Here in the Pacific, a small group of radical film and video makers are trying to create/discover
a uniquely "Polynesian" film grammar that doesn't require them to use the types of symbols,
film-grammatical constructions, etc, that work in western film. They're doing this for at least
two reasons: they consider western media itself one of the "colonizing strategies" of what they
think of as intrusively hegemonic western culture. Also, they're attempting to bring their own
cultures "into the modern world," one in which artists work in mediums like film and video, but
seek to do so while remaining "true" to their own cultures' artistic, visual and narrative heritages.
It's very difficult going, and it may be impossible, since language cannot be consciously un-
learned. Western, and specifically American, film grammar has become the template for most
world cinema (although Indian cinema is beginning to give it a run for it's money in many parts
of the non-western world). And American visual styles are somewhat less dominant in global
television and video production, particularly the further one gets from American-dominated
economic systems. But the impact of western media grammar is unmistakable in the work of
film-makers and videographers from places as diverse as Thailand, Kenya and Iran, and even
more so in sites like Hawai'i or Aotearoa/New Zealand where western culture continues to
predominate over the indigenous ones.
When I started thinking about this, somehow it was going to link to the ways BtVS "uses"
things as diverse as religious symbols, philosophy and ethnicity to create meaning for its
audience, and the cultural and film-grammar constraints ME must work within to do so. But
somehow those connections wandered away while I was busy thinking about Navajo
teenagers living on reservations lifting old, bulky, 45-pound military cameras onto their
undernourished shoulders and walking out into the desert to film their (silent) lives....
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> A correction of myself, and a general wow! -- Rahael, 14:34:40 08/29/02 Thu
Well, I must say I feel very honoured! I haven't had such a satisfying response (i.e lots and lots of discussion) for one of my posts for an age!
It's late in Britain, my brain isn't functioning so I'll produce more intelligent responses tomorrow but just a quick correction - as Sophist, Leslie and others have pointed out, the FFL I discuss is truncated - I start when Spike takes over the narrative, and end before the ep does. Which is completely me not checking the script before writing the post! How irritating of me! It seems very important that the ep actually ends with a mutual, non-combative silence, and that Spike decides to do away with the fancy artistry and takes a gun to kill Buffy. But her tears freeze him as effectively as the Other Slayers' 'death wish' freezes them in the moment when they stare death in the face.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> moment & silence -- anom, 16:15:15 08/30/02 Fri
Great post, Rahael! Wish I'd read it before posting my "which slayers are silent" post (above). I said:
"Certainly Buffy can't talk to them (if you don't count dreams & visions); they all died before she was born, so they're silent to her. I don't know if there's any more to be said about this aspect, but if there is, I'm sure other posters will say it!"
But you already had:
"However, in that radical fusing of all the Slayers in one, there is a very * ahistorical * anti-linear trend as well. The First Slayer's cry, that she lives only in the action, that she is death and that is what she deals out into the world (echoing Hopkins' poem) is very reminiscent of Giles' observation of Buffy re her allergy to history : 'History is of the then. Buffy is very much of the Œ"now"' . Buffy, like all the other Slayers lives in the 'moment'. It is hard for her to comprehend linear history because in her Slayer persona, she transcends it."
And certainly in Primeval (I think it was called; the ep before Restless) Buffy is in communication w/all the other Slayers before her. (Side note: was she also in communication w/Kendra?...Faith, who was still alive?) But other than that, she's in the "now"; maybe that's why the previous Slayers are silent to her.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Rah - Thank You for this wonderful post -- Dochawk, 18:24:43 08/30/02 Fri
You made me come out of my self-imposed exile of posting because I agree with this so much.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: -- aliera, 14:36:36 08/28/02 Wed
Strange to see Hopkins...I was reading him yesterday after the sonnets...pressed for time for writing but a twist to the thread on a tangent for mymind is not for grasping god; wise joss not to try.
The Golden
There is one, yes I have one (Hush there!)
Only not within seeing of the sun,
Not within the singing of the strong sun,
tall sun's tingeing, or treachertous the tainting of the earth's air,
Somewhere elsewhere there is ah well where! one,
Where whatever's prized and passes of us, everything
that's fresh and fast flying of us, seems to us sweet
of us and swiftly done away with, done away with, undone
undone, done with, soon done with and yet dearly and dangerously sweet
Nay, what we had lighthanded left in surly the mere mould
Will have waked and have waxed and have walked with the wind while we slept,
This side, that side hurling a heavyhanded hundredfold
What while we, while we slumbered.
Oh then weary then why should we tread? Oh why are we
so haggard at the heart?
When the thing we freely forfeit is kept with fonder a care,
Far with fonder a care (and we, we should have lost it)
finer, fonder
A care kept. Where kept? Do but tell us where kept, where--
Yonder. What as high as that? We follow, now we follow
Yonder, yes yonder, yonder,
Yonder.
Jesuitical...poetry as an appreciation of beauty and grandeur and gratefulness of generosity of his god and sharing, evoking resonating in lush feel this imploding words. description excitement praise a moving moment like a religious vision not just of the cold perfection of a statue but the quaint quirky the peciliar the transient most admired also when twisting gnarled bent curved against the sky and that it is never still always changing and full of sap of life blowing and blssoming and bending and shining and agitated within infinate combinations spiraling and meeting and ceasing and beginning.
Peculiar eccentric made up words repeated repeated words bursting with too many words odd individual alliterative internally-rhyming spiraling twisting recombining dialect archaic words putting movement and motion and moment together in a new a birth a stop an instance fleeting. Hush look feel. Become breathless from the words. Make the words hold it all actually contain the essence the feel the taste the sound of birds clouds trees rivers the land the little as a great gift full of change charge life.
Glory be to God for dappled things--
For skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow:
for rose moles a in a stipple unpon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-fall; finches wings;
landscape plotted and pierced--fold, fallow and plough;
And all trades and their gear tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange:
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour, adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change
From sleeping on the Wing by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell, all ham handed editing and recombining to be blamed on me!
A naming of the numinous too tricky creating the visual of all of us (and the interesting thoughts!) holding our piece of the elephant as each blind man in the tale seeking seeking the understanding. Wise Joss to evoke the feeling without the concrete boots of defining. Lovely thread all.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> aahhh!!! breathless words like vermillion dragons dashing gently aloft... -- rc, appreciating Hopkins even more deeply now -- thank you!, 15:00:15 08/28/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Thanks, or just too much puppy, I think ;-) -- aliera, 06:23:40 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Just Lovely! -- Rahael, 03:53:14 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Existentialist Christianity and some other stuff -- fresne, 11:24:24 08/28/02 Wed
While until she says something on the subject, I'm not sure I have an opinion on Buffy - Christian or Not, film at 11:00 - once again I have to compliment the board for raising some interesting ideas.
I can't say that I'd ever heard of Existentialist Christianity. But I rather like the sound of it, so it would seem more research is calling my name.
Part of the ambiguity, is that Christianity, as with so many religions when they reach a "certain" age, is it is incredibly theologically diverse. One text (with some additions and deletions), many interpretations. The gulf between say Catholics (priests who don't marry, confession, a pope, dancing and drinking okay), Unitarians (Lesbian ministers who have commitment ceremonies, mixed religious symbols up on the back wall for a reason) and Shakers (no sex at all, some dancing, no drinking, but seriously into technological innovation in their day) is pretty vast. However, they all share the name Christian. And those are just a few of the many splinters. Note: I am a Christian; don't have a kind, in as much as I can never seem to agree with any minister's interpretation of the text. Or for that matter what should be considered text. Whatever.
I'm more inclined to see Buffy and Angel as Christ-like figures. Thus those who want to glean a Christian message from the text can and those who don't want to don't have to.
So on one hand it is a cultural thing and ME is taking advantage of symbols imbedded in their/our subconscious and conscious minds.
Yet, I can't help but think, in that ME is creating a complex, myth is the wrong word, epic tale, that in some inexplicable way, ME reaches towards some sort of religious (or if it sounds better spiritual) conclusion.
