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... )
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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