meta meta meta
Okay, I have a question. Actually, what I really have is a big bundle of related questions. For the sake of clarity, though, my question goes: as far as pairings you like in your TV shows go, are you usually content going with the text and the stuff the writers explicitly say, or does the text make you uncomfortable and wanting to go someplace else with your interpretations?
I ask this question specifically about TV because TV fandoms are a fairly new thing for me and consequently extremely fascinating. Now, in book fandoms, you've got basically two things, the actual text on the page and whatever the author chooses to say about that book in interviews &c; so you either go with textual reading and supplements or you take the text's subtexts and gaps and fill in your missing scenes or backstories or futurefics, thank you and goodnight.
With TV you have this whole other monster: there's the script itself -- there's your text -- but then there's the music cuing you to what your emotions should be, and the blocking telling you how a scene should be read, and the kicker, which is the actors. They are not description and dialogue on a page to be filled in by your own inner voice. They are living people who are coming between you and the script and deciding what this character means and deciding in turn what the characters around them mean also. Here when you make your interpretation you have the scripted text and a whole riot of voices telling you what they think x character's action about y means, and your subtext is visual: angle shots, how close one character chooses to stand to another, &c.
When I watched Buffy the first time, I was not well-versed in the ways of reading TV. Now, I had already seen Firefly and was fairly on board with the "Joss is brilliant" concept, so I just went with the flow. Xander and Cordy? Hey, sure. Willow and Kennedy? I guess so. I'm more or less sold on the pairings, moving on. The second time through, I had already gone through various epic struggles with reading Doctor Who (see below, I'll get to that one also) and knew how to watch skeptically. This time, though, I was not watching Buffy alone, but with my friend Ray. I haven't had the meta-text/text/subtext talk with Ray ever, so I cannot claim knowledge of the way she reads the show; what I do know is that her Buffy OTPs are Buffy/Angel and Willow/Tara, and this makes her one happy camper. Why? Both the text and meta-text of the show support her.
(I warn that all my various following quotations, whether from episodes or interviews, are probably paraphrased and definitely uncited, as this is not a premeditated post and I only have all this info in my brain.) Buffy at one point says that she loved Angel more than she will love anything in this life. Of course one could validly point out that she hasn't met her other lovers yet and is a dramatic teenager, and one could snarkily point out, uh, which life exactly are we talking here, Buff? It remains: Buffy says that she loves Angel more than she will ever love anything again. Text. On the Willow/Tara front, in my meanderings through the wonderful world of the Buffy fandom I have discovered that Joss said Willow has always been gay and it just took her a while to realise it. Crushing blow to the Willow/Oz camp? Well, yeah. Ridiculously confusing for those among us who hold out bisexuality as a valid identity in life? That too. But there's your meta-text, and despite the hearsay that is my knowledge of the comics, the text of the show itself sets Tara up as Willow's One True Love and Kennedy as the rebound chick.
Watching Buffy with Ray was therefore all sorts of enjoyable for me. It's fantastic to watch something with someone who is genuinely enthusiastic and supportive of all the text and meta-text, because enthusiasm is catching and it is very nice not to struggle against a show. Now, don't get me wrong; I like these pairings fine. I like Buffy better when she's not with anyone, which happily the text of the show also supports re: Buff's cookie-dough speech, but -- here's the thing. The first time around, I just found Buffy/Spike a lot more interesting than Buffy/Angel, if only because I am a sucker for really fucked-up fictional people. The second time around, due in large part to [a] newfound love for David Boreanaz re: the show Bones and [b] Ray's catching enthusiasm, I really enjoyed the Buffy/Angel. I still found the Buffy/Spike plain more interesting, but I was more or less on the B/A OTP Bandwagon.