The insistence on this ephemeral, intangible, what the heck is it thing, a soul, being necessary for redemption. Redemption as a desirable end, as opposed to say reformation. Buffy's statement to Adam, with his concrete world of definitions, that he cannot comprehend her nature. The implication that the world cannot be comprehended in the concrete, the defined.
I love that Buffy rejects the First Slayer, refusing to be so finitely defined, and yet later re-engages with the First Slayer for spiritual refreshment. The First Slayer herself sliding the spectrum from a pitiless avatar sleeping on a bed of bones to a spirit guide who by faint firelight in the desert darkness gives clues to revelation.
Perhaps, the puma that led Buffy into the desert was Miss Kitty Fantastico all gown up, thus resolving that mystery.
Although, wacky S7 speculation to follow, if the Big Bad turns out to be a chick named Hope, who shoots people with her ray beam eyes, which she calls Charity (she's giving it away after all.). And her defeat necessitates the return of Faith and the season ends in a big love fest, well, then I might tip towards a BtVS in which the sub-text has just become text.
Then again a carpenter saved the world with love in S6, so maybe (definitely) ME just wants to mess with my mind. To which I reply, please may I have some more.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> hmmm...clarification -- fresne, 11:41:31 08/28/02 Wed
HmmmŠthought I might clarify that I don't think that all Unitarian ministers are lesbians or for that matter women, merely that they can be and for that matter they can and do perform commitment ceremonies for members of the congregation who so desire. A choice not always available in some other branches of the Christian faith.
See, sects of a larger religious persuasion so complex, they can't be boiled down into one sentence descriptions.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: hmmm...clarification -- redcat, 12:42:38 08/28/02 Wed
Don't worry, I think any reasonable reader would have understood your original meaning.
Another really wonderful post, BTW, fresne. Thanks for sharing your perceptive (especially when wacky) musings.
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy's Leap of Faith -- MaeveRigan, 08:25:28 08/28/02 Wed
Although I agree with some extent with Cleanthes, mostly I'm with Rahael on this: it doesn't matter so much what Buffy believes about Christianity. What matters is what Buffy does. Why? You know why--because BtVS has always been all about metaphors.
It's quite possible (and my personal preference, though not absolutely necessary) to read Christian metaphors in Buffy herself and in Xander, and in other aspects of the characters and the show, without demanding that the characters themselves "be Christians."
That would be much too limiting, and result in BtVS becoming "Doc," which would instantly raise it to the top of the Parents Television Council's Family Friendly TV list, but none of us would want to watch it, because the stories would be easy & predictable and it would star Chuck Norris as Spike and Tori Spelling as Buffy (apologies if needed..."Sorry, already got the visual")
Don't forget the priceless moment in "The Freshman" when the helpful girl asks Buffy, "Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?" and she replies, "You know, I meant to, but then I just got really busy..." Uh-huh. OTOH, Joyce does have a perfectly conventional Christian funeral; somebody chose that.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Christian characters who are'nt "christian" ( a question) -- Thomas the Skeptic, 12:42:26 08/28/02 Wed
Speaking of fictional characters who are metaphors for Christianity without being christian, are any of the characters in the "Narnia" books by Lewis explicitly christian? Pardon my ignorance. I read loads of his nonfiction in my youth but never got around to this series or the "Space" books. I do seem to recall an essay by him where he discusses his attempt to shape a christian myth that implied but did not specifically mention Christ but I'm hazy on the details. On the same topic, any (relatively sophisticated) examples of christian metaphor fiction that spring to mind?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Offhand? "Billy Budd" by Melville (I think) -- cjl, 12:50:43 08/28/02 Wed
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> On the Narnia Chronicles -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:53:09 08/28/02 Wed
I don't think it was ever explicitely stated what religion they were, and I don't recall Jesus or Jehovah being mentioned. However, in Narnia, humans are called "the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve", implying that the events of the books fit in an Abrahmic context (Abrahmic refers to Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the B'Hai World Faith. Each rose from each other, and are called Abrahmic because they all claim Abraham (not Lincoln, the Old Testament one) as a prophet).
"The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" was an excellent metaphor for the Messiah mythos (not just the Christian one, the same basic story is found in many if not all mythologies). However, as the series went on, C.S. Lewis lost a great deal of his subtelty, and the last book of the series is barely metaphorical.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Lewis -- Rahael, 05:35:58 08/29/02 Thu
Ahh....I have a love-hate relationship with Narnia.
But first to answer your questions. I'm 99% certain that all the 'human' children from the future are members of the Church of England. Apart from Eustace, pre Dawn Treader. Cos he was a horrid boy who believed in such silly things as calling his parents by their first name and being a vegetarian (shock! horror!).
However, Narnia is a Christian Allegory, a retelling of the Christ story so they aren't Christians. You might just as well say that "Narnians" is really another name for "Christians". I have to say that I spotted the Christian bits even at the age of 8.
I also read "The Horse and His Boy" with a feeling of shock, even though it's probably my favourite, because the cruel Calor (Colour, geddit?) men, with their turbans, their ancient civilisation and their cruelty, were opposed to the brave, blond haired blue eyed Narnians. Lewis in one paragraph even draws an explicit link between the blond blue eyed part and the Narnian's moral character. Umm, where did I fit, Mr Lewis? The Christian parts didn't jerk me out of the narrative - that did. Also Eustace, but in a different way. I particularly relish Buffy because of that truly annoying bit where it wasn't seemly for women to fight. Not that I'm agitating for the right of women to murder or anything, but I'm sure that Lewis would have condemned men who didn't want to fight as a kind of Eustacian sentiment. If it's bad for the girls to fight, the boys shouldn't have either!
I didn't get the neo-Platonic bits until I was a teenager. Sophist, in the Existential thread referred to the effort to incorporate the "Ancients" into the Christian mythos. Well, here's one in action!! Narnia functions as a kind of 'ideal' Christian land, one where the colours, life, everything was much 'truer' more 'beautiful'. It's like the Platonic version of England, basically.
But hey, I suppose you have to view it in the context it was written. They are still a great read.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Thomas More's Utopia -- Sophist, 09:35:11 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> For me, the most specific Christian metaphor in the Buffyverse... -- KdS, 09:28:12 08/30/02 Fri
When watching "Dead End" I idly considered that parallels might be being drawn between Cordelia and the Catholic concept of stigmata. I went and did a bit of research on the web and found this remarkable essay, which seems to be from a very traditionalist Catholic publication.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14294b.htm
If the link didn't work, here's a quick rundown. Not having much background in deeper Christian doctrine, I'd thought that stigmata were simply a spectacular show to impress the faithful and convert the unfaithful. Not so. According to this essay, it is official RC doctrine that stigmatics voluntarily and *literally* take on suffering that might fall on other people. Add the reference to visions in which the stigmatist may undergo the actual experience of the Passion, and I think we have lift-off.
Admittedly Cordelia's experiences "Parting Gifts" through "Birthday" aren't so much mystical transfer of suffering as a means of preventing it by relatively non-mystical means. However, I do believe that this shows someone on AtS must have a fairly in-depth Catholic background (well beyond the normal pop-theological understanding of Christian doctrine).
[> Re: Existential Much? The search for the authentic self(Season 6 spoilers) -- Arethusa, 10:15:36 08/27/02 Tue
"From an existential point of view, nothing Buffy is doing is 'wrong'."
Agree. There's no logical reason why Buffy couldn't have an affair with Spike if she wanted to; she felt it wasn't a choice because it violated her notion of correct behavior, which can change, and usually does as one gets older.
"Spike feels weighed down by the pressure to conform to Buffy's old morality, and that his true essence lies in his old life as an evil vampire. He feels that Buffy is responsible for this crisis; and in an act of hate he attempts to rape her."
