Love-Hate Relationship With Yourself Much, Willow?

One of my favorite moments in "Doppelgangland" is when Vamp Willow tries to convince Good Willow to become a vampire and join her. Beyond the literal sort of self-eroticism when Vamp Willow licks Good Willow's neck, this shows Vamp Willow recognizing herself in Good Willow and liking what she recognizes. Of course, Good Willow rejects her(self?), and animosity immediately forms. Later on, Vamp Willow gets to the point of attempting to kill Good Willow, but when Buffy goes to kill V.W. in order to save G.W. (I'm using initials from now on, guys), G. W. prevents this. G. W. (with the help of the rest of the Scoobies) goes on to send V.W. back to the world where she belongs, which if you think about it is really nice considering that this is V.W.'s ultimate goal and that she just tried to kill G.W. Before V.W. is sent back, the two Willows hug.

I think this whole love-hate relationship between doppelgangers is a really cool external representation of someone's internal struggles with his or herself. This also happens in Transformation, as Guido hates everything about his doppelganger the misshapen dwarf from his hideous voice to his appearance. In the end, however, the dwarf's actions help Guido get what he wants. I can't linearly compare this to the two Willows' relationship because it's hard to tell in Transformation how truly evil the dwarf is - granted, stealing someone's body doesn't seem particularly rosy-scented, but he acts far better than Guido would have done had his body not been stolen. Regardless, however, Guido's hate for the outward appearance of the dwarf represents his realization of his hatred for the bad qualities in himself, just as Willow's hatred but also acceptance of her vampire doppelganger represents her struggle with her identity.

Clothes Don't Make the Woman

Today, I dressed as a goth. I put on dark makeup, wore all black, and let my normally tied-back, ribbon-bound hair, fall messily across my face. My friends and teachers didn't recognize me. Although who I fundamentally was obviously did not change, the way people looked at me did. In the beginning of the semester, Janelle told us that when she first came to Hamilton, she was the only goth and people noticed. Today, I felt noticed. I don't feel like a wallflower in my day to day life as my tongue's penchant never to stop moving doesn't allow for that. However, it was an interesting social experiment to notice how my peers who both didn't recognize me or thought that I normally looked like as I did, reacted. Similarly, "vampWillow" is not the "doormat" that Willow usually considers herself to be. Even if she weren't an aggressive lesbian vampire, her "sexy" garb wouldn't allow her to go unperceived. Before she even opens her mouth, one of Oz's band members declares, "Dude, look at your girlfriend." The way that one dresses can cast one in a certain light. Because of the way that I normally dress, due to the human mode of constantly stereotyping, no one would suspect that I was an undefeated, co-ed, middle school wrestler. But I was. Willow Rosenburg may not look like she harbors the typical, homosexual dominatrix-loving vampire potential inside of her in season three, but we later find out that she does. At least a small part of her does and we find out that she can't repress it forever. Let's follow the old, 10% Freudian iceberg rule her: An outward appearance or impression one gives is only a small part of who they really are. The rest remains under the surface. Most likely, there is something deep down that they aren't sharing and certainly that their clothes don't show. Who knows? Maybe I feel more akin to my goth counterpart than I ever thought possible?

Willow and her "Transformation"

In Kim’s last post, she mentioned that Vampire Willow brings out the darker qualities of Real Willow by posing as a trustworthy figure. While I would have to disagree that Vampire Willow poses as trustworthy because, as Kim also points out, she makes Real Willow nervous with just how openly aggressive she is, I do think it is important to consider the fact that many of the qualities of Vampire Willow manifest themselves later in Dark Willow. I think it is possible to view this consistency in Willow’s character as being akin to the lack of change in Guido’s character as being akin to the lack of change in Guido’s character in Mary Shelley’s “Transformation,” but in reverse. Willow starts out warm and fuzzy (Literally, did you see those sweaters? The nineties seem so much crazier now than when I was living through them), but eventually her darkness becomes evident. Guido, on the other hand, starts out with the dark, or undesirable, parts of his character extremely evident, and eventually learns to repress them. This even connects back to what people were saying about Catherine in Northanger Abbey; charcters don’t completely change, they just show different sides.

Dopplegangshow

Second post of the day, woop! Dr. Michelle Schwartz made me feel guilty about being late with posts so I'm staying on top of this one!!!

So, as we discussed in class, there are many more dopplegangers in the episode "Dopplegangland" than just Willow and Vamp Willow. There's Buffy and Faith, Giles and Wesley, demon Anya and human Anya, etc. In addition to this, the entire series of Buffy shows the characters changing or encountering changed versions of themselves. To name just a few more examples, Buffy and Faith switch bodies in the 4th season, the adults in Sunnydale reconnect with their youthful selves in "Band Candy", and in "Halloween", everyone who bought their costume at a certain store becomes what the dress up as. This last example is similar to our discussion in that Buffy, Willow, and Xander both change into costumes that exaggerate a version of themselves they wish were true in real life (Xander is a tough soldier, Buffy a beautiful nobel woman from Angel's time).

So what is it about a doppleganger that makes it so appealing to the gothic tradition? As we have discussed previously, to set a character against their doppleganger allows a comparison to take place, and certain traits of the character become more obvious or exaggerated. Furthermore, as we see when Willow is unwilling to kill her Vamp self and when Guido praises the devil as being sent by his guardian angel, dopplegangers blur the line between good and evil. A doppleganger must be a version of yourself, so even if it is evil, and you are good, how can it be entirely bad? This is a dilemma which arises frequently in the literature we discuss, and I believe it is an important element of the gothic.

