Vamp Willow, in my opinion, can’t hold a candle to Dark Willow. She may have appreciated Dark Willow’s viciously creative homicidal tendencies, but I think she’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Willow’s dark side. However, Vamp Willow is a wonderful preview, and one might even say she’s the catalyst of those repressed qualities beginning to manifest in Willow’s character. What if Vamp Willow had never been transported into Willow’s reality? Would Dark Willow ever have come out later? It’s an interesting question, and the same question applies to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Jekyll’s catalyst was the potion he drank the first time Hyde came out, and afterwards, only the dark parts of Jekyll (Hyde, namely) voluntarily manifested. In Shelley’s “Transformation,” the case is a little different, but I would say that the catalyst, represented by the stormy weather, was him hitting rock bottom.
So my point is that I wonder if those transformations / reformations / changes in personality and the emergence of the darker traits would have occurred without a catalyst. Is it just a matter of time? Would the most commonplace thing act as a catalyst eventually? Essentially, are those dark qualities inescapable? I think I would say yes to the latter. These events seem to be literary devices to move along the plot so that all the fun stuff with the transformations can happen. But it’s interesting that the Gothic tends to land on this idea of the doppelganger. Traditionally, I think a doppelganger is supposed to mess up your life a lot, but Guido gets his life back, Willow gains a self-confidence and the respect of her peers. Jekyll’s life is pretty much ruined, but to be fair, his doppelganger wasn’t really a true doppelganger because it was a different body, thus Jekyll was not publically held accountable for the crimes of Hyde. In any case, I think the primary benefit to having a doppelganger is the opportunity to look at oneself from another’s perspective, allowing for true self-knowledge and the potential for self-change.
I like your point about how doppelgangers seem to both be beneficial and harmful to their doppelgangers. (Sorry, awkward phrasing. Doppelgangers are confusing. Anyways, I agree that the beneficial aspect of doppelgangers comes from the confrontation with aspects of yourself that you wouldn't normally be able to have, but I also think that this is where the problems come too. With Jekyll/Hyde, Jekyll strengthened the dark part of his nature by getting to know it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your comment about how Vamp Willow is a good preview and catalyst for Willow’s future dark side. We talked about how dopplegangers amplify qualities that are already present in a person, so therefore, I believe that even if Willow had not met Vamp Willow, her darkness would have eventually emerged because people cannot suppress all aspects that are inside of them. Vamp Willow hints that she is gay and obviously evil, and both are traits that Willow eventually embraces.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you guys here. Willow did not need to meet Vamp Willow to become Dark Willow. If anything, it only delays her transformation because it brings to life all of her bad qualities that she knows she may have. But it begs the question, if she knows how bad she can become, why can't she stop it? At the end of the episode she is aware that her life, as bad as she may think it is, is better than being a vampire and being evil. Yet, she is ultimately led down this path. It is almost worse that she meets her doppleganger because it makes the audience (or at least me) less forgiving her when she does transform.
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