Do you feel Spike was showing hate during this scene? Spike, too, decides for himself how to act. He decided to conform to Buffy's morality to achieve his goal (Buffy). When he does conform and still doesn't get the girl, he becomes frustrated and enraged. But he went back to Buffy to apologize, for not conforming to her morality, and falling back on his own. He was after intimacy, not revenge or punishment.
"Tara's death has no meaning or purpose, unlike Buffy's two deaths; it is an absurd event, it simply happens."
Very much agree. Most of the meaning from Tara's death is because it is meaningless-Willow's greatest nightmare, that her relationship is outside of her control.
"But it's his fear which drives him, the fear of having his choices in life limited; and, perhaps just as important, the fear of limiting Anya's own choices, and her personal freedom."
I think he's afraid of making the wrong choice, as his parents so obviously did, and thereby damaged his life, as Xander fears damaging his future wife and children.
Sophist and I had a discussion a while ago on whether AtS and BtVS were existential. He convinced me that S6 was, but agreed that the earlier years were not. I convinced him that AtS is existential, and some day I might finish my essay, which should prove it.
Enjoyed your essay very much.
[> [> Re: Existential Much? The search for the authentic self(Season 6 spoilers) -- Slain, 11:05:58 08/27/02 Tue
I definitely agree that AtS is existential - more so than BtVS. Wolfram & Heart and the PTB both remind me a lot of the law courts in Kafka's 'The Trial', and in many ways Angel and Raskolnikoff from 'Crime and Punishment' are very similar characters. Angel has also resembled the narrator of Sartre's 'Nausea' and of Ralph Elliston's 'Invisible Man', in his earlier pre-chirpy life... you see now why I left the literary comparisons out; the essay would have been twice as long!
[> [> [> Small spoiler for AtS Season 4 re Wesley -- Arethusa, 11:29:08 08/27/02 Tue
Literary comparisons are our meat and drink here. I'm comparing Angel to film noir antiheroes, whom he closely resembles, especially in his Season 2 relationship with Darla. Last year Wesley and Lilah took over the roles of antihero and femme fatale, and I look foreward to a year of more agony. In a spoilery article at
http://tv.zap2it.com/shows/features/features.html?27773
Denison says, "Now that [Wesley]'s lost and given up trying to control right and wrong and the world around him, he's willing to let some of the baser instincts come out." He's abandoned his old world view, and must make a new one. I can't wait.
[> [> choices & kinds of choice -- anom, 10:56:40 08/28/02 Wed
"Agree. There's no logical reason why Buffy couldn't have an affair with Spike if she wanted to; she felt it wasn't a choice because it violated her notion of correct behavior, which can change, and usually does as one gets older."
Meaning it wasn't a valid choice? Because in another way, Buffy seems to feel she wasn't even making a choice--"Why can't I stop?" she asks Tara. Of course it is a choice; that's what programs to help people give up things they're addicted to emphasize: at the moment you're about to take the drink, or inject the drug, or kiss the vampire, you have the choice not to. (I'm not saying Buffy's involvement w/Spike was an addiction, but the idea of choice applies to both.) From the descriptions of existentialism in this thread ('cause I don't know that much about it--please tell me if I've misunderstood), it sounds like it doesn't think much of the idea of addiction but wouldn't see anything "wrong" about drinking alcohol, taking drugs, or having sex w/a vampire, even if it's harming you or the people around you. Buffy certainly sees it as wrong & believes that it means something about her--she must be "wrong." So to her, it doesn't feel like a choice at all, but if it were, it would be a wrong choice. Her mindset is really trapping her. It's a choice she thinks is ruled out, & maybe as a result of this, she can do it only if she feels she has no choice.
[> [> [> VERY insightful post, anom!! -- redcat, 11:20:50 08/28/02 Wed
I think you've really caught Buffy's mindset in early-to-mid-S6 here.
One totally minor point, though. You write, "it sounds like it [existentialism] doesn't think much of the idea of addiction but wouldn't see anything "wrong" about drinking alcohol, taking drugs, or having sex w/a vampire, even if it's harming you or the people around you." I think most existential philosophers would separate what one does that affects only one's self, from what one does that affects or constrains others. "Harm" is a kind of constraint, and thus generally would be a consideration.
[> [> [> [> Moral wrongs -- Sophist, 13:06:07 08/28/02 Wed
Just to add to rc's point: existentialism denies any external, universal morality. Each individual has to make choices based on his/her understanding of right and wrong. Thus, I can say that a choice is wrong for me (or to me), but can't say that it is Wrong in some universal sense. Buffy has to decide for herself whether sleeping with Spike is/was right or wrong.
[> [> [> [> [> I think Buffy DID decide sleeping with Spike was wrong. -- cjl, 13:10:44 08/28/02 Wed
Not because he was an evil soul-less thing, blah blah blah, but because she was abusing him and she was destroying herself by abusing him.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Perhaps -- Sophist, 13:27:55 08/28/02 Wed
She certainly said that in AYW. However, she also said that it was "wrong" because Spike was evil undead (Wrecked, DT). Then she said she couldn't love him (which I take to mean, in part, that she couldn't sleep with him) because she couldn't trust him (SR). And all along she showed she still had feelings for him (Hell's Bells, Entropy, Villains). So, beats me.
I wasn't really trying to make that point, however. I just meant that it was Buffy's decision to make, not anyone else's.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> cjl wants to like the characters, so he'll just give Buffy the benefit of the doubt... -- cjl, 13:38:15 08/28/02 Wed
Actually, we all know Buffy's feelings about Spike are all over the map, and she's so far into denial about her own nature that she wouldn't know her genuine, gut reaction to their extended erotic tango if it leaped up and bit her in the neck.
But given that I want to like Buffy, I'm going with my original answer. No matter what she may think of Spike as a vampire and a bloodthirsty killer, she knew he was devoted to her, she knew he was (mostly) harmless, and she knew she had no excuse to abuse him. She was violating her own moral code, and she had to stop before she destroyed herself.
She made her decision. She ended it. And she shouldn't have to explain her rationale for starting or ending the affair to anyone.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Well, that raises an interesting issue -- Sophist, 16:57:35 08/28/02 Wed
she was abusing him and she was destroying herself by abusing him. .... She was violating her own moral code, and she had to stop before she destroyed herself.
In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson made the following argument against slavery:
The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism....Our children see this, and learn to imitate it....The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to his worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.
I've always thought this a clever tactical argument. The only people who could, in practice, eliminate slavery in Virginia in 1783 were the slaveholders. Jefferson showed that it was in their interest to do so: by abusing their slaves, they were killing themselves.
This is, if I'm not mistaken, the very reason you attribute to Buffy. But consider the case of slavery. Do we really think slavery a moral wrong because of its effect on the slaveholder? And if not, how does this affect your view of Buffy and the conclusion of AYW?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Schoolyard philosophy -- Just George, 17:41:15 08/28/02 Wed
Sophist: "This is, if I'm not mistaken, the very reason you attribute to Buffy. But consider the case of slavery. Do we really think slavery a moral wrong because of its effect on the slaveholder? And if not, how does this affect your view of Buffy and the conclusion of AYW?"
At one point, Angel says to Buffy, "not to go all schoolyard, but you hit me first."
I believe that Buffy's ethics are the ethics of the schoolyard. Simply put, bullies are bad. Bullies are people with power who abuse it. Heroes are people with power who stand up to bullies.
In this context power can be physical, emotional, social, moral, monetary, anything. Cordelia in Welcome to the Hellmouth is show to be a bully when she abuses her wit, looks, and social standing by attacking Willow for no reason. Buffy is a hero in that context by hanging with Willow and using her wit and looks to defend her.
Monsters who attack people are bullies in the physical sense. Spike has often been a bully using his verbal power, even when he couldn't attack people physically.
Under this philosophy, Buffy has no reason to attack Clem, even though he is a demon. She couldn't attack Angel in the episode "Angle" because "he has never done anything" bad that she knows of. Buffy doesn't sweep Willies Place every Friday night because the demons and vampires there aren't hurting anyone at the time.
