The Hollow World
Well the S5 discs arrived and just to be contrary I decided to start watching in the middle. Really just to see how A Hole in the World and Shells play when you see them in one sitting, which is how I first saw Surprise/Innocence and that was good.
It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World
This is a man's world
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing
Nothing without a woman to care
You see man made the cars
To take us over the world
Man made the train
To carry the heavy load
Man made the electric lights
To take us out of the dark
Man made the bullet for the war
Like Noah made the ark
This is a man's world
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing
Nothing without a woman to care
Man thinks of our little baby girls And the baby boys
Man make them happy 'Cause man makes them toys
And aher man make everything, everything he can
You know that man makes money to buy from other man
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing, nothing
Not one little thing
Without a woman to care
He's lost in the wilderness
He's lost in the bitterness
He's lost, lost and ............
James Brown 1966
I’ve spent my working life in academia. The pay’s not brilliant, the hours can be long but on the plus side are the intellectual freedom, comparative job security and relatively non-hostile environment for women. Relatively non-hostile and yet I can still remember, shortly after getting my first job, arriving a couple of minutes late to a faculty meeting and suddenly realizing that everyone else sitting at the table was a man in a suit. That disconcerting feeling of being the only woman in the room and therefore, in some sense, not being in the room at all (and we still get paid less at every level) came back a lot watching the final episodes of Angel S5. With one of the major themes of the season being the nature of corporate culture perhaps it’s only appropriate that by the end of the season the only ‘women’ who survive are Harmony as the archetypal blonde secretary and Illyria as every company man’s nightmare of the ball breaking, effortlessly superior, corporate bitch.
The gender politics of S5 have been much criticized. All the female leads do get killed off but I find it hard to decide whether this is a reversion to sexist genre type or a comment on the overwhelmingly masculine character of modern corporations. Looking at Whedon’s last episode A Hole in the World, after all the big dramatics and melodramatics are done with what’s left seems to be a pervasive sense of regret. There’s a definite impression that while the men have made this bright and hollow world they’re not really at home in it. To quote Spike: "There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.”
Fred
A Hole in the World is of course the episode in which Fred dies. Coupled with Shells and I am very dense but it’s only just hit me that A Hole in the World and Shells are both synonyms for hollow thing(s). Hollow, empty, a nothingness bounded and framed. The double episode is framed by scenes of Fred about to leave the family home in Texas, a shell of Fred if you like. And the story she encases is of her essence being destroyed in order to create a shell. What is the essence of Fred? Innocence, hope, curiosity, pancakes? For this story perhaps it’s womanliness. She does seem to run a gamut of female types as the story progresses. Maybe that’s what Wesley meant when he says he loved her before he knew her.
At the beginning of the episode Fred comes across as the gal who has it all. She’s the scientist with an eye for a good specimen, the compassionate lab head, everyone’s friend and confidant and love’s young dream to boot. Then, like the biblical Eve, she is tempted, she is curious (Wesley again) and she falls (literally down the stairs). Fallen she is forced into the role of damsel, collapsing into her lover’s arms. When he takes her home her physical convulsions, knees up, arms braced against the headboard, give the appearance of a mother giving birth.
Gunn
On the male side the key players in these two episodes seem to be Gunn and Wesley. It’s Angel’s show but he seems to spend most of it sidelined with Spike. Rather than instigating the action he’s either reacting to it or commenting on it. Plotwise Fred’s transformation happens because Gunn signs the paper to let a sarcophagus through customs in return for a permanent brain boost. Gunn, of course, was the one member of Angel’s team who was positively enthusiastic about joining Wolfram and Hart, the one who continued to see it as his big chance to do good and the one who most reveled in the fringe benefits. Which is to say that this season he became one of the boys. The only memorable interaction between him and a woman was his attack on Eve in Destiny and the only thing waiting for him in the White Room is himself. Gunn signed up for corporate culture, he perpetuated it, he let it define him and now he fears he can’t go back.
Wesley
Gunn may have enabled Fred’s death in the literal sense but emotionally the episode seems to finger Wesley as the guilty one. A case could be made that as a former Watcher he represents an older incarnation of the patriarchal institution but it seems more personal than that. It’s been possible to argue that Wesley’s feelings about women are highly problematic since his madonna-whore tendencies were revealed in Billy. In general I think it’s not as simple as that but it comes very close where Fred is concerned. Is it just me but if there’s anything creepier than Wesley-in-love in the first act of A Hole in the World I don’t want to meet it in a dark alley. So kudos to Alexis Denisof.
Reinforcing the sense that Wesley feels responsible for everything, towards the end of Shells if you squint there are odd parallels between incidents in his storyline and Buffy’s with Angelus in Innocence. Buffy shot down the Little Bad, the Judge, and went in pursuit of Angelus but couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Wesley shoots Knox and follows Illyria through the portal but also can’t bring himself to pull the trigger when he finds her. Buffy then had Giles as her final confessor but no such reassuring figure is available for Wesley who is left explaining things to a dispossessed Illyria.
Conclusion
Shells ends with a montage of all the remaining characters isolated to the strains of a sweet Country and Western tune that sounds completely out of place. Until it switches to the final scene, a flash back of Fred leaving home and suddenly you realize it wasn’t the music that was wrong but the place. Working for a big corporation maybe it’s easy to get sucked into that world and forget that anything exists beyond it. But, this final sequence seems to be saying, that’s not true. Outside the necrotempered glass walls there’s still another world where men and women can work together and form families. Where curiosity is a virtue and it’s still possible to set out on a journey with a heart full of hope.
