March 2002 posts
A problem with 'The Gift'? spoilers if you haven't
seen it...or read anything about it! -- O'Cailleagh, 13:45:57
03/17/02 Sun
After rewatching 'The Gift' on Friday, I was reminded of this
problem I had with the plotline, that escaped me at the time due
to the lack-of-puppies-ending.
I apologise if this was brought up at the time...
How does Buffy close the portal?
The scrolls say that once the blood starts to flow, the portal
will open, and will only close when the blood stops (ie no more
left). Dawn wasn't drained of blood...she lost very little, in
fact.
Okay, so I got that Dawn is made from Buffy's blood (apparently-we
only have her word for this), and that they have, therefore, the
same blood. This suggests that they are genetically identical.
So why aren't they physically identical? I suppose that Dawn's
DNA could have been altered by the monks, or by the energy of
the Key as the monks created her, but that would mean that her
blood would be different to Buffy's (only slightly as she still
has Summers' blood). For the portal to be fooled by Buffy's blood,
it would, presumably, have to be identical to Dawn's-genetically
or mystically-and if mystically (ie the same etheric 'blueprint'),
this would also suggest that they be physically identical.
On top of this, we have the fact that Buffy's blood is not imbued
with the "living energy" that is the essence of the
Key. It is, however, imbued with the mystical energy of the Slayer.
Are we being told that these are one and the same?
[> Re: A problem with 'The
Gift'? spoilers if you haven't seen it...or read anything about
it! -- TRM, 14:19:29 03/17/02 Sun
I would imagine blood being both physically and metaphorically
being related to the soul or some sort of life force. This can
have a similar analogy with the whole vampire-making schtick.
A vampire drains you of your blood, essentially having your blood
flow stop and thereby forcing your soul/life force out and then
replaces it with the demon soul which you drink.
In such a sense, the key is this other form of mystical energy
that can exist as energy or can be contained in some sort of vessel.
Dawn is that vessel, but in order to make her, they require her
to be alive and thus they must find life from somewhere, i.e.,
Buffy. Whether this is a literal genetic reproduction of Buffy
I find doubtful, and the meaning of Dawn being made from Buffy's
blood makes more sense in terms of being made out of her life
force.
In some sense, this life force can be seen as something that contains
the mystical energy of the key. Thus, the breaking of this life
force releases these mystical energies that can subsequently unlock
the doors to other dimensions.
However, this doesn't quite get to your point as to how the death
of Buffy closes the portal. I can't make any valid conjectures
here without assuming too much (the mystical energies of the key
have become intrinsically meshed with the Dawn (and therefore
Buffy) lifeforce, and will be drawn to termination at the termination
of this lifeforce, etc.); so I will be leaving the direct question
unanswered. I offer as far as "the blood stops" a more
literal interpretation in terms of the blood stops flowing, this
suggests that life is something that is inherently mobile, active.
As the Epicuriens would say: the only true repose is death. Buffy
in dying stopped her blood from flowing.
On another note, and perhaps this has been noted before. Did anyone
notice that poor Glory could have gotten back to her demon dimension
and everything else could have worked out the same? She really
died for no reason...
[> [> Re: A problem with
'The Gift'? spoilers if you haven't seen it...or read anything
about it! -- gds, 14:38:59 03/17/02 Sun
I recommend OnM's comments on this issue. It should be in the
archives for last year. It is a further development of his QH
theory which should be in the 2000 archives.
[> [> [> Re: A problem
with 'The Gift'? spoilers if you haven't seen it...or read anything
about it! -- Rob, 15:09:37 03/17/02 Sun
It said the portal would close when the blood stopped flowing.
When Buffy jumps in the portal, she dies, causing her blood to
stop flowing. Since Dawn's blood was made from the same blueprint
as Buffy's, the portal could be seen to have been fooled into
thinking that it was Dawn. Or, symbolically, innocent blood is
given to do the sacrifice. Whose innocent blood isn't as relevant
as the fact that the blood is innocent.
Rob
[> [> Re: Not just Glory...
-- Philistine, 17:04:14 03/17/02 Sun
Somehow I missed this until I saw the FX rerun, and I'm sure it's
been pointed out before, but...
Glory was already dead when Doc took the knife to Dawn.
Would he have bothered opening the portal if he'd known Glorificus
wasn't going to be able to go through? Perhaps he would - he didn't
seem overly sane - but the battle was already lost and won by
the time he got around to bleeding Dawn, so it was pretty much
entirely pointless. And if not for that one unnecessary, useless
action of Doc's - if Doc had known it didn't matter anymore; if
Spike could have just kept Doc occupied for a minute or two longer;
if Buffy could have gotten up the tower just a hair faster after
her fight with Glory - Buffy need not have died.
[> [> [> Re: Not just
Glory... -- Amber, 00:48:23 03/18/02 Mon
My interpretation was that Doc wasn't opening the portal for Glory,
but for himself. Regardless of whether or not Glory got to return
to her dimension, I think he wanted the hell-on-earth that would
be created by bleeding Dawn.
Angelus had the same goal in Becoming when he tells Spike and
Dru "We're going to make history...end." In this case
Angelus's goal doesn't make much sense either. If he turns earth
into a hell-dimension what's he going to eat once all the "happy
meals on legs" are killed by the newly increased population
of demons and other nasties?
Also, on the Doc thing. I was never clear on how he got to the
top of the tower. Did he climb like Buffy and Spike or does he
have some sort of teleportation powers? If he just appeared out
of nowhere, it's unlikely he knew what was going on with the ground
battle.
[> [> [> [> Re:
Not just Glory... -- Philistine, 18:53:31 03/19/02 Tue
That's possible, but I think Doc's self-identification as a worshipper
of Glorificus (to Spike and Xander in WotW) makes it less likely.
And I don't know how Doc got up there, either. We really don't
know what sort of powers he had/has, other than arcane knowledge
and the ability to survive impalement, so teleportation certainly
can't be ruled out; and the Scoobies on the ground apparently
didn't see him start up the stairs from ground level.
[> [> [> Battle Intelligence
& Synchronization -- Eric, 03:58:43 03/18/02 Mon
The final battle between the Scoobies and Glory was realistic
in the sense that real battles are rarely properly synchronized.
Indeed, a planned synchronization of all the elements thats ruined
by the enemy or circumstance is usually a determining factor in
who wins. Glory, bless her magnificant arrogance, completely ignored
the fact that she was approaching her most vulnerable time and
yet did nothing to stop Buffy & Co. Sadly, Buffy & Co. had no
real idea of how she was setting up Dawn's sacrafice. The tower
was a complete surprise. I suspect Xander's position manning the
wrecking ball is evidence of this. He was probably awaiting Buffy's
cue to demolish it, instead of a shot at a "spare".
And there were numerous opportunities for one or the other Scoobies
to be at a critical place at a critical time to save the day.
But you can only armchair general so much. BTW, I don't think
Doc's intrusion as a wild card Glory supporter was unrealistic.
Such things happen in fantasy or real life. And I don't think
many would have objected if he produced a knife to cut Dawn's
ropes. My biggest beef with the ep was that it made me really
sad. It was a shot in the gut which lingers still (especially
since I can't get UPN).
[> [> [> Glory wasn't
dead yet...almost there...very weak...but not dead yet when Doc
cut Dawn. -- Rob, 09:08:22 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> Re:
You sure? -- Philistine, 18:21:13 03/19/02 Tue
The sequence of events is a little hard to follow, because I don't
know which scenes are actually occurring simultaneously. But I
got the impression that after Buffy was done hammering Glory,
she got up to the top of the tower as quickly as she could and
arrived JUST too late to stop Doc from wielding the knife - the
first drops of blood fell, opening the portal, while Buffy was
freeing Dawn, and they didn't notice the portal until they reached
the other end of the walkway. Since we saw Giles smothering Ben
just as Buffy started up the tower, I think Glory was gone before
Doc made the cuts.
[> Try to reconcile the
inconsistencies and your head will explode. -- Darby, 16:57:56
03/17/02 Sun
None of it really makes any sense at all, right from the start.
The Key was not supposed to be in human form, but the ritual
involves anointing and bloodletting? If Buffy jumps into a portal
that stuff is coming through, why doesn't she go through?
If she stops what's happening, does this mean that the Key would
be destroyed by the opening of the "door" and shoving
her into the opening (which was growing toward her)?
The actual plot details throughout the arc don't make sense: Glory
has existed in our plane since before the advent of language (from
Giles' and the Watchers' Council research and some detail of the
"exposition monk's" monologue), but most of the time
seems to have been here only as long as Ben has been alive (although
sometimes Ben seems to have knowledge to suggest a less-than-normal
life, but it is explicitly stated somewhere that he's 22); the
Key, presumably a product of Glory's ouster from her dimension
(but maybe not), is being watched over by monks whose garb and
accoutrements suggest the Dark Ages, and sought by Knights of
the Middle Ages (able to import archaic weapons and horses
to Southern California!), who over the centuries apparently had
never found the Key they sought but still seemed to be able to
recruit members (seen anybody searching for the Grail lately?)
for Buffy to kill, although no one ever mentions it when they
talk about how the Slayer can't do that (what, the Knights
deserved to die more than Warren does???). And whom nobody had
ever noticed enough to write things down about them. The plot
holes were bigger than any transdimensional portal could be.
But it didn't really matter, because the plot on those levels
was pure MacGuffin. If we cared about that, we'd have to care
about Glory the Valley Girl and the ever-growing cadre of leprosied
hobbits around her, but they were way too much fun. Or the implications
of altering the world to insert a new person into the continuity.
[> [> Minor plot details
don't bother me...It's really the emotion of the story that matter...
-- Rob, 17:13:19 03/17/02 Sun
Just ignore the plotholes and they'll go away...I promise!
;o)
Rob
[> [> [> Re: Minor
plot details don't bother me...It's really the emotion of the
story that matter... -- DEN, 18:24:09 03/17/02 Sun
And the real snapper is that the Scoobies WON the season-long
contest ME set them. Glory is not only defeated and slain before
Doc appears. Doc's appearance on the tower is cheating! We last
saw him on the floor with a sword through his midsection. ME gave
us no indication Doc is immortal, or any less killable than anyone
else of the demon persuasion. Spike proclaims him dead, and Spike
is an expert on that matter! Talk about fraudulent resurrections
and reset buttons!
[> [> [> [> Re:
Doc -- Darby, 20:09:11 03/17/02 Sun
The last shot of Doc in his apartment is of him opening his eyes,
so we did know that he wasn't dead before he popped back up on
the tower, and we'd been told that he's a Glory supporter. As
for Spike, he had just risked incinerating himself for...does
anybody remember what was in the box? He may have been a bit distracted.
That's probably one of the details he spent the next 147 days
replaying in his head.
Why am I spackling plotholes here? I'm a bilgepump on the Titanic...
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Doc -- DEN, 16:00:08 03/18/02 Mon
WE know he's alive--a point I should have made, and thanks. But
the SCOOBIES don't, and have no reason to watch out for him
[> [> [> [> [>
What's In The Box... -- Ishkabibble, 20:27:32 03/18/02
Mon
After Spike pulls the box out of the fire, we don't see it again
until it shows up at the Magic Box, open, on a table. The table
is surrounded by Giles and the Scoobies (W. X. A. T. S.).
Buffy enters and says "Heard you found ritual text."
Giles then says something to the effect that "according to
these scrolls, it is possible for Glory to be stopped." Giles
continues on, describing how the portal can be opened by Dawn's
blood, yadda, yadda, yadda. Buffy says how she loves everyone,
but no way is she going to kill Dawn. Spike makes his "its
all about the blood" speech.
There doesn't seem to be any further reference to the box. Kind
of disappointing after all the risk Spike took to retrieve it
from the fire, huh.
[> [> Sorry, can't let
this go...Rack this up to my think-too-much-quotient of 11!
-- Rob, 21:35:32 03/17/02 Sun
I recently rewatched the entire fifth season over a period of
2 days, and I gotta tell ya...not all those plotholes you just
wrote about are plotholes.
Yes, they said the Knights were around for hundreds of years,
searching for the Key. And yes it said that Glory, as a being,
predated language. They did not say, however, that Glory had been
in our dimension that long. Further, it was made clear
that the Key's presence in our dimension predated Glory's presence.
And the key could be used to open dimensional portals, not just
Glory's specific one. The Beast springing up now was definitely
what the knights were fighting at this point, but it was not a
contradiction that Glory entered Ben's body 20-22 years ago (give
or take). The Knights had wanted to destroy the key long before
the threat of Glory came along. Its very existence scared them,
because of its ability to cause the end of the world.
Further, I don't see it as a plothole that the ritual involves
bloodletting, because Doc was Glory's "research guy,"
much like Giles and Willow are (or were) Buffy's. Had the key
been in a different form, he probably had a different way to use
it. Should it be in this form, however, that is the way these
things go. Glory is a god and does not concern herself with pesky,
mortal details of her followers. She has her minions, like Doc,
do that for her. And maybe the Key did have to be human...Either
way, Glory would not have known that.
And, as far as the Knights, I didn't find their existence that
strange. For one, in some places, there are still knight orders
that dress up and reenact famous medieval battles, etc. It is
merely an exaggeration (albeit more serious) of point in British
history, reminiscent of the Renaissance festivals. We don't expect
there to be true knights today, but this really added to the mythic
feel of the story, I believe. And it didn't say Buffy was allowed
to kill them. Buffy fought them, because they fought her. She
didn't go out to seek them, as she does with demons. In fact,
she tried to run away from them!
Rob
[> [> [> Re: Sorry,
can't let this go...Rack this up to my think-too-much-quotient
of 11! -- Darby, 07:14:31 03/18/02 Mon
I'll grant you that those points do sort of cover the inconsistencies,
but they lead to other questions.
Do the reference books include books from other dimensions? That's
the only way that the info about Glory would be available, right?
Nobody's ever talked about books in demon languages (except for
the Pylea one - was that actually in Pylean?), but it would also
mean that books currently being "published" (during
Glory's coup d'etat) are being moved across, a Priority Mail route
home for Glorificus!
If the Key itself were this long-held object of fear for an entire
order, it's hard to believe that no one could find any info on
it - it really would have been like the Grail, or the Gem of Amara.
Or that the Knights, who could find it in a Winnebago in the Mohave
(what'd Spike do, file a flight plan? or they followed them out
of town in full regalia? how slow was that thing?), couldn't track
it to a much more static monastery given centuries to do it. And
how the heck did Glory track it when she couldn't recognize it
right in front of her?
If you knew that the Key was only usable in a certain form, would
you place it into that form to hide it? But while it makes sense
that Doc could have adapted a ceremony to the current form, what's
the blood mean? Would it have been an energy siphon to gradually
open the doorway, that Buffy's blood overloaded?
Yikes! There might be coherent explanations after all! Curse you,
Rob! (Just kidding.)
[> [> [> [> Consider
me cursed. ;o) -- Rob, 08:35:42 03/18/02 Mon
For what it's worth, you do make some good points about the other
inconsistencies. I personally would list those as more "vague
points" than plot holes...
The books...heck, the Scoobies are always able to find some arcane
references that nobody else can...and sometimes even on the internet...How?
I believe about the knights not getting the key yet, the monks
had only recently found the key themselves, or hid it very well.
Its hiding place or form was close to finally being discovered,
so they changed its form. I personally imagined this happening
throughout Buffyverse history. Kind of like the Grail, but they
have no idea what it looks like, because at any point it can turn
into something completely different-looking.
The portal...um...I kind of thought of it like a mindless entity,
like the non-cerebral functions of the human body. Yeah, think
of it like that...Sometimes a human will get a heart transplant,
which the body will instantly attack, even though its meant to
be good for it. Sometimes, however, (hopefully) it can be fooled
into thinking that this heart is meant to be there. The portal,
similarly, knows, in whatever dumb mind capacity (or whatever
you'd like to call it) that it has, that it must open farther
and farther while the blood is flowing, and it will close when
the blood stops flowing. Buffy, whose blood makeup is very similar
to the key's (or perhaps even completely the same, on a surface
analysis), can therefore stand in for the key, like a heart transplant.
Buffy jumps in, and her death causes her blood to stop flowing,
thus tricking the portal into thinking that the key's blood has
stopped. The portal isn't smart to the point that it knows Dawn
from Buffy. But it does know what it will look like when the key's
blood has stopped flowing.
OK, maybe I'm overthinking (or even God forbid stretching lol)
some plot points here, but reconciling these little problems in
the story (with varied measures of success) is what keeps me sane!
Rob
[> [> [> Re: Sorry,
can't let this go...Rack this up to my think-too-much-quotient
of 11! -- leslie,
13:11:53 03/18/02 Mon
Just my two cents on the plugging of plot holes--first, my sense
of what happened to Buffy when she plunged into the portal was
that her body died in this dimension, but her spirit went through
the portal into another dimension (which she subsequently identifed
as "heaven," or perhaps, now, has relabelled "asylum"--and
remember that "asylum" is not only a mental hospital,
but a place of refuge). Second, although Dawn as the Key may be
necessary for opening the portal, closing the portal may not require
Keyness so much as bloodness. After all, if a door is locked,
you need a key to open it, but once it is open, you can close
it without necessarily locking it again. Which, when you come
to think of it, may be why Buffy found her way back into the asylum
last week--she didn't lock the door behind her.
[> [> [> [> Good
points, Leslie! -- Rob, 20:48:29 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> Re: Sorry,
can't let this go...Rack this up to my think-too-much-quotient
of 11! -- Simon A., 17:01:06 03/19/02 Tue
I thought that the knights were pretty dumb, and this comes from
somebody who does dress up in historical stuff on a regular basis.
I mean, there are plenty of orders of knighthood still around,
and lots of of quaint and curious costumes that they're called
upon to wear, but none of them actually fight in them. I'd believe
that they wore that stuff for ceremonies etc, but not for actual
battle. Even if they were mystical weapons and armor, to use against
Glory, I bet they'd have a few guns around to deal with any mortals
that got in their way. Of course there are very few guns in the
Buffyverse. Other than the "Scary.....Scarier" scene
in S2 the vampires and other bads rarely use them.
And did anyone else blanche when one knight said "bring forward
the clerics" ?(or words to that effect) Someone's been spending
too much time reading the AD&D Players Manual
[> Actually I thought it
was worse that, why not just bind Dawn's wound and stp her bleeding?
-- Dochawk, 09:47:22 03/18/02 Mon
[> anticoagulants --
skeeve,
10:45:48 03/18/02 Mon
Neither Giles's interpretation of the writings nor Buffy's solution
made much sense.
Killing Dawn would not have kept her blood from flowing outside
her body. Admittedly it would have speeded the process a bit.
The Scoobies should have been armed with anticoagulants, not just
bandages.
The writings gave not the slightest clue that the portal could
be closed by Summers blood other than Dawn's blood.
Given that it could, Buffy's `knowledge' was the result of either
clairvoyance or wishful thinking.
[> [> Why blood? Why
Dawn's blood? I mean, why couldn't it be like a, a lymph ritual?
-- TRM, 11:04:53 03/18/02 Mon
Which is why I would still contest that prophecies shouldn't be
read literally and that blood is simply a metaphor (albeit partially
literal) for life. Note Spike's comment:
"Blood is life, lackbrain. Why do you think we eat it? It's
what keeps you going. Makes you warm. Makes you hard. Makes you
other than dead. Course it's her blood."
Hm... Spike and his innuendos (Makes you warm...). Regardless
of which, Dawn's life is a latticework of blood, just like a rug
is a latticework of threads. Once the blood starts flowing, the
life starts unravelling. When no more unravelling can go on, the
rug no longer exists. Thus we get into the fact that someone must
*die* and then we have Buffy acting as the surrogate blood/life.
Strict interpretations of prophecies rarely make sense... I was
hugely bothered by "Prophecy Girl" since I interpret
dying as well, dying -- not having your heart stop or stop breathing...
Plus, if we are to look at this realistically, the prophecy is
likely to have been translated and written down by people who
are "only human/demon" and humans and demons take artistic
liberties and interpret things around a bit. Over the centuries/millenia,
I'm sure that the prophecy could have lost much of its technical
rigor.
[> [> Re: anticoagulants
-- Rob, 12:14:39 03/18/02 Mon
The fact is, the exact hows don't matter...It's the symbolism
and metaphor of the act of self-sacrifice to save an innocent.
In reponse to there not have been any clue that another could
close the portal, isn't that the point? Had we known before that
there was another option, it would have lessened the drama of
the moment, where Buffy has an epiphany, a moment of intense realization.
It was not clairvoyance...it was remembering the words of the
First Slayer, Spike's words about the importance of blood, and
her own words that Dawn's blood was Summers blood, and made from
her blueprint. That's why they showed those flashbacks.
Yes, it's possible that Buffy could have jumped and not solved
anything. But the fact is that it did work...Chalk it up to whatever
you want...it was meant to be; Buffy's wanting it so much made
it so. Whatever the technicalities, I truly don't give a fig.
Whether it was true or not, Buffy considered Dawn her blood relative,
and created from her own actual blood. And that was enough. This
is not science fiction, remember, bound by astringent, unshakable
rules. This is myth.
Technically, no, it shouldn't have worked. But the importance
is it did.
And I think that was Joss' intent.
Rob
[> [> Gile's reasoning,
I thought, was... -- Rob, 13:49:55 03/18/02 Mon
...that, if they killed Dawn, it would not stop her blood from
flowing, if she'd started bleeding, but make the bleeding go faster,
so that it would be over with faster and the portal would close
sooner.
Rob
[> [> [> Re: Gile's
reasoning, I thought, was... -- skeeve, 08:58:58 03/19/02
Tue
Giles wasn't specific enough to conclude that. Whether or not
killing Dawn would speed the bleeding would depend on just what
was done to her body. Just breaking her neck, for example, would
slow the bleeding. Anticoagulants would have done better.
Maybe that Buffy thought killing herself would save Dawn can be
attributed to the Doppler effect: the tendency of bad ideas to
seem better when they come at you quickly. (from someone's .signature)
That it worked was dumb luck.
[> [> [> [> Re:
Gile's reasoning, I thought, was... -- Rob, 09:41:15 03/19/02
Tue
See...I don't think it was dumb luck. I think that metaphorically
it made sense to Buff and that is why it worked.
I am a big believer in stories that the conviction of the characters'
beliefs (especially in fantasy) far outweighs what we believe
are the rules of the story. I don't think Buffy's death broke
any rules but rewrote some rules...or created new rules we had
not yet been aware of. The rules were that Dawn was just a ball
of energy and yet Buffy's love for her was so strong it rewrote
the rules that Dawn was a "fake" sister. Buffy embraced
her false memories and considers her her real sister.