Buffy wants to be a hero. It is central to her self-image to be the one that stands against the bullies. But in S6, Buffy acts as a bully toward Spike. I think that is what was killing her. Not sleeping with Spike. Using him. Acting against her heroic self-image.
Ultimately Buffy had to reconcile her actions with her internal "schoolyard" philosophy. And using Spike was inconsistent with that.
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> I'm not sure you answered my questions -- Sophist, 19:37:31 08/28/02 Wed
Was Buffy wrong in her relationship with Spike because the fact that she "was using him" impacted her? Or was she wrong because the fact that she "was using him" impacted him?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> The Abusive Relationship -- Finn Mac Cool, 20:18:49 08/28/02 Wed
I think a passage from As You Were is neccessary to answer your question:
Buffy: I'm using you.
Spike: I'm not complaining.
Buffy: And it's killing me.
The relationship was hurting him, but he didn't mind, and, in a perverse sort of way, enjoyed it. In his mind, the fact that Buffy is hurting him means she must really care, that he's more than just dead to her. The relationship also hurt Buffy, but she didn't complain because of her intense anger with self (explained somewhere else on this thread). Buffy saw the relationship was wrong because it turned her into an abuser. It wasn't for Spike's sake, because he craved the abuse as much as he craved sex. In fact, the abuse wasn't the problem with the relationship. It was the way each was turned into an abuser.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: The Abusive Relationship -- Freki, 12:14:52 08/29/02 Thu
I disagree with you about Spike not minding the abuse. He certainly sounded like he minded when he told Dawn "Oh, and big sis was treating me so well." Spike craves violence, not emotional abuse. I think he was willing to put up with it in order to maintain a connection to Buffy, but it wasn't the type of relationship he wanted.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> In this world, freedom for the powerless is usually achieved in one of two ways... -- cjl, 21:11:30 08/28/02 Wed
1. Violent revolution/all-out war
2. Moral awakening by the powerful
Many times, option one is simply not available. The structure of oppression is too firmly embedded into a society's cultural matrix, and no outside forces are willing to aid the powerless in outright revolt. The way to freedom then, is to impress the moral case to sympathetic ears within the oppressor's social stratum. (I know. It doesn't always work. Never said the world was perfect.)
Here, in this small instance, it does work, because we're dealing with only one person--Buffy--who already has a highly developed moral code (she's just slipped a little in this case). Buffy, seeing her own actions through the dark mirror of Warren and the nerds in DT, slowly comes to the conclusion that her actions are insupportable. Spike, as other posters pointed out, doesn't fight on his own behalf, because part of him gets off on the whole master/slave arrangement. (Shadowkat is writing about this right now, isn't she?) But even if Spike won't fight for his own self-respect, she concludes she has no right to deny him his dignity. The affair ends.
(Interesting argument here, Sophist, but the Spike/Buffy relationship doesn't neatly correspond to chattel slavery on the North American continent from the 1600s to the mid-1860s. Too much MUTUAL abuse and debasement on the B/S side to even think about equivlancy...)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: In this world, freedom for the powerless is usually achieved in one of two ways... -- Sophist, 09:46:30 08/29/02 Thu
the Spike/Buffy relationship doesn't neatly correspond to chattel slavery on the North American continent from the 1600s to the mid-1860s. Too much MUTUAL abuse and debasement on the B/S side to even think about equivlancy...)
No disagreement here. I had no intention of suggesting that there was such a correspondence. I was only noting the correspondence in the argument or reasoning used.
I'm also noting that you dodged my question. :)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Check my post "The Abusive Relationship" above. -- Finn Mac Cool, 09:52:15 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> I dodged your question? -- cjl, 10:04:32 08/29/02 Thu
1) Slavery is a morally wrong becasue of its effect on the slaves. 2) To an infinitesimally smaller degree, it's morally wrong becasue of its effect on the slaveholders.
I thought my answer made it clear that even though I think (1) is the greater moral catastrophe, in some cases, (2) holds the greatest potential for change within the system. In Buffy and Spike's case, Spike had no inclination to fight for his freedom and dignity, and it was Buffy who decided that her pattern of abuse violated her sense of morality.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I dodged your question? -- Sophist, 10:56:42 08/29/02 Thu
Not sure I agree with you about the "infinitesimally" part. At all. That's not really the point here, though.
My point was this: Buffy gave as her reason for ending the relationship that her abuse of Spike "was killing her". I'm suggesting that this is the wrong moral reason to give. The correct moral reason is that her abuse of Spike was harmful to Spike.
The fact that Spike showed no signs of wanting to end the abuse does not reach the key point. Buffy herself had the ability to control the situation, as demonstrated by the fact that she actually did end it. Just like the slaveowners, she could have ended it for either reason. The one she chose was true up to a point, but served to disguise the greater moral wrong.
If Buffy had had to admit that she ended the relationship because her abuse of Spike was killing him, then she and the writers might have had to admit something about Spike that they haven't yet acknowledged.
And that, at the end, is why I'm wondering at your decision to accept her rationale in order to continue liking her.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Butting in. -- Arethusa, 11:58:18 08/29/02 Thu
The first thing Buffy said to Spike when she broke up with Spike was that she was mistreating him.
BUFFY: I'm using you.
He doesn't respond to her confession.
He stares at her.
So she tells him that she knows she can't give him what he wants, and stays with him for her own benefit.
BUFFY: I can't love you. I'm just ... being weak, and selfish...
He doesn't care that he's being hurt and used, because he has Buffy.
SPIKE: (moves even closer) Really not complaining here.
So Buffy has to pull out the big gun, the only thing that might make him accept her refusal-she tells him he's hurting her.
BUFFY: ...and it's killing me.
Spike, who thinks he could never, in a meaningful way, hurt Buffy, still refuses to accept her dismissal. He continues to pursue her until he actually does hurt her. Then, he finally accepts something has to change. He stops trying to change her and decides to change himself. He still has the same goal-Buffy. Nothing she has said or done, no matter how terrible, is sufficent to get him to realize she doesn't want him, and never will. (Admittedly, her messages have been very mixed.) But I'm pretty sure, based on the moral values Buffy has demonstrated so far, that she realizes she mistreated him. Telling Spike that, however, was futile, even though she tried.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Oh, yeah. Quotes by psyche -- Arethusa, 12:13:17 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Thanks, Arethusa. And Sophist... -- cjl, 12:39:41 08/29/02 Thu
I wasn't saying anything particularly complicated here. I just want to believe that Buffy's break-up with Spike was based on a moral decision, rather than a fear of her own feelings and sexual desires. I think it reflects better on our heroine.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Buffy's moral decisions -- Sophist, 13:28:15 08/29/02 Thu
I almost always agree with Buffy's moral decisions. There are very few instances in the show where I don't.
My personal view (which I strategically concealed throughout this dialogue) is this: the varying and essentially unsatisfactory reasons given by Buffy about her relationship with Spike reflect the incoherence of the writers in S6, not any failing by Buffy (and yes, I do remember that this is a TV show). I say this because the Spike saga is, obviously, not over. I expect them to deal with the fallout in S7.
Personally, I don't think it's helpful to characterize "the relationship" as wrong. I like to point instead to specific actions that are right or wrong. From this POV, the relationship itself was not wrong, so there was no need to come up with inconsistent reasons why it "was".
I do think Buffy's conduct during the relationship was subject to criticism in 2 episodes: the beating in DT and the scene in the crypt with Riley in AYW. I tend to write off the latter scene as the dregs of what is, by far, the worst episode in the history of the show. DT, however, is a great episode; but it's not really over until they resolve the alley scene. When they do, I expect Buffy will recognize that she was wrong not because she hurt herself, but because she hurt Spike. (I also expect Spike to acknowledge that he was wrong not in his advice to her, but in his moral reasoning -- his soul should enable him to see that.)