One other purpose we haven't discussed is a doppleganger can serve to bring out darker qualities in a good character by posing as a trustworthy figure. In "Dopplegangland", Vamp Willow makes real Willow nervous with just how dark, sinister, and seductive she is. It is not long after this episode, however, that Willow begins to display many of those same characteristics. She realizes her attraction to women about a year later, and not long after that her powers begin to grow and become progressively darker, until she goes completely bad. I've always loved the moment when Willow, real Willow, who has become dark Willow (following me? There are too many Willows... though I still can't get enough of her) says "Bored now" in exactly the same tone as vamp Willow from this season. So, we see that dopplegangers in Buffy serve not only to exaggerate certain traits in a character, but also to bring opposing und surprising traits out of them later on.

Recognizing Oneself in the Mirror

In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode Doppelgangland, Willow must face an evil vampire doppelganger version of herself. The fact that I found most interesting about this episode is the compassion Willow feels for her doppelganger despite the horrific and violent actions of the vampire. Despite the fact that her doppelganger certainly deserves some sort of vengeance to be inflicted upon her, Willow refuses to do so, as she is able to see herself inside her doppelganger. Unable to commit what she views as a form of suicide, Willow instead opts to banish her doppelganger to another universe with the hope that good inside Willow will somehow make its way through the doppelganger and make her good. It is my belief that Willow’s decision demonstrates a great deal of belief and optimism in the human spirit, as Willow believes that her doppelganger will in the end be able to transcend her evil-doing ways, and become more like Willow herself. Whedon brings up an interesting point in this episode, pondering whether or not one of us could kill our own doppelganger if we were able to see small parts of ourselves within them. This is a question that I still cannot answer with any sort of certainty.

Bathroom Story Time

Going off of what Kim just said about the tradition of oral history, I think what is neat about the episode is the way that Andrew imagines himself telling the story versus how he actually tells it. In the episode, Andrew is seen in a leather chair beside a lit fire telling the history of Buffy the vampire slayer. He uses a melodramatic tone to enhance his rehearsed rhetoric. For Andrew, this is how vampire stories are supposed to be told. They are supposed to be traditions passed down through the generations so to inform people about the mysteries of the world. His exact words are, entertain and educate. Yet, in reality, Andrew is sitting in the bathroom with a camcorder. Anya makes clear how weird Andrew is and asks him why he can't just masturbate like the rest of us [while alone in the bathroom]. This implies that the bathroom is not a suitable place to be doing any storytelling. Yet, this is troubling for me because I think we all have a dramatic vision of how vampire stories are supposed to be told. I imagine a group of people hovering around a campfire while one person with a flashlight below his face is trying to be spooky. In actuality, I suppose that gothic stories could be told anywhere. Transformations, as we talked about in class, is similar to a tall tale in that it explains how things are how they are. I could easily see one of my parents telling my this story as a lesson if I was acting up as a child. Whedon does an excellent job of depicting our misconceptions about how to tell a story. It doesn't matter if Andrew is telling the story in a lounge or in a bathroom, the point of the gothic is to entertain and inform.

Andrew and the Gothic Tradition

As I was reading “Transformations”, the first lines stuck out to me as being very much a recurring theme of the Gothic Tradition. The tale begins, “I have heard it said, that, when any strange, supernatural, and necromantic adventure has occurred to a human being, that being… is forced to bare the inner depths of his spirit to another” (Shelley, 1). As we discussed in class, the idea of passing on a story as a form of penance for a sin is key to understanding this text, the poem of The Ancient Mariner, and other texts we’ve thus far explored. This is also exactly what Andrew feels the need to do in “Storyteller”.

For the most part, the Storytellers of our texts have also been the protagonist(s) of the story itself: Laura writes of Carmilla (though there is the brief introduction by whoever found her writings), Guido tells us of his own transformation, and the characters of Dracula each detail their own experiences. Each justify their explanations, usually saying they wish to educate others in the dangers they have encountered.

Andrew, however, is obviously not the protagonist of Buffy. He further differs from most of our traditional storytellers in that he tells the tale less to educate on the dangers of The First and more to document how awesome he and his friends are at battling evil. It can thus be said that Andrew is documenting his experiences for selfish purposes, not with the intent to educate (like Guido, a little bit, but not as much like everyone else). Though he might claim he wants to teach the world about the Slayer, his exaggerated descriptions and adoration of his own work (as seen as he dramatically re-watches Xander and Anya’s encounter, as if he himself were instrumental in writing the scene) clearly suggest he wants to earn fortune and glory for himself and for his friends.

As previously stated, Andrew is not the protagonist of the series. Buffy is (duh). Why, then, is he chosen to tell Buffy’s story rather than Buffy to tell her own? (When I say chosen, I mean in the sense of the show’s writers choosing him. In the context of the story he is a self-proclaimed storyteller). Perhaps the storyteller is not meant to be the protagonist, but is instead meant to be the character who changes the most over the course of the story’s telling. Andrew goes from being happy-go-lucky, stuck in an action movie destined to have a happy ending, to a man who realizes he is doomed to die and has murdered the only friend he ever had. This story may be his to tell, because when the audience (or reader, in the case of our Gothic examples) sees how much an encounter with the supernatural has effected the storyteller, they are more likely to fear the supernatural themselves, and thus the motive to educate is more effective. Buffy does not change over the course of this particular episode, and so the effect would be far less if she had been our storyteller. She does take on the role of the educator, however, so perhaps there is a correlation between protagonist and educator, and storyteller and the one most effected by the events of the story.

