The Feminist Filter: Halloween

[gabrielleabelle]

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

Comments

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Willow: I feel like there's something a tiny bit almost post-gender roles about Willow here. She doesn't transform the way Buffy and Xander do. As doublemeat says above, she is conscious of gender roles in a way Buffy isn't. Buffy wants to be old-school femininity as she understands it. Willow would rather have the right to vote. She's happy with social expectations of femininity

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Willow does have *romantic* fantasies, of course, and really likes talking about and thinking about kissing , but I think they are mostly pretty chaste fantasy-wise. She fell in love with an internet demon! She doesn't even quite want Xander to see her as a sexual being, even though she wants him to kiss her. So here Buffy introduces Willow to the idea of being an object of desire. Or rather, tries to convince Willow that being the object of desire -- being attractive and showing off her body -- will make things better; will make Xander freak. Buffy is not dressing Willow in ways that will actually express what Willow wants to express about herself -- because Willow, seemingly, has no say about it. So it is all about being attractive to others, which is something Buffy knows men value and knows is socially valued. We're two episodes after the Eskimo costume in Inca Mummy Girl. Willow has a side that likes sexual attention -- if we take VampWillow's domme outfit as any indication -- but it's not something she's willing to own

[angearia]

So Willow's leadership in this episode is actually a bit of a non-masculine form of leadership

She takes control of the situation in Buffy's house in order to go find Giles who actually saves the day. Her role, like in PG, is to be the ~voice~ and the spirit. She doesn't even get to be the one who figures out who's doing the dirty deeds -- she has all the evidence already in her mind, but it's Giles who pulls out the pieces from her through interrogation.

So it seems like Willow's form of leadership is limited. What if Xander hadn't taken Willow's orders? There's a comment above about how "you would take orders from a woman, are you feeble in some way?" is satirical -- but I feel it's pretty spot-on (if overblown) for how some men act when a woman's put in charge (and I've faced this sort of attitude myself). She might cause a nuclear holocaust with her ladyparts if she's in charge, you guys!In-story, I think it's that Willow isn't used to leading, so she immediately returns to the library and offers up her leadership

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Hm, I think you're right that I overstated Willow's empowerment here. Indeed, knowledge is explicitly denied to Willow -- she can't, physically, turn the page. Giles saves the day by enacting violence which is impossible for Willow both physically and, at this moment, emotionally. Your point about Willow and Giles is right on, and makes me think about the role he plays in her arc as the ideal and the goal. This is in the episode where she helps Buffy sneak in to read the Watcher's Diaries, so Willow is moving toward wanting access to that information, but she's still a voter and not a leader, except when she has to be. Part of the big central problem of the show too is that problems are all externalized which means that the skills that really matter are frequently physical skills -- not that moral judgment isn't important, I hope you understand, I mean skills particularly relating to demon-fighting -- and that leaves Willow in the lurch especially early on, as commander of information. I'm thinking too about how Willow as

[angearia]

Jumping ahead here, the collision between Willow and Giles in Season 6 stems in part from Willow taking a page from Giles' handbook: she hoards her knowledge about the spell and deliberately keeps Giles out of the loop. Giles accumulates power through knowledge; it drives home his ineffectiveness (and reminds me of his upsets with Buffy when she fails to inform him about Angel returning from hell, Riley being in the Initiative, and Spike getting his chip removed).

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

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Good point -- there is a nice symmetry there. Willow becomes a knowledge hoarder later on. And indeed it starts from before the series begins -- she has already begun accumulating information about city plans, etc. Xander can't handle the idea of having a secret, but Willow knows very well what it's like to have a secret. Some of it is also personal: Willow has an entire secret internal world, which includes Doogie Howser fanfic (did she keep watching Neil Patrick Harris works? what would she think of How I Met Your Mother?), deliberately hidden from the world. Right now magical knowledge is kept away from her by Giles because she hasn't yet gotten the courage to accrue knowledge that is guarded by a person she actually knows -- it's so much less personalized when it's just city plans

[angearia]

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

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

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I should say right now -- I don't think Maggie ever said season five; I just picked that at random because I was trying to think of what era she was talking about when talking about later-Willow. But yes, the cutesy baby talk/mutual infantilization with Tara is definitely Not Willow, or fake in a different way. Two victims of unloving home environments find love and WILL NOT RISK DAMAGING IT IN ANY WAY. LET US NOT ACKNOWLEDGE ANY PROBLEMS BECAUSE IF THERE ARE PROBLEMS NOTHING WILL EVER BE GOOD AGAIN. Sigh, they break my heart. I don't know why I said season five -- I think I was sort of trying to piece together what a good 'future Willow' time is. I do think that she's more 'truly' herself in 5 than in 1, whatever that means, but yeah, will the real Will stand up?

Season seven Willow is like a vector sum of all the previous Willows.

[doublemeat]

Season seven Willow is like a vector sum of all the previous Willows.

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.

[angearia]

This is an important point. Willow's still very hesitant about using her power in Season 7. And the point gets explicit in "Get It Done" that Buffy is powerful because she uses her power, where as Spike and Willow haven't been up to this point (okay, Spike's been a bit out of it due to the ~trigger~ and being tied up, so he gets a bit more leeway for recovery).

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).

[doublemeat]

Buffy's faith in Willow and her need for Willow to act are the prompts for Willow's empowerment again.

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.

[angearia]

YES. I love that scene. "I've got so much strength, I'm giving it away." It resonates on many levels for this season, foreshadowing Willow's taking strength from Kennedy, the Potentials gaining strength, the healing nature of connection even between Buffy and Spike in "Touched" when Spike gives Buffy strength through emotional support.

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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

[angearia]

RIGHT. This also fits with her need to actually re-shape the world through magic. Because that's the only way for her internal world to be acknowledged by ~others. She's tired of being ignored, so she changes the external to reflect the internal -- or sometimes to change the internal by creating an external she ~wishes~ were true.

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 aloneShe fears this is true, sometimes she believes it. But I think ultimately her story proves that

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RIGHT. This also fits with her need to actually re-shape the world through magic. Because that's the only way for her internal world to be acknowledged by ~others. She's tired of being ignored, so she changes the external to reflect the internal -- or sometimes to change the internal by creating an external she ~wishes~ were true.YES

[angearia]

Obviously what Willow does alone affects her internally! I'm more stating what Willow's attitude is.

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.