That's not even getting into the fact that it would have been
lousy storytelling if Buffy knew she could substitute herself
before...for a number of reasons:
(1) If we knew there was an escape route it would have taken all
of the suspense out of the saving Dawn scenario...We had to feel
as an audience that there was no options left until the very last
minute of the story. Had we known that Buffy knew she could kill
herself to substitute beforehand Buffy's self-sacrifice would
have been a foregone conclusion;
(2) It would have taken away the very importance of the symbolic
act. This was a perfect moment of clarity for Buffy...an epiphany...where
she realized the truth of the matter at hand. She realized finally
what "Death is your gift" means and Spike's speech about
the importance of blood. Had she been told before explicitly that
she could kill herself to save Dawn it would have taken away the
drama of the moment. I believe that the most important thing was
that Buffy came to the conclusion herself. Had Giles found out
he would have tried to stop her as would have the other Scoobies.
Buffy realized this on her own and acted on it before anyone could
stop her.
Joss is a brilliant writer. I think he knew full well that it
might seem illogical that Buffy could save Dawn this way. However
it is the symbolism and the emotion that truly matters and that's
what he's getting at. In the end rules don't matter. Family and
love is what truly matters. See other big episodes that year--"Family"
"Blood Ties" "Fool for Love"--they all deal
with those issues.
This death was planned out long in advance. Had Joss wanted to
fully explain the mechanisms behind how Buffy's death worked to
save Dawn he could have. There was a whole season filled with
clues about other things like the mental patients and the Glory/Ben
scenario that wasn't explained until the end of the year along
with the reason for why Dawn didn't tell Buffy about it. Why wouldn't
he have then explained this last moment unless it was not important?
For what it's worth I think the few flashbacks Buffy has before
jumping fully explains the situation.
Myth rarely fills in all the blanks. It allows us to make some
conclusions ourselves.
As I said before the importance isn't why it worked but that it
did.
Rob
P.S. Pardon the lack of commas. I'm working at a computer that
is sans "comma" key!
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Gile's reasoning, I thought, was... -- O'Cailleagh,
11:13:34 03/19/02 Tue
All very good points and comments. I still feel that some effort
be made to not break the rules though. I mean, these are the rules
that bind the existence of the Buffyverse...without them, it would
fall apart (in my head at least).
I feel Buffy jumping, without truly knowing if it would work,
shows that she was looking for a way out of her Slayerness...death
was a gift to herself..a kind of gold watch.
She wanted to die to avoid the responsibilities of her life...thats
why she was brought back, to face up to growing up.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Emotional gameplay of "the Gift" -- TRM,
14:20:08 03/19/02 Tue
Rob brings up a strong point about the value of emotions in the
Gift, and indeed I believe ME's intent was primarily an emotional
one. However, there are many ways to evoke and deter from emotional
impact. Here's my view on how the chronological emotional landscape
was intended to have been played out in the tower scene and how
it actually may have turned out to some viewers.
Let me divide the tower scene into three stages. First, the stage
is set: Dawn is bleeding, and Buffy has arrived too late. Second,
is the awakening/epiphany: Buffy and Dawn realizes the alternative
to Dawn's death. Last, is the action/decision: Buffy sacrifices
herself and the decision is made.
With Dawn bleeding, there is already this sense of urgency, this
sense of chaos, but ultimately this sense of certainty. It had
been drilled into our consciousness that if Dawn starts to bleed
Dawn must die. We have some sense of fatality here which brings
sadness, but some degree of predictability here as well which
may bring some version of calm. We know how this will end, despite
what Buffy might do in the interim. Dawn sacrifices herself, is
killed by a demon, is killed by Giles or Buffy even, the effect
is the same. In fact, given this there is a sense of futility
but a sense of the preciousness of time. In the interim, before
Dawn's death, Buffy and Dawn may "share a moment."
The kicker, of course, is the creeping realization of Dawn and
the almost epiphany of Buffy as to an alternative. Emotionally,
this stage is the most turbulent of the three, not Buffy's death
-- as there the decision is made. Furthermore, the presence of
this stage before the action/decision suggests that ME does want
us to know of the alternative before Buffy dies but the timing
is key.
In such a respect, I think the audience is to be feeling more
of what Dawn is feeling as opposed to Buffy. Buffy is resolute,
she knows what she is doing. But, Dawn is not. The realization
is at once dreadful, quickly creeping, and absolute. The audience/Dawn
doesn't understand at once what Buffy is suggesting, yet, she
has an impression of where it is leading. Time, of course, is
of the essence, and an alternative arriving at this late a stage
makes not knowing the alternative even more distressing and prevents
objective thinking. Thus Dawn is faced with arguing with Buffy,
stopping Buffy from doing something she knows will hurt her but
she isn't sure what it is, likewise the audience, is trying to
come to grips with what is happening, is trying to rationalize
the choices but cannot because they simply do not have the time
and the situation is too chaotic. They have been thrust out of
a safety, albeit it sad, into a confusion of what to do. Ultimately,
the realization is absolute, we've come from one alternative,
brought up another, and have settled firmly on the other. Yet,
for Dawn and the audience, they are trying their best to fight
and kick all the way -- if there's one alternative, why not a
third? Yet they are fighting that which they don't know and that
ultimately they feel cannot be overcome which makes the situation
desperate. Logical reasoning of course, falls by the wayside --
this is an emotional question. But of course, what we are being
faced with is not only the coldness of inevitability but a resolution
by Buffy that appears not only emotionally based but on her part
fully thought out.
Buffy's decision -- taken without the consent of Dawn and without
the time required for the audience to incorporate is striking,
almost harsh. Both Dawn and the audience are powerless to stop
Buffy. We feel protected, yes, but also weak and we feel as if
Dawn should have some say, that we should have time to come to
grips with this (think Buffy in "I Will Remember You").
It's not fair that Buffy made this decision on her even if the
decision is right. Buffy's sacrifice leaves us with a deep sense
of sadness resulting not simply from Buffy's death, but with its
juxtaposition with some sense of confused hope that the first
hints of realization brought about, and a sense of betrayal by
hope itself - - that for the audience and for Dawn, the alternative
proposed, the "better alternative" or at the very least
the one which with absolute truth must go forth is harder to take
then the problem which we faced originally. Buffy is indeed the
protector, but we have been forced into the role of the protected.
Buffy had sacrificed herself for Dawn, for the world, for the
audience as she had many times before and we have no chance to
repay her.
Of course, Buffy doesn't ask for repayment -- her speech to Dawn
is meant to reassure not to distress, but of course the impact
of this speech doesn't hit Dawn until afterwards, until she has
absorbed the fact that Buffy is gone. Indeed, the speech isn't
presented to the audience until after Buffy has sacrificed herself.
Council is secondary, delayed, potent, perhaps mildly curative,
but not preventative of distress.
Give the above as the emotional gameplay intended, what then do
I mean but what was actually played out? Indeed, I believe for
those of us who do care less about the technical details, such
a scenario was appropriately conducted. However, it is very evident
that there are many of us who do question the technical details
and most principally the conclusion that Buffy was so resolute
about that Buffy's sacrifice could save Dawn and the world. But,
it's the absolute nature of this sacrifice, the immutability of
the choice that must be made that is what creates the urgency,
despair, and injustice against time. We are to come to the conclusion,
despite ourselves, that Buffy must sacrifice herself. Thus, some
viewers who find technical details important would not have felt
as drastically the impending nature of Buffy's decision. Indeed,
as suggested before in this thread, lacking this absolutism, Buffy's
decision could seem downright illogical -- Buffy may be killing
herself for no reason, and Dawn would just have to swandive after
her.
I personally tend not to question details when watching movies...
I've cried at the most little things (I cried in Toy Story 2,
when the cowgirl was dreaming about her previous owner -- note
that her memories too had a false sense of hope that betrayed
her). However, taking a step back and knowing that there are viewers
who are more critical, would it be, perhaps wiser for ME to have
somehow made Buffy's decision much more concrete?
Ultimately, we would be dealing with a question as to how far
ME must go. Indeed, the clues were there: "Your gift is death."
"Summers blood." But, do these clues add up? Some say
yes, some say no. And in some part, you are to arrive at the conclusion
that Buffy's sacrifice is necessary just as Dawn did -- not because
Buffy says so. And in that sense, the pieces need to fall in place
and technical validity must exist. ME's greates weakness in this
story arc was to establish that Buffy's blood in some way could
replace Dawn's blood. The monks made the key into the form of
a human and sent it to Buffy, but they didn't suggest anything
about making Dawn out of her. Buffy's statement of Dawn's blood
being Summers blood was certainly intended in that particular
episode not to mean that it was physically, genetically Summers
blood but it was Summers blood in terms of familial ties (or should
we assume Joyce, if alive, could have sacrificed herself to close
the portal?). ME seemed to have tried to imply that Dawn was made
out of Buffy (indeed, I think it was mentioned somewhere in that
sense), but there seemed little justification for Buffy to arrive
at this conclusion. Ultimately, for some, the pieces didn't fall
quite into place, and Buffy's decision while seen as courageous
and just didn't seem quite as necessary or pressing. The desperation
might not have been quite as strong, because we weren't fighting
with ourselves, but we we're saying instead: "Buffy says
it must be so, so it must be so." whereas we should have
been saying: "I don't want it to be so, but I know it must
be so."
So there you go. As with Rob, I agree that often, you shouldn't
question technicalities. In fact, even in books or shows that
I view as of general poor quality -- largely due to huge technical
gaps -- I find it better to accept whatever gaps exist and try
to feel what the intent of the work was, then to backtrack and
look at it objectively in retrospect. Still, technical gaps do
create difficulties with some viewers and it often becomes distracting
despite what a viewer tries to do and so I agree with many of
the others and O'Cailleagh. If you can stick with the rules, do
so. It is just less distraction for those who are interpreting
your work.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> I understand your points... -- Rob, 14:39:22
03/19/02 Tue
Thanks for writing them down like that, because I never really
fully understood why people had problems with "The
Gift" at least rules-wise.
I do still think that the clues add up perfectly. And the explanation
worked very well for me. But I understand better now why it didn't
for some people.
Thanks. I still agree with my original thoughts, but it helps
to see why others think why they do.
Rob
P.S. I never cry at movies, but the end of "The Gift"
did make me cry.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Excellent analysis, TRM. -- Ixchel, 15:59:50
03/19/02 Tue
The Gift "worked" for me on a very emotional level (I
cried also). After watching it the first time, I did see some
"technical" gaps, but I was able to reconcile them with
reviewing of the season (and maybe a little rationalizing) and
they did not in any significant way alter the emotional impact
of the episode.
On a related topic, does anyone else feel that Buffy's jump was
both self sacrifice and suicide at the same time? I watched TG
with someone recently (he hadn't yet seen it) and he made the
comment that he thought Buffy suicided (he then referred to her
depression about her mom, etc.). I responded that I thought it
was both self sacrifice and suicide, and how I felt this added
a fascinating dimension to the entire season (indeed to the series).
I suppose I need to review the archives. Considering the level
of thought here, I'm sure there is some very exciting stuff there.
Ixchel
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Carrion Comfort -- Rahael, 07:20:55
03/20/02 Wed
I too have wondered about this ambiguity.
Basically, I wanted Buffy,s sacrifice to signify something utterly
selfless, her shining moment; where she died to herself and became
at one with the universe.
So this kind of colours my view, and probably, my reasoning for
going against the Buffy/death wish theory is half wishful thinking.
But. Those who are desperate enough to contemplate killing themselves,
who long for oblivion can at that moment only see themselves,
their pain and their despair. Those who suffer from depressive
illnesses are suffering from a vicious cycle of thought which
leads them to arrive at only one conclusion, only one solution
to their problem their death. Buffy before she jumped is inspirational,
clear thinking, wise and serene. And compassionate. She isn,t
thinking of herself. She thinks of Dawn, who at that moment represents
the rest of humanity.
As evidence, I present Gerard Manley Hopkins, sonnet about the
day he contemplated suicide.
Carrion Comfort
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist - slack they may be - these last strands of man
In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee
and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh,
cheer.
Cheer whom though? The hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot
trod
Me? or me that fought him? Oh which one? is it each one? That
night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my
God.
Hopkins conveys so well his despair, and his shock when he realises
that the person he is fighting is God himself. This is a pretty
terrible conclusion for someone who is a Catholic priest.
"I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Self yeast of spirit a dull dough sours.
I do think that in the Gift, BtVS touches on these elements, especially
leading up to it. There are constant hints all the way up to it
that Buffy is despairing, ready to give up. I think these elements
are all there simply to make her final decision even braver; even
finer; even more selfless. I think that it contains that bittersweetness
that you touch upon - if Buffy simply matter of factly jumped,
because that's what heroes do, that would have lessened the emotional
impact. It's because she was tormented, and confused that her
moment of realisation has a triumph to it. Buffy finally understands
what her gift to the world is. But I can't deny that there is
a certain ambiguity there.
I recommend Dedalus, essay (in fic corner) which highlights all
the wonderful imagery of rebirth and new life which are compacted
into Buffy,s leap of faith. God is dead; humans are mortal; but
Dawn still rises.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> I admit -- Rahael, 07:27:48
03/20/02 Wed
That the above post is just my attempt to while away the time;
has nothing new to say about the Gift; and was just me going oh,
look suicide! probably my only opportunity to ever quote Hopkins'
'terrible sonnets'.
This was before I saw Dream's new thread!
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Suicides die for themselves. Heros
die for a cause. -- Sophist, 09:13:21 03/20/02 Wed
The characterization of suicide never crossed my mind until I
saw some people mention it here. Thank for articulating why it
was indeed a sacrifice, as I saw it.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Thanks for the responses Rahael and
Sophist. -- Ixchel, 15:47:17 03/20/02 Wed
The person I was watching with did agree with me that it was also
self sacrifice. He just also saw an element of relief for her
in it as well.
I feel that when Buffy reached Dawn she thought for a second that
she had won, but then Dawn pointed out the open portal. Then we
see the flashbacks and Buffy reach her decision to jump, (IMHO)
completely sure that her sacrifice would close the portal. My
interpretation of her thoughts (based on previous events, especially
everything between Joyce's death and her decision) is that she
_knew_ that her death would save Dawn, the others, and the world.
That her last act would be about love, when she had wondered if
she was losing that ability. That her death would mean something
other than some vampire having "one good day". And that
instead of being the Slayer (as she was when she sacrificed Angel
in Becoming 2), in the end she could be Buffy and more than "just
a killer after all". Also, I feel that the depression over
her mom was very close (she had not had time to grieve, really)
and there was some sense of relief from that.
IMHO, Dawn's thoughts were probably a reflection of Buffy's when
Dawn made her attempt to jump. The feeling that she is only destructive
(like Buffy's about being only a killer). That her death would
save everyone and make her unreal life mean something. And that
she would not have to feel the pain of missing her mother anymore.
I think the only reason Dawn stopped is that she realized she
could not get past Buffy.
So I feel that even if Buffy's intention was say 95% self sacrifice
and 5% suicide (if such a thing could possibly be quantified),
it does _not_ (for me) in any way negate the heroism of her jump.
In fact it just makes her more "human", more real to
me.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Ixchel
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: Gile's reasoning, I thought, was... -- leslie, 15:53:33 03/19/02
Tue
The thing is, we had already seen, at this point, that Buffy could
fall from the top of the tower to the ground and survive--she
and Glory had both fallen to the ground already. So, if tossing
herself in the portal didn't work, she would just have to climb
back up and try something else. I have to admit that when I first
saw this episode, until the very last minute, I had been a little
annoyed by the fact that people were galloping to the top of that
damned thing and then plummeting to earth with barely a scratch
(Buffy, Glory, AND Spike), but then when Buffy finally flung herself
into the portal, I realized that the others had been there to
make the point that *this* time was different, she didn't survive
and it was due to her self-sacrifice.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: Gile's reasoning, I thought, was... --
O'Cailleagh, 19:48:48 03/19/02 Tue
I agree...there was a huge emotional impact at the end of 'The
Gift'-I also cried (I have also been known to cry at 'Star Trek'
but that's another story...and OT). It was just that the technicalities
are important to me. When I watch a show like BtVS, I like to
try and fully 'believe' what's happening. For me it greatly enriches
the enjoyment/non-enjoyment of the show (non-enjoyment, as in
the emotionally-upsetting sense). Many technicalities are easily
overlooked, but those that compromise the usually impeccable sense
of reality within the Buffyverse do tend to detract from the emotional
impact. That said, a case could be made to say that, in holding
on to these 'mistakes', I was hiding from the emotional side of
things........
I also saw the suicide thing....that's one of the reasons that
s6 is so good (IMO)- Buffy was 'happy' to die and now has to deal
with having all that responsibility again...
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Gile's reasoning, I thought, was... -- skeeve, 09:43:29
03/20/02 Wed
The `technical' stuff was so bad that it interfered with the emotional
stuff. In another context, it is considered rude to correct grammar.
Sometimes the grammar is so bad it interferes with getting the
message across. If I had written the previous sentence as "The
is bad interferes getting message sometimes grammar so it with
the across.", I would rightly have gotten some negative feedback.
Giles, research-guy extraordinaire, gave an interpretation that
did not make sense. It wasn't something one could get from an
ordinary or literal reading and the certainty he expressed could
not be justified if he were interpreting metaphors.
No one called him on it. Not Buffy, not even Willow, techno-gal
extraordinaire.
This felt wrong to me while it was happening. All that talk of
bleeding and no one mentioning anticoagulants.
To make it worse, it was harped on at some length.
Pulling an iron-clad rule out of the air in one hour and then
breaking it the next is not good writing.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Different Satisfactions.... -- Rahael, 10:44:51
03/20/02 Wed
This is why the Gift worked, in my opinion.
There are different 'language games' which require different satisfactions.
The language game of science functions on certain accepted conventions.
We ask for empirical proof, we use inductive reasoning. We understand
that theories should be subjected to tests, and that a experiment
and its results must be able to be replicated by other laboratories
before its results can be accepted as credible.
The language game of magic is quite different. Different satisfactions
are required. For example,in early modern Europe, if a cow fell
suddenly sick, people might automatically think back to the glare
of the village crank. Before the witch craze set in, these little
disputes were simply subjected to resolution within the village
itself. The witch might undertake to remove her curse. Or using
BtVS, we are satisfied that appealing to Hecate will turn a human
being into a rat and vice versa.
The Gift functioned on a language game which resonates with Western
culture, and arguably, even beyond Western culture. Therefore
it makes sense that blood, which signifies kinship and life, can
be stopped by an incredible sacrifice which recognised fundamnetal
human truths.
At that one cosmic moment, Buffy dies for Dawn, who is the world.
She dies for humanity. No man is an island etc etc. The significance
of blood is that it is what all human beings have in common. The
Gift depicts the moment when Buffy realises the profound kinship
between one human being and all human beings. I am my sister's
keeper. Our blood is the same. It resonates on so many levels.
Blood for blood. life for life. Pound of flesh for pound of flesh.
The imagery of blood wells up time and time again in Season 5.
Dawn cuts herself and blood oozes out in Real Me, (echoing Shylock
there - 'If you prick me, do I not bleed?'). Season 5 is about
kinship, about family. Joss who showed in 'Family' that kinship
is more than blood relationship, showed in the Gift that blood
is about more than DNA matches.
The very illogical nature of the sacrifice screams at us to look
at the symbolic nature of the sacrifice. It points out to us the
glorious truth that Buffy comes to (like the paradox that Death
was her Gift)is that fellow feeling with other human beings. The
person who is lost, lonely and tired is my sister; the person
seeking sanctuary is my father; the man lying at the roadside
is my brother. Buffy can stand in for Dawn just as Jesus Christ,
the son of man could stand in for all the sinners of the world
(even though he is sinless).
It works precisely because it doesn't work.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: Different Satisfactions.... -- Rufus, 13:55:28
03/20/02 Wed
It works precisely because it doesn't work.
Totally agree, this show is all about metaphors, it's sciency
might be dodgy, but the intent is clear through the metaphors
used.
Classic
Movie of the Week - March 15th 2002 -- OnM ( who knows that
it's really the 17th ), 14:09:44 03/17/02 Sun
*******
Emily tries, but misunderstands, ah ooh
She,s often inclined to borrow somebody's dreams till tomorrow
There is no other day
Let's try it another way
You'll lose your mind and play
Free games for may
See Emily play
Soon after dark Emily cries, ah ooh
Gazing through trees in sorrow, hardly a sound till tomorrow
( There is no other day... )
Put on a gown that touches the ground, ah ooh
Float on a river, forever and ever, Emily
( There is no other day... )
See Emily play
............ Syd Barrett
*******
I taught you to fly, Claire. But you wanted to fall.
............ Claire,s lover, Augustine
*******
Choices, choices, too many choices. It drives people to madness,
as it nearly did poor Buffy in this current week,s episode. Follow
your heart? Follow your ambition? Follow your spiritual needs?
Follow the needs of others who depend on you? Or perhaps not be
a follower at all, but be a leader.
But as Mr Zimmerman aptly noted in his song, You gotta serve
somebody,, so even calling the leadership card isn,t an escape,
it just frames the situation in a different shade of gray. We
all do what we can, and if we are people of even modest integrity
and unpretentious vision, we muddle through and accept that there,s
always a critic.
Like me, for example. Granted, I,m a teeny little corner o, cyberspace
kind of critic, and I like to think a generally charitable and
forgiving kind either because of it, or because I hope such generosity
represents my better nature. I just recently received another
submission for the guest host CMotW, spots coming up very soon
(possibly next Friday, in fact), and the author commented as an
aside to me that he found the task of writing his review to be
more challenging than he expected it to be. He further stated
(and I,m paraphrasing) that it had brought to his awareness just
how much effort goes into creating something that others will
want to read and enjoy.
And he,s right. I do this schtick because I enjoy doing it, and
hope others enjoy the results. But it,s very scary to let even
your friends roam around in your brain without fear of getting
your neurons trampled upon. If you,re talking strangers-- like
the people who file into a movie theater to watch your brainchild
toddle across the screen for an hour or two-- it,s really
frightening. Of course, you might be so secure in your opinion
of yourself and your personal universe that the criticism of others
doesn,t faze you, but I,m here to tell you that that simply isn,t
the case for most people. No real world actor enjoys getting booed,
no real writer enjoys being called a hack, no real artist branded
as bland or uninspired. What,s even more galling is when you deliberately
try to be innovative, (not follow the crowd, break new ground,
knowing up front that there will be lots of people who simply
won,t get it,, but still seek to follow your vision wherever it
leads you), and the result is not thoughtful critical review but
merely ham-handed mean-spirited trashing.
I have no idea what director Mary Lambert felt when her creation,
Siesta, this week,s choice for Classic Movie, hit
the original critical fan back in 1987, but perhaps she took some
solace in the knowledge that Madonna thinks highly of her. (And
whatever else one may think about Maddie, she,s a force to be
reckoned with and someone who understands taking creative and
personal risks). I saw Siesta back shortly after it appeared
on pay cable, and was impressed. Yes, the story is very non-linear
and often hard to follow. The lead character is not always likable,
and may even harbor a death wish. The people she shares her adventures
with are sometimes even more screwed up than she is. Visually
and continuity-wise, the whole film runs perilously close to leaving
the impression that it is an assemblage of individually startling
images barely melded together into even a semblence of coherence.