Skittles and "Storyteller"

Okay, so in watching “Storyteller,” I am once again struck by how the show uses humor to heighten its intensity. While the story of the episode is very dark and to be honest a bit more of a downer than the other episodes we've seen. I don't know about you, but I like my Buffy all wrapped up with a quippy one liner, and a parting shot of how though evil still lingers in the world, it is at bay for the time being. That being said, the stark contrast between those sort of endings, and the final scene with Andrew shutting off his camera stuck me as something I as a viewer was supposed to become aware of, because it was just so completely different than anything I had seen before.

I think this Gothic convention parallels nicely to Northanger Abbey. When Catherine Moreland is convinced that General Tilney is a cold hearted murder, the reader is laughing as she concocts the crazy story in her head. The moment that sticks out as such an extreme is when Andrew is in Mexico and dreams about living “as gods.” All of a sudden the scene switches to the three men skipping through a field in togas, singing and dancing surrounded by flowers. Oh, and there is a unicorn, obviously. Honestly, it’s like a skittles commercial, or at least it should be. Mars, Inc. are your reading this? Anyhow, I liked what Grace said in her post about Andrew being “an incredibly unreliable narrator,” because it is entirely true. He sees things only as he wants to. It’s easier for him that way, and its a fatally human flaw that proves he could never live as a god. By having such extremes, “Storyteller,” shows, as Madeline put so well, that “ gothic stories will never actually be real life.”

Though this commercials do come pretty close.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyvhMHDi6Mo

(This was all I could think of when Andrew has his dream moment, don't ask me why)

Transformations... and the adorable Andrew

In the episode Storyteller, Buffy once again pokes fun at it’s own melodrama through the ingenious “movie within a movie” concept through Andrew’s character. As I watched this episode, I was more fascinated by what it represents for the series than the plot lines. The idea that a show based on a parody could evolve into something like this is telling. When Buffy began (as we saw in Nightmares) the show relied on a traditional villain (the Nosferatu-like master) and a traditional stereotype of the blonde cheerleader. Although Buffy, yes, is a slayer, she also expressly wishes to be a part of the high school social sphere, try out for cheerleading, going to the Bronze. She is an amalgamation of two seemingly contradictory stereotypes, yet, she expresses the wants and desires of both in her struggle to be both a high school student and a slayer.

By the time Andrew first appears to us in Storyteller, we see the transformation not only of Buffy but of the show. No longer is the show dependent on the traditional gothic villains or even the 90’s cheerleader persona. Buffy is now a complex mixture of dark and light that, thanks to the popularity and endurance of the show, is capable of becoming a character in her own right. Andrew’s comical video proves the transformation of both Buffy as a character and Buffy as a show from parodies of tradition to a new tradition in it’s own right.

Totally Worth the Click

Since my last post isn't working, the link will have to suffice...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtBq3i6WtpYwiGqzgQBfp-kPrTAgVTdM0MaWZkwgx04-BaYqxmlpTofB307OCubMM2U8wU5gEX1yGolg4ZKlarRXf7oO1RinhHpbmIppyc0RFQn7p82xG4oLXKupO8IzEipGmoTGuRcDB1/s400/sexy+giles.jpg

Giles Appreciation Week...Coming soon!

Librarians, Actions and Knowledge: An Ode to My Favorite Nerd: by the Future Mrs. Rupert G.

In my search an article on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I expected to find something that would either bore me to tears or render me livid: a scathing review about Buffy’s ditziness destroying feminism and pleather pants for everyone or a Twilight-induced vampire-worship snoozefest with sixteen different references to Nosferatu. I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled upon joyous ode to one of my favorite characters from a group of my favorite people in the world. And by that cryptic statement, I am of course referring to Giles and that wonderful cultural subset, the barons of the bibliotecas: the librarians.

The piece I oh-so-gleefully came across in JSTOR, found quite appropriately in “American Libraries” is entitled “Bibliographic Good vs. Evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. From the get go, author/librarian GraceAnne DeCandido (of course) reveals Giles to be what she defines as a “SuperLibrarian”, the perfect role model for those special creatures who find their home among the stacks. Giles, according to DeCandido, is a “hero librarian”, a “librarian model who is elegant, deeply educated, well (if fussily) dressed, handsome, and charged with eroticism” (45). While I appreciate he has become a bit of a sex symbol, the most important insight into Giles’ character, the role he plays as a librarian who “lives in the faith that answers can be found, and most often found in the pages of a book” (45). The obvious bias of this article aside, (although I find the bias adorable—who knew librarians had heroes? Is it like professors finding an idol in Indiana Jones?) I appreciate the acknowledgement of Giles’ purpose as the conduit between the world of knowledge and the world of action.

The episode Tabula Rasa reveals the importance of knowledge over action. When Willow enacts her magic crystal spell, she erases the foundation of knowledge that Giles has set forth. In the episode lies a commentary on the nature of action and relationships, a seemingly anti-Giles world based on instinctual attachment and irreversible roles. Yet somehow, even in a world in which the characters build their identities around their emotions (i.e. Giles’ strong feeling of disappointment in his son “Randy”), they eventually understand the importance of books in finding out the solution to their problem. Giles and Anya’s comical yet telling search through the books, as well as Giles’ emphasis on a empirical method in finding a the very best book not only reasserts knowledge as equally important as the action of the story, but need to classify and understand the action.

