Ambiguity: What may or may not have happened in "Gingerbread", "Normal Again", and The Turn of The Screw

In The Turn of the Screw as well as the two Buffy episodes "Gingerbread" and "Normal Again", aspects of realism and fantastical Gothic elements are intertwined. Nicole talked about the real world in the two Buffy episodes as being scarier than the normal Buffyverse that the audience is used to, and I would like to sort of agree and sort of expand on that. I think that these two episodes are scarier than an average Buffy episode, and I agree that the scariness is due to the presence of "the real world" or storylines that are much closer to reality than the normal vampires and monsters are. (Normal for Buffy, that is.) But I think that it's the ambiguity as to what comes from the real world and what comes from the Gothic ghoulies that makes both episodes, as well as The Turn of the Screw, really creepy.

In my opinion, The Turn of the Screw is scarier than either Buffy episode. This is because the ambiguity is never resolved - we never really find out what's up with the ghosts, exactly how Miles dies, why Flora turns into an old woman, or what made Mrs. Grose start murdering everyone in sight. (I'm seriously a fan of this explanation. I plan on rereading this story in search for evidence supporting it. But I digress.) Ultimately, the reader comes away chilled because he or she doesn't know whether or not the ghosts exist.

"Normal Again" is the second most disturbing, because again we as an audience are not given an answer as to whether or not the entirety of Sunnydale is a figment of Buffy's imagination. However, because this is a TV series and the mental ward is never really brought up again, the audience can kind of forget about that mildly disturbing possibility that we're watching a show about a girl's delusions. I would argue, however, that if we knew definitively that Buffy is crazy, this episode would be far less disturbing - it's just a sad story about a mental patient. But because we don't know either way, it's disturbing both when Buffy ties up her friends to kill them (which wouldn't be upsetting if we knew that she's definitely crazy, emotional attachments to the characters aside), and when Buffy re-enters her coma (which wouldn't be upsetting if we knew for sure that the whole mental patient thing was due to the gross demon poison). If you could follow that sentence, what I'm trying to say is that the ambiguity is what freaks us out - we don't know which side to cheer for.

Similarly, in "Gingerbread", the moments where we don't know for sure what's going on are the most unsettling. The end where it turns out that the entire mob was pretty much driven by the influence of an evil demon reassures us and is extremely relieving - it almost feels like a letdown because all of the tension due to not knowing goes away. For awhile in the beginning and middle of the episode, it seems like Joyce is just acting a little bit strangely because she found two dead children. When it is revealed that the dead children are talking to Joyce, another layer of ambiguity is added. For one thing, the way the children are presented they could be figments of Joyce's imagination. We don't really believe this due to our status as jaded Buffy viewers, we are very much still unsettled because the extent of the children's influence on Joyce is unclear. Joyce still for awhile seems to be looking out for Buffy's best interests as best she can until the whole burning at the stake thing happens. Because we don't know how much of Joyce's behavior comes from her and how much has to do with the creepy dead kids, the episode is highly unsettling until the resolution.

Sorry for how long this post has been, guys. So for a final quick sum-up: Ambiguity is a really good tool for creating a scary atmosphere, because if we're not sure what's going on we can't even begin to try and do something about it.