Thoughts on Joss and why Buffy is special.

[elisi]

One reason I love BtVS so much is that Buffy gets a happy ending. She wins. I've not seen Dollhouse, but on his other shows winning doesn't enter into it. Angel will be forever fighting. Mal only wishes to keep flying.

But Buffy wins. And there's something else I've realised too. Putting it under a cut, so as not to take up all your flist.

shadowkat67 posted some Joss quotes re. Dollhouse that crystallised some things for me:

I never concieved of a more pure journey from helplessness to power, which is what I always write about, and in that sense, I feel we accomplished a lot of it. I do feel that part of what we tried to get at kind of got taken out at the beginning and it really was more important to how the show would work than I even realized when they took it out- which was sex. The show was supposed to be, on some level, a celebration of perversion, as something that makes us unique. Sort of our hidden selves. You can talk about your hidden selves and identity, but when you have to shoot each other every week, you get a bit limited. The show was supposed to flop genres every episode, and the moment we did that, they shut us down and said, 'Quickly, have someone shoot at someone.' I feel when we had to take sex out of the equation, it became kind of a joke or almost unsettling. Because we couldn't hit it head on - and so much of our identity is wrapped up in our sexuality, and this is something Eliza (Dusku) was talking to me about, as something she wanted to examine before I even came up with the idea, and to have that sort of excised and marginalized and santised and not to be able to hit on the head what they were doing made the show a little bit limited and a little bit creepy at times, I think we still did some fairly out-there stuff, and I'm proud of what we did, given the circumstances, but with those circumstances, it was never really going to happen the way it should have.

People say that rape is one of Joss' staples, and that's true, but that's probably because rape encompasses what makes him tick: power and powerlessness and sex. These are his leitmotifs throughout.

And what I love about Buffy is that she is most of the time above it. Sure, we find out that the original Slayer-power came from a very rape-like empowering of a helpless girl, but Buffy never experiences her power as anything other than innate and hers. The burden of it is to do with her loneliness, not with the power itself. (Which is why I love Chosen so much, because by sharing her power, she removes the last obstacle in her way to freedom.)

See River for a different take - River is very powerful, but the cost is immense, and she is very fragile mentally because of it, and needs a lot of care and looking after. Buffy on the other hand is always the one in control, the one who looks after others. Even in 'Helpless', bereft of her powers, Buffy does not go seek help - not from Giles, nor from Angel. She goes by herself, with nothing but her wits and her self belief, and she saves the day.

So yes, I love Chosen. I love that she triumphs and that her life is her own, without any compromises.

But what about the comics? Ah now. This is where it gets interesting, because suddenly they make sense! We have the extreme powerlessness, followed by the extreme powerfullness, followed by sex... You can see all the key ingredients of any Joss work, but bluntly wielded and rammed in sideways, the characters grotesquely bent out of shape to fit the paradigms in question. (Much like the way the giant bug fits inside the human farmer in Men in Black.) This story was never Buffy's - she was the one that got away, the one who was her power, and owned it.

From the shooting script for Chosen:

BUFFY
I want you... to get out of my face.
The First looks suddenly worried.

SLO MO: Buffy rises. Sweaty, bloodied, hair in her face, but nothing but resolve in her eyes. The First is nowhere in sight as she takes a step forward, two, stumbling, hunched steps...

Rona sees her and throws her the scythe. Buffy catches it. Stands a little straighter.

And SCREAMS, and swings the back of the axe like it's a bat, knocking five vamps back and over the edge in one blow. Sauron himself would be, like, "dude..."




As always, vids influenced my thinking and illustrate what I want to say:

Bachelorette by obsessive24 is Buffy, ultimately winning. (In the shape of a girl.)

And My Medea by yunitsa shows the flipside. (Mostly Dollhouse/Firefly.) I can't remember if I've rec'd it before, but if not - make sure you watch! (So come to me my love/I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry)

ETA: I think my point is - Buffy is never the victim. This is one reason the AR is so uncomfortable - it tries to jam her into that box, and she doesn't fit. Even her death at The Master's hand comes about through her own choice and bravery.

One problem with s8 (possibly the biggest one) is that she accepts the victim role (letting go of her powers, becoming passive rather than fighting, no matter how hopeless), and when she regains her strength (with added superpowers) it is not through her own agency (or the love of friends/family), but as a consequence of Twilight-related-nonsense. She becomes just another woman willing to bend whichever way she needs because of male power, and then altered without consent.