It,s far from a perfect film, it may even be a bad one,
as nearly all the other reviews of it I could locate seemed to
state vociferously, leaving little room for doubt.
But I liked it. If it was a failure, it was an honest one, in
my humble opin. There have been plenty of flicks I,ve seen over
the years that may not get up to even my all-time top 100 but
that still left me with some startling and powerful images that
stay in my head, permanently recallable at will. Anyone who thinks
that creating those images is easy, doesn,t understand the work
that is art, and it,s why I have so little patience with those
wannabe analysts who invariably summarize everything as
either simply smash, or trash, as if intense emotive brevity should
somehow pass for holy writ. (Brevity, dear friends, is a high
art form all it,s own).
One of those images starts out the film, as we first see a shot
of the sky, which then pans down revealing a grassy field and
what looks to be an airport control tower in the distance. The
shape of the tower seems vagely cross-like, like a primitive gravestone
marker, and in the foreground is something-- a body? We aren,t
sure what, but the camera changes perspective and we see that
yes, it is a body, or someone sleeping. A woman, dressed in a
bright red dress, bruised, bloodied, but otherwise looking asleep
rather than deceased. Cut to the sky, a large dark bird flying
in the foreground, dominating the frame, then back to the body
of the woman as a large aircraft suddenly appears in a roar of
noise, back to front, flying towards what is now confirmed as
an airport runway. The woman awakes at the noise, rolls over on
her back, breathing hard, dazed? Stunned? She notices what appears
to be a large bloodstain on the fabric of the dress near her ribs,
pulls up on the dress to examine herself-- but there is no wound.
Another plane flies over, engines shrieking. The woman screams,
and then runs.
We have just met Claire. From this point on, things get very strange.
Claire, as I remarked earlier, is not a hero in any conventional
sense, and I don,t think that Lambert is presenting her as such.
There are no heroes, in the film at all, as far as I can tell,
only a collection of strange people with largely undecipherable
motivations. This may very well be a primary reason why it can
be difficult to engage with the story, and the director not only
doesn,t help us in gaining greater involvement, but uses the non-linear
filming technique to distance us farther. Most films unfold slowly,
and we gain understanding as that unfolding takes place. Lambert
tries instead to keep everything unanswered until the very end
of the film, when the final key element gets dropped into the
muddle and clarity ensues.
Or does it? If you think you know what has happened, you may be
right or you may be wrong, because when you see Siesta
for the second time, you will probably still have trouble getting
all the pieces to fit. It isn,t giving anything away to tell you
that whole portions of this movie represent what may be complete
hallucinations on Claire,s part, in fact the ending appears to
demand just this degree of delusion to make any sense at all from
the preceding events of the story line. However, I suspect that
the visions, aren,t what pisses viewers (and reviewers) off, it,s
that Lambert refuses to keep things tidy,. The film is jarring
and disjointed like a fever dream because it is a fever
dream, or the dream of a person who has had a severe mental breakdown.
Mental illness isn,t tidy,, and in the world of Siesta
the obsessions that drive Claire could be construed to an objective
observer as symptoms of a psychotic break. In the recent (and
quite superb) film A Beautiful Mind, the protagonist,s
delusions are seen as clean and coherent, at least from within
his own mind,s view. From the outside, his doctor, his wife and
his friends see chaos. Suppose this viewpoint is reversed? From
the outside, the events in Siesta would seem logical and
orderly, if tragic. From inside Claire,s mind, turmoil reigns.
Depicting this chaos visually is a near impossibility, but Lambert
tries, and I give her due credit for that. Also, big-time kudos
go to the greatly-underappreciated actor Ellen Barkin for once
again being willing to take on a role as challenging and off-center
as this one is.
I won,t go into any of the other plot or story details here, since
the professional review by critic Roger Ebert I,ve reproduced
below in the miscellaneous, section of the column (BTW, the sole
and only generally positive review of this film I could find)
covers some of that. I am also aware that this film may be too
obscure to easily locate at many local video stores, but give
it a go. When I originally learned about the subject matter of
this week,s Buffy ep, I immediately planned to review/revisit
the unquestionably classic flick One Flew Over the Cuckoo,s
Nest, and even chuckled to myself when Willow mentioned it
in Normal Again, but then (the muse of artistic) reason
came over me, and I finally decided that...
... it was just too damn obvious.
Smash or trash, anyone?
E. Pluribus Cinema, Unum,
OnM
*******
Technically, I,ve lost my mind. Strangely, I don,t miss it:
Siesta is not available on DVD, according to the Internet
Movie Database, but is available on VHS. The review copy was on
an old Beta videotape dubbed from cable (HBO, Cinemax, one of
them or another). The original theatrical aspect ratio is unknown,
the review version was standard TV 4x3 pan,n,scan. The film was
released in 1987, with a runtime of 97 minutes. Writing credits
go to Patrice Chaplin (who wrote the novel on which the film is
based) and Patricia Louisianna Knop (for the screenplay). Cinematography
was by Bryan Loftus, with film editing by Glenn Morgan. Production
design was by John Beard with set decoration by Kara Lindstrom.
Original music was by Miles Davis and Marcus Miller. The theatrical
sound mix was standard Dolby Surround, and likely is the same
on the commercially released videotape edition.
Cast overview:
Ellen Barkin .... Claire
Gabriel Byrne .... Augustine
Julian Sands .... Kit
Isabella Rossellini .... Marie
Martin Sheen .... Del
Grace Jones .... Conchita
Jodie Foster .... Nancy
Gary Cady .... Roger
Alexi Sayle .... Cabbie
Anastassia Stakis .... Desdra
********
Miscellaneous:
Mary Lambert is probably best known for directing several of La
Diva Ciccone,s music videos, and for directing the feature film
version of Stephen King,s book Pet Sematary in 1989. She
is not a prolific feature film director, but the IMDb can provid
you with a list of what,s out there if you care to check it out.
During a search of mainstream reviews of Siesta at rottentomatoes.com
I came across only one critic who actually seemed to like
this film even a modest amount, and it happened to be none other
than the very well-known El Devo Ebert. The man either has taste,
or he,s as crazy as I am. (You may pick your own poison).
For what it,s worth, here,s his review:
Siesta begins with a woman daredevil preparing to jump
out of an airplane into a net above an artificial volcano, and
it ends with fundamental questions about whether anything at all
in the movie really happened. In between, there is a flight from
California to Spain, a glimpse into the incestuous world of the
woman's new and former lovers, and more than a touch of perversity.
There is also a great deal of symbolism, hinting at deeper meanings
lurking just out of focus.
The film is finally overwhelmed by its own ambition, not to mention
one too many gimmicks in its plot, but it goes down swinging.
It's the kind of bad film that remains quite watchable until fairly
late in the game, when you realize that you've made more of an
effort to figure it out than the director has. One of the pleasures
of a film like this is that if you ever happen to see it again,
it seems fresh because you can't remember how it turned out.
The movie stars Ellen Barkin, fresh from her triumph in "The
Big Easy," as a tortured daredevil with a past. As the story
opens, she is holed up in some kind of a temporary command post
in the desert, where Martin Sheen, a special events promoter,
wants to turn her into a new version of Evil Knievel. His exact
plans are fairly obscure; a model of the fake volcano is produced,
along with some talk about the safety net that will stretch above
the flames, but exactly how Barkin is going to drop from the plane
is in some doubt. I left the movie assuming that she would parachute,
but friends at the same screening assured me she was going to
do a free fall into the net. I argued that such a stunt would
certainly kill her. My friends said that was exactly the point.
It is certain, in any event, that the Barkin character has premonitions
of her death, and the action in the movie is intercut with quick
flashes of fantasy (or memory, or anticipation) in which she falls
helplessly through the air. Therefore it is perhaps not surprising
that, given three days before the deadline for the big jump, she
flies to Spain to say goodbye to the great love of her life (Gabriel
Byrne). And once there, she re-enters her lover's perverse and
haunting world of erotic entanglements, which feeds off the ennui
of an exile community including Isabella Rossellini, Jodie Foster
and Grace Jones.
Up until this point the movie is actually quite good, probably
because it seems to know what it is doing. Then confusion sets
in. Sinister figures appear. A taxi driver seems to know more
than he should. The flash forwards (or flashbacks, or fantasies)
grow more ominous. And then there is one of those endings that
reveals a final lack of imagination on the part of the filmmakers,
a gimmick in place of a resolution.
Barkin emerges relatively unharmed, however. She is an actress
who is clearly drawn toward interesting scripts and is willing
to take chances. Siesta, whatever it is, is not another
sausage from the Hollywood assemby line, and to intrigue us for
an hour is a worthy achievement for any movie, even if it baffles
us for the next 30 minutes then finally abandons us altogether.
( Above review is (c) Roger Ebert / Chicago Sun Times )
*******
The Question of the Week:
What film or films do you recall seeing that you felt started
out really well, were intriguing or innovative in some way that
got your attention, and then petered out or completely fell apart
before the ending? What do you think went wrong? Did you leave
the theater thinking that the filmmakers failed somehow, or that
it was just that you didn,t get it,?
Post em if you,ve got em, take care, and see you next week.
( Probably not a hallucination. )
;-)
*******
[> Re:
Classic Movie of the Week - March 15th 2002 -- Wisewoman,
16:57:21 03/17/02 Sun
I saw Siesta in the theatres when it was first released and loved
it, but it disturbed me the same way NA did. However, check out
that cast list! It was worth it for that alone.
We recently watched Enemy at the Gates on video and I was enjoying
it until all the Ed Harris cat- and-mouse stuff started, at which
point I got bored and went to our chat room. I don't necessarily
blame the filmmakers, but...
;o)
[> [> Re: Enemy at the
Gates -- LadyStarlight, 17:22:38 03/17/02 Sun
The first time I watched EatG, I couldn't concentrate on the story
because I was so bemused by these English accents coming out of
the mouths of Russian soldiers! Not to mention a mid-western(?)
Nazi sniper. (shakes head)
Liked the story though, but jeez....couldn't they afford a vocal
coach? Or was there some other deep philisophical meaning hidden
there that I completely missed? ;)
[> [> [> Re: Enemy
at the Gates -- Cactus Watcher, 19:23:29 03/17/02 Sun
I enjoyed it more, but then I knew the real story before hand.
It was, after all, as the director admits taken from three pages
of story out of the book Enemy at the Gates (which tells the whole
story of Stalingrad.) I've also read about Zaitsev in other sources.
As anti-soviet as I've been in my life, the movie is absurdly
anti-soviet even to me. There was a Koenigs (with an s). There
was a deadly cat- and-mouse game in which a number of Russian
snipers were killed by Koenigs. Koenigs was slain in a trap much
like the one in the middle of the movie. His hiding place at the
time was like the one at the end. A commissar Danilov did expose
himself to show Zaitsev Koenigs' postion. He was shot, but not
killed. Zaitsev and the female sniper Tania were in love, but
it was he not her who was seriously wounded, and they did not
find each other after he recovered. Both survived the war. There
was a young cobbler named Sasha Philipov who was hanged for spying
for the Russians, but he was fifteen and it had nothing to do
with the duel of snipers.
[> Another fine read, and
co-incidently... -- curious, 18:20:05 03/17/02 Sun
I'm just about to post a long winded ramble about "film language"
in regards to "that infamous scene" in NA.
You're giving me way too much to think about and yet another "to
watch" film to add to a very long list.
[> [> Speaking of that
shot... -- OnM, 19:20:32 03/17/02 Sun
... it also reminds me of that scene in Contact where Jodie
Foster's character Ellie is still a little girl, and her father
has just died.
The camera does a similar move to the one you describe in your
'ramble', except the camera starts outside and moves in towards
the house, then passes 'in through a window' instead of out through
it, and we see the now-orphaned child trying to 'reach' her father
on her ham radio.
Another death of a parent and the sense of abject loneliness it
brings, with the distance shown metaphorically with camera movement.
Investing
in Spuffy -- LeeAnn, 14:42:22 03/17/02 Sun
Investing in Spuffy
I've been thinking about why I care about Spike and Buffy, why
I care about their relationship, why I am so heavily invested
in these characters. I admit I found the pairing erotic, from
the Spike's unwilling obsession to the smoochies to the sex. It
all seemed even more sensual because I felt an emotional connection
with the characters and because James Marsters' acting made me
fascinated with Spike and his Object of Desire, the Slayer. But
it wasn't just the sex. It wasn't just the love story. I think
I care about Spike and Buffy because I want them to validate certain
beliefs important in my own moral universe.
Spike does not exist. Buffy does not exist. Vampires, demons,
and the Buffyverse do not exit. They are only symbols. They touch
me because they represent certain archetypes that I recognize.
They interest me because they represent something basic about
the human condition. They seem stripped down to a pure, primitive
meme already hardwired into my brain so when I'm faced with it,
it settles into my synapses like I've recognizing the face of
an old friend.
Buffy represents the hero we all admire. Buffy is the bully we
all fear. Buffy is the damaged veteran who might go wacko at any
moment. Unlike Spike she's too important to be relegated to the
shadows but too dangerous to be fully integrated into society,
as her problems in school, work and relationships all show. It's-All-About-Me!Buffy
is barely tolerable and Strike-First-Think-Later!Buffy is a bomb
waiting to go off. Her lack of vulnerability makes her more hero
than human, saving more out of duty than empathy. Outside of a
small circle of friends what does Buffy really care about anyone?
Not much more than Spike does. In Gone invisible Buffy's
treatment of people showed her true nature. She teased and tormented
and disrupted lives without any guilt at all. She keeps saving
the world because it's her duty, not because she cares about the
people in it.
Spike represents the bad boy, the bad man, the evil person, the
criminal, the sinner. To the fundies that characterization means
that Spike must always be EVIL. EVIL eternal and unchanging. Evil
cannot change therefore Spike cannot change. Evil must be destroyed,
not reformed. But I believe that people can change. So I believe
that Spike can change. Spike symbolizes the bad in all of us that
we seek to transform into something better. He represents every
bad boy that ever reformed. Every evil man that was ever transformed.
Spike represents the cruel and ruthless King Asoka, who, after
he converted to Buddhism, attempted to create a just and humane
society, Asoka who became one of the most admirable rulers in
world history. Spike represents Paul, who persecuted, imprisoned
and killed Christians then was transformed into one of the greatest
exponents of Christ's teachings. People do change. And not just
for the worse. So I want to believe that Spike can change, can
become a better person. Like I want to believe that anyone, given
the right circumstances, the right set of influences, can change
for the better. Even you or I.
I want to believe that Buffy can change as well. She's brutal
and self-involved but I believe that if she was ever able to feel
any love, any empathy for Spike, her alien enemy, that she would
then be more open to love for everyone else. I believe that Spike,
with his blind devotion and love, can be the influence that helps
Buffy grow and change into a better person.
I also believe that Buffy can be the catalyst that helps Spike
change. Spike's love for Buffy has put him on the road him toward
good, rocky though that road might be. Three years ago he kidnapped
Willow and threatened to put a bottle through her face. Now Willow
trusts him enough to leave Buffy in his care in Normal Again.
Three years ago he knocked Xander unconscious, kidnapped him and
threatened to kill him if Willow wouldn't do a spell for him.
Now he and Xander work together to capture the Glarga Ghul Gashminik
demon. I want to believe that if people change for the better
then the people they harmed can forgive them. I want to believe
that enmity need not be eternal. I believe that Spike can change
because I want to believe that Spike can change. As the Upanishads
say, As one acts and conducts himself, so does he become. The
doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One
becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action. Each
good act that Spike has performed has made him a better person
regardless of whether he did it to please Buffy or not. I want
to believe Spike can change because I want to believe that each
of us can change.
As society becomes more secular, more post-Christian, the idea
of forgiveness seems to be slipping away. Today it all seems about
accountability. Let's make people accountable for everything they
ever do, give them a permanent record so that the theft of a quarter
in kindergarten follows them to the grave, labeling them a thief.
Punishment. Retribution. Let's make people pay. People who find
those concepts appealing believe that Spike cannot change, cannot
be allowed to change. He must be punished for feeding on people
for 120 years. He can never be forgiven because that might allow
him to escape punishment. There was a time when almost everyone
thought that a change in person's heart could make a change in
their life and that when that occurred people were owed a new
start, a new chance to get it right. These days it seems that
punishment, not reform, is the goal, not just for unrepentant
vampires but for everyone from junkies to jaywalkers.
But again, I WANT to believe that if people change they should
be allowed to start over fresh, without carrying the sins of the
past with them. I want to believe that if Spike is, let's used
the word, "saved" that he is not required to continually
flagellate himself for the rest of his existence. Salvation means
forgiveness. Not retribution. Indeed, if salvation didn't include
forgiveness how would it differ from retribution? When a person
is saved their sins are washed away. Now I don't expect Spike
to have some Christian epiphany, or to walk down the aisle toward
some television preacher but I do hope he will achieve a quieter
salvation through his love for Buffy, and, hopefully, her love
for him.
I already believe that Spike's love for Buffy has helped him to
become a better person. I believe that he would change even more,
even totally, if she actively tried to help him transform himself.
He wants to change for her. Look, Spike has taken up smoking in
Normal Again. We haven't seen him smoke since before his
love affair with Buffy began. It was sad to see him backslide,
especially since smoking is a symbol of evil in the Buffyverse,
but think of why he gave it up while he and Buffy were together.
Smoking can't hurt him, can't give him cancer but he stopped smoking
while he was in a relationship with Buffy because secondhand smoke
could hurt her. He stopped smoking so he wouldn't taste like ashes
for her. He stopped smoking because he ceased being completely
evil. Spike stopped smoking for Buffy without her asking. What
more would he do if she only asked? People all over the world
change their life styles, their jobs, their countries, their politics,
even their religions to please those they are in love with. Someone
I know, the first date he had with a certain girl, she got him
to flush all his drugs down the toilet. A year later they were
married and he's totally been a solid citizen and dad for years.
People change for those they love. Sometimes they are just waiting
for someone to want them to change. I want to believe that Spike
can change for Buffy. Because I want to believe that love can
make a difference. That loving can make you a better person, especially
if the person you love wants you to become a better person. I
believe that Spike is only waiting to be transformed by love.
I believe that because I want to believe that about us all.
[> Re: Interesting thoughts,
but way too long! -- Sloan, 15:03:36 03/17/02 Sun
[> [> Did you get lost,
Sloan? This isn't the TWIZ board... -- Wisewoman, 15:41:52
03/17/02 Sun
The longer, the better over here!
;o)
[> [> [> Perhaps we
should sell MasqNotes. Any takers? -- mm, 15:49:12 03/17/02
Sun
[> Re: Investing in Spuffy
-- Kimberly, 15:33:10 03/17/02 Sun
Yes, it has been the path towards redemption that Spike has been
walking (plus the vivid portrayal Marsters gives him) that has
kept me at all interested in Spike. I have been watching the evolving
relationship between he and Buffy with great interest, not because
I actually care it they get and stay together, and not because
I find Spike/JM all that sexy (I KNOW I'm in the minority there),
but because of the wonderful exploration of his character into
good and evil, punishment, retribution, forgiveness and redemption.
And although I'm along for the ride, a part of me hopes that Spike
eventually finds the love he's been searching all these decades
for. I don't think it's the love of a woman (although he does).
I have this feeling (no spoilers, just speculation) that he will
find it in sacrificing himself for someone Buffy, not necessarily
he, loves.
[> [> Spuffy -- Spike
Lover, 18:26:34 03/20/02 Wed
A few words about the first post: Spike never stopped smoking
that I know of. But the actor, James Marsters did. I thought that
they probably have him smoking less on screen to accomodate him.
(He smokes in OMwF by the way-)
Anyway, I think your comments are valid about Spike, and I think
you hit the nail on the head about Buffy's character: Holier Than
Though and "It's All About Me" Buffy. I really don't
like her very much. And your example of Gone is right on too.
My question is how will knowing Spike bring her out of that? (In
some ways, Cordy is way more developed that Buffy.)
[> Never too long! :)
-- Nina, 15:44:50 03/17/02 Sun
"Because I want to believe that love can make a difference.
That loving can make you a better person,
especially if the person you love wants you to become a better
person. I believe that Spike is only waiting to be transformed
by love. I believe that because I want to believe that about us
all."
Thank you for that! I very much agree with you.
BtVS can appeal to people for different reasons. We can dissect
it, analyse it, look at it intellectually... but the reasons why
so many of us keep coming back are because the emotions the characters
trigger in us are so deep that we can't stay indifferent.
[> [> I agree with Nina!
;-) Write more! -- Solitude1056, 20:48:35 03/19/02 Tue
[> Re: Investing in Spuffy
-- Rufus, 15:57:43 03/17/02 Sun
I want to believe that Buffy can change as well. She's brutal
and self-involved but I believe that if she was ever able to feel
any love, any empathy for Spike, her alien enemy, that she would
then be more open to love for everyone else. I believe that Spike,
with his blind devotion and love, can be the influence that helps
Buffy grow and change into a better person.
I also believe that Buffy can be the catalyst that helps Spike
change.
I think of a section in "Power of Myth" to do with meditation
and ego.....
In Buddhist systems, more especially those of Tibet, the meditation
Buddhas appear in two aspects, one peaceful and the other wrathful.
If you are clinging fiercely to your ego and its little temporal
world of sorrows and joys, hanging on for dear life, it will be
the wrathfull aspect of the deity that appears. It will seem terrifying.
But the moment your ego yields and gives up, that same meditation
Buddha is experienced as a bestower of bliss.
I see Spike as clinging to his identity of the big bad, and it's
getting in the way of his spiritual growth. As long as his ego
is invested in that identity, Buffy will seem like that wrathful
Buddha...once he lets go he just may find bliss.
Further to that thought, I've seen lots of complaints about Spike
being humiliated, but again I see that as a much needed lesson
on his way to either becoming more or reverting back to evil...from
Power of Myth again.....
Campbell: That is a very late statement of this whole them.
That comes in Apuleius' Golden Ass, second century A.C. The Golden
Ass is one of the first novels, by the way. Its leading character,
its hero, has been by lust and magic converted into an ass, and
he has to undergo and ordeal of painful and humiliating adventures
until his redemption come through the grace of the Goddess Isis.
The appears with a rose in her hand (symbolic of divine love,
not lust), and when he eats this rose, he is converted back into
a man. But he is now more than a man, he is an illuminated man,
a saint. He has experienced the second virgin birth, you see.
So from mere animal-like carnality, one may pass through a spiritual
death and becom reborn. The second birth is of an exalted, spirtually
informed incarnation.
