First off, apologies (again, sorry!) for the late post.
What strikes me most about “Hush” is the line, or rather written scrawl from Giles describing The Gentleman, explaining that “They are fairy-tale monsters.” While in reality Joss Whedon created The Gentlemen, he designed them to be reminiscent of the Grimm fairy tales and was, in my opinion at least, very successful. There is something about the idea of a folklore or fairy tale monster coming to life that is so horrible no one wants to believe it. (When I say fairy tale here, I mean it in the historic and strictly non-Disney sense.) This happens to Jonathan Harker in Dracula when he completely writes off all of the warnings the peasants give him as he travels to meet the Count the first time. In "Hush", the local news station has a similar reaction to the Gentlemen - they report that a laryngitis epidemic has broken out in Sunnydale. Buffy and the Scoobies immediately believed in the existence of the Gentlemen, but they deal with the supernatural every day. This is similar to Van Helsing in Dracula who, immediately upon becoming aware of the circumstances surrounding Lucy's illness, goes to look up folklore surrounding vampires. Ultimately, it is Van Helsing's and Giles' respect for and knowledge of the folklore surrounding their respective enemies that allows the groups of humans to defeat the monsters. We talked about this in class with as a representation of old and new world knowledge, and Sydney talked about it in her post as well. Along with the different reactions to folklore showing the differences in old world and new world knowledge, I started to think about how, outside of the worlds of the novel and the show, the "old world knowledge" is actually myth. Requiring the reader or viewer to suspend disbelief is clearly a tenant of the Gothic, but it occurs to me that it is interesting that old world knowledge seems to be equated with myth. I'm not sure if this makes old world knowledge seem more reputable or less, because even though the old world knowledge is being equated with myths, it is also the only correct knowledge that the protagonists have about the monsters they are fighting. Thoughts?
I think old world knowledge is strongly associated with myth. It was because the old world knowledge was mythical, Van Housing was able to find a way to kill the mythical monster, Vampire. Mythical things are things that we are unable to trace from the beginning to the end. Because the intermediate steps are unknown, we label these phenomenons mythical. Like in the old world knowledge, where hero were given a weapon and specific instruction to slay a monster, but never explained why it must be so.
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