Perhaps I have spent one semester too long watching avant-garde film, but I couldn’t help but compare the self-awareness that Joss Whedon wrote into “Once More, With Feeling” with the work of Yvonne Rainer. It goes beyond what I said in class about her performances of choreographed dances with natural movements. The idea that “life’s a show and we all play our parts” is something that Rainer works with as well. The idea that life is both a ‘show’, but at the same time “life is just this, it’s living”. This balance between acting the way you’re supposed to, but being honest with yourself and others is challenging and something that Yvonne Rainer’s work addresses as well. Although we go about our daily activities, which seem normal, we are really performing a continuous dance, whether it is for ourselves or for others depends on the person and situation. Sharon Lockhart is a filmmaker who was very influenced by Rainer and a lot of her work uses this same idea of choreography versus naturalism. Her film NŌ (2003) is about Japanese farmers working on their field. It initially appears very natural, until it becomes apparent that that are staying within a very strict frame to compensate for the camera and their movements are actually in accordance with Lockhart’s instructions. The balance between playing a part and dealing with real-life problems is challenging because we want to place people in little defined boxes so we know what to expect of them. When the normal routine of our daily lives fails, we are left without a routine and without a ‘manual’ on how to deal with the situation. This episode dramatizes the ‘show’ aspect of our lives in order to bring out the unexpected and awkward secrets that everyone has been keeping.
This breaking of the pattern is part of what the Gothic tradition deals with. Previously we’ve only referred to it as a way of dealing with the contemporary fears, but fears are really what is outside our pattern and known spheres, which is exactly what Buffy and the Scooby gang are dealing with. Buffy is afraid of her friends finding out that she was really in heaven, Willow is afraid of losing Tara, and Giles is afraid of what will happen when he leaves. For this episode, instead of the ‘big bad’ being a supernatural creature or manifestation of a fear, the characters must deal with their fear of confronting each other and their personal problems.
Something that I think is important to acknowledge with your statement that life is like a continuous dance is that while many people may simply follow the choreography set out for them by society, we all have the power to dance in any way that we desire. As individuals, particularly in America, we have been provided the opportunity to craft any possible life for ourselves, a privilege which is something that most of the generations of humanity that have come before us have had to live without. So while life may be a play or a dance or a game, it is crucial that we remember that at the end of the day, we have the power to shape the rules for both ourselves and for the people who come after us.
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