I see Williams conversion into a vampire as analogous to being
the leading character in "The Golden Ass". If Spike
is able to withstand constant rejection and humiliation, maybe
he will qualify for that "rebirth"....Dru did say he
walked in world the others couldn't imagine. While his love for
Buffy seems rooted in lust, Spike goes nowhere, stuck in the crypt,
in the dark. It will only be when his love transcends lust to
the divine will he finally be on the road to being more than the
rejected, humiliated William, more than the lustful Spike, but
the person he never got the chance to be.
[> [> Re: Investing in
Spuffy -- VampRiley, 19:55:45 03/17/02 Sun
I see Spike as clinging to his identity of the big bad, and
it's getting in the way of his spiritual growth. As long as his
ego is invested in that identity, Buffy will seem like that wrathful
Buddha...once he lets go he just may find bliss.
But is he really clinging. As a human, he was the shy, sensitive
type who seemed to covet from a distance. When he bares his soul,
he gets his heart crushed. A chance meeting, and a few hours later,
"here comes Spike. The biggest...baddest...motha'..."
His birth as a human, all the way to when he's sired, I view as
his childhood -- pre-adolescents.
When we're teenagers, we grow tremendously, we change, we experiment...and
we finally emerge as young adults. VampWilliam saw how he looked
after he was vamped. He didn't like what he saw. So, he changed.
Just like we all do. When we become teenagers, we look at the
way we acted before and change the way we do things. He has spent
over 100 years trying to change. And he did.
But like in all of us, when we enter our young adult years (and
older adult years for that matter), there is that child inside
there that pokes it's head out every once in a while. I see the
same thing happening to Spike. The chip in his noggin' has allowed
more time for the child in Spike to surface. I don't view "the
Big Bad" as a kind of mask that he has been wearing for a
hundred twenty years. It's who he is, just not all of who he is.
That same gentle, caring William has always been present. You
can see it in the way he was with Dru at times during Seasons
2 and 5. He would always rush to her side whenever she was in
pain or hurt. Apologizing for being "a bad man". We
like people and develop relationships with others for many different
reasons. He created one with Dru 'cause he was in love with her.
The same goes for Buffy, Dawn and Joyce, although they were from
two, if not three, different types of love, even if he couldn't
get all three to like him at the same time. Could this be considered
as bliss? Some would. Just being able to make a connection...some
kind of connection...it had to be very satisfying for him.
He said Joyce "...was decent. Didn't put on airs. Always
had a nice cuppa for me And she never treated me like a freak."
He's got a caring maternal figure. Joyce maybe gone, but that
isn't the last relationship.
When Spike has been with Dawn, most of the time he seems like
he's been the big brother to Dawn. She's still there.
And he thought Buffy was in love with him... So did she. Granted
their relationship hasn't been the greatest recently...
But within a few years he has had a realtionship with three different
women for different reasons, giving him a sense where he is accepted.
Could this be, if not close to, bliss?
It will only be when his love transcends lust to the divine
will he finally be on the road to being more than the rejected,
humiliated William, more than the lustful Spike, but the person
he never got the chance to be.
Do you mean his love for Buffy or when he feels lust for someone
else?
VR
[> [> [> Re: Investing
in Spuffy -- Rufus, 22:47:26 03/17/02 Sun
When we're teenagers, we grow tremendously, we change, we experiment...and
we finally emerge as young adults. VampWilliam saw how he looked
after he was vamped. He didn't like what he saw. So, he changed.
Just like we all do. When we become teenagers, we look at the
way we acted before and change the way we do things. He has spent
over 100 years trying to change. And he did.
I don't see what Spike became as an improvement, I see it as a
sad joke at what he once was. His love for beauty, his adversion
to violence, his ability to love, all were twisted in this charade
to become popular. I realize that when Spike is with Dru, he can
be very loving, but what about everyone else that isn't under
the protection of love? Spike became the worst bully of all when
he decided to start counting bodies on his way to being seen,
recognised for his ability to create chaos. Teenagers do change,
but most of them find a far less tragic form of transformation.
Spike became interested, invested, in the big bad image, killing
to keep the image alive. Only the chip stopped him, made him come
to seem more human to us as we got to know him. Spike is an affectation
of William's, a sham to seem the tough guy to get the girls and
the respect of other men. But it comes at a bloody price. One
I wouldn't be willing to pay to get recognition.
With the chip, we have slowly seen past the facade of the big
bad, only to find William still there, still insecure and unable
to see his own strengths, if he could he wouldn't have needed
a leather coat, and a boatload of peroxide. He is now at a point
where he will be forced to make a real change or regress back
to the dangerous demon he has been.
Do you mean his love for Buffy or when he feels lust for someone
else?
Spikes love for Buffy has been expressed mostly in a carnal way
this season, and not to the betterment of either character. When
I say divine love, I mean love that extends to all, love that
won't allow him to be a murderer anymore. His interactions with
Buffy have brought him this far, I feel that he has a solitary
journey that will either bring him death or a transformation of
consciousness that we have never considered a vampire capable
of.
[> [> Re: Investing in
Spuffy -- LeeAnn, 00:58:48 03/18/02 Mon
That comes in Apuleius' Golden Ass, second century A.C. The
Golden Ass is one of the first novels, by the way. Its leading
character, its hero, has been by lust and magic converted into
an ass, and he has to undergo and ordeal of painful and humiliating
adventures until his redemption come through the grace of the
Goddess Isis.
I hope this means that all the pain and humiliation that Spike
has suffered this season will be to some purpose, will move him
toward redemtption.
[> [> Re: Investing in
Spuffy -- Rahael, 08:06:53 03/18/02 Mon
Great post Rufus.
And I can heartily recommend reading the Golden Ass. A very entertaining
read.
[> [> Re: Investing in
Spuffy -- verdantheart, 19:28:56 03/18/02 Mon
Kinda reminds me of Jacob's Ladder ... Thanks, very interesting.
[> Re: I'm in on the re-investing
:) And Rufus... -- curious, 18:06:09 03/17/02 Sun
Just how many times have you read "The power of Myth"
anyway?
All good points, off course. :)
[> [> Re: I'm in on the
re-investing :) And Rufus... -- Rufus, 18:10:35 03/17/02
Sun
One or two as well as a few other books from the same guy. Just
some things I read seem to fit what goes on in the show, he writes
what I think much better than I can..
[> [> [> Re: I'm in
on the re-investing :) And Rufus... -- curious, 18:34:27
03/17/02 Sun
Don't you wish you could time travel back to a time when you could
have been one of his Mythology students at the Sarah Lawrence
School. (Was that the name of the school)?
Anyhow, I'd loved to have heard the guy in real life.
[> [> [> [> Joseph
Campbell -- Kevin, 09:57:29 03/18/02 Mon
I remember when I first saw The Power of Myth series with Joseph
Campbell in my college mythology class...It was like time just
stood still for me...It tapped into this whole world I had been
looking for. It was really sad to have discovered him only after
his death. To have been able to be in his classes or seminars
would have been a wonderful experience.
Luckily he left behind so much much of himself in interviews,
tapes, and books (the Masks of God is probably my favorite)that
it's almost like he's still alive. I've enjoyed reading and re-reading
his work.
The way he relates to the myths to how we live our lives now was
the crucial link that makes them come alive for me. The way he
took everything he had learned about myths and applied it to current
literature and artwork, showing that myth is still alive today
and is a continuing creative process in our lives, not just something
historical to read and learn about as an intellectual process...I
think that's why I've gotten so much enjoyment from watching and
thinking about the BtVS series. It hits on those age old themes
relating them to our current lives via a modern media...I get
excited just thinking about Campbell's work and what it's meant
to me.
:-)
[> [> [> [> [>
Re: Joseph Campbell -- leslie,
12:42:46 03/18/02 Mon
As I've said before, I'm not a particularly big Campbell fan,
preferring my Jung straight, as it were. And I think this question
of Spike and evil (eeeeeeeeevil, I tell you!) is where I think
Campbell and Jung diverge. Campbell seems to say that by confronting
the Shadow, integrating it, achieving individuation, you somehow
defuse the evil in the Shadow, you make it Not Evil, and thus
"find your bliss." Jung has a somewhat less New Agey
take on it--accepting the Shadow means realizing that there is,
indeed, evil in all of us, that the evil (eeeeeeeevil, I tell
you!) that we see in others is actually evil in ourselves (think
about that the next time Spike's evil gets bashed), and realizing
this is a major step towards individuation--but the evil still
remains. It isn't defused, it isn't blissed out of existence--the
most one can achieve is to recognize one's propensity for evil
and self-correct, and especially stop projecting it onto others.
If you stop and think about it, that it actually a pretty heroic
thing in and of itself--to learn how to cease doing evil while
accepting that evil remains, that it exists, that it is in you.
At the same time, the existence of some evil in all of us does
not mean that any touch of evil at all overwhelms all the other
aspects of the Self. A rotten apple does not, in fact, spoil the
whole barrel. Jung's road is a lot tougher than Campbell's--it
leads not to bliss but to wholeness--but it seems to be the one
Spike is taking.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Original sin -- Sophist, 13:08:51 03/18/02 Mon
I'm puzzled here, probably because I don't know much about Jung.
What does it mean to say there is evil in us if we stop doing
evil acts? Is this similar to or different than the Christian
concept of original sin? If different, what does Jung mean by
"evil"?
I'm not a believer in essences, so I'm more inclined to think
we are defined by our actions rather than some mysterious essence
inside. Does Jung believe in the soul?
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Jung was a believing christian, IIRC -- Ete,
13:13:33 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> And an astrologer - he used horoscopes in
his analysis. -- Caroline, 15:25:33 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: Original sin -- leslie,
13:16:34 03/18/02 Mon
Actually, this is one place where Jung is a little foggy, as I
recall. Of course, he was the son of a somewhat Calvinistic minister,
and his psychological theories show signs of being both influenced
by and reactions away from his upbringing. So, to a certain extent,
I think he does have a substratum of original-sin thinking in
there. But the focus of his psychology is in *not* getting hung
up on sin, but on being whole, warts and all. So perhaps we could
say he believes in Original Warts.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> LOL -- Sophist, 13:32:06 03/18/02
Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Confused -- Kevin, 14:14:11 03/18/02 Mon
To my knowledge Campbell and Jung were friendly acquaintences
whose work supported each other...I have never thought of Campbell
as 'New Agey' and am pondering what in his work you're referring
to. Campbell often references Jung and I have never perceived
a conflict between their work.
It probably doesn't really matter much in the context of the Buffy
discussion, I just am really fuzzy on what you're referencing.
:-)
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: Joseph Campbell -- Caroline, 14:21:54 03/18/02
Mon
Completely agree. Yay leslie! And that's why I enjoy this show
so much because I think that the Jung rather than the Campbell
view is prevalent. Buffy and co. are not going to have a blissful
existence after they 'grow up' this season, they're going to keep
struggling with themselves, just as they've been struggling for
the last 6 seasons. What Jung and several other depth psychology
people will tell you is that recognition of projections does mean
that they will then lose their compulsive power - thus bringing
a certain sphere of action under conscious control. But there
is still the minotaur in the labyrinth, there is still an underworld
that you deal with day after day. The shadow doesn't go away just
because you see it.
And like any other gods, the gods of the underworld must be propitiated,
even after we become conscious of them. Those mortals who achieve
bliss tend to be punished by the gods for achieving the reward
of the gods. (A lot of the reason why, even though I admire some
of the Campbell I've read, I'm not in his camp). In myth, mortality
means a lifetime of struggle with the Self. Since I tend to believe
that myth is, on a certain level, a psychological expression of
a group, the stories that have been told for centuries make it
clear that this struggle only ends at death.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Re: Joseph Campbell & Jung -- manwitch, 14:39:46
03/18/02 Mon
Campbell, following Nietzsche, would argue that you supercede
or transcend the evil. Not that you "bliss it away."
(His "follow your bliss" idea is something else). You
come to the place where you recognize that "there is nothing
good or evil but that thinking makes it so" (Hamlet). And
you place the value on the experience of life rather than on one
or the ethical perpective.
I don't know from Jung (except that Campbell loves him), but from
what you say, Campbell and Jung are talking about different things.
Jung about how you function in society ("the most one
can achieve is to recognize one's propensity for evil and self-correct"),
Campbell about how you function in life.
I say "functioning in society" because to me the notion
of self-correcting (which might be your words rather than Jung's)
would seem to be society specific. It is dependent on a human,
all too human, point of view about what is correct or evil. And
such a view would, of course, be a social construct.
The Nietzschean view, that Campbell echoes, is not stuck on the
ethics of the social collective.
Neither is Spike.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Re: Joseph Campbell & Jung -- Caroline, 15:24:23
03/18/02 Mon
Jung is not stuck on the ethics of the social collective.
I disagree with your distinction of Jung being society-specific
and Campbell being 'life specific'. In terms of Jung and the shadow,
that is something that we as individuals have (countries, groups
etc have them too but let's leave that aside for now) and which
we tend to project onto others, until we eventually start to consciously
become aware of bits and pieces of our shadow - usually after
a lot of pain - and then try to see that those things that we
have projected are really a part of us. I don't see how that is
society specific, because each individual in each society has
this task. In this framework, (at least how I interpret it) transcendence
or superseding of 'evil' or undesirable elements of oneself is
denial. And some (not all) so-called religious or spiritual people
do seek this way to escape the hard work done to achieve their
own identity - explains why a lot of people join cults. Acceptance
of oneself can be achieved for all ones flaws etc. And that in
itself brings a measure of mental stability and peace.
As for 'evil' I think that leslie was using this term in quotation
marks. What is really meant here is the shadow, the dark, horrible
parts deep down inside us, the minotaur in the labyrinth, our
own personal god of the underworld. On a psychological level it
doesn't matter where the notion of onself being 'bad' comes from
(well, okay it is good to get where it comes from - helps in therapy),
the point is that it must be dealt with by each one of us. In
our own way, and what is appropriate for us, not what others deem
appropriate.
Switching now to the spiritual rather than the psychological,
Campbell's transcendence seems like an impossible thing to me
in practical terms. The Buddhists (whom I think Campbell may have
borrowed his idea of transcendence) say that there are 84,000
attractions, repulsions and bewilderments that must be overcome
before one can achieve enlightenment. That's a huge amount. I've
heard the Dalai Lama himself say, even after all his reincarnations
and lifetimes devoted to study and learning that he has not achieved
enlightenment or transcendence. For him, there is a daily need
to curb and discipline his thoughts, to commit to his practice.
My personal view is that any enlightenment or transcendence is
partial for the great majority of us the struggle only ends with
death. Precisely because as soon as one challenge is met, another
is placed in one's path. I wonder how many lifetimes it would
take to overcome all those attractions and repulsions?
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Re: Joseph Campbell & Jung -- manwitch,
18:08:23 03/18/02 Mon
Again, I don't know Jung, but I will be reading him shortly.
But I thought a distinction was made earlier, either by you or
by leslie, between "correcting" the shadow in the self,
which the post associated with Jung, and "assimilating"
it, which was associated with Campbell.
Now I read you saying "we eventually start to consciously
become aware of bits and pieces of our shadow - usually after
a lot of pain - and then try to see that those things that we
have projected are really a part of us." Which sounds to
me like assimilation. I don't mean to be difficult. As I said,
I don't know Jung.
I assume, perhaps incorrectly, that when you talk about the "shadow"
you are not simply talking about the unconscious. You are talking
about a "negative" manifestation. How is it negative?
According to what standards? While all people at all times may
go through the process, is not the process society specific? The
standards are surely socially conditioned. Who determines what
part of me is shadow and what is not? Individuals can't have an
evil part of them unless they are part of a social collective
that has discussed and defined evil. Evil has nothing to do with
the makeup of the person, but with how that makeup relates to
social convention.
If it is simply another way of describing unconscious urges and
the potentially dangerous power that they hold, then one could
argue that this is comparable to Freud and his belief that we
can access our unconscious through dreams. Some say Nietzsche
is arguing the same thing when he speaks of recovering our first
nature over our second nature. But he's not. To Nietzsche, any
attempt to take control of or to understand what Freud would call
the unconscious and what perhaps Jung calls the shadow would be
a ridiculous and fruitless task, because the task itself is mediated
through Language, the tool and prison of consciousness. We have
no recourse to our dreams when we are awake. We are already interpreting,
imposing the laws of consciousness on what was another world altogether.
What Nietzsche argues for is the living of great lives. Embrace
what you are and live. "Be careful," he writes, "lest
in casting out your demons you cast out the best thing that's
in you." The conditions of the day do not require a cure,
they require living. I am reminded of the line from Giles Deleuze
and Felix Guatarri's Anti-Oedipus: "A schizophrenic
out for a walk is a better model than a neurotic on an analysts
coucn." This is largely Campbell's argument, and its why
ethics aren't of paramount concern. In Campbell's words, "everything
you do is evil for somebody. You participate in it."
So, if Jung is talking about overcoming or correcting evil, it
seems to me that it is a major distinction between him and Campbell,
and again, the difference would be that correcting evil depends
on socially constructed understandings of evil. You have to have
a part that needs correcting. Campbell, following Nietzsche, is
starting in a different place, with the requirement being living,
rather than being ethical. Would Campbell agree that we all have
evil in us? Sure. That we all have unconscious urges? Of course.
But he sees the need to correct only where the experience of life
is being stunted. Perhaps that's the same as Jung. I don't know.
By the way, I don,t want to sound like I,m on a "defend Joseph
Campbell at all costs crusade. I do understand where you and leslie
are coming from. Not with Jung, but with Nietzsche. Campbell echoes
a lot of Nietzsche, which is well and good, but if I want Nietzsche
I,ll go straight to the source. Well, straight to the translators
anyway.
That said, I do think that Campbell makes some points that I suspect
are his own and are not without value. Also, as a popularizer,
I think he is utterly unique in his ability to refrain from horrendous
distortion of the work of others. He is also very accessible.
Few people nowadays will wrestle with Spengler,s Decline of
the West, but its an awe-inspiring work, and every evening
news report seems to add further support to its thesis. Campbell
gives readers a fair and accessible exposure to its basic ideas.
I,ve never read a westerner give a fairer and more insightful
description of basic Hinduism or Buddhism, both of which are usually
represented as mistaken.
Also, his work is very explicitly directed towards symbolism in
art and therefore is widely recognized by makers of film and television
art.
On a more personal note, I was lost and adrift before I watched
Power of Myth. I read everything of Campbell that I could find
and was inspired to read many other things, from Lewis Binford
to Spengler to Nietzsche and Foucault. I even gave up my potential
future of singing showtunes on subway platforms for change and
returned to college to get a degree. Now I,m a graphic designer
who occasionally gets paid for posting to the Buffy board. I really
feel that I have Campbell to thank for it.
But like I said, I don't know from Jung.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Re: Joseph Campbell & Jung -- Caroline,
11:47:34 03/19/02 Tue
Leslie did mention that one self-corrects when confronted by something
in the shadow one doesn't like. That doesn't mean that you necessarily
correct yourself according to the norms of the collective. It's
not a term that I've seen Jung use, and I've never read him using
the term evil - he NEVER refers to the shadow being evil so please
rid yourself of that understanding. Jung is not necessarily talking
in a right/wrong context. It's recognition of unconscious promptings
that hopefully leads to more consciousness and less compulsion
in behaviour. The judgements your ego may bring to this process
may be conditioned by social mores but there is never a judgement
on the part of Jung that any part of you is evil. I cannot emphasize
this enough. So we don't need to go into social constructions
of right/wrong with Jung because in terms of the personality,
it's not how he defines it. As for how similar this process is
to Campbell's assimilation, can't say because I haven't read much
Campbell. But from what you say, it sounds like Campbell borrowed
majorly from Jung.
As for the shadow, Jung, unlike Freud, hypothesizes that we really
have 2 parallel personalities, the conscious and unconsious. (Freud's
SUBconscious is not fully fleshed out like Jung's UNconscious,
consisting of the id and some respressed drives). Jung himself
acknowledges the debt he owes both to Freud and Nietzsche for
these ideas, but I think that he goes beyond both. Freud thought
dreams were the symbolic language of the SUBconscious and would
use the free association technique starting from dreams to get
to the repressed drives. Jung thought there was symbolic importance
of the content of dreams themselves, which he thought were highly
individual (although in societies there would often be a set of
common motifs) and needed to be interpreted at that level and
that they would reveal the unconscious drives. As for Nietzsche
and other philosophers, I have a hard time with their conceptions
of behaviour, precisely because they have so little to say about
the unconscious. Nietzsche may think that trying to access the
unconscious is fruitless but then he leaves an a rather large
part of the personality out of the human question. I feel that
it's certainly valid to use free association and dream interpretation
to access the unconsious (although very often our friends and
associates have much insight into our unconscious drives!) and
it certainly explains a lot for me.
As for the whole living a larger life thing - I have a big issue
with that. I don't understand what it means psychologically. There's
a collection of essays by Jung and others called Man and his Symbols,
published in 1964 with the first essay by Jung (which I would
really recommend as being very accessible). He says something
in there about how a man who thinks that he is the master of his
fate is really fooling himself, precisely because of the existence
of the unconsious and the need to develop a relationship with
it. And even when you do start understanding bits of it, that
doesn't mean that you understand all of it. I guess you could
say that someone like Jung lived a 'larger life' and followed
his bliss but I think that Jung would say that the struggle to
be oneself is the greatest one, the struggle to do gladly that
which I must do. But it's damn hard finding out what you must
do, let alone doing it gladly.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> excellent and thank you for the
thoughtful response. -- manwitch, 12:57:23 03/19/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: excellent and thank
you for the thoughtful response. -- leslie,
15:34:23 03/19/02 Tue
Caroline is a much more thorough advocate of Jung than I can be
(sitting here at my office desk with no reference materials at
hand). As for the relationship between Jung and Campbell, I would
point out that Campbell enthusiastically cites Jung, but Jung
(for purely temporal reasons, if nothing else) does not cite Campbell.
That pretty much sums up the direction of influence. I also have
to confess to a certain pissed-offness at Campbell for the fact
that he may cite his sources in psychology and philosophy, but
he pretty much glosses over the amount he relies on theoretical
folklore scholarship. Part of the general academic attitude that
any jerk can understand folklore, but philosophy, well, that's
REAL scholarship. Smarty-pants stuff!
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: excellent and
thank you for the thoughtful response. -- Caroline, 08:25:05
03/20/02 Wed
hey, I was at work too when I wrote so no reference material -
just that my TTMQ revved to high when I read manwitch's post -
it's amazing what happens to one's brain when inspired. I'd just
like to add to what I wrote yesterday about Jung (when I got home
yesterday and looked up the book). The stuff about not being master
of one's fate is because of the huge challenge that it is to control
one's emotions and thoughts consciously, let alone unconsciously.
As someone who tries to meditate, I can attest to how difficult
this is, even for short periods of time. I'm going to start reading
Campbell (bought a few of his books a last month - inspired by
manwitch and the board) to find out how much he does owe to Jung
and whether he really is more thoughtful than the glib 'follow
your bliss' stuff appears to me. (No offense meant to Campbell
lovers, I'm just saying that has been my impression and I'm quite
prepared to admit that my impression was wrong).
