Reflections on Fear and the Gothic Genre

As someone who has watched Buffy since middle school, I am very familiar with the series; however, this class has provided me with an opportunity to examine the show through an academic lens. In the past, I have always watched the series in order to see how Buffy and her friends’ actions relate to my life and my choices. Now, I’m able to focus on how the series takes mainstream issues and tints them with elements of the Gothic.

A quote from the first Buffy episode we watched in class stood out for me, “We are defined by the things we fear.” These fears can manifest in a multitude of ways, from vampires to witches; even the most mundane object can become fair game for the Gothic genre because the Gothic feeds off our fears; thus, in a certain sense, our fear is what gives power to the evil we find around us.

In the episode “Living Conditions,” Buffy faces the real-life challenge of adjusting to college life and living with a roommate. In this episode, we are presented with an example of how a common fear—that of having a difficult roommate—can be adapted for the Gothic genre. In this episode, Joss Whedon takes this common fear, exaggerates it, and brings it to life: Buffy’s roommate is literally a monster from another dimension.

But what does this say about Buffy? If, as the quote says, we are indeed defined by that which we fear, what does this reveal about her as an individual? What does this say about humanity in respect to our cultural fears? In “Living Conditions,” we see Buffy struggle not only with her roommate Kathy, but also with the idea that she herself is not as understanding as she initially believed. Thus, I think that there is another kind of fear which lies much deeper than the fear of the external, and that is the internal fear of oneself. Often these two reflect one another. Thus, fear often stems from that which we cannot reconcile within ourselves.

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As we've discussed in class, one of the most striking features of the show Buffy is the contrast between the "ditzy valley girl" heroine and the dark, grotesque elements of the world around her. Aesthetically speaking, it's a pretty pleasing concept: what's cooler than a blonde high-schooler sassing up a league of eldritch abominations? But I think it also hits a bit deeper.

It's really pretty disturbing, clashing two ends of the spectrum like that. Take for example Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. It's a pretty wacked movie in general, but the scene that stands out is when Alex, the protagonist, brutally rapes a random stranger while singing, of all things, Gene Kelly's "Singin' in the Rain." I'm hardpressed to think of another movie scene that so effectively enmeshes something so horrifying and something so (supposedly) cheery. The effect on the viewer is profoundly unsettling... perhaps because it somehow makes the horror aspect more personal, more intimate. Similarly, I think that's why all of those gruesome fairy tales (Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella) continue to endure, to fascinate generation after generation -- they tap into some deeper, shadowy consciousness that captures our childlike imaginations and continues to enthrall us even as adults.

Look at the setting of Carmilla, for example: "Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. It stands on a slight eminence in a forest. The road, very old and narrow, passes in front of its drawbridge, never raised in my time, and its moat, stocked with perch, and sailed over by many swans, and floating on its surface white fleets of water lilies." It sounds like a fairy kingdom. And while, yes, it's a very lonely place, ripe for disquiet and horror, there's a certain beauty about it that makes the aforementioned horror that much more... horrifying.

Also, can we talk about how, in this strand of the mythos, vampires bite into the chest, and not into the neck? I think you could look at it two ways (or both): either it seems ~sensual~ and increases the homoeroticism of the story, or it seems analogous to a baby nursing from its mother's breast. Except it's not milk. You know.

Am I supposed to feel bad for...Kathy?

I do not think we are supposed to feel bad for Kathy, but in the end, I felt guilty for the way I had perceived her throughout the episode. The episode is set up in a way to make her look like the "roommate from hell" but I cannot help but feel sorry for her. In the end, all she wanted to do was attend college and have an opportunity at a new life. I certainly do not forgive her for trying to take Buffy's soul however I think it is important to point out the human aspect of her plight. Throughout the episode there were villains, blood drinking, and dark holes, but the whole circumstance was COMPLETLY human. We all have trouble with roommates and we all make major sacrifices to attend college. Ultimately though, in a world of the supernatural, the plot line was commonplace. The point I am trying to make is that even though she is a monster (or whatever she was), it is hard for me to perceive her feelings as monstrous. She may be different in OUR world, but in Sunnyside, it is important to treat Kathy as you would any other character. Even though I know very little about the show, I think Buffy contradicts herself when she insinuates that because Kathy is evil, she is therefore a monster. I feel this way because from what I can tell, there are good monsters too, like their werewolf friend. If reality is pushed as far as it is in the show, shouldn't monsters/vampires have the benefit of morality, even if it does not align with how humans understand it?

