"Once More With Feeling" #surprisewin

As I mentioned in class, I find this episode horrifying. Yet, this response is strangely fitting given that “Once More With Feeling” is not simply a musical, but also a serious gothic representation. Tara’s line, “everything is turning out so dark,” embodies the sentiment from which my uneasiness derives. In truth, I was not expecting this episode to be fraught with so much tension and angst. When Janelle admonished us against “singing along,” I envisioned some campy silly songs about everyone smiling while people were dying. Clearly, I was wrong.

However, once I move past this visceral response and beyond the uncomfortable dearth of musical talent, I find that this episode is satisfyingly gothic because it functions like a cracked mirror through which the characters, and the viewers, can see how to deal with worldly struggles through supernatural occurrences. For example, Tara learns that she can’t function in a relationship without trust after she finds out that Willow has been casting memory spells on her. Thus, Xander’s desire to gain understanding through magical song and dance is fulfilled. However, along with this understanding, the characters also discover uncertainty and inner conflict.

The fact that the demon is not killed at the end of the episode amplifies this emotional turmoil because it shows how reality is worse than the devil himself. As Dawn so eloquently declares, “the hardest thing in this world is to live in it!” Moreover, this atypical Buffy ending also reveals the underpinnings of gothic convention because it emphasizes how the demon is merely a literary device; when the devil says, “big smiles everyone, you beat the bad guy,” he might as well sing, “look! I just subverted the heroic trajectory of the episode to show how the gothic is a self-aware mechanism that obfuscates genre clarity to highlight human dysfunction!” Therefore, the unconventionality of “Once More With Feeling” as a musical number and as a Buffy episode mimics the grey uncertainty present in actual humanity and the characters’ relationships with each other.

To my surprise, I actually think “Once More With Feeling” may be my favorite Buffy episode because it operates more like a self-sufficient gothic text than a brief chapter in a larger gothic series. Undoubtedly all Buffy episodes mix supernatural and worldly dilemmas, such as learning to live with a roommate and slaying demons, but this particular episode does this to a more pervasive and ambiguous extent.

... And it all comes back to fashion!

Back when we had to choose an article about Buffy, I chose one exploring the show’s use of fashion and color. I’d like to refer back to that article, entitled “Real Vampires Don’t Wear Shorts: The Aesthetics of Fashion in Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and written by Leigh Clemons, for my final blog.

Clemons discusses the final song in “Once More, With Feeling” in which each of the characters is wearing an outfit based around a different color of the rainbow. When reading the article I had trouble picturing this, as it had been a while wince I’d seen this episode. I was expecting each character in bright, blatantly colorful ensembles, but this is about the only subtle moment in the episode. Nevertheless, I think it is an effective image. The moment serves accentuate the different directions each character will soon be taking (or have already started down) after this climactic episode that can be seen as a turning point for the series.

The two best examples of this are Buffy in red and Willow in purple. Willow is seen in purple from the start of the season, as her decent into darkness begins. She has already abandoned the brighter, warmer colors she wore through most of season five, and the shade of violet she wears during “Where Do We Go From Here” is about as bright as she gets until the episode “Seeing Red”, when her white shirt is splattered by Tara’s blood. Red is a warm color that also has dark connotations of lust and devil-like behaviors. Buffy in red represents her feeling that, since being dragged out of heaven by her friends, her life is really hell. Spike is also dressed in red, so Buffy’s red top also reflects the beginning of her fling with him. Besides these two (or three, if you count Spike) obvious color choices, the rest of the characters are less obvious. It seems that the others were dressed not to represent a specific emotion, but to show contrast between two characters by dressing them in contrasting colors. In each contrasting pair, one is about to leave the other: Giles, in green to contrast Buffy’s red, is about to withdraw support from her fight; Tara’s bright yellow stands out against Willow’s purple; and Xander’s orange foreshadows that he will be leaving his bride-to-be, dressed in something blue, at the alter.

I’ll end this post by addressing the question raised in class: why was this episode chosen to be a musical? I think the reason was to unsettle us. We hear rising music and see coordinating dancing and expect happy endings. But there were no happy endings to be found, which leaves us with a feeling of dissatisfaction. Buffy’s entire purpose is really to modernize the gothic genre, and make fun of it at times. It seems fitting that the last episode we watched in class brings another genre, that of musical theater, into the work to alter to suite the purpose of the series.

Clemons, Leigh. "Real Vampires Don’t Wear Shorts: The Aesthetics of Fashion in Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. Web. 12 Dec. 11. .

A Little Song, A Little Dance...

Obviously, best episode ever.

I found it interesting that the show violated the standards of most musicals, enabling everyone to hear others’ revelations through song, whereas most characters in real musicals do not realize the conclusions that are come to (although, while Anya and Xander hear each other, Buffy doesn’t hear Giles, so I guess Whedon only lets them hear when it suits him).