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Bliss --
Rufus, 13:37:42 03/20/02 Wed
I'm going to start reading Campbell (bought a few of his books
a last month - inspired by manwitch and the board) to find out
how much he does owe to Jung and whether he really is more thoughtful
than the glib 'follow your bliss' stuff appears to me. (No offense
meant to Campbell lovers, I'm just saying that has been my impression
and I'm quite prepared to admit that my impression was wrong).
Other people on this board could converse with you about Campbell
better than I, but as I'm no academic I can bring a "common
persons" opinion to the mix.
I used the word bliss in a post above for a very specific reason...
bliss Pronunciation Key (bls)
n.
1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.
2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.
Campbell speaks of people finding their bliss, what they are meant
to do to have a happier life. It may sound superficial to you,
but I think he put great thought into what he says. I'll give
you Spike as an example. Spike became a vampire in a point in
his life where he had the potential to do many things, make something
of his life. A great humiliation brought him to Drusilla, "his
salvation". Becoming a vampire, to Spike, was a form of salvation
from the mediocre life he felt he was living. I see it as something
else, instead of bliss he found damnation. He became stuck in
an adolecent need to be seen, like a child yelling at a friend
or a parent to "look at me". That could have gone on
until he became dust, just another demon meeting a well deserved
end. But instead he met Buffy. Inside of Spike something woke
up when he got that chip, something compelled him to follow Buffy
because he loved her. I think he has missed the point. His constant
humiliation is a form of "grade school", a relearning
how to interact in a human world. Part of that means he will do
stupid things and hopefully learn from them. I don't think a love
affair with Buffy is the reason that they are together. Buffy
is the start on a road that could lead to "bliss" for
Spike.....spiritual salvation...refinding that person he once
was. But that road isn't easy because Spike is a shadow figure,
and has to work through all those aspects of his past personality
that stand in the way of him finally figuring out why he could
serve "a higher purpose" like Giles hoped for.
I know you have reservations about Campbell as an author, but
I can only tell you that for this "common person" he
says things in a way that I understand. You can discount his notion
of "following ones bliss" as glib, or you could look
deeper into what he means, to me that is that life could be so
much more than punching a time clock waiting for an inevitable
end, we could all find something that brings us joy, find our
bliss and make all our collective journeys more tolerable. I see
Campbell as a Giles figure, one that hopes we all find a higher
purpose but leaves it up to us to make that choice.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Bliss
-- Caroline, 07:57:14 03/21/02 Thu
I come up with a somewhat similar analysis of Spike based on my
knowledge of Jung and myth. Does that mean that Campbell is derivative?
What new insights has he added?
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Again, Confused (little
bit longish) -- Kevin, 08:50:06 03/20/02 Wed
I'm going to preface this by saying that I am an avid fan of both
Jung and Campbell. I don't know of any conflict between them in
their views either professionaly or personaly. I'm only following
this line of thought because it appears to be getting muddied.
I appreciate Caroline's post indicating that 'evil' is not part
of Jung's thought. The use of the word evil in the first post
was what rang untrue in my mind in conjuction with Jung's work.
I could not recall any reference by him that would indicate he
beleived in evil per se. A shadow is not evil, it is simply something
other.
Above you state:
"As for the relationship between Jung and Campbell, I would
point out that Campbell enthusiastically cites Jung, but Jung
(for purely temporal reasons, if nothing else) does not cite Campbell.
That pretty much sums up the direction of influence."
It appears that you are making comparisons where they don't seem
necessary for one thing and, for another, the comparison is being
applied to apples and oranges. Jung was a psychologist using cultural
symbols in his work from that perspective. Campbell's area of
expertise was comparative mythology which also uses cultural symbols.
Their work, while dealing with many of the same basic underlying
symbolism research, was focused on different applications. They
were not working in the same field as Jung and Freud were. If
you go to the book store, you will not find their books in the
same sections for that reason.
Campbell is incredibly footnoted. His references are what allows
those of us caught by his work to keep going deeper on our own
- which he encourages. He said that if a writer catches your interest,
read everything he's written, then read the books referenced in
the foot notes, etc. etc.
"Elitist" is the exact opposite of how I think about
Campbell. This is a man who rented a converted chicken coop without
even running water in the Woodstock area for five years and just
read. Out of that quest for knowledge came the thoughts that brought
together his field of comparative mythology which was based on
such an incredible, vast and varied amount of culture heritage.
The Masks of God is divided into four large books: Primitive Mythology,
Oriental Mythology, Occidental Mytholody, and Creative Mythology.
Far from being elitist, I find him all encompassing.
For me, and most of the people I know who have read very much
of Campbell, his appeal is that he can speak to the common man.
He brings the stories alive and gets you to think about how they
work in your life now, today. Out of the four books, the first
three are the background and then the fourth, Creative Mythology,
is all about how that background works in each of our lives today.
It's an incredible experience to have someone put that all together
and make it accessable to me.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Again,
Confused (little bit longish) -- leslie,
09:46:47 03/21/02 Thu
Your thoughts here sum up for me a lot of the problem with reading
just Campbell and not knowing the history and theory of folklore/mythology
studies--which is not anything I blame you for, because folklore
is a very overlooked field, and (as I said) I am frustrated by
writers in other fields either lifting theory without attribution
or going to the extent of reinventing wheels that folklorists
had up and running a good century ago.
Apples and oranges: until about the middle of the twentieth century,
the fields of psychology and folklore/mythology were deeply intertwined.
There were numerous psychologists, especially of a Jungian bent,
who really were more folklorists/mythologists than practicing
analysts. (In fact, if you buy Richard Noll's thesis in _The Jung
Cult_--which I don't--Jung was not a psychologist at all but the
creator of a religion based on his own mythology.) In the Freudian
camp, Geza Roheim was one you would be hard pressed to decide
if he were a folklorist or psychologist. It was only as American
psychology decisively committed to an empiricist bent, largely
under the influence of behaviorism, that folklore and psychology
began to radically diverge. So it really *is* legitimate to compare
the work of Jung and Campbell--we identify them as working in
different fields now, but in the mid- century, when, for instance,
_Hero with a Thousand Faces_ came out, the fields were closely
related. (It is a different case in, for instance, France, where
there is a great interaction between the schools of structuralist
anthropology and mythology of Levi-Strauss, the post-Freudian
psychology of Lacan, and the structuralist linguistics of Jakobsen.
And interestingly enough, I find most of the really interesting
mythology studied these days tend to be French or French-influenced--Jean-Pierre
Vernant, Marcel Detienne, the _Mythologies_ encyclopedia edited
by Yves Bonnefoy, Wendy Doniger...and on a slightly different
axis, my fave, Georges Dumezil.)
In _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_, for instance (and this is
the work of Campbell's that I am most familiar with, I've just
skimmed through the mythologies series), he has 3 citations for
Otto Rank, a psychologist and mythologist, only one of which (the
last one, at the very end of the book) is to Rank's _The Myth
of the Birth of the Hero_, which I would argue is seminal to the
thesis that Campbell has been developing throughout the book.
There are no references to Lord Raglan's _The Hero_ (1936) (see
http://www.tam-lin.org/abby/raglan.html for an outline of Raglan's
"hero scale"), which I think is a really big omission
in a book that is essentially advancing the same argument: that
worldwide, there are consistent patterns in the lives of "heroes."
The thing is, Raglan was a folklorist/mythologist, pure and simple.
HIs work is ignored. I am a folklorist, so when I look at the
index to _Hero with a Thousand Faces_ and don't see a reference
to Raglan, I know that something is missing. If you're not a folklorist,
you would have no way of knowing this. Ignoring the work of folklorists
is not a personally elitist stance, as you seem to have felt I
was saying of Campbell, it is a systemic problem in academic studies
of folklore and mythology. People from other fields waltz in and
seem to assume that because it's FOLK lore, they're the first
person to realize that some kind of overarching theory can be
derived from all of this stuff, because the FOLK are by definition
too dumb to come up with theory. They don't realize, or don't
want to realize, that, for instance, the theoretical study of
folklore actually preceded anthropology-- anthropology grew OUT
of folklore study (and quickly repudiated its roots). In all fairness,
I have to admit that a generation of as***le academic folklorists
haven't done much to make their work known to the world at large
and have gone to great lengths to unnecessarily repudiate the
work of may of their precedessors (intellectual Oedipus complex
much?), still, this was not the case at the time that Campbell
was writing _Hero_ and so I find his lack of reference to folklore
scholarship in that book very troubling.
As for the references to evil, it seems to me that Jung does see
evil in the projection of one's own Shadow onto others--something
he identified in the 1930's in the rise of Nazism, for instance,
and I'd say that's about as classic an example of the process
as you can come by. The evil is not so much in oneself as in the
act of projection. But when you realize that the evil you have
ascribed to others is really your own Shadow, you still have to
accept that you, yourself, have been doing evil in the act of
projection--that it is in you, not "Them".
All of that said, anything that gets people reading and understanding
myth is just fine in my book. I'd just like to remind you that
there is a hell of a lot more out there than just Campbell.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Again,
Confused (little bit longish) -- Etrangere, 11:20:08 03/21/02
Thu
out topic from this thread (well I guess), but since you mentionned
Dumezil, I've got a french friend who analized Buffy's characters
back in Seasons 3-4 in terms of the three Indo-european fonctions.
It was one of the first really interresting work of symbolical
interpretation I had read on Buffy back then (before going to
this board, that is) so I wonder I people would be interrested
by it (even if it's a bit old, it isn't hard to see how it still
applies) Besides, it's a good analyse to do B/S shipping :)
Offcourse, before I should ask that friend if he wants it translated
here.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Definition
of folklorist? -- Kevin, 11:41:26 03/21/02 Thu
I'm still trying to sort out this thread...
What is your definition of a folklorist? Does it differ from someone
who is looking at world mythology as a whole(including what we
term religions).
Do you actually disagree with the parts of Campbell's work that
you're familiar with or do you agree with them, but feel they
were appropriated without acknowledgement and that is the issue?
I've printed out most of this thread to ponder with my books in
front of me later. I do not limit myself only to Campbell. I have
many book of mythology, psychology, philosphy, collections of
folk tales (Norse mythology being one of my favorite collections).
I appreciate Campbell for bringing many of these things together
- especially all of his references and source citations. I appreciate
Jung and have several of his works at home as well. I just don't
perceive a conflict between these works.
Perhaps an OT thread once I've finished my muddled ponderings.
:-)
[> The Garden of Love
-- Rahael, 06:15:51 03/18/02 Mon
An interesting post, thanks LeeAnn. It,s a chance to continue
the discussion we were having in chat. I have to quote Blake again,
he seems to be the poet of the moment for me:
I went to the Garden of Love,
and saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
where I used to play on the green.
And the gates of this chapel were shut,
and "Thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turn'd to the Garden of Love,
that so many, many sweet flowers bore;
And I saw it was filled with graves,
and tombstones where flowers should be;
and priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
and binding with briars my joys and desires.
You said:
"As society becomes more secular, more post-Christian, the
idea of forgiveness seems to be slipping away. Today it all seems
about accountability. Let's make people accountable for everything
they ever do, give them a permanent record so that the theft of
a quarter in kindergarten follows them to the grave, labeling
them a thief. Punishment. Retribution. Let's make people pay.
People who find those concepts appealing believe that Spike cannot
change, cannot be allowed to change
I would argue that it is not secular society which is unforgiving,
which denies love. Blake,s poem shows that the message of love,
and everlasting life and joy in abundance that Christ signified
has been forgotten by parts of the organised Christian church
and forgotten for a long time. Blake is not only talking of romantic
love, but the kind of merciful, pitiful, compassionate love that
each human being should extend to the other. Loving thy neighbour
as thyself. When he looked at the church, he saw one which was
negative, concentrating on people,s faults (Thou Shalt Not). And
where Christ was supposed to bring freedom from sin and death,
Blake saw the church introducing fetters, and death and tombstones
everywhere. So I don,t bemoan the onset of a secular society.
It is thanks to secular, post-Christian society that sodomites,
are no longer consigned to whichever circle of hell Dante consigned
them to. Thanks to secular society that adultery is no longer
a criminal offence or that women no longer have to give obedience
to their husbands. But that wasn,t really the point you were making.
I think in your view of retribution/punishment and salvation,
you seem to be leaning toward the Protestant view (please correct
me if I,m wrong) where the action of grace in the heart of the
sinner instantly cleanses, and restores. Salvation is open to
all, if they only choose to open their heart to Jesus Christ.
Luther thought that his emphasis on Salvation by Faith alone would
free anxious souls from the mind wearying, constant torment about
sin, that the traditional Church then imposed on its congregation,
particularly through the practice of confession. (To digress one
only had to look at poor men like Nehemiah Wallington to realise
that Protestantism caused as much anxiety as Catholicism did.
If not more, because the palliative effect of confession and the
remission of sins was no longer available. Wallington as he grew
up was plagued with lustful, thoughts. He tried to kill himself
10 times because he thought that the shorter his life was, the
less chance he would have of committing sin). But in the doctrine
of Salvation by Faith, *actions cannot be counted *. So if Spike
is damned to hell, no amount of repentance, no amount of palliative
action can ever redeem him. Now that is not a view I take. But
invoking salvation by faith alone, and the immediate forgiveness
of past sins is not unconditional. It is in fact, harsher, and
far more difficult than the traditional Catholic doctrine Luther
rebelled against. The only thing which can count is to accept
Jesus Christ as your personal saviour. This is what Saul did on
the road to Damascus.
You say
"There was a time when almost everyone thought that a change
in person's heart could make a change in their life and that when
that occurred people were owed a new start, a new chance to get
it right. These days it seems that punishment, not reform, is
the goal, not just for unrepentant vampires but for everyone from
junkies to jaywalkers.
I would respectfully suggest that such a time never existed. If
you were Catholic, you expected someone to repent, atone and repay
your debt. If you were Protestant (in all its different varieties
and groupings) you might expect that you show signs outwardly
of your inner salvation. Most early modern Protestants would look
at Spike,s life, and his actions and say that he had shown ample
signs of his status as damned. Especially the fact he still has
to renounce evil doing. Modern society is far more accepting about
the individual,s ability to reform and change than the golden
past you invoke. Prisons for example, despite the dire lack of
proper funding, are still far more humane than they ever have
been in the past.
But like Blake, and yourself, I agree that love is a magnificent
thing. That every person should feel it, and it extends far beyond
the narrow concept of romantic love, but a more disinterested,
platonic love for our fellow man. I think we see that in the episode
where Angel is prevented from killing himself by unseasonal snow.
It is instructive to note that Buffy,s personal, individual romantic
love did * nothing * to save Angel. It was a miraculous and unexpected
gift of the earth toward one of its most troubled and repentant
inhabitants.
If Spike were to fall into bed with Buffy, easily renounce his
past and promise to be good forever more, it would devalue everything
about the Angel story. Another point look at Willow and Tara.
Tara loves Willow. Willow has been one of the most well meaning,
kind hearted and supportive people in the show. Tara hasn,t stopped
loving her. But she didn,t hesitate to walk away when Willow acted
badly. Tara did not want to condone the sin, despite loving the
sinner. It shows a moral rigour which is both admirable and humane.
Moreover, Tara would have comprised her innate goodness by staying.
She would have given the wrong message to Willow.
As for the redemptive power of love on Spike. I can only echo
the words that Age posted many months ago. For too long, Western
society has functioned on the myth of the Beauty and the Beast.
The Beauty marries the woman-hating Beast, because she can transform,
him. Thus the relationship becomes one of therapy for the Beast.
The message to women? Stick with the misogynist. Stick with the
abuser. Because love can transform him.
You said:
"I already believe that Spike's love for Buffy has helped
him to become a better person. I believe that he would change
even more, even totally, if she actively tried to help him transform
himself. He wants to change for her
Lets turn this around. We aren,t sure that Buffy loves Spike,
but we know that Spike loves Buffy. What has that done for her?
Has it made her feel loved? Confident? Better about herself? Those
who dislike Buffy and like Spike would argue that if only Buffy
would open up to him, she would feel better. That if , as you
say, she was only less of a callous person he would become better.
Thus, the onus of Spike,s lack of goodness is placed at Buffy,s
door.
This leads me on to the most puzzling aspect of the Spike- Buffy
debate. Often I see Buffy disparaged in the very posts that Spike
is extolled. So people invoke compassion, mercy and forgiveness
for Spike while denying it to Buffy at the very same time. This
to me, totally undercuts the value of the argument being applied
to Spike.
I accept the point about the transformative effect of love. But
I would argue that unless that love be built on a foundation stone
of principle, and reason, there is no real morality there. Angel
was able to disagree with the woman he loved to protect Faith
that shows his innate morality. Tara was able to walk away from
Willow because she wanted to remain the person whom Willow fell
in love with. Spike,s love for Drusilla merely abetted each other
from crime to crime sustained their wrongdoing and confirmed
to each other the legitimacy of their actions.
I believe very strongly that human beings are not 'evil'. That
all of us are capable of both. That the 'good' should not be complacent.
But in my view of the world, evil is not punished and goes unpunished.
The poor remain poor and hungry. The just are ignored. The innocent
are left to the whim of the powerful, the rich and the callous.
Distance is the only thing the rich are willing to let the poor
have, and to keep. That's what I see as 'evil'.
BtVS has a very strong morality. I would see it as completely
uncharacteristic to throw it away - have one rule for Willow and
another for Spike just because he looks beautiful.
[> [> Re: The Garden
of Love -- Caroline, 06:58:21 03/18/02 Mon
You said:
"As for the redemptive power of love on Spike. I can only
echo the words that Age posted many months ago. For too long,
Western society has functioned on the myth of the Beauty and the
Beast. The Beauty marries the woman-hating Beast, because she
can transform, him. Thus the relationship becomes one of therapy
for the Beast. The message to women? Stick with the misogynist.
Stick with the abuser. Because love can transform him."
A great post except for this para. The point of the Beauty and
the Beast thing is that the Beast has long had inner beauty but
Beauty cannot see it. The beastliness that she sees respresents
an illusion that she has created, she has not seen the treasure,
the gold, that he contains within himself. And by not being able
to see his real beauty, it the Beauty who is ugly. On a symbolic
level, this tells the story of an innocent girl who must leave
behind her father and cleave to her husband, but finds the sexualised
masculine principle threatening, thus Beauty finding him ugly.
She only grows up when she puts aside the image of the ideal father
and accepts the sexual masculine husband. It's really telling
a story about the original oedipal triangle that every woman must
resolve. So I don't think the message is stick with the abuser.
It's (once again) about growing up and seeing clearly.
[> [> [> I agree
-- Rahael, 07:41:57 03/18/02 Mon
That the beauty and the beast myth can be read two ways.
Like all fairy tales, it performs different functions in different
societies and different times.
I certainly agree that there is something beautiful and moving
about that fairy tale. But it can also have a different meaning,
with different overtones. And, with the Buffy/ Spike relationship,
there is sometimes too much of an onus placed on Buffy to change
Spike. If Spike is rejected by Buffy, then she is to blame for
any subsequent misdeed he does. If she is made miserable by him,
than that's her fault as well.
I'm not against Spuffy. In fact, when I used to read posts supportive
of Spike's journey, I agreed with them. But Buffy and Spike are
in a dynamic which both of them create. I don't like to see posts
accusing Buffy of being an 'abuser' any more than Spike as abusive
of Buffy. They just have a very complex relationship, which defies
easy categorisation. And Spike must make a substantial change
(which is what ME will do if they take the redemptive path) before
I can accept posts which argue that Spike is already there. That
all Buffy has to do is to love him some more, and it's only through
some deep deficiency that she has which stops her.
Finally, the whole love/transformation thing reminds me of the
Hitchcock film 'Notorious' where Cary Grant, in total cynical
mode tells Ingrid Bergman "that's right. I've been made over
by love."
[> [> Re: The Garden
of Love -- manwitch, 07:15:17 03/18/02 Mon
I do love your posts, Rahael, always maginificent provocation
of the mind.
I read LeeAnn's, also beautiful, post in the light of Hamlet,
and his reply to Polonius regarding the accommodation of the players.
Polonius says he will "use them according to their desert."
And Hamlet replies "use every man after his desert, and who
should 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity:
the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty."
We aren't here to judge, really. That task belongs to, well, some
other party. How we treat people reflects us and not them. You
are right, as is LeeAnn, that the christian and secular worlds
encourage us to believe the opposite, that we treat people as
they deserve. But who are we to judge?
I, too, am not a big fan of the "love by changing the other"
argument, whether the change is desired by male or female.
I think part of why Buffy is criticized while Spike is extolled,
is that the show is ultimately about Buffy. Its her transformation
that has to take place, not Spike's. The point of the show is
not, I hope, that we could have great loving relationships if
the other partner would change. Its, we can have great loving
relationships if we allow ourselves to love. Which is not meant
to be an argument for staying in sucky relationships. But the
only valuable transformation, I think, is self- transformation.
Buffy is full of love, I think, and I think her love saved Angel
a number of times, including the Great Sunnydale Blizzard of '98.
It was Buffy's love for Angel that brought Grace, not anything
of Angel's doing. Well, that might be overstating the case.
Anyways, I agree with the emotional point of LeeAnn's post. I
am invested in Spuffy because, for what these images have come
to mean for me, I really want the show to say they can be together.
(Which, again, doesn't necessarily mean happily ever after).
[> [> [> Re: The Garden
of Love -- Rahael, 07:58:06 03/18/02 Mon
I can return the compliment gladly, Manwitch!!
I agree, the show is about Buffy, and about her emotional journey.
And part of that is opening up to love. Integrating herself. But
I have now read one post too many which say (and I'm not accusing
LeeAnn of this, or any other contributors to this thread) "well,
I love Spike, and he wants Buffy for some reason, so he should
get her. Despite the fact that she's a cold hearted bitch. How
dare she reject Spike. Can't she see that he's too good for her?"
I am watching Spuffy for Buffy, not so much for Spike - as you
say, its her journey, and her transformation. But there are a
lot of people who are watching it only for Spike, and for Spike's
transformation. Who are a little attracted to the dangerous edginess
of his character (much in the way that Buffy is.)
I love that quote from Hamlet. I'd suggest that Buffy is the best
example of that just person. So many forget that only Buffy and
Dawn treat Spike 'like a man', despite his being a 'monster'.
And that Spike does not act as a disinterested party, urging Buffy
to open up to love. He is a complex character, with contradictory
motives. First he'll love her, then he'll kill her or is it the
other way around?
That's why it's compelling. It's not an easy path for either of
them. And it doesn't lend itself to 'right choices versus wrong
choices'. It's like life - messy and unpredictable. I'm more than
happy to see Buffy as a catalyst for change for Spike, and vice
versa. But I disagree that Spike must be a personification of
love in BtVS, or that he is the solution to Buffy's problems.