Here's what the text of the show gives us: Buffy is, or at least has been, in love with Angel. Let's make that 'is', since when she sees him briefly in s7 she makes out with him like there's no tomorrow -- although, in all fairness, impeding apocalypse. Buffy spends most of s6 insisting that she doesn't have feelings for Spike and it's just the sex. She also tells him she loves him, but the textual response and final word on the subject is "No you don't, but thanks for saying it." Here's what the subtext of the show gives us: brooding guilt-ridden vampire meets cute teenage Slayer. Brooding guilt-ridden vampire sees the face of his salvation; cute teenage Slayer sees tall, fanged, and angsty, which, let's face it, she's seventeen and there's a great Romeo & Juliet thing going on here. Bam, instantly in love. Now, far as we know Buffy never knows that Angel dances like a colossal dorkface and likes to sing 'Mandy', nor does Angel really know anything about Buffy after she really starts becoming an adult. Logistically of course this was to avoid too much show crossover, but what we've got is two people who really love the idea of each other and want to know each other but never really have. Meanwhile we got Spike, who, unlike the Angelus we all know and, uh ... know, starts being all White Hat before going out to get a soul of his very own. Note the lack of gypsy curses. Angel is unhappy and conscience-ridden; Buffy only knows him, really, when he is all Angelcakes, and absolves him of all his awful Angelus stuff. Spike, well, Spike was a bit of an evil fucker and he does seem to feel a bit twitchy about it, but with his kinda itchy new soul he is still recognisably Spike; therefore Buffy does not feel compelled to absolve him of anything (see: attempted rape, end of s6; let's weigh this one against Angelus' various sins), although to be fair to Buffy she is all about the Let's Not Kill Spike Please, Giles. Anyway, the subtext gives us something a lot weirder than the text does, despite the text's half-arsed attempt to make the choice between Angel and Spike any sort of contest. Obviously the solution is a threesome. (What is that you say? The comics sort of went there? Jolly good.)
I was also going to talk about how the early subtext of the show makes me cry because Xander is totally the gay one and meta-text, ie logistics and Seth Green leaving, damn yoooou Seth Green, mean the text made Willow the gay one instead despite the fact that it is obviously Xander, but the Angel/Buffy/Spike thing ate up a lot of space and if I start in on Fictional Portrayals of Gayness I will go on for ... a while. So in conclusion Buffy is a good enough show that I will both willingly embrace its text and want to poke the subtext with sticks. At length. And possibly demand of Joss what he means about Willow being gay all along.
I was going to talk about Doctor Who also, but it would have felt weird and tacked on and my companions rant is also a whole other post, so: are you at peace with the text of your show? Do you prod the subtext and demand of the various writers, "What are you talking about, clearly x is not true at all!" ? I think it is lots of fun to be at odds with the text, because where would fandom be without wacky non-canon pairings that are nevertheless supportable with the material, but there is only a certain degree of at-odds that is fun. I am not invested enough in who cookie-Buffy ends up with for this to upset me, but if I were to extrapolate upon my experiences in Who fandom, I would say at a guess that not wanting Buffy and Angel to end up together would kind of, ha, suck.
Give me your thoughts, please? I would prefer if they were TV thoughts but they do not have to be Buffy thoughts. Unless they are thoughts about how Xander is the gay one. Those thoughts I want to hear.
I ask this question specifically about TV because TV fandoms are a fairly new thing for me and consequently extremely fascinating. Now, in book fandoms, you've got basically two things, the actual text on the page and whatever the author chooses to say about that book in interviews &c; so you either go with textual reading and supplements or you take the text's subtexts and gaps and fill in your missing scenes or backstories or futurefics, thank you and goodnight.
With TV you have this whole other monster: there's the script itself -- there's your text -- but then there's the music cuing you to what your emotions should be, and the blocking telling you how a scene should be read, and the kicker, which is the actors. They are not description and dialogue on a page to be filled in by your own inner voice. They are living people who are coming between you and the script and deciding what this character means and deciding in turn what the characters around them mean also. Here when you make your interpretation you have the scripted text and a whole riot of voices telling you what they think x character's action about y means, and your subtext is visual: angle shots, how close one character chooses to stand to another, &c.
When I watched Buffy the first time, I was not well-versed in the ways of reading TV. Now, I had already seen Firefly and was fairly on board with the "Joss is brilliant" concept, so I just went with the flow. Xander and Cordy? Hey, sure. Willow and Kennedy? I guess so. I'm more or less sold on the pairings, moving on. The second time through, I had already gone through various epic struggles with reading Doctor Who (see below, I'll get to that one also) and knew how to watch skeptically. This time, though, I was not watching Buffy alone, but with my friend Ray. I haven't had the meta-text/text/subtext talk with Ray ever, so I cannot claim knowledge of the way she reads the show; what I do know is that her Buffy OTPs are Buffy/Angel and Willow/Tara, and this makes her one happy camper. Why? Both the text and meta-text of the show support her.
(I warn that all my various following quotations, whether from episodes or interviews, are probably paraphrased and definitely uncited, as this is not a premeditated post and I only have all this info in my brain.) Buffy at one point says that she loved Angel more than she will love anything in this life. Of course one could validly point out that she hasn't met her other lovers yet and is a dramatic teenager, and one could snarkily point out, uh, which life exactly are we talking here, Buff? It remains: Buffy says that she loves Angel more than she will ever love anything again. Text. On the Willow/Tara front, in my meanderings through the wonderful world of the Buffy fandom I have discovered that Joss said Willow has always been gay and it just took her a while to realise it. Crushing blow to the Willow/Oz camp? Well, yeah. Ridiculously confusing for those among us who hold out bisexuality as a valid identity in life? That too. But there's your meta-text, and despite the hearsay that is my knowledge of the comics, the text of the show itself sets Tara up as Willow's One True Love and Kennedy as the rebound chick.