While I do not share exactly the same degree of hero-worship as DeCandido for the ever-sexy Rupert Giles (Finally, I admit it. He’s gosh darn adorable.) I have come to appreciate his role in the series as not only the bridge between knowledge and action, but a nod to the traditional gothic archetype: the occult doctor. Giles as a watcher is the Van Helsing of Buffy: foreign, smart and constantly aware of the threat that surrounds them. As a different, more “stodgy” nationality, Giles not only bridges the gap between Europe and America, but he bridges the gap between the traditional gothic and the gothic of the 90’s as seen in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

And he looks fantastic in tweed.

DeCandido, GraceAnne. "Bibliographic Good vs. Evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer." American Libraries 30.8 (1999): 44-47. JSTOR. Web. 14 Oct. 20

Joss Whedon: Contributing to Insomnia Since 1997

Although a very easily scared person (didn’t sleep for a week after M. Night Shamalan’s Signs. C’mon. Signs.) I am very rarely scared by television. So I was extraordinarily surprised that the episode “Hush” rendered me as terrified as it did, especially considering the fact that I watched it surrounded by people in broad daylight.

My fear, albeit slightly exaggerated, drew me to look at what about this particular episode I found so unnerving. Granted, the “Gentlemen” are some creepy looking guys, and honestly, no one likes a mime, but I believe my fear stems more than the guy from Pan’s Labrynth and a whole lot of makeup. The fear Mr. Whedon preyed upon a societal fear, the fear of isolation from our community.

Obviously, our capability to communicate within our own societal framework is necessary for the continuance of our day-to-day existence. From the moment Buffy wakes up without a voice, she encounters situations in which she uses her voice. Granted, as a television character, Buffy is somewhat of a chatty Cathy already, so her silence both discomforting and alarming to the viewing audience used to her fast-paced banter. Added to the silence of the entire town, the panic becomes widespread. We witness the collapse of society as Sunnydale-ians abandon their regular lives for boozing or praying, unable to function without their voices.

Of course, as I have witnessed in pretty much every apocalyptic move, any little thing can set off this end of days wide-spread panic. The fear the Gentlemen create emerges even before they mutilate their first victim: the fear of isolation. After the first killing, the murder takes a backseat role to the more pressing societal disruption, as can be seen in the Sunnydale newspaper’s presentation of the issues. The town, and even the Scoobies, are lost without the seemingly mindless banter that marks the rest of the episodes. Humorous misunderstandings throughout the episode, as well as continued awkwardness reveals that their reliance on verbal communication is what creates their bonds: only the couples seem able to replace words with physical demonstrations.

At the end of the episode, I am more drawn to the criticism of community than with the floating baldies. The isolating silence deconstructs the town’s sense of community and breaks any form of social responsibility the individual might feel. We see the characters attempt to face their inability to lean on each other for emotional support and replace that emotional support with physical support. Happily, Joss Whedon attempts to portray the characters overcoming their isolation through romance, but the society outside of these romances depends on their ability for verbal communication.

So, now that I have analyzed my fear I should be able to sleep, right? Right? Guess not.

A Heroine Stands Alone

While watching “Tabula Rasa”, we primarily focused on how a heroine is made in both the Buffy series and in Austen’s Northanger Abbey. I think a major question we need to ask ourselves when answering this query is: who or what does each character rely on when things get difficult? A female protagonist needs to stand alone and rely on herself and no one else in order to become a true heroine. Furthermore, starting with a blank slate, alone with no one to help them forces both Buffy and Catherine to find their own way and prove their worth as heroines. Whedon and Austen portray their female characters as innate heroines who are born into their roles, Buffy as the Chosen One or Slayer and Catherine we are told is destined to be a heroine in the first chapter. In O’Reilly’s article, “The Wonder Woman Precedent: Female (Super)Heroism on Trial”, the author mentions that Buffy goes through a process called the “hero on trial” which is meant to prove her worth as a heroine within the show and that heroines in any medium must “justify possession of their conferred powers” (274). In this sense, both Buffy and Catherine must learn to depend on themselves and demonstrate their own prowess at taking care of themselves and others when the time comes and to be able to show that they deserve to be deemed heroines.

In “Tabula Rasa”, the Scooby Gang has their memories erased because of a spell Willow casts. Willow does not portray a heroine in this episode because when things get tough in her life, she instantly resorts to using magic to fix things. Instead of being brave and facing her troubles with Tara and Buffy face on, Willow takes the easy way out and does what only she thinks is best without thinking about the consequences. Also, we watch as both Buffy and her Watcher struggle because Giles feels the need to distance himself from Buffy in order for her to learn reliance on herself and not him. Throughout the series, Buffy has turned to Giles for guidance and advice on how to handle difficult situations, however this episode was a turning point for their relationship. Giles feels that after Buffy’s traumatic experience, she needs to learn to depend on herself instead of others and that she needs to relearn how to be strong in the world that she lives in. A true heroine must be able to overcome difficult times alone and therefore, it is not an option for Buffy to give up once Giles leaves. Instead, she has to keep fighting. This is an important opportunity for Buffy to truly prove herself as the heroine she was born to be.