Buffy is the solution. And self transformation, as you rightly
point out, must be accomplished by the self; and this applies
equally to Spike and Buffy.
[> [> [> [> Re:
The Garden of Love -- Rufus, 01:26:43 03/19/02 Tue
"well, I love Spike, and he wants Buffy for some reason,
so he should get her. Despite the fact that she's a cold hearted
bitch. How dare she reject Spike. Can't she see that he's too
good for her?"
The show is first all about Buffy and her emotional journey, something
that can be forgotten by some who prefer other characters. Just
because she may or may not want one or the other guy doesn't make
her a cold hearted bitch, just a woman making choices. I don't
see Spike as too good for Buffy just because he's done some good
deeds over a number of months, he has some catching up on all
the bad he's done for decades. He may be able to change, but he
is not redeemed yet.
[> [> [> Re: The Garden
of Love -- celticross, 09:19:17 03/18/02 Mon
Buffy can be full of love, yes. But love can also elude her at
times. Try as she did, she could never love Riley. (In fact, the
only time she ever admitted to loving him was to spite Angel -
one of her ugliest moments). Her love for Dawn, which had her
ready to sacrifice the world last season, doesn't quite know what
to do with ordinary problems. She can show Dawn love by fighting
a god for her, but showing Dawn love by making sure Dawn gets
her homework done. Deep down, I think, Buffy is a very dramatic
person. Her love shows itself best in grand, sweeping gestures.
It's easy to love the tortured vampire, to face the tempest of
difficulty that faces the paradox of vampire and Slayer in love.
But much harder to even notice everyman Xander, or to love (mostly)
normal Riley. And by this token, it's easy to hate Spike. Buffy
does nothing have halves. It's all or nothing. She feels with
her whole heart, or not at all.
[> [> [> [> The
middle of humanity -- manwitch, 09:42:43 03/18/02 Mon
"Buffy does nothing have halves. It's all or nothing.
She feels with her whole heart, or not at all."
As the chastizing Apemantus says in Timon of Athens:
"The middle of humanity thou never knewest, but the extremity
of both ends."
Is it possible that Angel and Riley are the extremity of both
ends? And perhaps Spike is the middle path? Not seeking to save
the world, not searching for his own redemption, but loving because
he... loves?
[> [> [> [> Re:
The Garden of Love -- Caroline, 14:58:18 03/18/02 Mon
You've reminded me of an report I heard last week about narcissism
- apparently in this study, narcissists tend to respond well to
big happenings and challenges, to when they are up on a stage
and must perform to impress but if they need to do something which
won't involve recognition, they tend to perform more poorly. Buffy
can do the big stuff (sacrifice her life, save the world) but
she can't seem to do the little stuff well - take care of Dawn
etc. There was a discussion a while back about heroism, and learning
that when you grow up it's the little everyday heroic acts that
become more important rather than the huge ones. Maybe that fits
in here. Buffy may have a hard time reconciling Buffy as hero
with Buffy-getting it done in the real world.
[> [> Re: Conditional
and Unconditional love -- LeeAnn, 08:18:14 03/18/02 Mon
I would argue that it is not secular society which is unforgiving,
which denies love. Blake's poem shows that the message of love,
and everlasting life and joy in abundance that Christ signified
has been forgotten by parts of the organised Christian church
and forgotten for a long time.
Perhaps in the past forgiveness was not practiced as much as it
was preached but at least the idea had wide currency. Today even
the idea seems ridiculous to most people. Forgive your enemies?
What fool had that idea? Kill your enemies and dance on their
graves.
I would argue that most (or all) organized religion has little
to do with Jesus or his teachings. Large scale organized religion
is little more than a control mechanism, just another branch of
the shadow government, another way of keeping people in line.
Ignore it. As Jesus did.
I think in your view of retribution/punishment and salvation,
you seem to be leaning toward the Protestant view (please correct
me if I'm wrong) where the action of grace in the heart of the
sinner instantly cleanses, and restores. Salvation is open to
all, if they only choose to open their heart to Jesus Christ.
But in the doctrine of Salvation by Faith, *actions cannot be
counted *. So if Spike is damned to hell, no amount of repentance,
no amount of palliative action can ever redeem him. Now that is
not a view I take. But invoking salvation by faith alone, and
the immediate forgiveness of past sins is not unconditional.
Not having been raised a Catholic I'm unfamiliar with their doctrine.
But the Christianity I was exposed to did claim that if you accepted
Jesus and his teachings that you would receive forgiveness and
the remission of your sins. You would be saved, not by any action
of your own, but by God's mercy. If you were truly saved, you
would behave differently. If you were saved, you would want to
do good deeds. These deeds are not payment for your salvation,
not a bribe prepaid to God, but gifts of the heart, given with
love and joy to your brothers and sisters, a group which, like
neighbor, includes everyone.
If you were Protestant (in all its different varieties and
groupings) you might expect that you show signs outwardly of your
inner salvation. Most early modern Protestants would look at Spike's
life, and his actions and say that he had shown ample signs of
his status as damned.
I disagree on this. The Christianity I am familiar with proclaims
that everyone, no matter how lost, no matter how depraved, can
be saved. I think there is still a vigorous prison ministry proving
that by trying to save those incarcerated and help them change
their lives, regardless of their crimes.
Tara loves Willow. Willow has been one of the most well meaning,
kind hearted and supportive people in the show.Tara hasn't stopped
loving her. But she didn't hesitate to walk away when Willow acted
badly. Tara did not want to condone the sin, despite loving the
sinner. It shows a moral rigour which is both admirable and humane.
Moreover, Tara would have comprised her innate goodness by staying.
She would have given the wrong message to Willow.
Tara's action are right but prove that Tara's love is conditional.
It is bestowed on Willow only if she is good, not if she is bad.
I'm sure that's the healthy way for love to be. But pardon me
if I prefer Spike's unconditional love to one that judges its
object and then withholds itself if the object is unworthy.
Lets turn this around. We aren't sure that Buffy loves Spike,
but we know that Spike loves Buffy. What has that done for her?
Has it made her feel loved? Confident? Better about herself?
In Life Serial Buffy says the only person I can even
stand to be around is a ... neutered vampire who cheats at kitten
poker, Spike. In Gone Invisible Buffy says about the
Spike boinking, I thought we were having fun, the first
fun she seems to have had since she was resurrected. Before that
day is over she no longer wants to die. In Dead Things
she tells Tara that the only time she feels anything is when she
is with Spike. The SG might have resurrected Buffy but Spike brings
her back to life. Spike's love has had value. It has helped Buffy
live.
I accept the point about the transformative effect of love.
But I would argue that unless that love be built on a foundation
stone of principle, and reason, there is no real morality there.
Angel was able to disagree with the woman he loved to protect
Faith - that shows his innate morality. Tara was able to walk
away from Willow because she wanted to remain the person whom
Willow fell in love with.
Again, conditional love, rather than unconditional love. Probably
the wisest choice in the real world. But reality does not reside
in the Buffyverse. Art provides what life cannot and the fantasy
of an absolute love may not translate into the real world, but
I still want to believe it can exist, at least within the confines
of the Buffyverse.
[> [> [> Re: Conditional
and Unconditional love -- Rahael, 08:47:43 03/18/02 Mon
I have to say that I don't think Tara stops loving Willow. But
she does walk away from her. And she does it because she loves
her. Tara walked away from her family, because her love was great,
but she didn't want to be abused in the name of love. Love that
imprisons, creates misery, causes pain - that is a travesty of
love.
And also how Tara reacts to Buffy - she loves her too. She tells
Buffy that there is nothing wrong with her. She gives her solace,
and comfort, peace of mind and strength. She doesn't judge her.
She doesn't want to drag her down. And that's what I think of
when I think of love as healing wounds.
Your view of Christian salvation is Protestant. And certainly
predestinarian theory suggest that those who are saved show this
by their actions. The tree shall be known by its fruits. I think
looking at Spike's actions provides ambiguous evidence at best,
damning at worst.
Personally when I think of the Christian ideal of tolerance and
love,I think of Nelson Mandela - forgiving his persecutors on
the one hand, while smiting down the system they built. Just as
Jesus Christ might have loved the sinner, but his meekness was
deceptive - he hated the sin. He told the rich to give up all
their money. He drove the money lenders out of the temple. Yet
another Christian virtue I find hard to spot among Christians.
Perhaps I'm not capable of absolute love - perhaps my love is
conditional. But I am curious about your idea of absolute love
- what does that entail? How absolute is it? What can it endure?
What I mean is, what would the practical application of absolute
love look like?
[> [> [> [> Re:
Conditional and Unconditional love -- LeeAnn, 09:17:43
03/18/02 Mon
Spike has pretty much shown absolute love for Buffy this season.
His love is completely nonconditional. He loves regardless of
whether Buffy deserves it or not. If Buffy was addicted to magic
and using it in ways that hurt him and others do you think he
would desert her or try to help her get over it? I'm sure he would
try to help her regardless of the cost to himself..as he did in
Dead Things.
In addition he has proved he is willing to suffer and die to protect
Buffy from pain. He has also tolerated things that he probably
shouldn't have tolerated.
Absolute love can be a bitch if it's not requited. The hell that
Spike has gone through this year has been because of his love.
[> [> [> [> [>
Spike & Tara -- Etrangere, 09:34:45 03/18/02 Mon
You can go on loving someone, and yet not stay with that one what
that means being abused by that one.
That's a decision that both Tara and Spike (even if it didn't
last for his case) did.
As Rahael said before, Tara didn't stop loving Willow, nor was
she trying to "punish" Willow for messing with her mind,
she just though that what Willow did was abuse (and I agree with
her) and that she wasn't likely to stop. And Tara had enough self-respect
to know she couldn't stay with someone who abused her. That's
IMHO the healthy thing to do.
Spike never offcourse, ceased to love Buffy. Yet he knows she's
been using him, been going to him as an escape. Because he though
it was a way to make her love him ("I don't love you - Not
yet" from Wrecked) he let her do. But in Gone he refused
to let her go on while she wasn't aknowledging the reality of
what they did together. And that's again the basis of his ultimatum
in Normal Again. Now, one of the difference between Tara and Spike
that we can see in Dead Thing and As You Were is that Spike doesn't
have much self-respect, he does believe he is beneath Buffy, and
he does believe she has to be wrong to even want to be with him,
and so he does believe that he's somewhat worthy of the abuse
he's been taken from Buffy and that's why he's ready to take any
crumb from her ("really not complaining here") he can
get. Well, I certainly not think that's the healthy thing to do,
and I certainly believe Spike doesn't deserve this.
Unconditionnal love shouldn't be about letting yourself being
hurt when you can avoid it, allowing to be hurt is bad for you
(lack of self-estim) and bad for the one hurting you ("it's
killing me" from Buffy in AYW)
Unconditionnal love is about forgiving, all right, doesn't mean
you have to let yourself being abused and hurt.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Isn't it romantic? -- manwitch, 10:01:07 03/18/02
Mon
Spike is a romantic. The late 19th century is considered the "Romantic"
period.
Spike's love is about life. Being on the burning edge. He would
rather be in the hellish fires of life than sitting in a chair
watching TV commercials. Its not a good or bad thing to him, its
the experience of being alive.
When Spike was vamped and found out about the slayer, he immediately
sought them out. "Don't you ever get tired of a fight you
know you're gonna win?" He wants to live on the edge, to
feel every moment that he is alive. Which is ironic, cuz I guess
in a way he's dead.
But that's why his love of Buffy is not predicated on reciprocity.
The fiery torment of unrequited love, especially of the most Noble
Woman far above your station, a love that can never be realized
on earth except in the willingness to accept the torment of separation,
that is the essence of Romantic Love, and in the view of the Romantic,
it is the burning point of life.
Spike's lowest point was when he was reduced to a nothing in Xander's
basement, doing chores for a buffoon (Spike's POV, not mine).
He was suicidal at being reduced to someone who could not live,
as he saw living. Once he realized that he could fight, that he
could stay on the edge, he wanted to live again. But for a vampire,
the edge is the slayer, and when he finally recognized that he
couldn't best her, he found another way to the edge. Love her.
Its not about outcome to the romantic. Its about feeling alive,
with all the accompanying pain and joy. I think that's what Spike
is, and that's all he wants for Buffy. Live a little.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Good point -- Rahael, 10:10:28 03/18/02
Mon
And in fact, one of my favourite theories about Spike, is that
he is a Romantic. He is just slightly out of the height of Romanticism,
but in his posturing, his dramatic gestures, his former occupation
as a poet, he seems to be someone who aspires to Byronic flamboyance.
And your right - his willingness to feel intensity of pain, and
pleasure is also the classic Romantic elevation of Feeling. Or
as Shelley put it:
"I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!"
His relationship with Drusilla, at one turn the masterful Vampire
and the other the devoted swain reflects this.
Of course Shelley, Keats, Byron - they all plunged headlong into
highly Romantic early deaths. And with the honourable exception
of Keats, who pined tragically for his love, the other two practised
free love and elevated the feeling of being in love above the
women they actually loved.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Re: Good point -- Simone, 12:49:21
03/18/02 Mon
I absolutely agree with the assessment of Spike as a Romantic,
but, to me, the idea of Spike's "redemption" - I really
prefer to think of it as "rehabilitation" and avoid
the religious connotations altogether - is pretty much predicated
upon abandonment of this demented Romanticism of his. There's
no question that the stubborn Romantic in Spike is a big reason
why the character is so fascinating and compelling. At this point,
however, I think he really needs to just grow up. Learn that one
needn't completely lose onself in love, that having some boundaries
is both good and necessary.
It's Spike's pragmatic streak, IMO, that will allow him to become
a better person, not his ability to love "unconditionally."
The latter ended up being rather destructive, both for him and
for his relationship with Buffy. He needs to decide who *he* wants
to be instead of desperately trying to be whatever he thinks -
often mistakenly - she wants. Unless I misunderstood, Rahael,
you were hinting at the same thing in your earlier posts.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> I like to think of it in terme of "humanity"
instead of redemption myself -- Ete, 13:09:19 03/18/02
Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> That would work too... --
Simone, 13:26:25 03/18/02 Mon
... but, when one talks about Spike "reclaiming his humanity"
or some such, people tend to take it literally. And the last thing
I want is for Spike to become human.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Absolutely -- Rahael, 15:51:47
03/18/02 Mon
I like Philip Pullman's idea that you first learn 'who' you are,
when you fall in love for the first time (as apposed to dissolving
yourself away in the loved one)
Or as Graves put it:
'You love, are beauty's self indeed
Never the harsh pride of need'
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Right and furthermore... -- Ete, 11:01:27
03/18/02 Mon
I think being in love with Buffy gave him a challenge he needs
to have to feel alive. Because of what you said (being a Noble
Lady above his station) and because it gave him a good excuse
to fight with the Scoobies for the good (and he needs to be fighting
too)
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> exactly my POV! well said. hate and love are much
closer than love and like. -- yuri, 13:57:23 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Tara as a foil for Buffy and Spike, aka, "Finally,
a use for my analysis of 'Dead Things!'" -- Dyna, 12:33:57
03/18/02 Mon
I'm delighted that the subject of Spike and Tara has been raised,
because it gives me a chance to throw in something that's been
running around my head since "Dead Things," but at the
time eluded my ability to explain it. Yay, how exciting! In short,
I think both Buffy and Spike are struggling with dysfunctional
approaches to love. In "Dead Things," we see this very
clearly: On one hand, we have Buffy, a person who believes that
love (including forgiveness, a form of love) is about deserving-
-that we have to earn love, that love is about worth, that the
unworthy can't be loved and if we're not loved it's because we're
unworthy. This point about Buffy was well-discussed on this board
in the immediate aftermath of DT (most notably by fresne, whose
posts on the subject totally altered my thinking about what's
at stake in the Buffy/Spike relationship. Thank you, fresne!)
It's clear that a big part of Tara's role in "Dead Things"
is to provide a foil for Buffy, with her message of acceptance
and forgiveness countering Buffy's self-condemnation, which is
founded in her particular (imo wrong) ideas about love. Tara and
Buffy's final conversation functions like a mini- debate on the
subject: Buffy says Spike is "everything I hate, everything
I'm supposed to be against" (he's unworthy, therefore it's
wrong for me to have feelings for him); she is certain that if
her friends find out, they will stop loving her, never be able
to forgive her (if I'm unworthy, I will lose my friends' love;
I have to be perfect to be forgiven; I am unworthy of forgiveness.)
Tara counters with reassurance--it's okay if Buffy loves Spike,
but it's also okay if she doesn't (love isn't earned--if Buffy
loves Spike, he doesn't have to "deserve" it, and if
she doesn't, no amount of "deserving" on his part can
change that. Love just is, period.) Tara counters Buffy's absolute
self-condemnation ("It's not that simple,") and by her
example tries to assuage Buffy's fears that her friends will not
be able to forgive her if they knew. Tara forgives Buffy, without
question or judgement, and Buffy can't accept it. Buffy, at this
point, is still holding on tightly to her beliefs, even though
they hurt her, even though no lower an authority than the spirit
guide in "Intervention" has told her that to keep her
humanity, she needs to let go of her fear and act on her need
to "love, give, forgive." Buffy can't love and forgive
herself at the moment, so it's hardly surprising that she can't
really hear Tara's message at this point. For her own good, I
think she needs to hear it, and soon.
What's not as obvious but I think also really interesting is how
Tara's presence in this episode reflects on Spike. I think it's
no accident that in "Dead Things" we see the first meeting
of Willow and Tara since the morning after Willow's magic binge
with Amy. We can't help but be reminded of Tara's decision to
walk away from Willow, and why she did it. What's also clear is
that Tara still loves Willow, really seems to have forgiven her--but
that this isn't enough to ensure that they'll get back together.
Just being able to love and forgive Willow isn't enough; Tara
also has boundaries that must be respected, a sense of personal
integrity that she cannot give away, even for the person she loves.
How significant this reminder seems in light of what we see of
Spike in this episode! In the alley scene, Buffy beats him senseless,
taking out all her rage and helplessness on his unresisting form,
and in reply he says only, "You always hurt the one you love."
I've seen many comments on this episode that have suggested this
is an example of Spike's unconditional love, and that this scene
suggests something positive about what he brings to the relationship
with Buffy--he does, after all, sacrifice himself in service to
what he sees as her needs. While I can't bring myself to condemn
Spike for his desire to be self-sacrificing, I think the comparison
to Tara is instructive, and suggests why Spike's thinking about
love, as summed up so well by his own words, is bad for Spike
as well as Buffy. When I think of Spike's way of loving, the word
that comes to mind even more than unconditional is "boundariless."
Spike doesn't know where his boundaries are, can't draw the line
with Buffy the way that Tara could with Willow. His "you
always hurt the one you love" reminds us of the spirit guide's
reminder that "love is pain"--but it resonates slightly
wrong: Where it's true that in order to experience the joys of
love we must be willing to risk the pain, we must also recognize
that pain is not the proof of love--"you hurt me, therefore
you must love me" is a trap, in which Spike seems to be caught.
The position I take on the state of the Buffy/Spike relationship
up to at least "As You Were" is that both of them are
thinking and acting wrongly, and are hurting themselves and each
other in the process. I don't agree with those who blame Buffy's
misery on Spike or Spike's misery on Buffy, but I do think there's
something to be learned from Tara in this situation. Tara walked
away from Willow, not only because Willow's actions were a violation
of her personal integrity, but because to have accepted them would
have been bad for Willow also. If Tara had stayed, would Willow
have hit bottom as quickly as she did? Most likely not. But she
also wouldn't have been challenged to find the inner strength,
in the aftermath of hitting bottom, to try to recover herself
and repair the damage she'd done. Does this mean Spike is to blame
for Buffy feelings of self-loathing about using him, because he
allowed her to use him instead of refusing this treatment? I don't
think so, not really. What I get from the comparison with Tara
is not that Spike has done wrong by Buffy by failing to be more
like Tara--that would be too much like blaming the victim. I would
say that what Buffy did to Spike hurt Buffy too, and to the extent
that neither Spike nor Buffy seems capable (at this point) of
finding that "third way"--the balance Tara found between
unforgiving judgement on one hand and boundariless acceptance
on the other--it's better for both of them that they remain separate
for now.
Of course, eternal optimist that I am, I remain convinced that
there's no way this issue would have been built up so carefully
and thoroughly over the season if the goal wasn't eventual (positive)
resolution, but I've been called "delusional" before!
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Oh, yes, exactly! -- dream of the consortium,
12:58:28 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Great points ! And a bit of rambling on my part
on Mercy & Wisdom, Fire & Ice -- Etrangere, 13:06:42 03/18/02
Mon
"Just being able to love and forgive Willow isn't enough;
Tara also has boundaries that must be respected, a sense of personal
integrity that she cannot give away, even for the person she loves.
"
With those words you make me understand a few things I was wondering
about... Forgiveness, Tara is always standing for forgiveness
from infinite compassion, as shown in Dead Things, for Buffy,
then to Willow in Older and Far Away, when she defends Willow
of exaclty what she's suffered from Willow ("you don't make
people do what they don't want to do"), yet Tara also stands
for the wisdom of those boundaries, those rules that has to be
respected about respect of self and others.
Offcourse, Mercy and Wisdom is Clem and Sophie, the guests Buffy
and Spike bring to Buffy's birthday, and to each other, which
are also Fire and Ice.
The Fire of passion is also the forgiveness of unconditionnary
love.
The Ice is thus wisdom, respect of self and others, of the boundaries
:
Older And Far Away, Tara to Spike : "maybe you should put
some ice on it"
As You were : Spike screws it because he didn't keep the eggs
frozen
Normal Again : "you should put some ice on the back of her
neck", a very disinterrested comment to help Buffy while
he walks away.
Me think that Spike is finally getting what "ice" is
all about, just as Buffy has begun to get her "fire"
back.
And, Tara is standing for the one who knows both, the fire and
the ice, she's the Temperence figure, mixing the red of passion
with the blue of reason, the synthesis of the "third way".
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Interesting points about fire and ice. Something
new for my mind to chew on. Purple makes sense now. -- yuri,
14:08:50 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Yeah, that's why I mentionned Buffy's
purple shirt to Caroline when she posted about AYW -- Ete,
14:24:55 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> And it's a great point --
Caroline, 12:10:40 03/19/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> A wow! and a brief ramble -- ponygirl,
14:21:54 03/18/02 Mon
Wow, Clem = clemency/mercy! That's a great catch. In Buddhism
the male aspect often represents compassion and the female wisdom.
The union of the two is a method of achieving balance, and elevation
to higher state. (my knowledge of Buddhism is based on a few books
so I apologize if I'm way off).
Excellent post!
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> thanks to add to my pet theory about
B/S :) -- Etrangere, 14:29:44 03/18/02 Mon
Offcourse the ice and fire thing is all about yin and yang...