It made me kind of disappointed that musical forced the show’s characters to communicate about the issues they are having, like Whedon was kind of undermining the character growth by throwing everything out there before the Scoobies were ready. But then again, this also forced them to deal with their problems, escalating the tensions between the characters, and bringing the storyline to a head, as we see in Tabula Rasa. These tensions were somehow lessened, however, by the melodrama of the episode – the revelations were comical, despite their somber nature. Xander and Anya confess their doubts about each other through song and dance, which later results in him leaving her at the altar. Buffy confesses that she’d been in heaven in the same manner, something that she had been concealing from her friends for a long while. For such dramatic issues to be revealed in such a way robs them of some of their impact.

Another thing I appreciated within the episode is the demon’s “Life is but a song,” a probable reference to “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players,” from Shakespeare’s As You Like It. I found this appropriate, considering the themes of exile (like Buffy’s from heaven, and the feelings of exile and solitude in her own life), woman power (Buffy, like Rosalind, is a badass), and disguise (like how Buffy has to conceal her identity from the world). It’s also telling that the play is a comedy – even though things might seem dark, they all turn out okay in the end.

And finally, to tie this in to The Nutcracker:

Obviously, The Nutcracker isn’t simply a happy-go-lucky Christmas tale full of pretty dolls and toy soldiers and sugarplums – why else would we read it in a class about gothic literature? The Nutcracker is all about subtext – the creepiness of Godpapa Drosselmeier’s interactions with the children, and Marie’s child marriage, for example. “Once More With Feeling” follows a similar pattern – though, on the surface, a musical world seems harmless, it’s made sinister by the fact that it’s caused by a demon, and can cause one to burst into flame. It also takes a page out of the child marriage handbook with Dawn and the demon. Innocence is a façade for something much more macabre.

It’s been a blast. Good luck with finals!

<3 Lisa

Beneath the Surface of "Once More, With Feeling" and "The Nutcracker"

One thing that immediately struck me about “Once More, With Feeling” was the reversal of the meaning behind platitudes, and how generally positive statements were shown to be dark. When Buffy sings, “What can’t we face if we’re together?” it’s not quite as uplifting as it sounds. Because Buffy is stuck feeling hopeless and numb, this lyric represents the monotony of her life rather than an appreciation for the community she’s in. Similarly, Tara’s “I’m under your spell” is at first a happy lyric, and then becomes dark when she realizes the implications of the fact that she is literally under Willow’s spell.

I had not thought much about the connections between “Once More, With Feeling” and The Nutcracker until I started reading other blog posts, but this phenomenon is equally present in The Nutcracker. We discussed at length the differences between the “happy and cute” Christmas ballet and the darker themes of the Hoffman version, and the same dissonance we see in “Once More, With Feeling” is clear here. The story is presented to us as if Marie gets everything she ever wanted, but the audience is left with a lot of questions about how to interpret the actual resolution. An eight-year-old getting married hardly seems like a dream come true, especially given the land that she’s entering. As dreamlike as Marie made Toyland out to be, I thought that the hints of darkness (such as the “pastrycook” scene, as well as the giant with the sweet tooth who demolished a tower of the castle) made it seem like it was teetering on the edge of nightmare.

So what comes next? After reading Katherine’s post, I started thinking about the resolutions of both the episode and the story. The oppositions in both serve to increase the tension, and make us feel uncomfortable about what should happen next (in the case of “Buffy”) or what is actually happening at all (in the case of The Nutcracker). The only difference is that “Buffy” continues and the characters get to work through the issues that “Once More, With Feeling” is about, while The Nutcracker ends without any real sense of resolution. The fact that we get no real sense of what happened in The Nutcracker is the main reason that it is creepy, especially because it is told in such sugary sweet language about how happy and wonderful the ending is.

This is all beside the fact that taking secrets and Buffy’s lack of feeling and broadcasting them in the most emotive and public way possible is just an awesome way for the Scooby gang to realize that they have to deal with their issues.

Happily Never After

When Janelle initially mentioned that the version of the Nutcracker we’d be reading would be much darker than the traditional, family-friendly Nutcracker ballet we all know and love, I was hesitant to see how much this version would differ. The classic elements are still present: the toys, the great battle, the wonderful world made of candy. However, underneath the surface of these seemingly innocuous similarities, sinister subtleties exist that twist this story into being terrifying rather than delightful. I want to focus on the obvious issue of Marie becoming a child-bride in Nutcracker and the King of Mice since this relates to the issues in “Once More, With Feeling.” Marie is a child, still innocent and full of imaginative wonder. However, the Nutcracker is described as having “a well-kept beard of white cotton” which “drew attention to the smile which his bright red lips always expressed” (Hoffman, 135). The Nutcracker doesn’t sound like a young boy prince, but a mature man. This distorts the relationship between Marie and the Nutcracker: an old man seems to be courting a child. This distinction turns their fairy-tale wedding at the end into more of a twisted nightmare and imbues the rest of the story with horror. For example, there’s a moment in the story where the Nutcracker whispers, “Marie fine, angel mine! I will be thine, if thou wilt be mine!” and “Although a sort of cold shiver ran through [Marie] at this, still it caused her the keenest pleasure” (Hoffman, 163). This is loaded with sexual meaning, and also reminded me a bit of the overt sexuality in Carmilla. This passage demonstrates clear perversion of childish innocence. Also, when the Nutcracker takes Marie into “Toyland,” he says, “Oh! My best beloved Miss Stahlbaum, if you would only take the trouble to follow me for a few steps, what glorious and beautiful things I could show you” (Hoffman, 169). When we remember the age gap between the Nutcracker and Marie, and the Nutcracker’s intent to take Marie as a wife, these words take on a much more twisted and sexual meaning than we would have originally thought. Also, a grown man wants to show a little girl a land made of candy? Really? Come on.