In Austen’s Northanger Abbey, we are immediately told that Catherine is going to become a heroine. Thus, we are able to watch as her experiences test her and shape her into the woman that she was meant to be. Catherine’s first step to growing into her persona as a heroine was to leave her family and travel to Bath with Mr. and Mrs. Allen. This allowed her to distance herself from the reliance on her close family and taught her how to act on her own accord. Furthermore, when she is abruptly dismissed from Northanger Abbey, Catherine must face a long and somewhat treacherous carriage journey home, alone. These difficult circumstances allowed Catherine to meditate on what had happened and come up with her own solutions without being aided by any outside source. Therefore, Catherine’s isolation from her family and people she did not want to associate with, like Isabella Thorpe, allowed her to grow into a strong, confident and productive heroine. Both Catherine and Buffy, along with any heroine in training, must learn to depend on themselves alone through tough situations in order to prove their true worth as a fictional heroine.

O’Reilly, Julie D. “The Wonder Woman Precedent: Female (Super)Heroism on Trial.” Journal of American Culture, September 2005, Vol. 28, Issue 3, p273-283. Tuesday 25 October 2011.

Buffy as Storyteller

My post was inspired by Lauren’s post, which also deals with Buffy’s character. I was going to comment on hers, but then decided I wanted to expand on my departure from her ideas. While I totally agree with Lauren that Buffy shows some pretty significant doubts, I’m hesitant to say that this makes her more of a heroine. I’m more inclined to say that it makes her a more important storyteller than Andrew is.

Andrew is shown as an incredibly unreliable narrator. He ignores fairly significant information and chooses to romanticize the events occurring around him rather than accepting the terrifying facts about the upcoming apocalyptic struggle. It is true that he is using his story as an escape, but he is not simply escaping from the guilt he feels about his own part in the story, but escaping from the story altogether. He builds Buffy up as an undefeatable superhero so that he himself will feel safer against the forces of evil that surround Sunnydale.

Still, the storyteller that fascinates me more is Buffy herself. While her lecture to Andrew was a strategy to provoke his tears, the reason it worked and the reason we were able to identify with it as an audience was because Buffy was being sincere about what she said. Because she had to make Andrew cry, she was able to voice the angst that we know (through seven seasons of glimpses and occasional diatribes like this one) is pretty much perpetually present in Buffy. She admits to her own storytelling with her pep talks to the potentials, saying that she has to offer them hope that she does not feel.

As several other people have pointed out, we all are storytellers, but most of us fool ourselves just as efficiently as we try to pull the wool over everyone else’s eyes. Buffy’s problem is that the buck stops with her—everyone else can count on a miracle from Buffy (an expectation that does happen to be backed up with repeated precedents). However, Buffy can’t rely on anyone else to get them out of the apocalypse, and so her stories are all external, meant to comfort everyone else while she still deals with her internal worries. Even surrounded by a group of potential slayers (not to mention Faith, an actually “activated” slayer), there is no one to truly sympathize with Buffy. The potentials are too naive and Faith is too dysfunctional to fulfill that role.

Even when Buffy is sincere and her plan to make Andrew cry works, we see her having to snap back into the role as storyteller. Andrew, who has closed the seal and taken responsibility, has still only accepted the truth to a point. He is relieved and confirms that Buffy was never planning to kill him. While Buffy wasn’t directly planning to kill him, I got the distinct sense that she would have done whatever was required, which is perhaps a fairly recent development to her character. However, when Andrew obviously wants to believe that she would never have done something like that, Buffy lets him. Andrew, ostensibly the “storyteller” the title refers to, stops being the storyteller by the end of the episode, while Buffy continues to tell stories throughout.

Maybe in the end, this does relate to what it is to be a heroine, as Lauren suggests. Still, I think it is the act of storytelling that is part of her role as a heroine, rather than simply having the doubts that force her pep talks to be falsely confident.

"Storyteller" and Northanger Abbey - It's "Buffy vs. Dracula" all over again!

And by that I do not mean that Buffy is yet again confronting the Dark Prince, but that the Gothic is confronting/commentating on Gothic traditions.

As I was reading people's posts about "Storyteller" and the similarities/differences between Andrew and Catherine, I started to think about how, structurally, "Storyteller" and Northanger are oddly similar. I think that the documentary style of Andrew's videotaping functions in a somewhat analogous way to Austen's intrusive narrator. While the narrator explicitly points out Catherine's over-dramatization of real life, the contrast between Andrew's documentary and the regularly filmed parts of the episode point toward the overall dramatization of the show. In this example Austen is satirizing the Gothic novel as a genre while Whedon and the other writers are Buffy are self-satirizing a bit, the effect is quite similar. In "Storyteller" we see the behind-the-scenes dullness of Buffy's speeches and we also see things like Spike attempting to be scary for the camera. Small things like Willow yawning during Buffy's speech and the household running out of cereal highlight that a normal episode, and even the non-documentary style clips from this episode, do not represent day-to-day life. This same type of confrontation happens in Northanger Abbey when the narrator describes Catherine as a heroine and points out all of her flaws in that regard, such as having a live mother and average looks. The clincher for me is how both Andrew and Catherine realize that their lives are not stories and have to confront this and deal with the consequences. (Ironically, of course, both their lives are in fact stories...) Upshot is that both "Storyteller" and Northanger Abbey end up satirizing the Gothic a bit by pointing out that no matter how hard they try (or don't, as the case may be), Gothic stories will never actually be real life. But I'd say they do a pretty good job representing it in an albeit overblown metaphor-y type way.

