The Belated Blogger: Living Conditions [It's the Fear]

This has been sitting on my computer for some time now, and, running on three hours of sleep, I've gotten over my trepidation at posting such a scattered thing. However, I do think that if I am to start posting, I should start posting -- and if any of you are in need of commenting on post of the first few episodes we watched in class, I have more to follow.

Two things struck me most about “Living Conditions”: 1) The exploration of fear, and 2) Kathy’s motivation. (Both items, I’d argue, stem from Gothic elements.)

Ok. No surprise that the Gothic and fear have a long history. Some of the fear is that big, epic, cultural fear (we saw a lot of that in Dracula): the “it’s coming, end of time fear, the larger-than-ourselves, inevitable” fear. But what’s particularly great about some Gothic Lit, and this episode in particular, is personal fear. Individual fear. One of the most attractive elements of “the Gothic” is the identification with the reader/audience, and it’s ability to deal with more “me” oriented scenarios – and fears. It’s one of the ways the Gothic can easily relate to its readers: fears shared between the main characters and the readers.

In the case of the Buffy episode, these fears would have to do with going to college and dealing with a roommate. The interesting thing is that Buffy becomes these fears that she has: the personal fear is a bad, crazy roommate (Buffy’s is a demon roommate); Buffy becomes just as bad a roommate as Kathy is. For a while there, she appears to be a worse (read: murderous) roommate, but then we find out Kathy is a demon and is stealing Buffy’s soul (with the end effect being that Buffy would be sent to a demon dimension for Kathy’s personal gain).

Which brings me to part two. Though stealing your roommate’s soul so that she’ll be teleported to another dimension instead of you is certainly immoral (trust me, you soulless demons out there who don’t know wrong from right [and thus can be argued to be innocent, whereas murderous Buffy knows better – though she is losing her soul, so.], stealing souls is bad. Don’t do it. Just say no), the reason Kathy  did so was so she could go to college and get an education like a normal person. (She might even have felt bad about it afterwards when she had a soul!)

That brings me to a third idea: this something special, something human: soul. We know it doesn’t make people good or bad – though I suppose part of the idea is, without a soul, it’s easier to do great badness, because it’s the nature of many a soulless beast, whereas with a soul, it’s worse, because it means something is broken within you that should be stopping you from killing/doing bad.

Anyway, back to college: Isn’t that a good thing, a good motive? She’s trying to escape the tyranny of her people, and Buffy sent her back to them. So there wasn’t much Kathy could do in the way of requesting asylum, and she didn’t even try, but Buffy condemned her (though it was only through an act of self-preservation) to live out her live according to her culture, not according to her own individual path (which is something us American’s *claim* to value).

Kathy wants to become like Buffy (or what Buffy stands for to her: a normal student); Buffy ends up becoming like Kathy (or her perception of Kathy: a bitchy demon). We become our fears, we become what we fight: An example of the ever-present dichotomy in Goth [conveniently tying Fear, Kathy’s motivation, and the Gothic together]. (Hitchcock used that in his movies too, btws. Um. Yeah.)

It's also like the lyrics from the song below (from a Dutch symphonic rock/metal band, often classified as Gothic, though the band members do not consider it to be a Gothic band):

I fear who I am becoming, 
I feel that I am losing the struggle within 
I can no longer restrain it, 
My strength, it is fading 
I have to give in

Though, Buffy did not actually seem to feel or fear what was happening to her (so it's actually the opposite of this song: she became who she feared). I'll leave you contemplating the difference between the two ideas.



[It’s the Fear – Within Temptation] 

(*The sound quality isn't as good I would have liked, but I thought the lyrics would be nice, and the other videos didn't have them.)