In short, I don't think you have to adopt the "it's killing me" reasoning in order to keep liking Buffy. She's pretty likable on her own.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy's moral decisions -- Finn Mac Cool, 14:28:59 08/29/02 Thu
First, what was abusive about the AYW crypt scene?
Second, I think the relationship was "wrong". Not morally wrong, neccessarily. But it was wrong in the sense that Spike and Buffy are right for each other.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Abuse in AYW -- Malandanza, 21:53:41 08/30/02 Fri
"First, what was abusive about the AYW crypt scene?"
Not physically abusive -- Spike took a couple of hits from Riley and Buffy, but that was nothing. Look at the emotional abuse (Quotes from Psyche):
Spike wakes up beside her. Sits up straight -- and a toothy, wicked grin spreads across his face as he says.
SPIKE: Well looky here.
Reverse reveals: Riley stands before the two of them, holding a very large gun, armed and ready.
Buffy goes straight to shock -- she cannot speak.
Spike wants to play.
SPIKE (cont'd) I don't often use the word "delicious," but I've got to wager this little tableau must sting a bit, eh? Me and your former? Must kill. (shrugs) What can I say? The girl just needs a little monster in her, man.
Buffy is having the worst moment of her life -- all her darkest secrets revealed. Riley is having all his worst fears confirmed. And "Spike wants to play".
Continuous. Buffy and Spike caught frozen in their post-coital positions, Riley armed and dangerous. Buffy scrambles to find, pick up, and put on her clothes throughout.
No one's real comfortable.
BUFFY: Oh, God...
SPIKE: Here I thought we run you out of town, mate. Last I saw you, if memory serves, you were getting the juice sucked out of you by some undead ladies of very questionable reputation. Now be a good tin soldier and ...
He gestures "run along."
...
SPIKE: Look, crew-cut: she's not your bint anymore, and if I can speak frankly, she always had a little thing for me even when she was shagging you.
The scene is reminiscent of the first Buffy/Spike morning after scene, where he is crowing about his sexual prowess at bagging the slayer (in front of her!) only now he is more interested in hurting Riley. His former rival. Spike is indifferent to her suffering and shame in this scene. You can argue about whether or not Buffy ought to be ashamed of her relationship with Spike, but clearly, at this point, it is a mortifying experience and Spike is being abusive in hurting her for the sake of hurting Riley.
We also get another glimpse at the real Spike. He talks a good game (but then, so did Parker), but he treats Buffy like an object here -- he says "she's not your bint anymore" -- as if she ever belonged to Riley. For all his talk, Spike doesn't consider the impact his actions will have on Buffy. He's just a walking, talking, shagging id. He helped break Riley and Buffy apart out of jealousy -- the least he could do would be to appear contrite when he's caught in bed with Buffy (as he did when Xander caught him outside the Magic Box). My feeling is that Riley didn't stake Spike for two reasons: 1) he needed to know where the eggs were (and his hands were full after he found them) and 2) he didn't want to kill Spike out of anger -- that would be too much like murder -- and could not separate his emotions from his mission.
One good thing that came out of the S&M threads is the recognition that the person being beaten isn't necessarily the person without the power in the relationship. All along, Buffy has been manipulated and abused (psychologically as well as physically) by Spike. She felt that she didn't have a choice because Spike was doing his best to constrain her choices. I feel the relationship was morally wrong. Buffy was unhappy from the beginning, Spike has always known that, and yet he did his best to keep her under his sway. Buffy shouldn't have broken off the relationship with Spike for Spike's sake -- he was never the victim. In Sophist's slaveholder analogy Buffy is the slave. It is for her own sake that she should have walked away but it no surprise that she was only able to end the relationship for what she beleived was his sake. Her own suffering is never a consideration.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> "He's just a walking, talking, shagging id" -- Slain, 07:51:25 08/31/02 Sat
I think we can put that down as one of the great board quotes. :)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Abuse and SM -- Etrangere, 08:10:51 08/31/02 Sat
dear Mala, I had no time to answer you on the SM thread about what I mean when I said no one claimed Buffy was the kind of Sadist who got off making people suffer in the general sense.
What I mean is that there is a definitive nuance between sexual behaviours and fantasies and the actions in real life. You seem to think that a sadomasochist relationship must be an abusvie relationship. It is not so. I never believe that Buffy is someone as reckless as to, outside certain circonstances and context or with some persons she identifies too much with, condemn without compassion and show as really cruel. Even though I think she definitily played the dominant role in the B/S SM relationship.
Now, about abuse, yes, there were also some bit of abuse in this relationship. It came from both of them, and more than springing from their abusive tendancies sprung from both their very low self-esteems : Spike inviting the blows in Dead Things or Buffy's hiding behind garlic and crosses in Wrecked. They're both guilty.
Just my opinion.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Hey, come on in. The water's fine. -- Sophist, 12:53:46 08/29/02 Thu
I understand you to mean that Buffy's stated reason in AYW was not her real reason, but merely one that might satisfy Spike. I can't rule that out, but I would note the following:
1. cjl accepted that explanation as true, and added that this made it easier to like Buffy. It was this comment that triggered my campaign of harassment.
2. Buffy has given (as I noted above) at least 3 different explanations for why her relationship with Spike was wrong: he's evil (Smashed, Wrecked); she's using him (AYW); she can't trust him (SR). It's hard for me now to say we should just ignore all 3 of these and trust that another explanation, which she has never articulated, is the "real" one.
3. She has never articulated the reason you suggest.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Butting in. -- Just George, 13:00:16 08/29/02 Thu
Buffy states three reasons for wanting to end the relationship: "I'm using you," "I can't love you," and "It's killing me." The third is presented with the greatest dramatic impact. It is also the only reason that seems to have any impact on Spike.
If we assume Buffy is acting selfishly then the third reason, the relationship is killing her, seems like the dominant one. The third is certainly presented with the greatest force. However, I think that Arethusa has an important point when she says, "the only thing that might make him (Spike) accept her refusal (is when) she tells him he's hurting her." Buffy may have presented this reason forcefully in order to have an effect on Spike, not just to reflect her inner reasoning.
If we assume that Buffy is afraid to continue a loveless relationship, then the second reason could control the issue in her mind. The question of "loving enough" seems to come up in all of Buffy's relationships. I suspect Buffy feels she lost Riley because she didn't love him "enough". Buffy may want to avoid getting hurt again by being the one to break it off this time.
Finally, if we assume that Buffy is bailing because she feels bad about abusing Spike, then her first reason could be the most important. She lists "using you" as her first reason to break up. The order may have some significance to Buffy's thought process, with the first being the most important to her.
I suspect that all of the reasons are important to Buffy. Selfishly, she is unhappy with how the relationship is making her feel about herself. Historically, she knows that her relationships have been fragile and that a loveless relationship is bound to end badly. Morally, she probably realizes that she is hurting Spike, even though he says he doesn't mind. Any one of these should be a good reason to break it off. Together they seem to me like more than enough.
Because Buffy doesn't rank her motivations overtly, The question of which is most important to her depends partially on how much the viewer trusts Buffy's choices. I think some viewers have weighed Buffy's choices over the history of the show and found them wanting. They look at her choices skeptically. Other viewers may view her choices with less skepticism. Which of the three reasons a viewer feels is most important to Buffy may be a kind of mini-Rorschach test on how the viewer sees Buffy's moral compass.
It must be clear by now that I am among the less skeptical viewers when it comes to Buffy's moral choices. For moral questions, I think WWBD (What Would Buffy Do) leads to a pretty good outcome most of the time. I am sure this colors my analysis. However, I also understand there are many other interpretations of Buffy's actions and motivations. YMMV
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Shellfish -- Slain, 13:49:21 08/29/02 Thu
Which is what I always think when I see the word selfish written down. Moving along...
