"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.