Unreliable narrators and uninhibited characters in "Storyteller" and "Tabula Rasa"

Like Eryn, I’m going to combine my posts on “Tabula Rasa” and “Storyteller,” because I need to write about them and because I think they do go well together. In both, the characters profess to have a certain objective standpoint (or if they don’t direct profess it, it’s implied, as in “Tabula Rasa” when they are wiped of their memories and have to start anew). In “Storyteller,” Andrew insists that he is a “detached journalist” committed to the truth – but in fact, he’s actually very emotionally tied to the footage he’s shooting (like when he’s mouthing what Xander and Anya are saying to each other…?). He also takes time to discuss his personal life, and when Buffy chastises him (“Life isn’t a story, Andrew!”) we experience one of those narrative shifts that also occur in Dracula and in Northanger Abbey. Suddenly we realize that Andrew is, to an extent, an unreliable narrator who is under an onslaught carried out by his heroine, Buffy.

In a way, I think “Tabula Rasa” exhibits the polar opposite situation (and that’s why we can discuss how they relate to each other so easily); in this episode, the characters are essentially left to their own devices, forced to reinvent their place in their friends’ lives, in Sunnydale, and in the world. Willow, who is responsible for what the characters’ memory loss, is driven by a kind of desire for control over situations that reflects what a literary theorist might call narrative intrusion (when a narrator comments on an element of the story or gives it a certain slant so as to steer it in a certain direction or make the text more self-aware – that’s my own definition, and I don’t know how accurate it is, but still). She alters the landscape of her friends’ minds, thereby severely cutting off their authority as contributing authors of the story. So the way I see it, these two episodes are self-referential in that they deal with storytelling, authorial influence, and gothic “shifts” in tone.

Who is the Storyteller?

The Buffy episode “Storyteller” demonstrates how stories are both “entertaining and educating”, as Andrew tells us in the beginning. Andrew’s goal while filming Buffy as she prepares to face off against a vampire army and the inevitable Apocalypse is to record proof of her powers as the Slayer and tell her story. Furthermore, he wants to capture her success on camera so that the people of Sunnydale will be aware of all that she did for them. Andrew sees Buffy as a hero and a legacy that future generations need to know about. While everyone always wants to tell an interesting and captivating story, they also want to share an important lesson with the listeners. Andrew’s message in his movie is about how much Buffy sacrifices and how hard she works in order to repeatedly save the world from supernatural monsters. In order to accomplish this, however, Andrew and many other storytellers must dramatize and exaggerate their stories to paint a more outstanding picture and to capture the attention of their audience. Readers and listeners must always be aware of storytelling bias. When Andrew is confronted with the guilt of killing his best friend, he ends up changing his story multiple times to justify why he did it and remove himself from blame. Therefore, we can never fully be sure that what the narrator says is in fact the truth of how things unfolded.

Sonic Codes in "Hush"

So the peer-reviewed article I wanted to use for my blog post was in a book at Colgate, and Interlibrary Loan just got it to me today! Here is what I’ve gathered from reading it:

I read “Battling the Buzz: Contesting Sonic Codes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by Katy Stevens. Her central thesis is that sound in television is often the primary means of securing a viewer’s attention, and that “Hush” is an attempt to defy this tendency. What’s interesting about her viewpoint is that she very tightly intertwines sound with subjectivity in its many forms – language, voice, and body. She even associates the use of vocal imagery in television with life itself: “…the voice often takes on the responsibility of embodying and bringing to life the complex acoustic environments within the text. In this sense the human voice becomes accountable for materializing the ‘liveness’ of the originating body of utterance (the subject) and the surrounds it inhabits” (81).

So when Buffy and the others lose their ability to speak, they also lose the ability to buoy the sonic information that is presented to the viewer both narratively and emotionally. This goes back to what we were talking about in class; some of us argued that our heightened awareness of the music in the Buffy soundtrack allowed us to generate our own emotions and not feel tied to what Joss Whedon might have wanted us to feel. Other people in class thought that it did just the opposite – that it more firmly directed our response to the text. I think Stevens would agree with the former, but I’d say the main idea is that without the characters’ “linguistic prowess,” as Stevens puts it, the viewer experiences more ambiguity with regard to the sound environment and how it advances or inhibits the plotline.

We also see how silence in this episode affects the characters’ relationship to their bodies. When Riley can’t get the vocal identification panel in the elevator to work, it’s as if his entire being is challenged. The characters also demonstrate visceral reactions to external noises (like the shattering of glass) – and Stevens believes these examples are meant to indicate a larger, more meta-concept about television. “The very language of recording the human voice is imbued with the connotations of entrapping a body…This language operates in direct contrast to the essentially ephemeral nature of sound and, of course, the voice itself…the human voice operates as an object to be seized and projected through the apparatus” (84). So even the way this episode is made, not just it’s content, is gothic – it’s a commentary on the gothic, in a way, just like Northanger Abbey is, because it seeks to illuminate something about the nature of sound in the media! The story that Giles relates within the episode itself also has a similar function, I think.

Works Cited:

Stevens, Katy. “Battling the Buzz: Contesting Sonic Codes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ed. Attinello, Paul, Janet K. Halfyard, and Vanessa Knights. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010. 79-89. Print.