Comments

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this. You've managed to articulate something that has been bugging me in not just Whedon's work but many other male writers writing about women, as well. Notably Heroes, Caprica, and Whedon's Dollhouse,
Angel, Doctor Horrible and Firefly, but to a lesser extent Buffy. The comics are only worth addressing here - because they made me aware of the problem.

Which is basically...that we have someone who is writing from a position of privilege, who has not or does not know what it is like to walk across the street and be heckled by construction workers. It's to put it in a broader context - the difficulty many people online have cited about whites writing about persons of color...you will no matter what you do end up projecting your own experience on to it, which I think can be problematic.

Whedon tells the "girl's" empowerment tale from a "male" perspective. His examination of "female romantic tropes" is also from a decisively male outlook. While he should be applauded for attempting to rise above that..I'm not quite sure it is possible in our society to do so - it is so ingrained.
And in the entertainment biz, in particular, the power is with White men. They choose the stories we see, they choose who writes them, who directs, and who produces. A perfect example is Wonder Woman - when that was pitched as an idea - male writers and male directors were the first choices. The comic itself was originally written and drawn by men. It's a woman's tale - but told through a male lense. Mad Men brilliantly critiques this through Penny's debates with her boss Don Draper, when she attempts to say that if it is a female product, shouldn't the female voice be heard - and Don shrugs her off, more or less stating it doesn't matter. An Echo of Roger's similar statement regarding fur coats to Don, it's not the woman who chooses the fur, it's her lover.

Whedon, I believe, much like the writers of Mad Men, is attempting to critique that societal view - in all his art. The difficulty or brick wall he's run into...is well, he can't help but further some of the very stereotypes and negative views that he is attempting to critique. Example - River in Firefly.
A powerful character. But her power is the result of torture and manipulation at male hands. She's been mentally raped and enhanced. It is "her brother" that saves her, not herself.
And finally Mal who saves her and provides her with a purpose.
She becomes in a sense Mal's surrogate daughter. A similar situation occurs - albeit tragically with Fred - who Angel/Wes/Gun and Lorne save from Pylea. She becomes in turns their lover, sister, daughter, girlfriend...and then is betrayed by a male friend/colleague who gives her to an ancient goddess as a new shell/sacrifice. Going back to Buffy ...we get somewhat the same pattern, but as Elsie states, Buffy does manage to save herself, unlike River or Fred.

Moving to Dollhouse - Caroline is a tough woman, strong, saving animals, tries to save her boyfriend, fails, and becomes a sort of vigilante. She is captured by the male run organization she's trying to take down. That organization in turn - wipes her memory and turns her into Echo, does to Caroline what in effect was done to River (and the First Slayer). Echo becomes even more special, even more powerful than Caroline ever was.
And she eventually does take down the male/father, but she also incorporates her male lover into her psyche, he resides inside her head as a sort of separate persona, a conscience - much like Mal becomes River's conscience.

This feels patronizing to me and somewhat creepy. The fact that Whedon sees Dollhouse and Echo's journey in Dollhouse as a triumphant one, a pure journey from helplessness to power, bothers me a bit. And I think the reason it does not work is in part what you articulated above, it's also the reason that the themes in the comics aren't working for me.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I agree with a lot of what you say, but before you agree with me too hard :) I should probably clarify what I said above; the fact that there are huge potential problems with either end of the "scale" doesn't mean that it can't be done well, IMO (FMPOP, From My Position Of Privilege? ;) ). Whedon doesn't get everything right, but for the most part he's at least aware of it and works to point out exactly what you say: where the power lies, the attitudes that further it (including, in Dollhouse, his own) and how to shift that.

While he should be applauded for attempting to rise above that..I'm not quite sure it is possible in our society to do so - it is so ingrained.

But - devil's advocate here - if we take that to its logical conclusion, if it's not possible, wouldn't that mean that men shouldn't try to write stories like these? And then we're back to muscled men saving helpless damsels without even a hint of subversion... It's why I added a little caveat, provided they're aware of it and see it as a problem rather than the natural order of things. There are already quite enough writers (and non-writers) who, FTPOP, don't even see or acknowledge the problems. Fiction is the possibly greatest tool we've come up with to try and understand ourselves, our own good and bad sides, and personally I'd much rather have a Dollhouse than a Fastlane, creepiness notwithstanding.

