The Feminist Filter: Halloween
Alright! Let's do Halloween! This one is particularly rich in the feminist text, so make yourself some tea. :)
Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and encourage open discussion. It's not so much about making value judgments about events and/or characters but about analyzing the ( Read more... )
Mission Statement:This series is intended to outline the feminist text of each episode so as to provoke and encourage open discussion. It's not so much about making value judgments about events and/or characters but about analyzing the ( Read more... )
she sees Giles as being more admirable and more relatable as book man than as romance man.
I think it also might show Willow not thinking much of performance because she's aware of the gender roles -- ooooh they're both being so cliche. Which is funny considering how she'll go forward. She begins to realize the need to ~perform in order to become (a la Spike), but she's always overly aware of her performance and afraid of being found out for her falsehood.
Dark Willow is when she's reveling in the performance -- look what I can do? -- and she's aware that it's false but that it's also true. She's caught between her ability to create and her need to conform because reality is determined by interaction with and the perception of ~others. If a Willow falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does she make a sound? If a Willow becomes superpowerful and there's no one to witness it, is she really any different than she was back in high school?
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The switch in Flooded is big isn't it? Willow is so proud that she's done one better on Giles, too. Watchers get their slayers killed; Willow brings Giles' slayer back to life. She has better magic knowledge. It is a big usurpation of Giles' position as the mind, and Giles doesn't like it -- and it is true that it's a combination of legitimate worries, and the fact that his territory has been stepped on. I mean, it's mostly the former -- but maybe Willow's not *just* seeing things from her self-centred POV when she wonders aloud in Grave if he left because he couldn't stand that she was the one with the power.
PERFORMANCE
Willow already does do performance art in season one (indeed, before we meet her), but I think she's not quite conscious of it. Willow is aware that performance is false; Willow doesn't quite realize that performance can also reveal reality. She thinks she's being true even when she's being fake, she thinks she's being fake even when she's being true. Maggie likes to say that Willow is much more truly herself in season five or whenever when she's more outwardly confident and sexually assured and so forth -- no stuttering! she knows that she's attracted to women! -- and I think it's actually not untrue. But is there even a true self?
I'm trying to think what the difference is between the Willow and Spike transformations. Willow's seems more gradual but it probably isn't, considering over how many years Spike's takes place. Both reject the nerd harshly; both are much more vulnerable than they make themselves appear. But I do think that Willow doesn't put on a show to quite the same conscious degree that Spike does -- and Willow also makes a show of her weakness in a way that Spike never does. Willow makes herself seem more nonthreatening than she is, when there's a chance people will hate on her. Spike doesn't do that much -- though he does have OTT displays of crying when he's upset! -- but he doesn't do the public self-effacing in the same way. Self-effacing, I mean...not self-criticism, not describing himself as a loser, but the actual effort to seem to disappear. And that is something Willow thinks of as her true self, but is also something that is partially constructed: she slips into "I'm just a poor nervous nerd girl!" at the end of her threat to Giles, for example, right when it's an appropriate time to try to make things seem okay again. She slips into that old identity even more post-Wrecked when it's time to establish that she's Willow the good but weak addict defined in harsh opposition to Willow the power-mad rapist. It's not quite conscious, but it's definitely performative, and I don't think Spike does the same, at least not while soulless. I wonder if that's a gender issue? *Willow needs to seem HARMLESS*, which I think is very gendered. Spike will sometimes plot to seem harmless, but it's more...calculated -- like when he's waiting in the wheelchair for the time to strike out against Angel & Dru. And he maintains his image of strength. Wow, long.
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This no doubt stems from gender expectations, too. Spike's performative show is hypermasculine. He only gives in to ALL MY CREYS when he's in private (after Buffy storms off in FFL, as he's storming off down the street after Cecily rejects him) or when he's too mentally exhausted and lost to perform (the end of Beneath You) and has given up all hope of wearing a costume convincingly.
Willow's self-effacement, I think, falls in line with the expectations that women not be ~smart or bossy. Even Willow's cutesy way of speaking softens her displays of intellect. The first time she snaps at Giles and Angel in Reptile Boy, it's immediately followed by a ramble that displaces the sense of authority she'd just commanded over the two men.
Actually, I think I disagree that Willow is more truly herself in Season 5. Season 5 is the era of cutesy baby talk with Tara -- which eventually devolves into actual baby talk when Tara's been mentally disabled by Glory. Like you, I'm not sure there's a ~true self here. I think in Season 5, Willow's is playing the role of the lover. It's weird, because the infantilizing language displays in a way both infantilize Willow and Tara. Or maybe Willow uses the baby language the way girlfriends use it with boyfriends, as a way to play the hyperfeminine role in the relationship in the showing of affection (Tara is the mother for part of their relationship) and this role gets reversed when Tara becomes the child Willow must care for.