The Story of Life: "Tabula Rasa" and "Storyteller"

I'm going to combine my posts for "Tabula Rasa" and "Storyteller," since I forgot to post last week about "Tabula Rasa."  Luckily, I believe the episodes do have a lot in common, for they both focus on literary devices and aspects of literary creation.  "Tabula Rasa" examines a more focused aspect of literature (and media in general) - the creation of a hero(ine) - and "Storyteller" examines the art of actually telling the tale that the hero(ine) participates in.

I really enjoyed "Storyteller" because it examines how people conceptualize their lives in the context of society and the major events that surround them.  By extension, it examines how people create the stories of their lives.  As a History major, I've heard a lot about the importance of historiography (the study of the study of history).  Historiography is incredibly important because it allows the historian to locate and understand the possible biases in a document.  Historians know that no document, however much it claims the contrary, is truly objective.  The author's social and political opinions inevitably shine through, no matter how hard s/he tries to rise above them.

Buffy certainly understands this concept and uses it to her advantage during "Storyteller."  While she tells Andrew, "Life isn't a story," her manipulation of him reveals that she believes otherwise.  Buffy realizes that Andrew continually lies to himself and others about his role in awakening the seal to the Hellmouth.  He alters his memories, or even completely falsifies them, to absolve himself of any blame for precipitating the Apocalypse.  In effect, Andrew writes stories about his past with the Hellmouth to protect himself from his guilty conscience and from the realities of the impending doom of humanity.  Buffy holds no patience with this approach and continually tells Andrew to lay off his filming; however, this doesn't stop her from using the human propensity to romanticize, or tell stories about, their lives.  In fact, she employs this knowledge to shut down the seal of the Hellmouth and to delay the Apocalypse.  By telling Andrew his actions will definitely destroy humanity and informing him that he must die to turn off the seal, Buffy forces him to confront his past actions - to abandon fantasy for reality.  In doing so, Andrew makes peace with his guilt and sheds the tears that deactivate the seal.  The irony, of course, is that Buffy draws her realism and unwillingness to sugarcoat the future from a script.  A script, in many ways, is a stripped down novel.  Joss Whedon certainly recognized this irony and, in utilizing it, reveals that life is indeed a story.

"Tabula rasa" similarly plays with literary conventions; however, the episode focuses on a single literary convention: the creation of a hero(ine).  The episode suggests that heroes/heroines are born, not made.  Willow, fearful of Buffy's depression and Tara's unhappiness with her dependence on magic, casts a spell to erase those memories from their minds.  The spell goes awry, as they are wont to do, and leaves the entire Scooby Gang with amnesia.  They awaken in Anya's magic shop with no idea as to their identities and are forced to confront a situation they cannot comprehend: the existence of vampires.  While they are originally confused and scared, they quickly rise to the occasion and confront the situation.  As they do, their respective personalities and roles within the Gang reveal themselves through their actions.  Most importantly, Buffy retains her slayer abilities.  She discovers this when, despite her fear of the vampires attacking Anya's shop, she successfully fights back and stakes one of them.  Although she doesn't understand the implications of her actions - she says, "I'm like a superhero or something." - she knows that she is special, a heroine of some sort.  Spike, likewise, discovers that he is a vampire when his face transforms while he is helping Buffy fend off his peers working for the loan shark.  He incorrectly assumes that his actions and the lack of any desire to harm Buffy means he is good guy, "A vampire with a soul."  While Spike misinterprets his actions, they do reveal the essential role that he plays in the overall arc of Buffy; he is the interpreter of the darkness, who forces Buffy to recognize she represents a conglomeration of good and evil.  The other members of the Scooby Gang similarly rediscover the essential roles that they fulfill within the show throughout the course of the episode.  Like Spike and Buffy, they do so through their actions and their emotional responses to the situations they find themselves in.  Thus, Joss Whedon demonstrates that heroes/heroines are born, not made.  A hero(ine) can certainly grow and become an increasingly better hero(ine).  For that to happen, they must be born with the potential.       

Xander eventually steps on the blackened crystal that Willow used to enact the spell.  In doing so, he reverses the group's collective amnesia and resurrects the problems that Willow had hoped to mask.  Buffy, who has been brought back from Heaven to her version of hell - the act of being a slayer - becomes depressed again.  She realizes now that not only must she stand alone - Giles decides to return to England - but she must also continue to fight a war that she despises.  She can no longer hide from the knowledge that she contains some measure of darkness within her character.  Her amnesia forces Buffy to accept her role as a slayer and a hero.  As such, "Tabula rasa" encompasses in a single episode what TV shows and novels often spend a great deal of time doing: it creates a heroine and an entire cast of characters from a literally blank slate.  In doing so, it reveals that heroes/heroines must be born with the potential for that important role and that they play an important role in shaping who they are and their world through storytelling.  Ultimately, humans can only relate to themselves and others through storytelling.

storyteller

I know that we think he's pathetic and all, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and admit that, honestly, I saw a lot of myself in Andrew. I mean, I'm not a murderer (or am I...) but the way he goes about involving himself--or NOT involving himself, I should say--in the lives of others hits close to home. (Perhaps too close to home? The uncanny rears its ugly head again, ho ho ho!)