The difficulty or brick wall he's run into...is well, he can't help but further some of the very stereotypes and negative views that he is attempting to critique.

Absolutely. One problem (another, of course, being that Whedon isn't perfect in any way) is that any storyteller, especially postmodernists like Whedon, and especially in film and TV, depends to a large extent to certain well-established tropes - shortcuts from one part of the story to another. This isn't necessarily lazy writing, it's how writing, and its necessary counterpart reading, work. Even if Joss doesn't mean to make River a helpless damsel in distress (and I do think it's hardly the worst example of the trope) he (feels he) needs to acknowledge the trope to make the story work, to make sure the audience knows what's going on. He might not be completely aware that he's doing it, he might be trying to subvert it (shoving Wash into the fridge), he might be compromising and thinking he can't subvert everything all the time... But he can't not use it, or he might run the risk of falling into trap 1 instead and simply have River overcome everything without any problems at all.

Re: Dollhouse, I'm not sure I agree with you about how Caroline comes across. But that's a very long discussion that I think will have to wait until I've rewatched the whole series, I'm hoping to piece something together then.

Re: elisi's ETA - *nods quietly but vigorously*

Surprisingly enough, I agree with quite a bit of this

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

if we take that to its logical conclusion, if it's not possible, wouldn't that mean that men shouldn't try to write stories like these? And then we're back to muscled men saving helpless damsels without even a hint of subversion...

True enough. Fiction is after-all how we explore mindsets other than our own. I certainly do it. You are correct it can be done well. And Whedon for the most part has done a far better job of writing women than well, Stephen King. Heck - Aeryn Sun, one of my favorite female characters - was written by men. And Stephanie Meyer's damsels...make me far crazier. So it is not necessarily gender specific.

The easy path - as you state - would be to create yet another damsel. And yes, I prefer Buffy or Dollhouse to say...Hex or Heroes or even True Blood (even if it is a lot of fun to watch).

Even if Joss doesn't mean to make River a helpless damsel in distress (and I do think it's hardly the worst example of the trope) he (feels he) needs to acknowledge the trope to make the story work, to make sure the audience knows what's going on.....

True.

But, I think there is a way of acknowledging the trope without...well going too far down path #2. I know the trope he's playing with - and it has been played with before by both James Cameron and John Carpenter, not to mention Ridely Scott. The last female heroine who is battered, tortured, bruised, and in the subversion comes out fighting and conquers the day, as opposed to the abuser winning. The difficulty I have with River though is well, her power comes from her victimization. It isn't really there before it. Sure she's brilliant, but she's not a physical weapon - not super-girl. The mind-rape makes her supergirl. Because of point A (being raped - metaphorically or literally) - she's this powerful creature. If it weren't for that - she wouldn't be. So there's the danger of an underlying message here - that yes, you are given crappy circumstances, but I want you to be strong, you need to rise above them, those circumstances have made you powerful. It's well - the Medea vid...I torture/rape the girl to make her strong. It's for her own good. Granted an extremist reading, I admit that. ;-) But.. even with the milder tone? It's patronizing.

Now, backing up a step, in Dollhouse -Whedon explores through Topher what I stated above - which is why I found Dollhouse to be so fascinating, even though it bugged me at times. The problem with Dollhouse was far too much time was spent on exploring the ways women are victimized - often in a manner that...is an odd subversion of female romantic trope. Example: Sierra's story is a nightmare of a contemporary female romance novel. Many of the scenarios on Dollhouse are taken out of contemporary female romantic tropes. But we see them through a male lense.. and that's unsettling.

What may be my difficulty is the trope that Whedon is attempting to critique and subvert? To see that trope - all you have to do is watch any number of torture porn flicks (which I admittedly haven't but I remember Whedon ranting about them a while back) or the latest slasher flick. Whedon is attempting to take a page from Cameron - in that the plucky waitress being relentlessly pursued by The Terminator saves herself, while her protector dies. She's not a victim by the end. Where I am having issues with Whedon is I feel like there's undo empathsis on being victimized, particularly the manner in which she is victimized. I have to admit - I prefer Buffy, Willow, and to a degree Cordelia's journey to empowerment better (in the tv series). Also Aeryn Sun.

I think where Whedon fails in the latter stories is in how wedded he becomes to his definition of helpless. He wants to examine the victim rising up out of the ether and becoming a hero...and while in one respect that is empowering, in another - it is unsettling and creepy.