Watching Buffy with Ray was therefore all sorts of enjoyable for me. It's fantastic to watch something with someone who is genuinely enthusiastic and supportive of all the text and meta-text, because enthusiasm is catching and it is very nice not to struggle against a show. Now, don't get me wrong; I like these pairings fine. I like Buffy better when she's not with anyone, which happily the text of the show also supports re: Buff's cookie-dough speech, but -- here's the thing. The first time around, I just found Buffy/Spike a lot more interesting than Buffy/Angel, if only because I am a sucker for really fucked-up fictional people. The second time around, due in large part to [a] newfound love for David Boreanaz re: the show Bones and [b] Ray's catching enthusiasm, I really enjoyed the Buffy/Angel. I still found the Buffy/Spike plain more interesting, but I was more or less on the B/A OTP Bandwagon.
Here's what the text of the show gives us: Buffy is, or at least has been, in love with Angel. Let's make that 'is', since when she sees him briefly in s7 she makes out with him like there's no tomorrow -- although, in all fairness, impeding apocalypse. Buffy spends most of s6 insisting that she doesn't have feelings for Spike and it's just the sex. She also tells him she loves him, but the textual response and final word on the subject is "No you don't, but thanks for saying it." Here's what the subtext of the show gives us: brooding guilt-ridden vampire meets cute teenage Slayer. Brooding guilt-ridden vampire sees the face of his salvation; cute teenage Slayer sees tall, fanged, and angsty, which, let's face it, she's seventeen and there's a great Romeo & Juliet thing going on here. Bam, instantly in love. Now, far as we know Buffy never knows that Angel dances like a colossal dorkface and likes to sing 'Mandy', nor does Angel really know anything about Buffy after she really starts becoming an adult. Logistically of course this was to avoid too much show crossover, but what we've got is two people who really love the idea of each other and want to know each other but never really have. Meanwhile we got Spike, who, unlike the Angelus we all know and, uh ... know, starts being all White Hat before going out to get a soul of his very own. Note the lack of gypsy curses. Angel is unhappy and conscience-ridden; Buffy only knows him, really, when he is all Angelcakes, and absolves him of all his awful Angelus stuff. Spike, well, Spike was a bit of an evil fucker and he does seem to feel a bit twitchy about it, but with his kinda itchy new soul he is still recognisably Spike; therefore Buffy does not feel compelled to absolve him of anything (see: attempted rape, end of s6; let's weigh this one against Angelus' various sins), although to be fair to Buffy she is all about the Let's Not Kill Spike Please, Giles. Anyway, the subtext gives us something a lot weirder than the text does, despite the text's half-arsed attempt to make the choice between Angel and Spike any sort of contest. Obviously the solution is a threesome. (What is that you say? The comics sort of went there? Jolly good.)
I was also going to talk about how the early subtext of the show makes me cry because Xander is totally the gay one and meta-text, ie logistics and Seth Green leaving, damn yoooou Seth Green, mean the text made Willow the gay one instead despite the fact that it is obviously Xander, but the Angel/Buffy/Spike thing ate up a lot of space and if I start in on Fictional Portrayals of Gayness I will go on for ... a while. So in conclusion Buffy is a good enough show that I will both willingly embrace its text and want to poke the subtext with sticks. At length. And possibly demand of Joss what he means about Willow being gay all along.
I was going to talk about Doctor Who also, but it would have felt weird and tacked on and my companions rant is also a whole other post, so: are you at peace with the text of your show? Do you prod the subtext and demand of the various writers, "What are you talking about, clearly x is not true at all!" ? I think it is lots of fun to be at odds with the text, because where would fandom be without wacky non-canon pairings that are nevertheless supportable with the material, but there is only a certain degree of at-odds that is fun. I am not invested enough in who cookie-Buffy ends up with for this to upset me, but if I were to extrapolate upon my experiences in Who fandom, I would say at a guess that not wanting Buffy and Angel to end up together would kind of, ha, suck.
Give me your thoughts, please? I would prefer if they were TV thoughts but they do not have to be Buffy thoughts. Unless they are thoughts about how Xander is the gay one. Those thoughts I want to hear.