Suspending Disbelief with a Little Help from our Friends

While many of the posts here have focused on the fact that Buffy looks for supernatural explanations of her problems because she is more comfortable in that realm, the reverse often holds true in gothic literature. While we roll our eyes at Laura because she seems to be so slow to realize that Carmilla is bad news, this is because in normal life, we do not look for supernatural beings (as Buffy is so used to doing). The reader might be surprised if Laura was immediately suspicious of Carmilla’s behavior and accused her of vampirism, because this is simply not how normal life works. We, too, might be slow to recognize that someone we knew and liked was a vampire—that is not within the realm of possibility in our minds, because of course we do not suspend disbelief in our everyday lives.

We need some serious convincing before we can jump on board with gothic concepts, so it makes sense that protagonists in traditional gothic literature would need the same type of persuasion. When they are actually persuaded, the result becomes extra scary because it seemed so improbable to them (and to the original readers of gothic literature, who may then imagine similar happenings in their own lives).

Joss Whedon plays with the reversal of this dynamic in Buffy, wherein every character is quick to jump to supernatural conclusions. It is only because of the wealth of gothic literature that preceded Buffy that we are comfortable with the world Buffy lives in. But Buffy does dwell in a highly supernatural world, which is why it is so painful when she has to deal with her friends' disbelief when she has supernatural suspicions.

This plays into her fourth season adjustment from a high school world in which she was comfortable to college (a new playing field). In high school, Buffy’s friends trusted her explanations implicitly, because it seemed obvious that Sunnydale High was overwhelmed by the supernatural, which is quite simply Buffy’s territory. In college, however, they expect a shift to more normal life, and Buffy’s explanations seem to them like a manifestation of her refusal to move on. If Willow, Xander, Giles, and Oz immediately believed Buffy about Kathy, the episode would not have very much emotional impact. Buffy’s realization that no one believes her is the truly painful part of the experience. Similarly, Laura’s childhood experience of Carmilla is characterized by the fact that the adults around her say it was just a dream. It seems to me that the isolation that comes from involvement in supernatural events is already emerging as an important part of the gothic genre.

Ultimately, Buffy comes to the conclusion that she’s in it alone in very important ways throughout the series, although her friends often do support her. She is the “chosen one,” and it comes with the job, but it doesn’t make it any easier to deal with when those closest to her doubt her.

Light vs Dark, Blond vs Brunette

Some of us have already pointed out the parallels between "Carmilla" and "Living Conditions". One similarity in particular I would like to exaggerate on is in the physical appearance of the characters we would pair based on the role they play in the story: Buffy and Laura both have lighter features, while Kathy and Carmilla both have darker hair and eyes. All are meant to be quite beautiful in their own right.

We tend to pair Carmilla and Kathy together because they are the antagonists of the story. Both put the protagonist through terrifying ordeals which they (that is to say Buffy and Laura) percieve as nightmares, and both claim to share those nightmares. Kathy and Carmilla also feed off of Buffy and Laura, respectively. What they take in both cases is what could be considered a person's life force: Buffy's soul and Laura's blood. For this reason the two seem at first glance to be the same, and this is why the dark features they share are appropriate. The same applies to Laura and Buffy, who at a basic level are the innocent victims of dark creatures and thus boast light features to contrast their enemies.

In the case of Buffy and Kathy, these stereotypes are only skin deep. If we examine the two as characters, we find that Buffy is the truly dark one. Kathy comes to college for the same reasons most freshmen do: to escape her home life, get and education, make some friends, and have a little fun. What could be more innocent? Even though she is a demon, she does not have a dark soul. She is a fan of Cher and Celine Dion (as we see in the episode before "Living Conditions" for those of you who haven't watched it), and her flaws are simply being a little over eager about college life and also territorial. Sure, she tries to suck out Buffy's soul, but where she comes from souls are not important. In fact, they don't even exist. As far as she knew, she was doing nothing more socially unacceptable than borrowing Buffy's sweater. It is Buffy who is the darker character, a fact which becomes indisputable in later seasons. She was chosen to fight the forces of darkness, and as such she is irreversibly tied in with dark creatures. This breaking of stereotypes is what makes the gothic universe, and more specifically Sunnydale California, such a dangerous place to live: you never can accurately distinguish between light and dark, good and evil.