Re: Dollhouse, I'm not sure I agree with you about how Caroline comes across. But that's a very long discussion that I think will have to wait until I've rewatched the whole series, I'm hoping to piece something together then.

Will be interested to see your review on it. Haven't seen it since it aired here in the states. So memory may be foggy.

Re: Surprisingly enough, I agree with quite a bit of this

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I know the trope he's playing with - and it has been played with before by both James Cameron and John Carpenter, not to mention Ridely Scott. The last female heroine who is battered, tortured, bruised, and in the subversion comes out fighting and conquers the day, as opposed to the abuser winning.

On the other hand, the Last Girls of classic horror also remain victims, defined by the monsters that attack them; they merely survive, often implied to be scarred for life or killed off in the sequel. Ripley and Sarah Connor not quite as much, true, but Ripley (albeit in a story written by someone else) ends up infected by an alien and killing herself - until Joss brings her back. Y'know, with magic. ;) Sarah Connor spends years in a mental hospital, then (at least in the movieverse) dies of cancer offscreen. And Laurie Strode of Carpenter's Halloween survives the first two movies, but she never wins; she spends 20 years becoming a bitter alcoholic jumping at every shadow... and then Michael Myers kills her. What Joss' heroines, including Ripley in Resurrection, do - and I agree that it's not always done as well as it might have been - is to understand what has been done to them, appropriate the weapons of their enemies, and use it against them. It's how any moderately successful revolution works, and IMO it works very well with the underlying metaphor of fighting your own demons in Buffy (somewhat less so in Dollhouse and Alien, perhaps), but also with the gender politics: until you see how you (general you) have been marginalised, and acknowledge that it's so ingrained that it's part of you, you can't do anything about it.

Also Aeryn Sun.

Hell yes.

it is unsettling and creepy.

Absolutely no argument there, and I can understand how it's a dealbreaker for many. Though one of the things I did like about Dollhouse, and it was nice to have it confirmed in interviews etc since the FOX version of it tended to play it down, was that it was supposed to be creepy. Both writers and viewers were supposed to go "Programmable prostitutes, cool. That makes me a... rapist. Huh." It's basically the series-long version of the scene with Katrina and the Trio in "Dead Things", except Katrina makes it up the stairs, and the writer is forced to acknowledge that there's probably a bit of Warren in him too. There's probably meta here about the violence of the storyteller upon the character (again, see David Lynch and the masterful INLAND EMPIRE), but that's for another day...

Re: Surprisingly enough, I agree with quite a bit of this

[angearia.livejournal.com]

There's probably meta here about the violence of the storyteller upon the character

*nods* I wrote about that a few months ago. That Joss sees himself and the way he treats the characters, his absolute power... that it unsettles him. Which I think is an understatement.

Re: Surprisingly enough, I agree with quite a bit of this

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

What Joss' heroines, including Ripley in Resurrection, do - and I agree that it's not always done as well as it might have been - is to understand what has been done to them, appropriate the weapons of their enemies, and use it against them. It's how any moderately successful revolution works, and IMO it works very well with the underlying metaphor of fighting your own demons in Buffy (somewhat less so in Dollhouse and Alien, perhaps), but also with the gender politics: until you see how you (general you) have been marginalised, and acknowledge that it's so ingrained that it's part of you, you can't do anything about it.

True. His heroines do at least come to grips with what has been done to them and find a way of at least trying to fight against it and possibly own it..but, at times I feel he's underlining that last sentence. It feels at times as if he is relating how he would handle it if he were female.
Not quite understanding or respecting how we already have. In some respects, I think Farscape addressed this better with Aeryn Sun - and to a lesser degree Chiana. At any rate - it worked better for me, in part because the emphasis was taken off the stereotype of the poor little girl, and broadened.

Part of my difficulty with Whedon is it is always an adolescent or small girl. Which admittedly makes sense - since he is attempting to counter the stereotype that the small girl or little girl is the victim who dies in the slasher flick - see Drew Barrymore and Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Scream movies. But, with Aeryn (who wasn't necessarily big) and Chiana (who definitely wasn't) - it is addressed in a different yet in some respects less creepy way. Maybe because the theme of Farscape is more general? And maybe because it is less gender specific? BSG and to a degree Caprica are much the same way - it's central theme was less based on gender.

The difficulty I think in attempting to subvert or address sexual perversion and gender - is you run the risk of well repeating the rape metaphor over and over again to the point in which all the viewer sees is the rape metaphor, and doesn't see the rest of the message. (Which literally has happened here.)