There's so much performance going on in Season 5 for me to feel like it's true, I think. I think Willow in Season 7 seems more ~natural to me. She's been zapped of her need for overblown performance after the climax of Season 6, a performative nature that was building strength in Season 5. By Season 7, her identity seems more settled ("I'm over you, sweetie," and "gay now!") and while she may appear hesitant and even uncertain of her power, that's far more honest than overcompensating for her insecurities by saying she can ~totally~ handle all this magic which she has NO training to handle like in previous seasons.
Haha LONG COMMENT IS LONG.
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Season seven Willow is like a vector sum of all the previous Willows.
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In terms of empowerment, S7 Willow seems like a step backward. She starts off being apprenticed again by Giles and the Devon coven; when she gets back to Sunnydale she slips into maximum self-effacement mode and literally disappears. For the rest of the season, she's a mass of self-doubt and tries to avoid conflict of any kind (e.g. refusing to help Buffy against Anya in "Selfless"), being once again content in a sidekick role. Even the spell in "Chosen" is Buffy's idea, which Willow resists on the grounds of her own supposed weakness.
But I think the writers (and the actor) are saying something more subtle about power. S7 Willow has, finally, begun to understand that power isn't a worthy end in itself. I'm not entirely sure how that fits in with a feminist reading, but I would say Willow has become an adult. Not the "final" or "real" Willow, because what's that, right? (For anyone, not juts her.) But a Willow who understands sacrifice and loss.
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But by the end of "Get It Done," Willow is very honest in explaining "how [she] work[s]" by glomping onto the strongest person in the room and zapping Kennedy of her strength. She's very accepting of what has to be done. Hesitant, but she still "get[s] it done."
Nonetheless, Buffy's faith in Willow and her need for Willow to act are the prompts for Willow's empowerment again. Which strikes me as very feminist, especially in light of the historical context of women's relationships (I've been studying women's clubs and unions during the late 19th century).
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Yep. The scene at the end of STSP where Buffy insists on lending her own strength to Willow encapsulates this pretty well, I think. Buffy's also probably trying to teach Willow something about the nature of power/leadership. It's a beautiful scene.
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Dark Willow: part of what happens when Willow kills Warren is that she becomes Warren, including the hyper-masculine acting out, in some respects ("I'm just getting wood for the violence here!"). And she's revelling in the performative act, agreed. She also plays up (as Vamp Willow does) her cute little girl schtick so deliberately. One of my favourite moments is when she tosses the fireball in the air to go after Jonathan and Andrew: "Unless somebody, some how, can get there in time to save them! Oh well, fly my pretty, fly! See what I did there?" The gender stuff will be interesting to unpack, the performative masculinity and femininity she goes through.
Dark Willow is when she's reveling in the performance -- look what I can do? -- and she's aware that it's false but that it's also true. She's caught between her ability to create and her need to conform because reality is determined by interaction with and the perception of ~others. If a Willow falls in the woods and no one's there to hear it, does she make a sound? If a Willow becomes superpowerful and there's no one to witness it, is she really any different than she was back in high school?
Brilliant. OK, this is the best comment ever.
OK, I've got it. Willow's truth -- her perception of the world -- has *ALWAYS* been different from the social truth around her that seemed so easily accepted by everyone else. But she is unloved, and no one else shares her perception of the world -- so she becomes convinced that her own personal truths don't matter. Which means the only thing that matters is what other people see and what other people perceive. And so if people perceive her as a nerd, she's a nerd. And of course if a Willow falls in the woods and there's no one to hear it, it doesn't make a sound, because she only exists by virtue of an external world. Maybe if she's lucky a Willow can grow in Earth, in Tara and then can be a person.
So here is the converse: if a Willow falls and kills a deer in the woods, does it scream? Is there blood? If the truth doesn't matter, because it never has mattered, all that matters is the current state of the world. It doesn't matter what she does when she's alone, because she doesn't even exist alone. She kills a deer and no one sees it; she mindwipes to clean up her own mistakes, and as long as the world is presently the way it should be, does it matter how it got there? If a tree fell in the woods, but it's been magicked back into place, did it actually fall?
OK, this is getting OT again. Um, so, back to gender. I do feel like there is something in Willow about the idea that women need to be seen and not heard. And women as objects -- because if Willow only exists when other people are observing her, she is *perpetually* an object. And of course she is a subject, too; she has a POV, and she has desires, and she has distortions, and she doesn't understand what other people are thinking until she becomes psychic and even then. Maybe it's partly the social consequences of telling women they don't matter.
There's a guy in this coffee shop who looks like Seth Green.
