At the end of the episode, the demon prepares to leave, but before he does, he tells the gang to “say you’re happy now, once more with feeling”. They should be happy: they sang and danced, all their secrets are revealed, the demon has been defeated, and heck, the episode even ends with Spike and Buffy getting together. Why does it feel like they lost? It should be a Shakespearean comedy, but the episode feels like a tragedy.
We said that the demon was the villain in this episode, but I disagree. Compared to other monsters in the series, he does not do anything that despicable. Sure he enjoys watching people burst into flame, but he obeys the rules. He only wants to marry Dawn because he thought she summoned him; when the summoner turns out to be Xander, the demon backs off. He allows all the secrets that the gang has been holding within them to be exposed. The demon is cruel, but he’s not the worst demon we have seen. In all truth, he is pretty reasonable.
Because of all the singing, the gang finally realizes what they have refused to say: that they dragged Buffy from Heaven, Tara realizes Willow is magic-crazy, Giles sees he needs to move on, and Anya and Xander realize they have some serious relationship issues. Although the truth is supposed to be a good thing, even when it hurts at first, we know from “Tabula Rosa”, everything begins to fall apart. Maybe what Joss Whedon is telling us is that our expectations are too high. We expect life to make sense and to end like comedies and most musicals. We want a cheesy Broadway song: simple rhymes, easy to understand lyrics, and music that follows the words. We join together to try to make clear paths out of the chaos, but what if the life is not as easy as that. In the episode, the lyrics do not always match the music and sometimes the feelings are too complicated to fit into a rhyme scheme. If life is a song, then it is not the pop hit that Anya is looking for. It is something deeper and much less definable
I like the reference to Shakespeare. It always surprised me that no matter how funny a Shakespearean play is, if it's got a death, it's a tragedy. (Example: Troilus and Cressida, someone dies and we must accept the tragic) I feel like the same principle applies to the humorous aspect of this episode: songs are funny, we get to see the actors bravely attempt to sing, yet despite this, by the end of the episode, we are left with sadness at the characters emotional realizations. Through the sad element, the happiness ends, and we finally realize that happiness is not fully possible in the real world, despite the humor and happiness that we, like the characters, use to shield ourselves from our own emotions. Man that was depressing. Can you tell its finals week?
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that this demon isn't really that bad. I know if I ended up trapped in a Buffy episode... I would want it to be this one.
ReplyDeleteI like your Shakespeare reference too!
I really liked your post because I think it captured the complexity of relationships and how sometimes the truth is worse than lies. Also, although it was very cheesy, Dawn was right when she said that life is hard and things don't always work out well.
ReplyDeleteI like how you mention the simplicity of the script/score as compared to the complexity of the message. Though I'm not a huge fan of this episode, I wonder if Joss Whedon could have done it any other way.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoy how you end your discussion by drawing attention to the fact that Whedon breaks musical conventions in addition to gothic conventions. This makes the episode doubly unsettling. Moreover, I think that broken conventions do support your hypothesis that our expectations are too high. In my opinion, the beginning of the demon's final song exemplifies the crux of this issue: "What a lot of fun/ You guys have been real swell/ And there's not a one/ Who can say this ended well." This quote not only illustrates that are expectations for happiness are too high, but that we should also be careful what we wish for. Xander's desire to know whether a "happy ending" is in the cards, turns out to be the source of this secret-telling-singing-fiasco. Perhaps if he hadn't wished for this then the characters would have resolved their issues on their own time and terms. Or, perhaps another underlying message of the episode is that we should be more communicative with each other in order to avoid these massive unresolvable emotional build-ups.
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