Buffy and the Body

Although I'm not extremely well-versed in gothic literature, I was drawn to this course because of the element of psychology I suspected would be involved in both the show and the works we'll be reading. Because I'm a comparative literature major, I enjoy finding traces of other disciplines in the books I read, the movies I watch, and the music I listen to. So what I found particular fascinating while watching "Living Conditions" was the degree to which so much of what was happening was rooted in how we perceive our own personal space. Like we discussed in class, one major theme in this episode was adjustment; Giles notes several times that what Buffy's going through is typical of the college freshman experience -- she's learning to live with someone else. So I think lines like "we're almost like sisters now," are certainly creepy because they articulate the foreboding possibility that the each of the two girls will morph into a version of the other. More importantly, though, the loss of self is entirely due to the fact that they’re living in the same space -- they’re intruding on each other’s territory. In this way, I think the psychology of space (or however you want to call it here) is very apparent here and I think it’s probably going to turn up again in some of the books we read.

To bring up something else we talked about in class, I think that this episode is not as much about seeing the self in a new light – or confronting the self – as it is maintaining the self. In both Kathy’s and Buffy’s nightmares, spiders crawl across their bodies and a demon paints red occult-like marks on their skin; I think these things portray the psychological damage that physical intrusion inflicts. Physically occupying the same space as someone else (even if it’s just a new college roommate) can result in some pretty nasty mind games; in order to combat that, Kathy and Buffy use defense mechanisms like flossing (the upkeep of the self when something else is impinging on it) and headphones (blocking out noise, a sign of some outside presence or influence). I even think that Buffy’s pencil-tapping and Kathy’s Cher obsession are ways they sort of play the offense in this battle for integrity of the self. That’s why I think this episode is called “Living Conditions” – there’s something very gothic about the idea that the body/self as it’s located in space has profound effects on our psychological state. --Allison

Blurred Lines Between Good and Evil

I loved what Sydney said about Joss Whedon blurring the line between black and white and good and evil by defying stereotypes, and though I initially wrote this up as a comment to her post, I realized that I wanted to expand on it so much and it deserved to be its own post. But still, props to Sydney! Anyway, I think that Whedon defying stereotypes is one of the things that makes the show so great. Whedon creates this grey area with his characters, giving the pretty blonde cheerleader some super strength, the nerdy bookworm badass magical powers, and the goofball Xander the sensitivity to talk people off of a ledge. I think that this is a trend in the Gothic that not everything is good vs. evil or black vs. white. We talked today about how Buffy had to make her roommate "Evil", because she is an "Evil Fighter" and then the answer to her problems seemed simple. Then, in the monster realm and in Gothic literature, there are monsters and there are heroes, but then there becomes this grey-ness when we can't distinguish between the two. What I mean is that Kathy, though a demon, is really not that radical of a roommate. Annoying, sure, but I think we all know of someone who has Kathy-esque tendencies...plus, I really wouldn't want Buffy as a roommate either. I find myself almost feeling bad for her, even though she is a soul-sucking demon, she was just doing what she had to do, and besides, in her realm, she is good and Buffy is evil.
I can relate this sensation to something I have experienced first hand, and forgive me for getting off topic of the class, but I think this is important to understanding my point. I have acted a lot in my life, but the most meaningful role for me was playing a villian, Nurse Ratched of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and had to learn how to turn the tables. To play a villian, an actor must learn how to view a situation in the reverse of good and evil. See, Ratched doesn't see herself as doing wrong, no, she sees herself the hero. She genuinely believes that she is a protector. Through the eyes of a villian as opposed to a hero, we might still see a situation as dark and light, good vs. evil, but which role is which is entirely based on individual perception, and so, how can a third party like an audience for a TV series or a reader for a gothic novel truly deem one person evil and worthy of suffering while declaring another person a moral heroine? I think that what is so beautiful about the Gothic is that it acknowledges this paradox and uses it to the advantage of the storyteller. Gothic writers harness this internal conflict for the audience and create a greyness, so that once a character like Carmilla or Kathy is defeated or wiped out, the audience cannot feel entirely satisfied with the defeat.
Even though this isn't really from "Living Conditions," I can't help but bring up Angel and Spike into this conversation, as throughout the series, they are the epitome of the grey area between good and evil, both being vampires who fight alongside the vampire slayer. In Carmilla and even in Dracula, we see this Gothic trend of blurring the lines between the darkness and the light. Carmilla confuses Laura; Laura is unsettled by her, and senses that something is wicked and dark about her, but at the same time, she is her companion, and she speaks to her of (morbid as it is) love and eternal friendship. It seems that Joss wasn't the first to devise a meshing of good and evil to throw a protagonist off guard.