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Our analysis of Buffyverse relationships sometimes makes me feel cynical about relationships. Was Tara only Willow's greatest love because Tara helped Willow connect with herself more fully? But is that bad or is that just the reality that's romanticized into something else? Is Tara as much a person to Willow as Spike is to Buffy? (Have you read The Awakening? Because the protagonist, Edna, loves a man who connects her with her true inner self and awakens her sensual nature, helping her to live more fully as herself.)
It doesn't matter what she does when she's alone, because she doesn't even exist alone
She fears this is true, sometimes she believes it. But I think ultimately her story proves that her actions do affect her internally -- this shift towards darkness -- and she as an agent then affects and changes the external. She keeps trying to make it secret and unwitnessed, thinking that if it's all internal, she can keep it inside, but her belief system of thinking everything inside her is ~invisible to an extent -- it's flawed.
Willow-as-an-object makes me think of Willow feeling like a ~force~ in Season 6. It's like Willow's awareness of societal perceptions gets taken too far in placing all the power for identity construction onto ~outside forces. She's still unable to fully grasp her sense of self, not until she actually travels WITHIN HERSELF and finds the ephmeral is undefineably real. But she's unable to communicate this with others like Buffy and Xander and especially not Kennedy -- she's also unable to communicate the sense of loss when magic is gone. Magic made her insides real, gave her ephmeral internal identity literal shape and contour that she could understand. How can she know herself without being able to quantify what's within her?
THE GUY WHO WAS ON THE UNICYCLE? :D
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YES
I think that Willow & Tara have the same problems as Buffy & Spike, in terms of personhood. To an extent though, I think it's okay. Because Buffy and Willow are 21 in season six. That's young. And they're both emotionally damaged. Willow did know Tara as a person, and I think she loved her -- but she NEEDED her more than she loved her, if that makes sense. I think that it's somewhat mutual, actually -- Tara needed an escape from her abusive family, and Willow "brought [her] out so easily." Tara ultimately had a core confidence and sense of self that Willow didn't -- like Buffy, she has an ultimately positive mother -- though she ultimately submitted back to Willow in Entropy and died indirectly as a result (tear). I think Willow loved Tara as much as she was able...but, well, it's not complete love is it, if you *need* the person so much that they have to be the person you need them to be, and have to block out from either your perception or from their own mind aspects of them that you can't handle.
Obviously what Willow does alone affects her internally! I'm more stating what Willow's attitude is. Hm. Willow in season six seems to me to be someone furiously, and in a blind panic, trying to wipe invisible blood off her hands. I should read Lady M's lines before season six. But anyway, Willow is *guilty*, and I don't think that is just about consequences that have happened. And she continuously tries to change reality toward one in which those bad things didn't happen. Some of that is by wiping memories. Some of that is by changing her own self-perception -- she's an addict, *not* a bad person. Some of that is by projecting onto an Other, as she does with Warren, recognizing the evil in getting off on having power over other people. And some of it is just losing her identity entirely and just trying to *become* magic, as she does with Rack. She is running/hiding all season. But the assumption that underlies much of it is that *if* she can make the evidence disappear, she actually *will* be a good person again. It's not even, I think, a matter of trying to hide what she's done so that other people don't find out she's bad, it's about erasing the existence of her being bad.
And yeah, the material on being a force. Magic allows her to actually connect to the outside world in a literal meaningful way, and make the outside in and inside out. And suddenly that's gone and she's trapped in her puny body again.
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Right, I agree! Just that Willow doesn't seem to realize that what she does alone affects her, and by affecting her, she affects others in how she later interacts with them. She thinks she's in control of herself internally because she's able to do magic now, but it's actually the opposite. And the ripples affect everyone. Oh, TOYL. RIPPLES.
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This is why, like you, I go back and forth on Wrecked, BTW. At times it almost feels like it's trying to "explain away" Willow's magic addiction as simple hedonism, when it's obviously more than that. OTOH the magic is a source of immediate gratification, as well as being instrumental to her for the control thing. So maybe the drug parallel isn't completely forced.
I think you're on to something when you say Willow sort of wants to see herself as an addict in the classic sense. There's that whole "it wasn't me, it was the magic" evasion in play.
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I am loving this whole discussion so much! I just want to say that.
Anyway: on the Willow/Tara stuff. I don't think it's cynical to realize that all human relationships have a degree of selfishness or neediness to them. It's just who we are. A mark of really good writing is that it doesn't try to deny that or gloss over it. W/T's problems explicitly stem from that selfishness, that conflict between them, rather than from external stuff. It's probably the most realistic of all the relationships depicted on the show; and yet it's also the most typically "romantic", with the baby talk, sweet gestures, dancing, making dinner together etc.
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YAY! I'm glad. Max and I sometimes go off on tangents, but at least they're interesting, right? :P
I think I still have a few romanticized notions about love, so I sometimes have to remind myself to not demonize selfishness and neediness. (But that's my issues. ;))
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