The Vampire Diaries: Metanarratives and the Effects of Framing in the Process of Interpretation
This arose from a discussion that wheatear, cranmers, and ishi_chan had on the previous 3x20 (non) reaction post, and also many other discussions on the same topic, that I just found fascinating and wanted to contribute to, and then it just turned into this horrifying thing and I cannot even with my life anymore. /fml (But then again, I’m doing a paper on text and the audience, so it might help me gain some clarity for that /official excuse). Also, the title is cooler than the actual written part and actually just written like that to make it sound cooler #things you know about me.
Every text, whether an article, book or show, constructs a model audience. This is not the actual audience, as it would be impossible to predict the reactions of all the people who’re interpreting the text. For instance, the model audience constructed by the show would never dislike the show, but the real audience ofc can. So, in the process of interpretation, we usually try and also determine what the text is presenting to us; how it wants us to feel about what it’s presenting to us, rather than how we actually feel about it. Judging a text by the audience-response to it is extremely hard because every single person may have a different reaction. Therefore, especially in the medium of television, we tend to study various techniques of presentation within the show, of which narrative framing is an important part, as it's an externally employed device, and therefore functions more as a comment on the text, rather than as a part of it.
Take Rose’s speech for example. Technically, and in my very right personal opinion, it’s stupid. It may be the stupidest thing in the history of the world, and mostly just an example of trashy writing. But would it be possible to say the show wants you to see it like that? Ofc not, because then why would that scene exist in the first place? So, if you’re reading Rose’s speech through the show, instead of via your own discretion and filtration, how you’re supposed to take that scene is (as wheatear mentioned in the previous post) as a sort of ‘shipper manifesto’. It’s the show telling you why it, THE SHOW, thinks D/E is ~epic. It’s the show saying what it feels about how this relationship that it’s developing, and why they think it works. And that was the last word of the scene, which means the text validated it, because it shut Jeremy up, and didn’t allow him to voice his legitimate concerns. It didn’t allow him the space to state that he couldn’t give a damn about how much Damon ~challenges Elena, because this is the same guy who once killed him and has continuously hurt his sister in multiple ways.
Contrast this with the S2 episode, where Damon force feeds Elena his blood. The presentational base of the scene is violent in the extreme; where one second Damon and Elena are having this tender moment about how Damon feels about the possibility of her dying, and the next moment he’s shoved his wrist in her mouth. Everything in the atmosphere changes instantly, the mood, the sounds, even Damon’s vampire face coming to the fore- it all stresses how harsh and brutal the scene is. Because it’s presented as such. And later, in one of the most important frames, you have Stefan telling Elena that Damon did it only because he “loves” her, and then Elena says that it means Damon "doesn’t know what love is". Damon’s action, no matter how much the shippers might go on about Stefan's willingness to let her die and Damon heroism at the cost of Elena's favor, and that he loves her the best etc, is invalidated by the show.
Consider for a moment how changing the frame would change what the show is saying to us; If Elena had had her say first; something like “why would he do that? How could he do that to me?” and then Stefan had done his part; looked down as if her were afraid of her reaction and told her that it was because Damon loved her, and that had been the last word of the scene, then Damon’s action would have been legitimized. Then it would have been the show saying ‘yes, what he did was abusive, but he only did it because he loves her and can’t stand the thought of losing her’. But instead, you have Elena as the last voice of that particular discussion, stressing that she doesn’t believe that the action connotes ‘love’ as she understands it; which means, the action gets stripped of all its romantiziced aspects and intellectual justifications, and is presented in its physical, visceral sense of how horrifying it actually is. The interpretations dealing with Damon-as-the-hero are interpretations based on psychological readings of the character, which the show in its narrative framing of the scene does not particularly cater to.
This is why the Stefan/Elena scenes in Do Not Go Gentle are problematic. Not because scenes of emotional manipulation or apologia or abuse shouldn’t exist at all (that would be militant and unnecessary); but because the narrative itself shows no particular sign that it recognizes the scene as being just that. The music, the dialogues, the reactions of other characters are all used to heighten the ~romance and ~tragedy of the scene. The fact that it is indeed abusive is coming from the watching audience, who, as previously stated, are not the model audience that the show constructs. Because there is nothing within the text, no musical cues or character-reactions, that suggests that these scenes are supposed to be viewed in any other way than how they are explicitly presented. The audience's alternate interpretation, is therefore not contingent upon or deriving from the show's interpretation of itself. The scenes could have been kept in their entirety, and gained a whole new dimension if someone had voiced their concern. If Caroline, for instance, had come in and said to Elena ‘let’s make this a girl’s only dance. You need to stay away from the Salvatores. Stefan may be a million and one times better than Damon, but he’s still unstable right now', then that understanding would have a strong basis. Because then, even if the rest of the episode had gone just the same way, you would have had an in-text voice stressing that there is an alternative discourse operating within the text. That Stefan’s, admittedly valiant, attempts at gaining control don't automatically negate everything that he previously did. And if Elena had then decided to still go with Stefan, it would’ve highlighted her inability to let go of that which had provided her stability since so long.