It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World
This is a man's world
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing
Nothing without a woman to care
You see man made the cars
To take us over the world
Man made the train
To carry the heavy load
Man made the electric lights
To take us out of the dark
Man made the bullet for the war
Like Noah made the ark
This is a man's world
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing
Nothing without a woman to care
Man thinks of our little baby girls And the baby boys
Man make them happy 'Cause man makes them toys
And aher man make everything, everything he can
You know that man makes money to buy from other man
This is a man's world
But it would be nothing, nothing
Not one little thing
Without a woman to care
He's lost in the wilderness
He's lost in the bitterness
He's lost, lost and ............
James Brown 1966
I’ve spent my working life in academia. The pay’s not brilliant, the hours can be long but on the plus side are the intellectual freedom, comparative job security and relatively non-hostile environment for women. Relatively non-hostile and yet I can still remember, shortly after getting my first job, arriving a couple of minutes late to a faculty meeting and suddenly realizing that everyone else sitting at the table was a man in a suit. That disconcerting feeling of being the only woman in the room and therefore, in some sense, not being in the room at all (and we still get paid less at every level) came back a lot watching the final episodes of Angel S5. With one of the major themes of the season being the nature of corporate culture perhaps it’s only appropriate that by the end of the season the only ‘women’ who survive are Harmony as the archetypal blonde secretary and Illyria as every company man’s nightmare of the ball breaking, effortlessly superior, corporate bitch.
The gender politics of S5 have been much criticized. All the female leads do get killed off but I find it hard to decide whether this is a reversion to sexist genre type or a comment on the overwhelmingly masculine character of modern corporations. Looking at Whedon’s last episode A Hole in the World, after all the big dramatics and melodramatics are done with what’s left seems to be a pervasive sense of regret. There’s a definite impression that while the men have made this bright and hollow world they’re not really at home in it. To quote Spike: "There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known.”
Fred
A Hole in the World is of course the episode in which Fred dies. Coupled with Shells and I am very dense but it’s only just hit me that A Hole in the World and Shells are both synonyms for hollow thing(s). Hollow, empty, a nothingness bounded and framed. The double episode is framed by scenes of Fred about to leave the family home in Texas, a shell of Fred if you like. And the story she encases is of her essence being destroyed in order to create a shell. What is the essence of Fred? Innocence, hope, curiosity, pancakes? For this story perhaps it’s womanliness. She does seem to run a gamut of female types as the story progresses. Maybe that’s what Wesley meant when he says he loved her before he knew her.
At the beginning of the episode Fred comes across as the gal who has it all. She’s the scientist with an eye for a good specimen, the compassionate lab head, everyone’s friend and confidant and love’s young dream to boot. Then, like the biblical Eve, she is tempted, she is curious (Wesley again) and she falls (literally down the stairs). Fallen she is forced into the role of damsel, collapsing into her lover’s arms. When he takes her home her physical convulsions, knees up, arms braced against the headboard, give the appearance of a mother giving birth.
Gunn
On the male side the key players in these two episodes seem to be Gunn and Wesley. It’s Angel’s show but he seems to spend most of it sidelined with Spike. Rather than instigating the action he’s either reacting to it or commenting on it. Plotwise Fred’s transformation happens because Gunn signs the paper to let a sarcophagus through customs in return for a permanent brain boost. Gunn, of course, was the one member of Angel’s team who was positively enthusiastic about joining Wolfram and Hart, the one who continued to see it as his big chance to do good and the one who most reveled in the fringe benefits. Which is to say that this season he became one of the boys. The only memorable interaction between him and a woman was his attack on Eve in Destiny and the only thing waiting for him in the White Room is himself. Gunn signed up for corporate culture, he perpetuated it, he let it define him and now he fears he can’t go back.
Wesley
Gunn may have enabled Fred’s death in the literal sense but emotionally the episode seems to finger Wesley as the guilty one. A case could be made that as a former Watcher he represents an older incarnation of the patriarchal institution but it seems more personal than that. It’s been possible to argue that Wesley’s feelings about women are highly problematic since his madonna-whore tendencies were revealed in Billy. In general I think it’s not as simple as that but it comes very close where Fred is concerned. Is it just me but if there’s anything creepier than Wesley-in-love in the first act of A Hole in the World I don’t want to meet it in a dark alley. So kudos to Alexis Denisof.
Reinforcing the sense that Wesley feels responsible for everything, towards the end of Shells if you squint there are odd parallels between incidents in his storyline and Buffy’s with Angelus in Innocence. Buffy shot down the Little Bad, the Judge, and went in pursuit of Angelus but couldn’t bring herself to kill him. Wesley shoots Knox and follows Illyria through the portal but also can’t bring himself to pull the trigger when he finds her. Buffy then had Giles as her final confessor but no such reassuring figure is available for Wesley who is left explaining things to a dispossessed Illyria.
Conclusion
Shells ends with a montage of all the remaining characters isolated to the strains of a sweet Country and Western tune that sounds completely out of place. Until it switches to the final scene, a flash back of Fred leaving home and suddenly you realize it wasn’t the music that was wrong but the place. Working for a big corporation maybe it’s easy to get sucked into that world and forget that anything exists beyond it. But, this final sequence seems to be saying, that’s not true. Outside the necrotempered glass walls there’s still another world where men and women can work together and form families. Where curiosity is a virtue and it’s still possible to set out on a journey with a heart full of hope.