I was refering to some older posts I had made :) The first one
dates from Wrecked and can still be found on the Big Bad board.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> thanks I'll check it out!
-- ponygirl, 17:59:53 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Thank you! -- Simone, 13:22:00 03/18/02
Mon
Dyna, you've just articulated my every thought ever so much better
than I could have:
>> [..] neither Spike nor Buffy seems capable (at this point)
of finding that "third way"--the balance Tara found
between unforgiving judgement on one hand and boundariless acceptance
on the other-- it's better for both of them that they remain separate
for now.<<
Exactly. I think that, coming from opposite ends of the spectrum
where love - among many other things - is concerned, they can
really help each other achieve that balance, but only AFTER they've
figured out some things *on their own.* They can't save each other
until they're both willing to save themselves.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Another great post, Dyna. I would just add
-- Sophist, 13:27:26 03/18/02 Mon
that Buffy's belief that those only are loved who deserve to be
loved reinforces her own deepest fear. Her own failures in love,
with Angel, Parker, Riley, and now Spike, become proof to her
that she doesn't deserve to be loved. Her concern about how her
friends will judge her relationship with Spike makes that relationship
less likely to succeed and thus drives the vicious circle.
I think Buffy's fears about her ability to love can only be faced
if W and X extend to her the same compassion she found with Tara.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Re: Another great post, Dyna. I would just
add -- Simone, 13:59:11 03/18/02 Mon
>>I think Buffy's fears about her ability to love can only
be faced if W and X extend to her the same compassion she found
with Tara.<<
I tend to disagree with that. Buffy's angst about sleeping with
Spike IS just an extension of her inability to accept the killer
in herself and her fear that, if they knew who she really was,
her friends would reject her as well. But the only solution, IMO,
is for her to learn to accept herself, regardless of anyone else's
opinion. She needs to understand that the capacity for violence
inherent in her nature does not invalidate all the goodness in
her. Just like Spikes needs to understand that his capacity for
good does not make him a weak, laughable creature.
Basically, I think they both need to stop seeking validation -
via love or fear - from others.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Hmm. You raise a very fundamental issue.
-- Sophist, 16:37:04 03/18/02 Mon
The reason I phrased my post the way I did, is that I'm inclined
to believe that "no man is an island". Yes, we have
an inner life that we must come to terms with. But we can't separate
that from our social existence. In Buffy's case, her profound
social relationship with W and X helps define who she is. I don't
think that she, by herself, can solve the problem. Nor do I think
that W and X can solve it for her. I think it has to be a group
effort. Both and, not either or.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> Re: Hmm. You raise a very fundamental
issue. -- Simone, 18:27:32 03/18/02 Mon
I'll admit that I am naturally inclined towards individualism
but I didn't mean to imply that no one's opinion and perception
of us should matter but our own.
I just think that, while we do define ourselves partly through
our relationships with others, those relationships change constantly
and we should not rely too much on how others see us in the construction
of our self-image. And, despite the oft-heard accusations of self-involvement,
Buffy has been living entirely too much *for* others (and I'm
thisclose to veering off into a Levinas rant here, but I'll abstain),
trying too hard to live up to everyone's expectations (or what
she perceives as their expectations): always strong, always brave,
always victorious, always righteous. Her current emotional dependence
on the regard of W/T is, IMO, a sign of dysfunction. She's using
them as an excuse to hide from herself.
At this point in her life, she can't afford to do that anymore.
She needs to figure out who *she* wants to be, which requires
that she first come to terms with who she really is, independently
of what anyone else thinks/expects of her. Unless she can forgive
herself for not being perfect, the forgiveness of others will
not have much of an impact.
Does that make any sense? I'm incredibly tired and, most likely,
rather incoherent.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> I'm not sure we're disagreeing
-- Sophist, 20:22:06 03/18/02 Mon
I certainly agree that Buffy needs to make decisions about herself.
I also agree that it's wrong to lose yourself in others' opinions.
Your comment about Buffy trying to hard to live up to others fits
in (I think) with Dyna's point about Buffy taking everything on
to herself.
The part where I guess I disagree is your emphasis on coming "to
terms with who she really is, independently of what anyone else
thinks/expects of her." No -- I think she has to come to
terms with herself in light of her own self knowledge in relation
to her position in the world, a concept that includes within it
what others think/expect of her. I just can't separate the two.
Manwitch says something similar in a post above about Campbell
and Jung. I'm sure it's better phrased there.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Brilliant post, Dyna! -- ponygirl, 14:04:58
03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Echoing everyone else's praise! -- Rahael,
15:16:36 03/18/02 Mon
Another Dyna post to cut out and keep!
Your emphasis on Buffy's fear that she is unloveable ties into
all the desertions she's experienced. Her father, her mother,
Angel, Riley, Giles and now she feels the burden of all her friends'
problems. How much must she feel that somehow, she must had done
something wrong to drive these people away? That the only person
who says he loves her tells her that she belongs in the dark with
him? That she is so unable to accept his love that she punishes
him for loving her?
It really does put a different spin on Buffy's fear last season
that she was turning into stone inside, and that she was incapable
of love. She was really frightened that her 'specialness' was
really a terrible wrongness, and that soon, others would become
incapable of being able to love her. Going back to the beauty
and the beast analogy, she fears she is the beauty on the outside,
beast on the inside - and that's why she's disturbing Spike's
unquiet grave. He must be the only person, she thinks, who will
be able to look at the 'ugliness' within.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> love, love, love. All you need is love. --
fresne, 17:37:15 03/18/02 Mon
I want to respond to everyone, everything. Alas, I, unlike Primal
love, am finite. Therefore, I shall post, here, in no particular
order. Sadly, it isn't really a response to Dyna's excellent post
on Dead Things. Well, sort of in, a repeating, reaffirming, long
winded, I agree with you sort of way
Anyway, as to whether or not we are more or less forgiving as
we (Western society) have become fore secular, two things come
to mind.
Firstly, the rather vivid description, I believe in a work by
Foucault, of the execution of an attempted regicidist. Neither
reformation nor salvation was the point. The man tried to kill
the good and most Christian king and now that king was going to
take a good long, public, painful way of killing him, while people
watched in a carnival like atmosphere.
In the scheme of things, it's not so long ago that the criminal
justice system didn't even contain the concept of reformation.
Criminals were branded because well, you wanted everyone to know
what they had done. Consider the concept of the Scarlet Letter,
that most depressing of books. Hester, girlfriend, move to another
town already.
And since these activities took place in eras which were profoundly
less secular, well, what can I say. I'm a typical modern American
(what's worse S.F. Bay Area Californian. The country's at an angle
don't ya know and nuts roll down hill. We're the drain.) and the
concept of anyone fighting/punishing someone over religion is
foreign/bizarre/incompressible to me.
I'm inclined to like a certain level of secularism because it
helps people get away from becoming emotionally wrapped up in
say running around with the Malleous Malificarum or getting all
Cottony and Mathery.
Which brings me to my second thought, Dante/the Comedia. Perhaps,
because I'm not Catholic (although certainly Christian), it gets
to be one of my favorite books about love. Which is why it was
so funny that Rahael mentioned it, although in the opposite direction
from where I'm going to go. (mainly because I tend to ignore some
of Dante's stickier bits. Gays and barristers in hell being one
glaring example).
Buffy entered the season wondering if she was in Hell. In a strict
sense, Dante's Hell is the place where the damned are separated
from the Divine Love (aka God, light, the big rose in the sky).
And for the rest of the season our characters have done the dance
of how to love. Xander and Anya. Willow and Tara. Spike and Buffy.
Giles and Buffy. Well, actually, Buffy and every other freaking
character in the show.
Part of what intrigues me about Dante is the concept that everyone
who is in Hell is there because they love wrongly. Put another
way, they love incompletely, selfishly, meanly. It was love that
was about self and not about giving way and giving in. Bending
like a smooth reed, but then snapping back again. And at the same
time, doing the hard thing. Not what would feel good, but would
be good for yourself and your society.
Damned Franchesca beautifully describes her love for the weeping
Paolo. Heck, Dante the character faints (again!). And yet, despite
her eloquence, because she was willing to abandon the world for
passionate love, forget children, obligations, marriage, and whirl
away in passion, that's how she will spend the afterlife. Whipped
about in the dark air by a whirlwind. Clinging to her lover, who
can do nothing but weep and wail and curse.
Contrast Franchesca's description of love to the description of
one of the saved in Purgatory. In the last moment of his life,
he felt genuine contrition. And as he died and his body was washed
willy nilly down a river, a tear came to his eye, he made the
sign of the cross, and I believe he said the Virgin Mary's name.
Same concept, carried away by love. However, Francesca didn't
approach love out of a desire to change, grow and transform. She
was unhappy. She grabbed love because it pleased her to do so
(and by the way completely misread/misunderstood an Arthurian
legend.) Therefore, she's stuck in Hell, where no one ever changes.
Where the damned are stuck in an endless cycle of the actions
which that brought them there. I get less a sense of the punishment
of hell, than I do that the punishment is the sin itself.
Purgatory on the other hand, once reached through a willingness
to learn to love, is about purging sin away. Fining away the roughness
of pride, greed, envy, anger, sloth, lust and gluttony. Refining
until only the pure self is left. A self who is ready to love.
But you have to be willing. People can pray for you and love you,
but ultimately, the choice, the willingness to change must come
from within.
Which won't bring me back to Buffy quite yet. Instead, I will
segue into a book recommendation, Requiem for the Devil. I read
it every few months. It's funny, intelligent, profound. The theme/melody
is the redemptive power of love. I suppose in a surface read,
one could take it as a story in which the love of a good woman
changes a erman, sorta shaped being. But, I'm inclined to say,
that would be to miss the point.
Our main character, who falls in love for the first time in his
very long life, falls because he's ready to fall. (Pause while
I contemplate the ramifications of the word fall.). He's finally
ready to open himself up to love. And once love gets in, it transforms
his understanding. Great love allows him to acknowledge smaller
loves (friendships). And love, once accepted, allows him to let
go of pride (he is very prideful) and selfishness.
His lover certainly doesn't let him walk over her or manipulate
her. She lays down her ground rules. He has to decide for himself
if love is worth a change. Decide if where he is no longer pleases
him. If it ever did. There's this wonderful line at the end of
the book that I'm not sure that I want to spoil about love and
light, very Dante.
Oh, I should mention, it never really comes off well if you say
it first, that the main character is Lucifer Morningstar, who
isn't so much morally ambiguous, as evil. Which is kinda the point
of the book.
Now then, after going on about love, I suppose I should lean back
to Buffy, who has been so very lost. Caught in an endless cycle
of behavior. Every day waking up and saying, "This is the
day that I snap out of it." Course it doesn't work that way.
I would have to agree, that people have been saying, "I love
you." all season, but she hasn't heard it. Understood it.
Accepted it. The light hasn't been the illumination of Primal
Love. It's been too harsh. Too bright. Painful. Its been a burden.
Segueing here to Tara, who described herself in OMwF as always
having been in shadow, until Willow's reflected illumination brought
her into the light. A love (visually depicted as sparkles from
Willow's fingers), which once filling Tara, completed and transformed
her from a shy, gawky person into herself. Loving. Kind. Forgiving
as well as giving. Taught Tara her own self worth. Gave her the
ability to walk away from Willow, because both Tara and Willow
deserve better.
S4 Tara would have put up with mind twisting because she would
have believed that she deserved no better. could have walked away
from Willow. S4 Tara tried to hide her true nature from Willow.
Believed herself unworthy of love. Was ready to be dragged back
home by her family. She is compassionate, because not only Willow,
but all the Scoobies gave her compassion first. Gave her enough
light and water to grow. Although, to carry the metaphor further,
Willow trees are notoriously shady and block the light.
I suppose, Tara could have stayed with Willow after Willow violated
her mind on two occasions, but that's not a healthy love. It strikes
me as a love very similar to a world that could exist at the expense
of 14 year old girl's life. The value of love must be protected,
just as surely as the world's value must be protected.
As the characters have flailed about, I'm actually glad that there
has been no one particular, "Ah ha moment." Rather a
series of little moments, in which Buffy turns westward towards
her truth.
Has Buffy abused Spike emotionally and physically. Yes. Has Spike
emotionally manipulated Buffy. Yes.
I wonder if the entire relationship hasn't been like the fire
at the top of Purgatory. Consuming, but something that you have
to pass through to get to heaven. Like the Phoenix's pyre. They
needed to flame out so they could/can figure out where they are
going wrong.
Buffy, rejected by her parents when she needed them the most.
She shared her fear with them and they put her in an institution.
Put her away. Taught her that to be loved, you must be normal.
So, she learned to pretend.
Course, she can never fool herself, or for some reason Spike.
She isn't normal or fine. And grabbing brief physical moments
with Spike haven't been resolving her issues. And yes, Spike does
need to get over the romantic poet thing (oddly enough with its
roots in the whole Troubadour/Courtly Love/Dante/Petrarch tradition).
Spike was and is Love's Bitch. Being someone's, anyone's bitch
is not a good thing. That's not giving into primal love. That's
giving into the whirlwind.
Buffy and Spike have just been spinning around each other. Time
to stop. Get down. Let go. Give in. Start walking. Purgatory's
a long climb and the day is already more than half over.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Actually, Francesca of Rimini was in my mind
too.... -- Rahael, 18:20:43 03/18/02 Mon
and I'm loving Dante. Just some parts squick me.
Great post.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Divine post, fresne! -- Ixchel, 18:22:57
03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Beautiful, fresne! -- Dyna, 09:03:40
03/19/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> Dante -- Malandanza, 09:26:49 03/20/02
Wed
"She grabbed love because it pleased her to do so (and
by the way completely misread/misunderstood an Arthurian legend.)
"
It probably depends upon which version she was reading -- Dante
predates Mallory. The oldest extant Lancelot/Guinevere story is
from Chretien de Troyes where the affair was not so much adulterous
as it was a right of conquest:
" In those days the customs and privileges were such that,
if a knight found a damsel or lorn maid alone, and if he cared
for his fair name, he would no more treat her with dishonour than
he would cut his own throat. And if he assaulted her, he would
be disgraced for ever in every court. But if, while she was under
his escort, she should be won at arms by another who engaged him
in battle, then this other knight might do with her what he pleased
without receiving shame or blame." (The Knight of the Cart)
Thus, when Lancelot defeats Meleagant, he has earned the right
to have sex with the queen. The Queen first rejects Lancelot and
he goes away in despair -- here are her thoughts when she reconsiders:
"When he came before me smiling and expecting that I would
be glad to see him and would welcome him, and when I would not
look at him, was not that a mortal blow? When I refused to speak
with him, then doubtless at one blow I deprived him of his heart
and life. These two strokes have killed him, I am sure; no other
bandits have caused his death. God! can I ever make amends for
this murder and this crime? No, indeed; sooner will the rivers
and the sea dry up. Alas! how much better I should feel, and how
much comfort I should take, if only once before he died I had
held him in my arms! What? Yes, certainly, quite unclad, in order
the better to enjoy him. If he is dead, I am very wicked not to
destroy myself. "(Knight of the Cart)
There are no repercussions in this version, either -- no collapse
of Camelot or war among the knights. If Paolo and Francesca were
reading Chretien (or one of his imitators), I don't think they
misinterpreted the story.
But I'd say they were probably reading the French Vulgate Lancelot-Grail
cycle, because of the comment: "A Gallehault indeed, that
book and he / who wrote it, too; that day we read no more"
(Canto V, Inferno). There was no intermediary in Chretien's book.
Even in this version, however, Lancelot and Guinevere only have
the occasion to consummate their relationship because King Arthur
is off trying to seduce a maiden in a castle he is supposed to
be besieging (and he gets himself captured as a result, so that
the next day Lancelot and the knights have to rescue him). The
Arthurian myths were only just beginning to become Christianized
and it's possible that Francesca and Paolo had an older, less
moralizing version.
"I tend to ignore some of Dante's stickier bits. Gays
and barristers in hell being one glaring example.
I think the Classics have to be read within the context of their
times. I cringe when I read racial epithets in a work by Kipling
or Twain; it bothers me that the authors were so benighted and
ignorant, but the words didn't have the same connotations when
they wrote them as they have now. A modern author using the same
words should be condemned, but if we were to burn all the books
that don't measure up to today's standards of tolerance, we wouldn't
be left with much in the libraries -- and what would be left would
be such insipid fare as to encourage illiteracy. But Dante isn't
just an example of 13th century intolerance for homosexuality
-- in fact, his view of Brunetto Latino is so favorable that it
suggests that Dante was uncomfortable with the idea of men being
condemned to Hell for sodomy. Compare his self-righteous attacks
upon other sinners with his final remark about Brunetto: "And
then he turned and seemed like one of those / who race across
the fields to win the green / cloth at Verona; of the runners
he / appeared to be the winner, not the loser" (Canto XV).
I seem to recall a biography on Dante where he was worried about
his son or nephew having fallen into a homosexual lifestyle --
worried for the boy's salvation, but was told by a friend that
such acts were commonplace among the young at Rome, which may
have softened his position on homosexuality.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Of course -- Rahael, 10:13:43
03/20/02 Wed
Great works of literature arise from certain contexts and cultures.
Understanding and setting them within that context enhances the
reading you get.
But I still get disturbed. It's because of Dante's very subtle
portrait of Latino, his affection for him, that I was disturbed
by their placement in hell. It was the subordination of human
beings to strict points of theology and doctrine. The souls of
unborn babies, the Ancient Philosophers and so on. Of course Dante
tried hard to show that the Ancient philosophers were proto-Christians,
and in many ways was far more inclusive than some of his contemporaries.
It just gets me on a irrational level. I don't come away thinking
Dante was prejudiced as such. I'm still left with the impression
of a tolerant, humane and expansive mind.
Similarly I spent many many months working on various aspects
of Calvinism, from the records of a consistory court in France
to general essays regarding Calvinists and their beliefs. I could
find myself passionately in their corner, explaining and explicating
things from their own cultural perspective, but when I stepped
away, I knew that I would be horrified by them were I to encounter
them in the flesh.
The only author who I have truly been disturbed by is Somerset
Maugham. I read and loved 'Of Human Bondage'. And I was proceeding
through his short stories at a cracking pace, until I came to
a particular paragraph. The story was set in Ceylon, and it came
to a description of the Sinhalese women (simply bystanders in
the story). Maugham described their ape-like features. Hardly
looking human, according to him. I felt like I'd been slapped.
I put the book down and I've never picked up anything by him again.
I took it rather personally; I found that its crudity in itself
devalued any literary merit that could be claimed in his defence,
for what can you say about the descriptive powers of an author
who said that?
On the other hand, I read Philip Larkin, racist, misogynist and
misanthrope (as revealed by his private letters) with nothing
but pleasure. He doesn't even have an excuse, belonging as he
does to the 20th century, where the prevailing culture was growing
more tolerant. If his hatred of his fellow man creeps into his
poetry (man hands on misery to man/it deepens like a coastal shelf/get
out as soon as you can/and don't have any kids yourself)it is
still expressed beautifully. Never come across anything clumsy
or crude, or even overtly racist yet.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> Of Human Weakness -- Sophist,
12:53:09 03/20/02 Wed
My favorite movie -- not the best, just my favorite -- is Casablanca.
There are 2 scenes in it which really bother me. One is a gratuitous
reference to Sam as "boy". The other comes when Rick
says to Ilsa "I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't
take much to see that the problems of two people don't amount
to a hill of beans...." Ok so far, but followed by the gratingly
condescending "Someday you'll understand that." If I
could somehow edit the movie to eliminate these two bits, I'd
do it in a heartbeat.
I face this issue all the time in evaluating historical figures.
What am I to think about racist comments by heroes of mine like
Jefferson and Lincoln? Yes, the objectionable phrases amount to
a few words out of hundreds of thousands they wrote. Yes, it is
fashionable today to take words out of context to make them seem
worse than they actually were. No, their contemporaries did not
see them as racist. Still, the words remain, and they retain the
power to hurt.
For better or worse, I forgive them (presumptiously, perhaps).
Here's an analogy: if I judge the work of an artist, what do I
look for? His/her best works, surely. It would make no sense to
judge Michelangelo by his worst composition. Anyone can make bad
art. I do it particularly well. Michelangelo is special because
he has the ability to transcend the ordinary.
In the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address,
Jefferson and Lincoln gave us ideals to live for. The lives they
composed deserve to be judged by their best moments, not those
in which they failed to live up to their own ideals. I can't and
wouldn't edit their lives, but I watch the movie anyway and it's
still my favorite.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Of Human Weakness
-- Ian, 16:44:41 03/20/02 Wed
One view of this subject strikes me as very topical.
No one, regardless of their empathy or humanity, is immune from
the depravity of their age.
That such great people as Lincoln or Jefferson could still fall
prey to the misogyny and bigotry of their age makes them human,
and therefore flawed. But still great.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Of Human Weakness
-- Rahael, 10:06:44 03/21/02 Thu
Great points, Ian and Sophist.
Plenty of food for thought. And in away, the mature thing for
us to do is not seek perfection in other human beings; not to
ask our heros to be impeccable inside and out.
Still don't know whether I'll read Maugham again. It's not like
he's a Joyce, or a Sterne or a Dante. He doesn't give me enough
goodness to balance out the disturbing thoughts.
Btw, I think Kipling is underrated. A fine writer, especially
Kim. ANd I think his views on Colonialism are very complex. He
was inextricably bound up with the process, and he was a pretty
tortured man. Bit like him going on about the glory of war, and
militarism and all that, and then his son goes and dies in the
great war.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> [> [> [> Re: Of Human
Weakness -- Sophist, 10:58:15 03/21/02 Thu
Completely agree about Kipling, whom I rather like. Yeah, there's
the whole "white man's burden" crap, but there's lots
else as well.
Maugham, to me, is not worth it. Like you say, it's a balance,
and the good there ain't good enough.
The US political system today puts everyone's flaws under a microscope.
It's one of the least appealing aspects of current culture here.
People's strengths get lost entirely because someone spots one
flaw (or even many), and frequently the flaw has no relevance
to the job. Drives me crazy.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> Reading and Misreading text --
fresne, 11:34:57 03/20/02 Wed
Francesca was reading a particular version of the Arthurian legend,
which is neither the Chretien de Troyes, nor one of the Lays of
Marie de France (brief plug for Marie's brilliantly subtle story
le fresne, the anti-Griselda).
Unfortunately, I'm at work (I'm actually virtuously on my lunch
break.) and can't reference the particular story, so if you believe
it to be the French Vulgate Lancelot-Grail, I'm willing to go
with that.
In the version that Francesca is reading, Gallehault, serves as
an intermediary between Gwen and Lance. Thus the name Gallehault
came to be a synonymous word for panderer, which is how Francesca
is using the word. "A Gallehault indeed, that book and he
/ who wrote it, too" Thus she slides the blame for her kissing
Paolo and entering into adultery onto the book and its author.