Part of the problem may very well be the environment (Hollywood - which seems to be obsessed with sex and violence) and genre that he has immersed himself in as both critic and artist. (Whedon loves the superhero, horror, western, sci-fi, noir genres - which steer towards violence and sex). As Whedon admits - it was hard to focus on sexual perversion and identity, when he was being told to do shoot them ups at the same time. He wanted to explore the sexual identity, but he was told that the network/advertisers wanted violence - for the male demographic. The temptation? To combine them, which of course leads to multiple takes on rape. And if you're going down that road, let's at least make the audience realize they are complicit in pulling you there. (That last sentence is what I liked about Dollhouse.)

Dollhouse, unlike Buffy, was a show that was being targeted to men, not women. (Fox wanted what the CW is currently doing now - Nikita or an Alias - hot babes kicking ass and being sexy as they do it, with the added bit of them taking down a male organization yet never quite achieving it. They did not want that fantasy trampled - which is what Whedon was in a sense doing with Dollhouse - he was trampling on the Alias fantasy. That made the network and advertisers as uncomfortable as their audience.)

I think the problem with Dollhouse - was Whedon tried to appease too many people - give Fox what they wanted, the advertisers what they wanted, Eliza what she wanted, while at the same time attempting to figure out what he wanted. The other problem is the type of writer Whedon is - he's off-the-cuff or make it up as I go along, intiuitive writer. Not a planner. He even says this in the interview I read (it's in SciFiNow, issue 46 - www.scifinow.co.uk) - that he likes to go by the seat of his pants.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Example - River in Firefly. A powerful character. But her power is the result of torture and manipulation at male hands. She's been mentally raped and enhanced. It is "her brother" that saves her, not herself.

Her brother rescues her from the compound, but it's River who saves herself. She leads Mal et al to the planet where she confronts and reveals the Alliance secret. By doing so, she regains a sense of control over her own mental anguish. Then she goes on to save everyone by controlling her abilities--agency restored--to fight the Reavers.

River saves herself, then she saves everyone.

I do agree that Echo taking Paul inside her head is creepy as hell. But I don't think Echo qualifies again as someone who doesn't save herself. It's her innate physical ability that allows her to keep hold of the imprints, said ability that brings her to the attention of the Mysterious Benefactor (avoiding spoilers here) who sends her into the Dollhouse to have her test the system. And like you said, she in turn destroys the father who thought to use her. And she saves everyone through leading them.

I disagree with the dichotomy implied in--Echo becomes even more special, even more powerful than Caroline ever was--because the show doesn't treat them as completely separate. Echo's strength comes from Caroline. Adelle attests to this when Echo leads all the dolls out of the Dollhouse--Adelle identifies the act as pure Caroline. The power Echo attains is only possible based upon who Caroline was physically, and the power Echo builds upon in mastering her imprints is only possible based upon Caroline's own strength of will, her defiance, her determination to help others (her savior complex, too).

Both River and Echo triumph because of their own agency, by taking the powers and skills dumped into them and mastering them, forging them into a weapon they will wield as they choose. And they choose to help their friends. They end their stories in perfect control of themselves, their bodies, their spirit. This is perhaps best shown by how River flies the ship, taking her into the sky before Mal can even give her instructions on how. River is in control of Serenity now. When Mal talks about loving her, listening to her keen, River tells him she already knows but she likes to hear him say it. River is humoring Mal. As Spike once said to Giles, "she's surpassed [him]."

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Both River and Echo triumph because of their own agency, by taking the powers and skills dumped into them and mastering them, forging them into a weapon they will wield as they choose.
This. Also it's significant that River was already a polymath genious before the Initiative did anything to her and Caroline's imprint-assimilating specialness was innate to her. Joss has this weird sort-of Freudian theory that misogyny comes from a pathology he calls "womb envy." Which is kind of gross at one level but when it's about what women can do not what they are isn't so regressive. Misogynists not only hate women they envy them, they find it unbearable that River and Echo, mere girls, can do what they can't.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Right. I'd amend my statement to say the powers and skills weren't dumped into them, but manipulated and magnified--the misogynists were trying to harness their power, make a more perfect "soldier", and the women rebelled and remastered their power. It is for her alone to wield.

Haha, womb envy.

Which is kind of gross at one level but when it's about what women can do not what they are isn't so regressive.

Yep.