Instead, the stress is on the magnanimity of Stefan’s actions; validated by a character who doesn't actually have a personal stake in the matter. Caroline, acting as the author-insert, focuses the audience's attention on how good it was for Stefan to allow Elena to explore her feelings towards Damon, to let her go on the trip (a viewpoint that Elena herself later legitimizes when she asks Stefan why he's so good to her or something). And even worse is the fact that Elena listens, except then her actions are presented as a result of Caroline’s interference, which seems to absolve her of all the responsibility of herself choosing to accept the guy who had, just a few weeks earlier, threatened to throw her off the bridge her parents died falling over. Caroline’s use in this narrative (presumably as counterpoint to Rose’s Damon/Elena agenda) is highly problematic (as I mentioned over at cranmers's post). Because what the narrative essentially does through her dialogue is that it trivializes her own experiences of abuse. The show never bothered to expand upon that angle; so here it's just nicely making use of her experiences to further its ~shipping agenda. There is no mention of WHY Caroline should react so strongly to either brother, no mention of how she's still scarred from her Damon-experiences, that her automatic siding with Stefan, even after all he's done, to the point of irrationality is because of all she’s faced. There is a way of framing that scene as well, to make the audience understand that Caroline’s unfounded, continuing support of Stefan, despite his actions throughout the season, is because Caroline herself is unable to impartially separate herself from the man who saved her life and taught her control as a vampire. However, even though the highlight here should be on Caroline and her issues, it is instead on Stefan, which changes the reading of the scene entirely, and it seems to suggest that (even after Elena’s amusement over Caroline’s ‘bias’) that Stefan is being viewed objectively, not through her gaze, because he's done 'objective' nice things, not specifically concerned with Caroline.
Consider another framed arc within the previous episode; the issue of Abby's death. Within the narrative, it seemed as if the show knew that the coin-toss which precipitated the tragedy was callous in the extreme (I mean, it was a coin toss, for god's sake), but that Damon and Stefan could not be held entirely responsible because there was no alternative left, they did what they unfortunately had to. However, in this episode when Damon tries to justify his actions through this model of interpretation, stressing that Bonnie's anger, while legitimate, conceals the fact that she may have done the same if faced with the situation, the masterframe steps in and changes the view of the scene. Bonnie gets the last word, dismissing the pre-deterministic aspect that Damon invokes, highlighting the fact that the action, regardless of what he sees as extenuating circumstances, was a choice; that the Salvatores didn't do what they had to, they did what they wanted to, that they are morally responsible for their actions. And Bonnie is validated by the text through the placement of her dialogue. Contrast this with a scene in which Bonnie had had her say first and Damon came in later, emphasizing that Bonnie would have done the same, and managing to silence her as she understood the truth in his statement. This would have changed the tone of the scene because the underlying focus would then would have been on the fact that the actions of the Salvatores are justifiable because it's the same thing that 'any one of them would have done in the situation'. However, the frame denies this legitimacy, and instead forces the arc to the previous conclusion.
This sort of framing is exactly what was horrifying about Damon/Andie. Because their very last scene together involves Andie telling Damon to “get his own drink”, which he proceeds to do, much to his own amusement. The arc framing in this instance almost negates all the abuse that has come before. While earlier scenes has highlighted the violence itself, here, the show seems to suggest that Andie is not ‘fully compelled’ or that Damon ‘isn’t so bad’ because ‘hey look, he went to get his own drink’, which caters to the reading that Andie may still be with Damon of her own free will. And considering that this scene is the culmination of the relationship, it glosses over the reality of this relationship, instead framing it as one between equals. And this is the show’s last word on the arc.
When you accept the premise of a show like The Vampire Diaries, you’ve already accepted another mythology and system of ethical judgment. Certain forms of abuse are inherent within the premise itself, derived from the traditional mythology of vampires; therefore faulting the show on that would just mean you should probably be watching some other show. However, here too, reactions are always dependent on the perspective that the viewer adopts while entering a scene. Compulsion viewed from a vampire’s POV is everyday and mundane and raises no questions, and if the viewer is ascribing to that construct then it is unproblematic. However, if the same scene is perceived from the viewpoint of the victim, then the entire interpretation changes as then the loss of free will is terrifying in the extreme, regardless of what system of morality the vampire operates through. The understanding of the show’s POV has to depend upon whose POV it is catering to at a given moment, and thus what POV the framing of the scene is contingent upon; in Caroline and Damon’s first morning after, the viewpoint is Caroline’s, her fear and horror, which places the focus on Damon’s monstrosity. However, the scene with Andie in the bathtub-while still highlighting the violence-is catering to Damon, stressing Damon’s desperation and need for a ‘distraction’. Therefore, changing the frame can entirely change what the show is saying, even if the scene itself remains the same.
Every show, even if based on a supernatural premise, has to conform to a certain narrative credibility. Which is why, although it can challenge realism without losing any believability, it cannot, however, go back on its own established storyline. In the same vein, although it seems that it’s the text that develops character and therefore, everything that happens within it is canon, it is still possible to call a character OOC even within the text itself, if the narrative development of the character does not conform to what has previously been established about that character. However, here the problem isn't that Elena's characterization is OOC, it is not. Her reactions are very much in-character. The problem is the framing which caters to her point-of-view, instead of presenting it as mostly delusional. Framing is therefore, the show’s metanarrative, that exists beyond the conventional in text narrative, and establishes the show's understanding of itself. Of course, a structural analysis is only helpful to a certain extent. It can be argued that it doesn’t particularly matter what the show thinks or what it’s trying to say, because not only does the text construct the audience, but every member of the audience constructs the text, therefore, every single interpretation is equally valid; ie if you think Stefan’s actions in the previous episode are manipulative then that is what the show is saying, regardless of the show’s own intentionality.
/shrug. My two cents. Hopefully it makes some sense. And if you read all that:
(Now I’m thinking I should just give this in as my paper, since I seem to have spent an hour on it DD: Oh you know what, I'll just change the paper to 'Mirrors, Mirroring, and Framing in The Vampire Diaries'. Heh.)