fear, itself

I'm not sure if we had to watch this episode, but I went ahead and watched it anyway. I quite liked "Fear, Itself" -- definitely a funny episode with some neat twists. I was reminded of "Nightmares" from earlier in the semester (similarly, when everyone's worst fears come to life), but this episode is definitely a bit more mature and extrapolates things a bit further.

Also, did anyone else notice the Wizard of Oz parallels? In the episode it seemed that Buffy was meant to be Little Red Riding Hood but, to me at least, she looked more like Dorothy -- and her friends were the motley trio. We have Oz (...obvious reference #1) as the cowardly lion/wolf, who's afraid to turn into his beastly self. Then there's Xander as the scarecrow, who's afraid that he doesn't have a brain (aka, he's dumb) and no longer fits with the rest of his collegiate friends. And finally Willow as the Tin Man, who needs to... lubricate joints before physical exertion? I don't really have a parallel for that one, but I'm sure someone can think of something. Nevertheless Willow has that biting line -- "I'm not your sidekick!" -- that she deploys after Buffy assumes the role of leader once again, and I'm sure that at some point the Tin Man must have thought, too, that creepy woman-child Dorothy and mongrel Toto were spotlight hogs. Anyhow, finally there's also Gaknar (sp?) as the Wizard himself, who is much less than he initially seems to be, or as Xander says is "big overture, little show." Then Buffy/Dorothy gets out of her situation through... creative use of her shoes.

Moving on. Two things struck me about this episode: the first is Giles (who was incredible in this episode, by the way) mentioning that real demons consider Halloween "too crass" to even make an appearance. So then do demons have standards? An air of sophistication or polish to uphold in the eyes of us mortals? Nonetheless it sets up a nice dichotomy between the artificial tidings of our human "holiday" and the genuine supernatural horrors that serve as the models for our playtime. Halloween, as an event, is pretty interesting when we consider it among the pantheon of Gothic tropes to which we're accustomed. After all, Halloween is truly the epitome of the Gothic aesthetic: ghoulish specters, haunted houses, grotesque monsters and creatures, countless screams and lunatic laughter. The Castle of Otranto, for example, would be an ideal place to hold a Halloween party. So then why do "real" monsters consider Halloween -- and, by extension, the Gothic aesthetic -- so "crass" and unappealing?

Which leads to the second thing that struck me about this episode: that the superficial constructions of Halloween transform seamlessly into their real and horrifying counterparts, and vice versa. The plastic skeleton turns into a liche-swordsman, the real bats turn out to be rubber, a fake spider suddenly becomes a creepy-crawly tarantula. Or have they actually changed at all? Are the characters hallucinating? The line between "real" and "fake" grows blurrier. I quite liked that Gaknar (albeit only being a few inches tall -- gee, is there a moral to be learned?) masterfully manipulated the characters' skepticism in order to exacerbate their vulnerability. Xander says, for something like the fifth episode in a row, something along the lines of "Holy crap, is this real?" -- yes, Xander, you should know this by now. And you should realize that, ultimately, your disbelief in the "bad things" is exactly what enables them to bump in the night.