"Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsmtsm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:1c98ae3d-91c5-4cea-8d10-773706216c8f@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apr 27, 11:30 pm, "One Bit Shy" <O...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> "Arbitrar Of Quality" <tsm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>
messagenews:b0517048-3b35-42b1-a32e-71209c082c25@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> Poor Xander. The fight is a terrific scene, but for me, the defining
>> moment
>> of the episode is Xander's speech to the Potentials about Buffy's
heart.
>> It's one of my favorites from Xander, who's had his share of big ones.
>> "I've seen her heart, and this time—not literally. And I'm telling you,
>> right now, she cares more about your lives than you will ever know. You
>> gotta trust her. She's earned it." In a season often aimed at summing
up
>> the series, this is a high point for summing up Buffy's quality across
>> the
>> years. It also sums up Xander's attitude - a recap of the lesson he
>> learned
>> from Revelations that Giles has forgotten. It's about retaining faith
in
>> her even when it's hard to see the reason.
>
> They go together. Reaffirming these bonds and shattering them is what
> the episode's all about, and the one part doesn't have as much impact
> without the other. You question where that understanding of Buffy's
> persistence, loss, recovery,e tc. goes next episode. But I'm okay
> with this shattering his and Willow's resolve because it's not like.
> The main characters face insurmountable odds and win, the sheer power
> of their hearts is what wins battles, and when people die or get hurt,
> it's in stupid random accidents, not as part of a decisive defeat.
> I'm not certain that Xander (especially him) does have a total
> understanding of what he's getting into throughout the series, until
> this moment. His shock is the viewer's.
I don't disagree with that. (Well, a little about the battles. Drusilla
killing Kendra, wounding Willow and taking Giles to be tortured was a
battle
loss. Giles seriously wounded and Buffy going cationic in Spiral was the
culmination of a battle. Jenny and Tara's deaths and Angel getting shot
by
Faith were more isolated, but still part of broader wars. Those come to
mind quickly.) Again, I think the overall setup for Empty Places is
superb.
(And even some within Empty Places. Carrying your thought further, I
think
Willow's resolve breaks in the hospital room when Buffy won't stay to
visit
with Xander. I think she's misreading Buffy a little, but the
disappointment in Buffy still strikes deep.)
I don't want to propose those counter thoughts (or any others) as
necessarily winning arguments. I'm just observing how the show runs away
from them at the critical moment more as if they don't exist than that
they're ineffective. It's all part of it not seeming to flow naturally to
me.
>> > On a
>> > related note, each Andrew joke gets one or more repetitions more than
>> > it needs – it can’t be a good sign when someone who’s always more or
>> > less “gotten” Andrew starts thinking “c’mon, could anyone really be
>> > that oblivious to the world?” Everything’s just a little… overdone?
>>
>> I didn't notice that with Andrew. I rather like him this episode.
"I'm
>> Andrew. I'll be your bad cop this evening."
>
> So the Hot Pockets scene doesn't make you roll your eyes the longer it
> goes on (especially since the fact that he's supposed to be annoying
> everyone else basically is the joke, ha ha)? And the blooming onion
> doesn't seem like, to use SM's terms, starting to more from continuity
> **** to masturbation?
The Hot Pockets isn't the best moment, but it didn't bother me. I liked
the
blooming onion - which I see as more of a Spike moment anyway.
>> You asked me to hold that thought earlier. As I recall, I believe I
said
>> that its objective is to enslave humanity. I suggested that Joss's
idea
>> of
>> ultimate evil may be oppression.
>
>> The allegory goes much further than a battle with the stodgy
>> representatives
>> of official patriarchy. It's looking at an entire cultural paradigm
>> where
>> everybody is both victim and oppressor. The battle between Buffy and
the
>> Scoobies and Potentials that comes to a head on this CD speaks to the
>> resistance of the oppressed to their own liberation and their tendency
to
>> self enforce the status quo.
>>
> The WC and Shadow Men definitely are not the direct
>> agents of the First or evil in general. But they none the less serve
its
>> ends through their part in perpetuating cultural oppression. Which
they
>> do
>> with conviction. Ah, the madness of conviction. Here is the
connection
>> with Caleb. He holds no illusions over the brutality of his deeds.
How
>> can
>> he with so much meted out by his own hands? But he believes in what he
>> does
>> every bit as much as the Shadow Men and WC. He's just a more direct
>> enforcer of the natural order as he knows it.
>
> There are a few advantages to that interpretation of the story. One
> is that it lets the First both be the enemy from within the self and
> draw on outside contractors like Caleb.
It doesn't just allow it. It demands it. It's not just an internal enemy
being fought. Liberation requires overcoming external enemies too. In
the
feminism analogy (other types of oppression too) that happens on a couple
of
levels. The immediate and personal foe - the rapist, the wife beater, and
so on - would be Caleb's function. And the weight of greater society
would
be the army of ubervamps.
> I was going to ask about the
> First's predilection for appearing to people in the faces of their
> dead loved ones, but that kinda fits here if you treat everyone as
> partly oppressor. Then the obsession with a person's past and the
> insistence that s/he can't change, will always be haunted by past
> things becomes part of the First's agenda of holding people back.