Like Andrew, I also tend to see everything in the form of stories. I think they're inescapable. I think that by merely contextualizing anything in our head, literally anything, we are contributing yet another fragment to our story because we are placing that anything within some perceived sequence of events. That half-eaten bag of sunflower seeds on my shelf is an intersection of countless stories: the story of the time I got super-hungry over Fall Break and ate seeds for dinner, the story of how the seeds came to be inside the bag, the story of the man who works in the factory... it goes on and on. We tell ourselves stories all the time. We are the protagonists of our own lives... I'm thinking back to Campbell and the monomyth. We are all on some sort of journey, right? And I guess you could say that I fancy myself the narrator and the protagonist of my own life. Of course, this is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, I personally believe that the ability to narrativize one's life, in whatever capacity, is a defining characteristic of, well, perhaps not "what is human," exactly, (can't escape that class, can I?) but perhaps rather "what constitutes a higher consciousness."

...On the other hand, the compulsion for storytelling has its downsides -- a point that Buffy makes clear in "Storyteller". If there's one (intangible) thing that most every human being craves, it's the feeling of control -- and I think that the recognition of one's capacity to narrativize, to tell stories, can easily get all tangled up in that desperate need for control. Sometimes we mix up, consciously or otherwise, our own fictions and non-fictions in an attempt to control what we do and don't want included in our life story. (I'm reminded of Freud's notion of the repressed, the Jungian "shadow"... the pieces of our life's narrative that we desperately don't want to read.) I don't think anyone could bear to live in a world that was completely indifferent and utterly uncontrollable; therefore we classify, we organize, we put in sequence the elements of our lives as to resemble some kind of comprehensible coherent whole.

I think that, ultimately, this fear of non-control is what motivates Andrew, what drives him to create a new story for himself, albeit one of delusions, distortions and omissions. As Buffy says at the end of the episode:

"I don't like having to give a bunch of speeches about how we're all gonna live, because we won't. This isn't some story where good triumphs because good triumphs. Good people are going to die! Girls. Maybe me. Probably you. Probably right now."

That's a horrifying thing to hear, and it's what Andrew has been rebelling against throughout the episode. He has transformed the war from what it really is--a thing of untold violence, nearly incomprehensible in its destruction of life--into a kind of romanticized bedtime story, full of improbabilities and inconsistencies, in which the good always overcomes the evil and that someday, just maybe, against all odds, the people will live happily ever after. He believes this story because he cannot bear its alternative.

I mean, what can I say? I look to the news, to the recent revolutions of the people of Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt; I look at it through computers and televisions, while I'm lying in bed or sitting in the classroom, and I read that another dozen people have died and I see a photo of a burial ceremony but I don't see the limbs bursting or hear the mothers screaming because I won't, I can't. I know that the loss of life has been an enormous tragedy and yet I don't really know anything at all; I can only hope the revolutions have lead to something better and will keep progressing toward something better yet, because they must.

And so I look back to Andrew and I think, am I really all that different?

Circles in "Storyteller"

One aspect of this episode that really stood out to me was the cyclic nature and the confrontation of traditional narrative. This is in the last and seventh season, so the idea of an apocalypse and vampires is kind of passé because Buffy has been there and slayed that before. In this episode, Joss Whedon mocks the fact that he is reusing plot, but he also points out that the cyclic quality seen in Buffy is true for real life. This was particularly relevant when Xander and Anya were talking about getting back together and Anya says she feels like they are on a merry-go-round, just going back over the same arguments again and again. This is very true of almost every relationship that you have with someone, friends, parents, and significant others. You always are having the same argument or are talking about the same topics over and over again, with only minor diversity. Sometimes it is apparent, as in the case with Anya and Xander, because they are unable to find a suitable solution to their problem, there isn’t a compromise that satisfies everyone. Joss Whedon addresses the repetitive nature of life and mocks it by deliberately commenting on it or bringing in issues from previous episodes. The idea of the apocalypse has been repeatedly used throughout the series, but, as Anya says, this is the “actual apocalypse”. In addition, the deliberate return of many past character types, such as the invisible girl, are another way that Joss Whedon directly alludes to the circle of cast and characters that move through the series. He visualizes this by moving the camera in circles around the scene, in order to recreate the sense of a merry-go-round. This is seen again as Buffy and Andrew circle the seal and the camera circles them. Neither Buffy nor Andrew is willing to step outside of the circle, to truly confront the issue before them (until Andrew cries, of course), but instead continue to circle each other. I think that Joss Whedon was very conscious of this cyclic aspect in the production of this episode because it is a way to pay tribute to the past seasons and emphasize the way that Buffy has developed throughout the seasons. The breaking of the seal releases evil upon Sunnydale, which used to only happen one at a time, shows how Buffy is not able to handle greater evil and greater chaos. The invisible girl was the problem from a previous episode in which the girl was the sole focus of Buffy’s attention, whereas now, she is one of many. I also think that the scene in which Buffy and Andrew are circling the seal demonstrates how much she has changed. The fact that she was willing to kill someone in order to save the whole world shows how mature she has become. In the past, Buffy has always drawn the line at killing innocent people, even if those people are bad and ‘evil’, but in this case, I think that it is very obvious that she would have killed Andrew if that were what would have closed the seal. She acknowledges the fact that she has changed because during this exchange, she responds to Andrew’s questions with one of her own: “what kind of hero does that make me?” She has become much more grounded in reality and no longer has a sense of false hope or a skewed sense of heroism anymore. She is fully aware that she must make difficult choices and that nothing else matters except that she must stop this apocalypse by any means possible, even if it means sacrificing an innocent life.