Here's the an updated passage from my essay:
Existentialists believe no one can help you through your own life, so Spike can't help Buffy. She doesn't achieve greater meaning in her life; she is only escaping from her responsibilities, and escaping from coming to terms with the loss of her old self-assurance. When Buffy makes the decision to leave Spike it is not because she has fallen back onto her old morality of 'soul good, soulless bad', but because she feels not only that Spike cannot help her find her lost raison d'être, but that she is also impinging on his personal freedom and individuality. That's not to say that Buffy doesn't feel sleeping with an evil vampire isn't wrong, and this is part of her leaving Spike; but her personal morality has evolved to the point where the idea that a vampire without a soul is incontrovertibly evil (and untouchable) is no longer true.
So I think that, firstly, Buffy leaves Spike because she feels that being with him isn't helping her; she's stuck in a rut, and escaping rather than progressing. Many people would disagree, and say that in fact Buffy's time with Spike was a progression in her self-awareness; personally, I'm on the fence about that.
Secondly, she leaves Spike because she feels their relationship is damaging him, and that she is not being authentic with him; she doesn't feel, as he does, that she is drawn to darkness, or at least she doesn't feel that evil is good for her, so to speak. I don't think the fact that Spike is evil is a reason, so much as an excuse. However, I do think that she believes that she cannot love Spike when he has no soul, and that it's wrong to be with someone she doesn't love: which ties in with Buffy's personal morality so far.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Excellent post. Agree. -- shadowkat, 14:20:13 08/30/02 Fri
I think you're right. And you're not the only one on the fence about how much sleeping with Spike and being with Spike helped her progress. I'm not completely sure myself.
I think it might have helped a little - at least to the extent that it got her to explore her dark side, the Faith side of her persona, if you will, but I think that there came a time in which she had to move past it. I've been thinking about this a lot and reading way too much fanfic
and come to the conclusion that a continuation of the Spike/Buffy relationship would have been a mistake. They were both stuck emotionally. Her breaking things off moved both characters forward, made both characters break out of their rut.
What I've fond interesting in many of the Spuffy discussions, is the view that Buffy was Spike's moral compass. That She and the SG were responsible for guiding him morally and were at fault when he fell down. And he just followed her guide. Sort of like a little kid does its peer group. And several people saw no problem with that. He could be redeemed through his love and desire to follow her guide. Uhm, no. That's not only limiting for the character, it sticks the SG with a perpetual adolescent.
"Existentialists believe no one can help you through your own life, so Spike can't help Buffy"
Let's turn that around. Buffy can't help Spike. This was a co-dependent relationship in the worst way. Spike can't help Buffy figure out where she belongs and She can't help him. She couldn't help Riley, riley had to figure that out.
Tara couldn't help Willow. Nor could Oz. Xander can't tell Anya what to do. Anya needs to choose on her own. And Giles can't tell x/W/B what to do all there lives. While we can support one another, exchange info, when it comes down to it, Whistler was right - in the end it's just you and what you decide that counts.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Excellent post. Agree. -- Slain, 07:46:56 08/31/02 Sat
As far as Spike's redemption goes, I do think it was his love for Buffy which was the force which made redemption a possibility; but of course it's true that it could only come from him, and that he would have to want to change. Angel wandered, not seeking redemption, until Whistler and seeing underage Buffy (ick) gave him purpose; but again it was his own choice.
Buffy made it clear that, unless Spike changed, she would never love him (though at the same time she often said she could never love him anyway). But, even with this impetus, Spike didn't change: simply because he didn't choose to, or believed he wasn't capable of.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Thanks, Just George. You said it better than I. -- Arethusa, 13:53:18 08/29/02 Thu
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Uhm..butting in myself -- shadowkat, 13:58:37 08/29/02 Thu
Having just spent way too much time analyzing the B/S relationship for my monster essay post above...I think maybe Aersthua and Just George are right here.
But I mainly think Buffy's main reason for breaking up with Spike is the reason that she inadvertently let Riley go as well. She doesn't love him. She tells him this in Entropy:
(Buffy has just told Spike she doesn't care if her friends find out about them, they'll deal. Spike is convinced that's the only thing keeping them apart)
Spike: "Then why won't you sleep with me?"
Buffy: "Because I don't love you."
Spike: "Like hell."
Spike and half the viewers are confused by this and don't
quite believe her, because well Buffy doesn't tend to have meaningless flings in our minds. Also if she doesn't love him why does she care about him dating someone else (HB) or sleeping with Anya, or whether Xander kills him. To Spike she either loves him or hates/cares nothing for him. It's all or nothing. He can't quite conceive of anything in between. Spike still sees the world in the blacks and whites of adolescence. You either hate me or love me. You either have feelings for me or not. Her comment in the bathroom in SR confuses him.
(Spike asks Buffy why she didn't let Xander kill him)
Spike: "You should have let him kill me"
Buffy: "I just couldn't"
Spike:"Why?"
Buffy:"You know why?"
Spike:" Because you have feelings for me -"
Buffy:"Yes, I admit I have feelings...but they aren't love.
I could never trust you enough for them to be love."
Buffy can't trust Buffy enough right now for them to be love. Buffy isn't really sure right now what she feels or will do next. She hasn't felt in control of her life for some time and she certainly doesn't feel in enough control to love someone. Or trust herself enough to open up to someone. Let alone a soulless vampire. She can barely open up to her sister and friends.
Buffy repeatedly tells Spike she can't be with him because she can't love him. He believes it's because of the soul. It really isn't. Buffy can't be with Spike - not so much because he's Spike, a soulless vampire, but I think because she just can't love anyone right now, including herself. She feels dead inside at this point.
He inspires lust and desire and craving - but that's not love. Spike doesn't get that. Spike confuses lust and craving with love.
In Wrecked.
Spike: "You felt something."
Buffy:"Not love."
Spike: "Not yet. But you're going to start to crave me like I crave blood..."
Spike doesn't understand what Riley figured out. Which is ironic since he told it to Riley in Into The Woods.
Spike:" Sometimes I envy you and sometimes I think you have the better deal...to have her beneath you ...but to be all alone surrounded by her scent..no you have the better deal."
Riley: "yeah I'm a lucky guy."
(But he knows he's not and leaves - telling Buffy she can love him physically but can't open up to him emotionally, can't talk to him.)
I'll go out on a limb here and state that Buffy hasn't been able to open up to a man emotionally and really talk to him since Angel. She did for a while with Riley in Season 4, until he slept with her while Faith occupied her body, after that Buffy closed up. It didn't help that she discovered Angel helping Faith or that Riley freaked over her relationship with Angel. After Restless, Buffy began to close herself off. She finally realizes this in Intervention and goes to the guide for help. Her fear of this happening is foreshadowed in Fear Itself - in her discussion with her mother after the PArker fiasco. She asks her mother how does one learn to trust again, open up? Joyce tells it is hard that it took Joyce a long time. When Joyce finally starts dating again, finds a good guy? What happens? Joyce dies.
And Buffy? Look at her track record regarding
men - she considers, seriously considers dating Ben - and well let's just say it's a good thing she decided against it.
It makes sense that Buffy's closed that part of herself off, can't open herself up emotionally to men. And a lot of it goes back to her father's abandonment of her - which didn't really occur until Season 3 - Helpless, where he stands her up for their annual ice-skating show. She tries to get Giles to take her, but Giles is too busy drugging her so she can be horribly tested by the Watcher's Council.
In that episode Buffy is betrayed by two father figures.
Prior to their sex, B/S seemed to talk a lot. Moment they start having it? No conversation. Spike tries, but she refuses to talk to him. Letting him inside
physically is no problem. The reason she breaks it off
is she realizes that he wants more, partly, and that she can't give it to him. And the meaningless sex isn't helping her anymore. It goes against her core view about how sex=love. A view she mentions to Faith way back in Bad Girls. Faith asks Buffy if she ever thought about doing it with Xander. Perplexed Buffy states : "I love Xander but I don't *love* Xander." She has the same problem with the Parker situation. She thinks sleeping with him should mean something. And with Riley? She feels somewhat the same way. She doesn't really understand Riley's complaint that they don't talk anymore (they don't but they appear to have great sex) and that she doesn't confide in him or open up to him anymore. (She doesn't really understand this until Intervention...when it's too late.)