> Sometimes through fear as I pointed out earlier, but that'd just be
> one generally useful tool.
That works, though I suspect that's done more because that's how it was
done
in Amends. And it's a convenient way to bring back some old faces.
Still,
in Amends it was about tearing down Angel's sense of self worth. That
would
be part of what makes The First attractive as a repeat villain.
> Now, is this something that came through clearly to you on early
> viewings, or something you had to try to tease out?
When I first watched BtVS I got very little of any metaphor. In S7 I
noticed the symmetry of destroying the town with destroying the high
school
in S3. I saw the girl power message of Chosen and thought it was fitting
to
the series, but otherwise pretty much missed all of the feminist message.
(I was actually kind of stunned at how blind I was when I realized it
later.) That's why it was years after the conclusion before I showed up
here. It took a while before I realized how much more there was to the
series and to want to discuss it with somebody. I remember while S7 was
aired a friend of mine explaining to me how the early seasons had been
about
high school as hell - turned literal. I remember recognizing the truth of
that, but still thought of it as some high concept framing to give the
show
an attitude, but otherwise not terribly im****tant.
I've never analyzed a TV show like this before - or new that such a thing
was possible. (Yes, I knew and enjoyed symbolism heavy shows like Twin
Peaks and The Prisoner, but they were obviously artificial in a way that
BtVS isn't. Often puzzles for the sake of puzzles. Both were terrific -
at
least for a while - but never offered me the sense of meaningful depth
that
BtVS does.) So I was slow.
> I ask because as
> a metaphor, it's a hell of a lot quieter than the feminist theme that
> S7 so often uses (which in your explanation becomes one example of the
> greater idea, I suppose).
Heh. Well I guess I have two reactions. First, the heavy handedness too
often used with the feminist theme is, IMO, one of the greater weaknesses
of
S7. It's not that I don't appreciate the idea being gone after - it is a
girl power show after all and it's fine to use that as a general attitude
and final message. It helps give the whole series a frame of reference to
anchor it. But I think it gets a little overdone this season - a little
too
doctrinal as well as blunt. So anywhere there's more subtlety is a plus
in
my book.
However, Caleb is not where I find such subtlety. (I'm more intrigued
that
way, for example, in the empowerment undercurrent to Bring on the Night.
As
in when they hesitate to arm the Potentials. Give them the tools of
empowerment? Is that really a good idea?) Caleb is probably the first
place that I recognized how feminist oriented the season is. I mean that
women hating language of his is awfully extreme - and trope filled. He
goes
right to original sin and women as temptresses, for example. (That alone
may be why M.E. chose to make him a preacher.) He seems to be constructed
as the embodiment of all the worst misogynist thought - in a way that I
could imagine to be a women's studies class exercise. You want to see
some
deconstruction of patriarchal society mythology? Try this!
It took much longer to recognize how pervasive the feminist theme was -
how
it really extends to most characters in some fa****on. Even the good guys
in
not always favorable ways. The way Giles fits, for example, came very
late.
I had to grasp how he'd taken on the mantle of the WC first, which was a
notion I first encountered in this newsgroup. I still pick up on bits and
pieces today - or connect them differently. But broadly speaking, S7 was
probably the first season of BtVS that I think I largely got. I couldn't
recreate the progression now, but it was before coming here.
The First (and to some extent how Caleb represents an external vs.
internal
foe) remains a work in progress. Probably always will because I sense
that
M.E. struggled to make him fit just right. Broadly speaking, that goes to
S7's biggest problem. There's just too much to bring together in one neat
little package. Too many themes. Too many characters. Too many old
stories to wrap up along with the new. Everybody, The First included, and
every scene has too many functions loaded onto them for a clean fit. The
notion of The First not having an ass to kick is intriguing idea, but
ultimately there are way too many other ideas that count just as much -
maybe more - to allow that concept to control the season. So it suffers a
bit.
I'm reminded now of how I think of the moment of empowerment in Chosen as
operating on two levels. One being the in-story act of endowing
Potentials
with Slayer powers. The other suggesting the availability of self
empowerment to everybody in the world. The metaphor doesn't exactly fit,
so
the show kind of jumps outside of itself for a minute to extend the idea.
I
think that not exactly fitting happens fairly often this year, and
liberties
are sometimes taken to just make it fit.
Well, I'm rambling now. Hopefully somewhere in there your question got
answered.
>> > It hadn’t occurred to me until listening to the commentary that Marti
>> > was the one who wrote the basement Spike/Faith scene in “Dirty
Girls,”
>> > but now that we know, doesn’t it seem obvious?
>>
>> Because of the chains? It's just a florid imagination. I'm sure Marti
>> would be a chaste and proper date.
>
> The whole scene, not the chains. A rapid spin through mocking some of
> the foibles of men and ***, with a wry detached tone. Very much a
> Noxon scene. I can only shrug my shoulders (and be rather confused by
> the joke) about what she's like outside the scripted page.
There's very little to it. I was just musing about the implication of
Marti
having an -er- obsession and got amused at the thought of a real life
Marti
who wouldn't be caught dead not wearing underwear.
OBS
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