However, if she'd gotten slightly farther, as opposed to getting
distracted by kissing, she'd have gotten to the bit which basically
said, adultery, a bad idea, don't do it.
Thus, Francesca's excuse for adultery, the book it made me do
it, is a wonderfully subtle (on Dante's part) chiding against
interpreting a text before you get to the end. Or for that matter
blaming an author for your sins.
All of which is why I love Dante and why I'm perfectly willing
to read him within the context of his times. He's so incredibly
compassionate and well, the stone woman poems. Va va voom.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> [> [> [> You've made me like him even
more. -- Rahael, 11:47:01 03/20/02 Wed
That is very subtle, and beautiful.
I guess I should pay more attention to the nuance.
[> [> [> [> Re:
Conditional and Unconditional love -- dream of the consortium,
09:26:58 03/18/02 Mon
Ah, the old "conditional" versus "unconditional"
love thing. It tends to get under my skin, because I was told
once at a very vulnerable moment that I was loving someone "conditionally"
by doing what I knew was right - for him and me. He couldn't see
it then, because it was painful and sad. Maybe he can now. Sometimes
the most loving thing you can do is separate yourself from someone.
Tara knew that the relationship was not only not good for her,
but not good for Willow. It is very dangerous for someone who
is manipulative and abusive to be in a relationship with someone
who never holds the abuser accountable. Willow's soul was endangered
by her actions (again, we come back to the idea that doing good
can make you good, and doing bad can make you bad). Tara did the
loving thing - which is to say, to paraphrase Joss, she gave Willow
what she needed, not what she wanted. That's not putting a condition
on her love; her love remains. She could have screamed and yelled
and sulked and used the guilt card for her advantage. She could
have just meekly accepted what had happened without complaint.
Where would Willow be now in either case? She's doing very well
now, in part because Tara did all she could for her, which was
to let her know that she was acting in an unaccpetable fashion,
and continue to treat her with respect, while enforcing a necessary
distance. I just love Tara - she is far progressed in the art
of being a whole person, in maturity and kindness and generousity.
That sort of character is rare in popular culture - perhaps because
to create a character with those attributes requires possessing
them yourself to some degree?
I might add that the very appeal of the Spike/Buffy relationship
is that he is tough on her in a way that is loving. It is in the
moments when he forces her to look at the truth that he seems
good for her. It's when his love takes a selfish turn that he
fails her - either by letting her get away with too much ("I'm
using you, and it's killing me" - and she was) or by trying
to convince her she is something she is not. Spike is most loving
when he forces Buffy to look at the truth, even if that may mean
losing her (the speech at her bedside in NA). Spike's love becomes
most unconditional when he is most like Tara, when he is willing
to do the thing which is best for her, even if it means giving
her up - not when he says he doesn't mind being used.
[> [> [> Re: Conditional
and Unconditional love -- Isabel, 09:54:48 03/21/02 Thu
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what people have been saying, but
my definition of Unconditional Love and Conditional Love seems
to differ from other people's here. (I'm sorry if I'm repeating
someone. I could have missed it in one of the posts)
It seems to me that the arguments have been made that since Tara
left Willow, her love is Conditional, and since Spike tried
to stay with Buffy, his love is Unconditional. I posit
that people are arguing that their actions prove the quality of
their love rather than their love is something separate from their
actions.
I've always interpreted 'Conditional Love' to be like a 'Fair
Weather Friend.' It's easy to love someone who is beautiful and
rich and successful. It's a love that's based on an aspect of
the person and if that aspect changes, the love goes away. The
wife isn't beautiful anymore and her husband divorces her for
a new wife that is.
'Unconditional Love' is a 'Love is Blind,' 'Come Hell or High
Water' situation. It's not based on a condition for love. No matter
what happens, the love remains. That does not require the people
to stay together. Some murderers in prison have mothers that still
love them.
I've always thought that Anya and Xander's duet in OMwF expressed
their worries that their love was conditional.
Xander: "Is she looking for a pot of gold?"
Anya: "Will I look good when I've gotten old?"
Xander: "Will our lives become too stressful if I'm never
that successful?"
Anya: "When I get so old and wrinkly that I look like
David Brinkly."
I agree with people that argue that Tara did what she had to to
save herself and Willow. Just because you love someone, it doesn't
mean you have to take what they dish out. I think the fact that
Tara still loves Willow after what she did to her is a good indication
that her love is unconditional. (Just thought of this: Willow
thought that Tara wouldn't love her if she wasn't Superwitch.)
On the other hand, I argue that we have yet to see if Spike's
love of Buffy is unconditional. And don't assume I'm saying this
b/c I don't like Spike. I adore his character, he's my favorite.
I like the Spuffy relationship. Yes, Spike has taken a lot of
garbage from Buffy; he's tried to be what he thinks she wants
in a lover; he kept his promise to her to protect Dawn after she
died, BUT I'll withold judgement until Buffy is no longer the
Slayer. If Spike still loves her as adamantly as ever one month
after she becomes a completely normal woman, then I'll agree his
love is unconditional. This scenario is extremely unlikely and
will probably never happen, but I think her being the Slayer is
pivotal to his love.
[> [> Re: The Garden
of Love -- Thanks Rah! Awesome as usual, 09:28:35 03/18/02
Mon
[> [> IL Paradiso*
-- Sophist, 09:36:22 03/18/02 Mon
Beautifully said, Rahael. I have a couple of points to add.
About Protestant doctrine. Calvin argued that grace was sufficient
for salvation. However, that grace could not be achieved by any
act of the believer, but was a gift from God. Nothing done by
the believer alone could result in justification. That required
God's gift of grace. This reasoning led to Calvin's doctrine of
the elect.
The later theologian Arminius made substantially the argument
you cited as Protestant doctrine. His position was rejected at
the Synod of Dort. Protestant churches today range from strictly
Calvinist to Arminian. The fundamental distinction of Protestant
from Catholic -- justification by faith alone, not works -- generally
remains.
I bring this up because it affects the way we view Spike. If Spike
is justified in Calvinist terms, nothing he can do himself
will cause that, and nothing he has done in the past will prevent
it. God decides.
In more liberal Protestant terms, Spike has it within himself
to achieve grace by sincere acceptance of God and repentance (i.e.,
remorse). Buffy's love may provide a motive for him to do this,
but by itself cannot do more.
In Catholic terms of salvation, Spike needs to repent of past
evil and perform acts of grace and contrition. The Church
has, to be honest, waffled on whether certain evil deeds are redeemable.
Spike's past is heinous; whether that leaves him in hell or purgatory,
Dante alone knows.
I agree with you completely about the modern world being more
tolerant, understanding and forgiving. The US today is far more
moral today than it was 50 years ago precisely because we are
better able to treat with dignity people who were condemned by
standard religious doctrine.
I've been thinking hard about this issue since your last post
and since the exchange I had with various posters about the morality
and efficacy of punishment. I'm not sure I can articulate my view
with much precision. This I do believe: Spike can change. He can
commit to moral action in the future. Whether that amounts to
redemption or not, I don't yet know.
Dyna has a great post above which characterizes Buffy in terms
far different than those LeeAnn uses. I agree completely with
Dyna. I would add that Spike has behaved with Buffy, to some degree,
the way Buffy has behaved with Willow and Xander. Spike has suffered
so Buffy doesn't have to. I wonder whether we'll reach the point
where Buffy includes Spike in the group of those for whom she
will suffer so that they need not.
*The word paradise, as you probably know, comes from the Old Persian
word for "garden".
[> [> [> Re: IL Paradiso*
-- Rahael, 10:23:46 03/18/02 Mon
I didn't know that. And it adds so much to my enjoyment of that
poem now that I do.
Thanks for elaborating on those points of doctrine.
All those different Protestant doctrinal stances were fought over
bitterly, but from afar, look pretty piddly.
The point I made about the outside showing signs of the salvation
within in Protestant thinking is, you are right, not classic Calvinist
theology. It's what many English Calvinists had to argue to rescue
themselves from accusations of antinominanism. That is those who
were of the elect could commit any crime they liked - but they
would still be elect no matter what.
The whole predestination/works tension in Calvinist theology comes
not from Calvin himself (who only devoted only one paragraph to
predestination out of the 15 volumes of his 'Institutes') It's
all Theodore Beza's fault!!!
The whole of Protestantism is just subcultures within subcultures.
There's Luther, then there's Calvin; then Beza, then Zurich Protestantism;
there's Arminianism which was accused of being proto Catholic.
In 17th Century England you had a whole spectrum of Protestantism,
ranging from Arminians like Herbert, conservative Presbyterians
like Denzel Holles, then Radical protestants like Cromwell; then
at the furthest reaches you had the Diggers, the Baptists, the
Quakers...the list is endless.
I find the whole thing utterly fascinating. When you look at 17th
century England - religious fervour, political radicalism, and
the growth of scienctific inquiry as we would recognise it today
- all intersect each other.
Have you read Iain Pears' 'Instance of the Fingerpost'? That's
really the best historical fiction I've come across.
[> [> [> [> I can't
spell. That should have been "antinomianism". I think!
-- Rahael, 10:26:28 03/18/02 Mon
[> [> [> [> [>
Would that be "antinominalism"?? -- Simone, 17:11:32
03/18/02 Mon
I'm not familiar with the term and I know next to nothing about
Calvinism (or theology in general, for that matter), but nominalism
- as I understand it from reading Ockham - is the doctrine that
universals are merely concepts, names related to mental states,
and that the individuals falling under a universal category need
not share any properties other than that name. In other words,
they need not have an Aristotelian "essence" in common
- just characteristics which we perceive as similar enough to
call by the same name in all said individuals.
So antinominalism would be a sort of extreme essentialism: the
idea that a group of individuals (e.g. the "elect")
are what they are solely in virtue of having - or of participating
in - an ontologically distinct essence, quality or form, regardless
of all apparent dissimilarities. It seems to fit what you're saying
about Calvinism but you may very well be referring to something
altogether different.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Nope. The antinomians were different. -- Sophist,
20:40:20 03/18/02 Mon
They believed they had direct communion with God, that He spoke
to their hearts. With this direct knowledge of God and his laws,
they did not need any written laws. Specifically, they did not
need written rules about sacraments or the means of grace. The
word antinomian means "against law" from "anti"
and from the Greek "nomos", which is usually "law"
but also has other meanings.
Needless to say, antinomians could come across as pretty self-righteous.
They were especially hard for Puritans to deal with because many
parts of Puritan doctrine seemed to support the antinomian arguments.
For example, Anne Hutchinson was an antinomian and used sermons
by John Cotton (Cotton Mather's maternal g'father) to justify
her actions. Cotton disavowed her shortly before she was banished.
I actually kind of sympathize with the Puritans here -- our present
world doesn't make me very comfortable with people claiming a
hotline to God.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> [> Thanks, that makes a lot more sense (scary, scary
people)! -- Simone, 06:54:20 03/19/02 Tue
[> [> [> [> Cavaliers
and Roundheads -- Sophist, 10:37:37 03/18/02 Mon
I've never read Pears' book. I generally read only non-fiction.
That's probably why I'm so impressed by the literary analyses
here, and by the writing ability of the posters.
I'm a committed secularist, but for some reason the Protestant/Catholic
doctrinal disputes fascinate me. The period from 1517 to 1688
is my second favorite (to US 1760-1876), and I have dozens of
books on various religious and political events, mostly English,
of that time.
[> [> [> [> [>
1647 - the most exciting year of English history. -- Rahael,
06:22:56 03/20/02 Wed
Anyone who has read the Putney debates cannot fail to fall in
love with that period. To hear the voice of ordinary people -
and how intelligent, alive and dynamic they are!
It is characteristic of that year that we have a man like Rainsborough,
never noticed for anything before to say this:
"For really I think that the poorest he that is in England
hath a life to live, as the greatest he; and therefore truly,
Sir, I think it's clear, that every man that is to live under
a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under
that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England
is not bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath
not had a voice to put himself under."
Rainsborough never really rises to prominence again. He dies in
an skirmish at night some years later.
During the Putney debates, streched over 3 days, you can positively
cut the atmosphere with a knife - the tiredness, the crowded,
hot room, the passion with which everyone spoke. And it's the
icing on the cake on an incredibly dynamic, action packed year.
I did a timeline for 1647, and I had a significant event/document/speech/battle
for nearly every single day of that year.
[> [> [> [> [>
[> Yeah! You got the Rainsborough quote in. -- Sophist,
08:45:01 03/20/02 Wed
1647 has to be near the top of any list. Let's see: 1066 (duh);
1215; 1265; 1399; 1485; 1536; 1647; 1688; 1776 (and not just cuz
I'm a colonial); 1940. These would be my top 10. 1647 would certainly
be in the top 3, along with 1066 and 1940. I'm not sure it matches
those 2 for world historic drama, but you can feel the fervor
in the country. As many pamphlets as we have posts. I hope it's
not this hard to vote on the ATP Buffy Awards.
In the movie, I want to see JM play Lilburne.
[> Darkness -- Malandanza,
10:36:55 03/18/02 Mon
"she's too important to be relegated to the shadows but
too dangerous to be fully integrated into society"
I realize I'm deviating markedly from the main point of your essay,
but Buffy as a source of danger is too interesting a topic to
me to let not address it.
While Normal Again is the most prominent evidence we have
of just how dangerous an out- of-control Buffy can be, it is certainly
not the first time we've seen her like this.
Dawn has faced Buffy twice now -- in NA and before with the pull-back-the-curtain
spell where a dazed Buffy knocked her into a wall. I would guess
that some scary Buffy-centric nightmares would be in order.
When Buffy's demon roommate was stealing her "soul,"
we also saw Buffy behaving a bit erratically - - NA was the second
time Buffy knocked Xander unconscious (Oz also got beaten).
And speaking of Oz, Buffy's werewolf hunts had to unnerve him.
Her conversation with him during the Veruca affair had some rather
serious intimidation going.
Bad Girls, of course, had Buffy nearly out-of-control in
her wilding spree with Faith. Then the subsequent knifing of Faith
and the battle between Faith and Buffy in L.A.
There was Doggleganger Buffy in the Wishworld and Buffy as a huntress
at the beginning of season six.
Then there was the entire alley filled with vamp-hookers -- all
massacred in the blink of an eye. And the casual snapping of a
beaten demon's neck in Family followed by a flash of anger
(before she recovered herself) when Tara admitted to having performed
the spell.
My feeling is that Buffy's connection to the First Slayer comes
to the forefront when she is in stressful situations (or drugged
-- much as Angelus took over when Angel was drugged). In battles,
Buffy's humanity is submerged and the Slayer emerges -- but so
far she has a tight enough control over herself that she has been
able to regain control once the battle is over. I think Spike
was playing a very dangerous game by trying to lead Buffy into
the darkness -- he would not have liked the result, nor would
the denizens of Sunnydale's underworld. Buffy needs the guilt
and overactive conscience to keep herself from slipping into real
darkness.
[> [> Re: Darkness
-- celticross, 12:02:37 03/18/02 Mon
" Buffy needs the guilt and overactive conscience to keep
herself from slipping into real darkness."
However, there's a fine line there. Yes, with half a chance (and
some stress), Buffy could go sliding into violence and cruelty
easily. But she also cannot deny her dark side and it would be
much safer for her and everyone around her if she didn't. She's
at her best when she's herself, not just Buffy the Normal Girl,
and not just The Slayer, but both. When she uses her mind and
her wits (Normal Girl) and her strength and penchant for violence
(Slayer) to defeat evil. But as soon as things calm down again,
she takes one look at her the interior darkness and runs screaming.
Trying to convince Buffy's she belongs in the dark may not be
Spike's smartest move, but he does know her well enough to see
the darkness lurking under the surface, and call her on it.
[> [> [> Re: Darkness
-- Malandanza, 09:43:04 03/19/02 Tue
"Yes, with half a chance (and some stress), Buffy could
go sliding into violence and cruelty easily. But she also cannot
deny her dark side and it would be much safer for her and everyone
around her if she didn't...she uses her mind and her wits (Normal
Girl) and her strength and penchant for violence (Slayer) to defeat
evil. But as soon as things calm down again, she takes one look
at her the interior darkness and runs screaming. Trying to convince
Buffy's she belongs in the dark may not be Spike's smartest move,
but he does know her well enough to see the darkness lurking under
the surface, and call her on it."
I agree that it would be best for Buffy to follow Angel's example:
to recognize the darkness inside. In fact, admitting to herself
that this dark, primeval force impelling her towards destruction
does exist would allow her to fight against it more effectively
(as Angel is cautious about giving Angelus any sort of opening).
However, I doubt that Buffy will ever be able to integrate the
darker aspects of personality with her normal side, so if the
choice is a life of denial and escapism or total immersion in
darkness, I have to hope for the former, for Buffy's sake and
for the sake of those around her (from a dramatic point of view,
I'd love to see an out-of-control Slayer running amok in Sunnydale
and sleeping on a bed of bones -- Sunnydale demons have become
too complacent).
And I do think that escapism and denial have their place. Back
when role playing games first became popular, there was much discussion
about the deleterious effect they had on the impressionable minds
of their young adherents -- talk of suicide and becoming lost
in fantasy worlds. Gary Gygax (D&D creator) responded by pointing
out that role-players had a suicide rate that was 1% of the national
average (not that anyone paid attention to him) which he attributed
to role- players engaging in social activities, making friends,
etc. -- activities having a negative correlation with suicide.
I believe that he was correct, that socializing (especially among
groups of people who might otherwise have been isolated) does
help prevent suicide, but I also think that escape into a fantasy
world played a role. After all, the players might have been on
the lowest rung of the social ladder, but in their fantasy world,
they were mighty paladins slaying demons and dragons and rescuing
beautiful maidens (or, if they were like my friends, evil half-orc
warriors, slaughters paladins, defiling temples and carrying off
beautiful maidens).
I am also reminded of a short story, by Guy de Maupassant, The
Little Walk, where the protagonist had drifted through life
without much self-examination -- only to discover how empty his
life was and how unhappy he was when he did do some soul-searching.
It ends with his body being found hanging from a tree in the park.
And then there's the Total Perspective Vortex from Hitchhiker's
Guide -- too much reality is a bad thing (although the live-action
roleplaying games leave me a bit unsettled, though -- too much
like blurring the distictions between fantasy and reality).
Finally, it was not Spike's intent to help Buffy by pointing out
her dark side, but t help himself by playing upon her deepest
insecurities.
[> [> Disagree on a point
-- Robert, 13:40:22 03/19/02 Tue
>> "While Normal Again is the most prominent evidence
we have of just how dangerous an out-of- control Buffy can be,
it is certainly not the first time we've seen her like this.
Dawn has faced Buffy twice now -- in NA and before with the pull-back-the-curtain
spell where a dazed Buffy knocked her into a wall. I would guess
that some scary Buffy-centric nightmares would be in order."
The episode you are referring to is "No Place Like Home".
Buffy was not out of control. She was in control, but with incomplete
information. She knew that her mother was ill -- possibly gravely
ill. She had good reason to suspect that Joyce's illness was magical
in origin. She knew that Dawn's presence was magical in origin.
Due to her incomplete information, she misinterpreted Dawn's actions
as a threat to Joyce. This is not the same as out of control.
[> [> [> Re: Disagree
on a point -- Ian, 16:19:22 03/20/02 Wed
You've got a point, but I the degree to which I disagree depends
on just what you mean by "darkness."
If by darkness you mean violence, violence can be a justified
(and justifiable) response to a situation. There is such a thing
as self-defence, and Buffy moreover defends those who cannot successfully
resist themselves. An act can be righteous and yet remain violent.
By the same token of course, violence can rob a righteous stance
of its morality. It's all so dependent on point of view.
Also, "too dangerous to be integrated into society"
is a label that has been applied to everyone from anarchists to
homosexuals. Often the forces or concerns that Society deems "dangerous"
are in fact efforts to correct an ill in society. To take it even
further (which has often happened in real life), Buffy represents
a truly empowered individual; she is both moral and strong. Human
civilization is tragically disinclined to correct itself, and
is terribly resistant to those who would alter the status quo,
for whatever reasons.
This reminds me of the recent link on the board to that wacky
mayor in Florida who banned Satan from influencing the towns population.
Her reasoning? Kids were dressing in black and wearing Halloween
costumes. The "dark forces" behind this threatened her
narrow conception of right and wrong, and made these innocent
acts assume dangerous intentions.
Dangerous, evil, corrupt, perverts, and even "darkness"
are labels that have been applied to the greatest people the human
species has produced. Yes, Buffy is "dangerous," but
mostly in the best sense of the word.
[> [> [> [> Re:
Disagree on a point -- Ian, 16:21:05 03/20/02 Wed
Corrected first sentence. Oops.
You've got a point, but the degree to which I disagree depends
on just what you mean by "darkness."
[> [> [> [> Dangerous
-- Sophist, 09:09:19 03/21/02 Thu
Good points. Reminds me of a scene in LOTR, when Pippin asks Gandalf
if Denethor is dangerous. Gandalf says, paraphrasing, "Of
course he's dangerous. So am I. More dangerous than anyone you
will ever meet unless you come before the Dark Lord himself."
We are all dangerous; it's how we use it that counts.
[> [> [> Not just
incomplete information -- Malandanza, 08:52:49 03/21/02
Thu
"The episode you are referring to is 'No Place Like Home'.
Buffy was not out of control. She was in control, but with incomplete
information. She knew that her mother was ill -- possibly gravely
ill. She had good reason to suspect that Joyce's illness was magical
in origin. She knew that Dawn's presence was magical in origin.
Due to her incomplete information, she misinterpreted Dawn's actions
as a threat to Joyce. This is not the same as out of control."
Out-of-control is a bit strong for that incident, but I would
say that she was not in full possession of her faculties. She
was wandering around the house in a drug-induced haze (foreshadowed
by Riley's parting comment just before Buffy began the spell --
"have a nice trip" -- plus, incense) when she confronted
Dawn. Buffy's behavior (knocking her 14-year old sister into the
wall) was not merely a normal act based on incomplete information
-- we have not seen her assault friends or enemies with such slight
provocation before. Compare her reaction to Dawn with her reaction
to Tara in Family: yes, there was an initial flash of anger before
she had all the information when she found out that Tara's spell
had almost killed them all, but she didn't hurt Tara, nor did
she make veiled threats to Tara as Buffy did to Dawn before leaving
her alone in the house. In any event, from Dawn's perspective
it must have been the most terrifying moment of her life (and
might still be so -- although her time on the tower probably rates
pretty high on the her list of terrifying experiences).
[> I have to disagree about
Buffy... -- Ixchel, 21:23:41 03/18/02 Mon
IMHO, she is at heart a kind person. And while some of her actions
this season have been distressing, I believe I understand them
(not condone, understand). She is depressed, confused, frightened,
lost, and conflicted.
In the same way, I believe I understand Spike's actions.
Ixchel
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