So the reason Buffy stopped the sex with Spike is actually very simple. She can't love him. She can't open up to him emotionally. And she can't go on having sex with someone she can't love, trust, or open up to. Someone she can't bring home with her. Or have interact with her friends or sister. She was able to do that somewhat with Riley (the friends, sister part) but she couldn't talk to him really.
(She doesn't open up or talk to Riley really when he comes back - even before she finds out about Sam.) Spike - Buffy could talk to when he wanted to kill her or hated her or was just the noble lap dog, but as a sexual partner? It's impossible.
Is her choice a selfish one? Maybe. Although having sex with Spike was equally and possibly more selfish. Is it noble or moral one? To Buffy it is. It's not having sex that was wrong or so much who she was having it with, although I'm sure she felt ashamed of that, but having sex with someone she didn't love that she felt was wrong.
Oh...Buffy has said that she could never love Spike or want him - it was in Crush. I'm not sure it counts, since she also said the only chance he'd ever have with her was when she was unconscious and we know how that turned out.
Sorry for the ramble...hope it made a little sense and added to the discussion.
shadowkat
(inexact quotes from my memory...since my connection is not good enough to access Pysch today.)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Buffy and Riley -- Sophist, 15:34:02 08/29/02 Thu
I'll go out on a limb here and state that Buffy hasn't been able to open up to a man emotionally and really talk to him since Angel. She did for a while with Riley in Season 4, until he slept with her while Faith occupied her body, after that Buffy closed up.
Lots of people say, this, so maybe I'm alone in disagreeing. However, I think the failure of the relationship had nothing to do with Buffy "shutting down" (which I don't believe she did), but was entirely Riley's fault.
The principal complaint Riley had about Buffy was that he loved her more than (he felt) she loved him. His feelings towards her were more intense than (he felt) hers were towards him. I would emphasize 2 points about this:
1. By saying this, Riley seems to be adopting the Spike theory of love ("Love isn't brains, children, it's blood boiling...."). I thought there was general agreement that this was an immature notion of love. If this is Riley's standard, he's just as wrong as Spike.
2. This is a cheap shot by Riley. He can know the intensity of his own feelings, but he has no way to judge the intensity of Buffy's.
We, the audience, can't see inside either one of them. I personally didn't see Riley show any great passion towards Buffy (as distinct from what he said). In fact, by sleeping with Faith/Buffy he showed a lack of passion -- he engaged with the body rather than the person.
Nor did I see any diminution of passion in Buffy. What I did see was that she was overloaded with stress brought on by her obligations to Dawn and her mother's illness. To me, Riley's insistence that she engage emotionally with him on these counts was pure selfishness on his part. It gets back to whether his view of love is mature or not -- a mature view allows one's partner to engage emotionally somewhere else when the need arises. The immature Spike view says "me, me, me".
Riley never could accept his diminished role after the destruction of the Initiative. He kept intruding into Buffy's space in order to satisfy his own ego, then blamed her for shutting him out. He didn't know how to deal with a woman strong enough to handle pressure without his manly support.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Buffy and Riley -- Just George, 17:26:26 08/29/02 Thu
I liked Riley. His courtship with Buffy in Season 4 seemed to be one of the happiest times in her life. And yes, one of the ways I rate Buffy's boy fiends by how happy she seems to be when she is with them.
My wife puts the B/R problem down to lack of communications. Buffy was keeping a big secret (Dawn) and Riley could tell something was up. However, he thought it was a secret about THEM. In some ways its too bad Buffy didn't tell Riley about Dawn. He was trained in undercover. He was the person in her circle of friends most likely to be able to handle the news without freaking Dawn. It would have given B/R a shared secret and a shared mission. Buffy was right not to tell the rest of the SG however; their actions began spooking Dawn in less than a day.
BTW, Buffy claims to suck at undercover. I disagree. They way she handled Dawn for months without a slip shows she can do undercover work with the best of them.
I also blame Riley for the breakup. He should have worked to find himself a life goal beyond being "mission's boyfriend." It was not Buffy's job to find Riley a life goal. Anyway, she had enough on her plate: being the Slayer, protecting the key, being sister to Dawn and daughter to a sick mother. Riley was an adult. He should have been responsible for finding his own path. If he wanted to stay with Buffy, he could have found a path where their lives could intersect. As it was, he waited until a path slapped him in the face and took the first black helicopter out of Sunnydale.
I've sometimes wondered why Xander never alerted Buffy to Riley's concern. He didn't have to say "Riley thinks you don't love him." All he had to say was, "Riley's seemed a little weird around you lately. Maybe you and he should have a talk." I'd also loved to have seen more Riley/Xander, maybe playing street basketball and talking. It would be interesting to see BtVS handle "guy talk" more often. Missed opportunities.
One completely out-of-story question, did MB want to leave BtVS or did ME write Riley out? Real world events have effected the arc of so many characters (Angel, Oz, Maggie Walsh, Joyce, Whistler, to name a few) I was wondering if the same thing had happened to MB/Riley.
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Marc Blucas -- Slain, 18:01:16 08/29/02 Thu
To quote MarcBlucas.com, he was 'leaving Buffy and purusing his movie career'; I'm not sure if this means the same as leaving to pursue his movie career. I think it's possible the plan was to have him hanging around and leaving mid-season 6... although, then again, can we really see Riley Finn getting his dance on for the Buffy musical? So perhaps his leaving was planned well in advance.
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Uhm..butting in myself -- Just George, 15:35:54 08/29/02 Thu
shadowcat, I'll grant you the theory: Buffy can't be in a relationship right now because Buffy can't love anyone right now.
I agree that Buffy has been shut down for a while. I think she will be better off reestablishing her love of family and friends before she tries taking the plunge into another relationship.
However, I had Buffy's major shut down pegged to her mom's death. Given that, I saw her saying goodbye to Joyce in "Normal Again" as a possible catalyst for opening up again.
But if you are right, and the betrayal/shutdown goes back to Riley/Faith and "Who Are You?", then we are awaiting more euphonies before we see successful Buffy relationships.
Almost completely off topic, I think the other problem Buffy has in relationships is that her standards are just damned high. She wants it all. To put it in "Spike Speak" from a fanfic scene I have been playing with:
"Heart throbbing romance like you had with the great poof. Friendship and light like you had with captain cardboard. And hot dark passion like you had with me. Oh yeah, and a comrade in arms. Someone that accepts your fight, even helps, but keeps safely out of the way when you've got to do your dirty work."
Is it selfish to ask for so much from a partner? Buffy will give, has given, as much to her partners. Why shouldn't she expect the same in return?
The problem is when Buffy's partner doesn't measure up to her standards the two of them can't stay together. Either the man leaves of she does. Examples?
* Angel left because he couldn't give Buffy passion without going evil.
* Angle abandoned being human because he couldn't be a comrade in arms.
* Riley left because he couldn't give Buffy romance. No Grrr Arrr.
* Buffy left Spike because she couldn't be friends with him. She only likes him sometimes.
So, even after Buffy gets to a point when she can love again, it will be very hard to find someone that will fulfill all her needs.
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Uhm..butting in myself -- shadowkat, 14:31:17 08/30/02 Fri
I agree on the whole with what you said, but I think you're overlooking something, "daddy issues".
Notice who Buffy keeps dating? They are all much older than she is. Riley is at least five years older (a graduate
teaching assistant), probably late 20s (although we're never told). Angel is 245 years older. Parker was a senior.
Spike is 130 years older. I don't think Buffy is going to be able to have a good relationship until she handles those abandonment/father issues she's been struggling with. And it's my guess that will be one of the issues they deal with next year. They've already introduced Hallie who also has problems with cough*daddyissues*cough. And Hallie appears to be associated with Spike, who may also have the daddy issue problem. It's a cycle. Buffy is unconsciously trying to repair the pain she suffered with her father leaving her by dating much older men, who can possibly replace him in her mind. (James Marsters who plays Spike mentioned this very thing in his Shore Leave interview on www.bloodyawfulpoet.com, he states it as a response to someone who asks about Spuffy.)