I found similar innuendos this time watching “Once More, With Feeling.” Although there’s dancing and music and everything seems swell, the episode is actually fairly dark and disturbing underneath the catchy numbers and jazz hands. The singing Devil incarnate, who must be ancient, wants to take fifteen year old Dawn to be his bride in Hellsville. Gross. Just like in the Nutcracker, the demon's language is filled with sexual references. In his song, the demon tempts Dawn, saying, “Why don’t you come and play? I guarantee a great big smile.” His body language is provocative, causing Dawn to respond to his dance with her hips even though she’s clearly uncomfortable and mentally doesn’t want to participate. Similar to the Nutcracker, although everything seems fun and wonderful, there are underlying issues in the episode that cause everything to have a double meaning. Sure, people are singing; but that doesn’t mean things are going to end happily ever after. And, similar to the Nutcracker, there’s no return to reality from a dream place at the end because everything that happens in the episode is real. The demon leaves, but he leaves behind him all the problems that have been brought up through song. What happens after the big group number? Things fall apart. What happens after Marie’s marriage to the Nutcracker? Don’t even want to go there.

“Once More With Feeling” – Deconstructing and Reconstructing the Fourth Wall

We discussed briefly in class this deconstruction and reconstruction of the “fourth wall,” or the awareness between characters of each other. The demon’s influence forces this singing about real life, and thus all the secrets come pouring out. But, there are times in the episode when the characters can and can’t hear what the others are singing, like when Giles is singing about leaving Buffy and she can’t hear him. But, Anya and Xander can hear each other singing about those little things they don’t like (beady eyes and hairy toes). So there’s a jarring shift between having that fourth wall and not. The same occurs in The Nutcracker and the King of Mice where there’s the veil that gets blown aside every now and then. Finding the line between reality and fantasy is very difficult in the story because it gets blurred so often. Someone I believe argued that this is partly a result of what the characters want to hear. Anya and Xander each have a desire to know what the other is thinking, born from an anxiety about whether their marriage would work. Spike wants Buffy to hear him out, and Buffy has this strange attachment to Spike because he cares for and understands her, something she secretly desires from her other friends. Spike can see through Buffy and knows that she was torn out of heaven instead of hell, so he acts as her anchor. But, Buffy is unable to stand on her own until some healing starts, so she vehemently doesn’t want to hear Giles saying he’s leaving her. Thus the fourth wall is reconstructed. At the end, Buffy’s desire to reveal the truth and for her friends to understand what happened to her wins out over her martyrdom and they hear when she sings about it. Marie, in the Nutcracker story, of course fully believes in the realness of her dolls, and therefore the battle and the trip to Marzipan Castle is very real for her. But no one else seems to believe these things. The fourth wall is more blurred in this story than it is in the Buffy episode. It’s difficult to say just what makes the difference and why sometimes we as the audience are in the real world or the fantasy world. Perhaps we should instead ask whether there’s a difference.

"Buffy," a MUSICAL!

In this blog, I wanted to continue to discuss the point that I brought up in class regarding the effectiveness of the musical medium. We talked about how this episode is really climactic, in that it occurs at a time in which tensions for all of the characters are mounting. Buffy has just been pulled out of heaven, Giles is wondering if his position as Buffy's watcher is impeding her growth, Tara and Willow are having relationship problems, Anya and Xander are engaged, yet they clearly have a lot of underlying issues that they haven't discussed, and Dawn is chock full of teen angst-angst, especially after the death of her mother. I think that Whendon was shrewd to use a musical medium here because as viewers, most of us are familiar with the tropes part and parcel of musicals. We expect dramatic pauses, monologues, and melodrama galore. Because of all the abounding tensions in this episode that inevitably need to be dispelled, it makes sense having a very open, self-exposing medium to quickly allow the underlying tensions to escape into the open. It would soon become boring if Whedon had to allocate five or so episodes to addressing all of these problems individually. However, use one musical episode, and all the problems quickly expose themselves. But what was truly so intelligent about the use of musical was how self-aware it was, both in its evocation of the typical musical tropes and how it still managed to maintain a light-gothic feel. I have made the argument before that what makes "Buffy" such an successful show is its self-awareness, often through parodying the gothic form. Whedon engages the same self-awareness in "Once More with Feeling." Not only does self-awareness lend itself to a parody of the musical genre, but it demonstrates that this musical medium is not being used just so that Whedon could add a musical to his repertoire, but because its tropes are a perfect way to let this episode have all of the "melodrama" it requires, without seeming melodramatic, if you know what I mean. Once again, form and function complement one another perfectly.