The Belated Blogger: Hush (Imagine if you were blind!)

We saw in this episode how a mass loss of voice could effect society/our main characters. They relied on each other differently: in person, with gestures and touches (one could argue, more personably). They (Riley and Buffy mostly) found other uses for their mouths (finally kissing). When their relationships were “all talk” (Buffy describing her and Riley) they kept more secrets from each other than when there was no talk (granted they were battling a crisis, so they couldn’t really focus on creating or concealing secrets – but nor could they explain them away, such as when Riley and Buffy finally saw each other battling demons). 

It’s weird, typing this in a voiceless room, devoid of other people or my own voice (no reason or inclination to talk aloud). It’s actually sort of normal: but because of the nature of this blog post, I’m oddly conscious of it. But I digress.

In Dracula we also saw the importance of communication. The whole story is communicated to us through diaries, either spoken or written, normally or in short-hand, telegraphs, and memos, which were then typed up by Mina, so that in the end it is all, also, non-vocal communication. Without this communication, the story would not exist. It is the framework within which Stoker has set his story, as something that was and is communicated. (And thus achieving an element of scary-ness and empirical realism, as well as a sure way of switching perspectives, in a way listening to characters’ dialogue cannot. Though they eventually knew that the rest of the crew would read their diaries, did not censor them the way dialogue inevitably is. Back to that whole secrets-when-talking thing.)

And of course, Northanger Abby explores communication, specifically proper Victorian communication. (Again, though, the story is communicated to us, this time via an outside [if not impartial] observer.) What to say, what not to say, how and when to say it—if we have our voices, how do we use them? Catherine learns to become a little more discerning as the story progresses, and not speak all that she has learned how to speak; as well as how to interpret to an extent what others are saying. And though often characters in the book say things that mean or are other than what they appear at face value (her whole being at the Abby was a product of exaggeration and false/faulty communication), and Catherine learns to understand this, she, our heroine, retains her inability to speak lies.  [Hey look, more relation to speaking and secrets in Northanger Abby – only with a twist! Catherine, who doesn’t know the nuances of speech or how to speak properly all the time, exhibits and retains virtue of being unable to conceal fully (a.k.a. lie) via speech, like those around her.]

While this episode of Buffy is the most obvious exploration of communication, it certainly keeps showing up everywhere. That aside, while I was watching the episode I was wondering what I would be like for a blind person in Sunnydale. I guess you could arrange baby tomatoes into brail sentences… if tomatoes were in season….