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: -- aliera, 06:49:18 08/30/02 Fri
For some reason the Joan of Arc reference in Tabula Rasa jumped into my head again reading this. A warrior of the people who has friends and family but no partner.
Would it be going to far to say that the Spike relationship was the first serious one where Buffy came right out and initiated the breakup? Do you think this is a step forward for her or another step away?
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: I dodged your question? -- verdantheart, 12:09:32 08/30/02 Fri
I hesitate to add my 2 cents here, as I'm sure everyone remembers my opinion, but here goes. I agree with you, Sophist. I found Buffy's reasoning to be disappointing, and I spent a great deal of the season being irritated with the character.* Buffy knew the score and that Spike was vulnerable. She had the choice to go for some other person or to go for Spike and she went with Spike. Her reasoning is unclear, although there is plenty of subtext that might help explain it (all the "dancing" of the previous seasons, her emptiness, his heat). In a way, she was the vampire this season, sucking out his emotional heat, leaving him the emotional wreck we saw at the end of the season. And it really did work (in Gone she realizes she doesn't want to die after all). So it wasn't a total loss for Buffy. But Spike, who seemed to have some peace at the beginning of the season ended up betraying what he held most dear.
* Spike disclaimer: I don't mean to say his behavior was exemplary; just that there was no need to be disappointed with it because he was not a hero (hello, vampire) and, hey, Buffy almost always refused to communicate with him in any meaningful and positive way.
[> [> [> [> [> [> Good point - Buffy was not falling back on her old morality in leaving Spike -- Slain, 13:38:13 08/28/02 Wed
[> [> [> Re: More choices -- Arethusa, 12:49:56 08/28/02 Wed
By "Why can't I stop?" I think Buffy meant "Why am I so compelled to do this? Why have I chosen to sleep with a vampire I hate?" She knew it was "wrong" and was ashamed of her behavior, but Spike was able to briefly lift her out of her depression. She felt good when she was with Spike because, well, sex feels good and so does unconditional acceptance and love. (It's funny-I can't remember Spike ever telling Buffy why he loved her. Did she ever ask?) She knows she can stop seeing Spike, and should, but depression, which can be masking overwhelming fear, is preventing her from making the "right" choice. I read somewhere that depression is anger turned against one's self. A heavily burdened Buffy thought that when her job was done she'd receive-if not her reward, at least a final peace. Willow shattered that comfort, one of the few she had left. Buffy told Sweet that he could drag her to hell, but it wouldn't make any difference. And to her, at that time, it wouldn't-she was already in hell. And in that sense, she really has no choice-what does it matter what she does, when the outcome will be the same?
Existentially, she is trying to find her place in the universe. Does she belong with the demons, or the humans? Did Angel reject her because she is human, or did Riley reject her because she is superhuman? Or were they rejecting the woman Buffy? Does she belong in both worlds, or neither?
(Sorry for the incoherence-I'd tidy it up but I have to run.)
[> [> [> [> Re: More choices -- Just George, 17:11:46 08/28/02 Wed
Arethusa: " I read somewhere that depression is anger turned against one's self."
I think you have identified something important here. If true, Buffy wasn't just depressed in S6, she was angry.
ME has a history of having angry characters talk about themselves as they seem to talk about someone else. The most obvious case was Faith (in Buffy's body) riffing on Buffy (in Faith's body). I think ME has done it other times as well.
One interpretation of Buffy's depression, actually self loathing, in S6 can be seen by reversing two of her most explosive interchanges with Spike. As you read them, assume Buffy is taking about herself, not about him. Thanks to Psyche for the transcripts.
Here's the critical part of the interchange between Spike and Buffy from Smashed. It seems as if they are talking about each other:
Spike: "She doesn't fit in anywhere. She's got no one to love."
Buffy: "Me? I'm lost? Look at you, you idiot! Poor Spikey. Can't be a human, can't be a vampire. Where the hell do you fit in? Your job is to kill the slayer. But all you can do is follow me around making moon eyes."
Spike: "I'min love with you."
Buffy: "You're in love with pain. Admit it. Spike gets up You like me . . . because you enjoy getting beat down. So really, who's screwed up?"
Spike: "Hello! Vampire! I'm supposed to be treading on the dark side. What's your excuse?"
But turn it around and let Buffy be talking about herself and about her history with love. By swapping the terms you get:
Buffy: "Me? I'm lost. Look at me, you idiot! Poor Buffy. Can't be a human, can't be a Slayer. Where the hell do I fit in? My job is to kill vampires. But all I can do is follow you around making moon eyes."
Spike: "I'min love with you."
Buffy: "I'm in love with pain. Admit it. I like you . . . because I enjoy getting beat down. So really, who's screwed up?"
The description here of "being in love with pain" mirror Spike's comments in Normal Again that Buffy is in love with misery.
Here is the critical interchange from the alley scene in Dead Things:
Spike: "Come on, that's it, put it on me. Put it all on me. That's my girl."
Buffy: "I am not your girl!"
Buffy: "You don't. . . have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never. . . be your girl!
Spike: "You always hurt. . . the one you love, pet.
Apply the same switch and you get:
Buffy: "I don't. . . have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in me. I am dead inside! I can't feel anything real! I could never. . . be your girl!
In this case, an interpretation could be that Buffy isn't good enough for anyone because she is dead inside.
Remember that at this point Buffy is sure she "came back wrong." She has not yet gotten the "truth" from Tara. Seen from this perspective, Buffy was convinced that her problem was beyond her control. She thought she was unable to make choices because she had no "soul".
Becoming convinced by Tara that she had a "soul" stripped Buffy of this excuse. It was the beginning of taking back responsibility for her choices. I don't know that Buffy has figured out her place in the world yet. But perhaps she is no longer making choices from a position of inwardly directed anger.
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> More paths to explore.... -- Arethusa, 18:16:38 08/28/02 Wed
I wonder if Buffy was hoping she came back wrong. I mentioned this once before: if Buffy were a demon, she wouldn't have to feel bad about being unable to save her mother, or being angry with the people she loves most in the world and who were trying to give her a life back, or being overwhelmed by her new responsibilities. It's very important, I think, that Spike was the only one she could express anger to without reserve; he couldn't be physically hurt, and she did her best to convince herself that he couldn't be emotionally hurt. Letting out the violence was an emotional release, and only after she vented her violence could she have sex. The times when she didn't fight (behind the tree and the Doublemeat Palace) she had emotionless sex.
I think your're correct about the exchanges you posted. She really was talking about herself. Was she admitting she had no soul, or hoping she had no soul-or both, if that is possible?
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: More paths to explore.... -- Just George, 22:24:58 08/28/02 Wed
Arethusa: "Was she admitting she had no soul, or hoping she had no soul-or both, if that is possible?"
Both, I think. Buffy was both hoping she had no soul and admitting it to herself. This is a lot like how Faith admitted in her rant that she had been a bad person.
Having no soul would be a convenient excuse for what Buffy was doing and how she was feeling. As Angel says in "Angel": "No conscience, no remorse. . . It's an easy way to live." By "Dead Things" Buffy had convinced herself that she had lost her soul and was "dead inside". That is part of the reason why Tara's news hit her so hard. Buffy had to accept that she had no "excuse" for her actions and feelings. They were just choices she had made and had to take responsibility for.
-JG
[> [> [> [> [> [> Well, of course -- vh, 12:13:32 08/30/02 Fri
if she did come back wrong things would make sense. Things didn't make sense.
[> [> [> [> [> Powerful post, JG! -- Rahael, 05:16:56 08/29/02 Thu
[> I have nothing to add - but GREAT essay!!!!! -- Jacki, 13:19:00 08/30/02 Fri
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