(no subject)

[seraphcelene]

Dead Man's Party continues to be one of my least favorite episode. Xander's talking head speech of self-righteousness is UBER annoying.

Comments

[lettered]

I think this one is interesting, because I do find Xander's speech annoying. I feel like they're all way too hard on Buffy, and that Buffy's behavior is understandable; her friends need to suck it up and give her some slack. This is not the viewpoint of the episode . . . which makes me think.

The main thing it makes me think about is this:

CORDELIA: I don't get it. Buffy's the Slayer. Shouldn't she have...

XANDER: What, a license to kill?

CORDELIA: Well, not for fun. But she's like this superman. Shouldn't there be different rules for her?

WILLOW: Sure, in a fascist society.

CORDELIA: Right! Why can't we have one of those?

The thing is, I sort of do think there should be different rules for Buffy, because she is different than everyone else because she's the Slayer. If you took out the supernatural element--if she wasn't the Slayer, if she'd just had a bad breakup with Angel instead of having to kill him, if she and her mom had just had a fight about Buffy lying and Joyce not understanding her reasons--I might think Xander, Willow, and Joyce's treatment of Buffy upon Buffy's return justified. I might think that Buffy, while her feelings were understandable, should suck it up, realize that everyone has problems, and be thoughtful by not inflicting her own problems on other people without considering their feelings. But because I do think that what she suffers is worse than what other people do, I feel like everyone should be more understanding of her.

The problem is, there are no Slayers in the real world. The people who think, "but my situation really is worse than everyone else's!" are people who are selfish. They're also the people who see themselves as Nietzchian supermen who can do what they want because they're better than everyone else, and that is a problem.

One thing that's interesting to me about BtVS, and this ep, is that everything is from Buffy's pov. We're on her side, usually. And that's how it is in the real world--we're each in our own worlds, and can only see from our own pov's. Because we can't see the things other people suffer, our own suffering often looks worse, or feels worse; we each seem unqiue; we each seem special; we each seem like we have an excuse for our own bad behavior. Or at least I feel that way, looking at the world. Intellectually I know that I have it way better than almost everyone, but emotionally I easily identify with this aspect of Buffy's character.

The interesting thing about Dead Man's Party is that it could be an episode about how Buffy getting special treatment actually is, you know, a little like fascism. A better episode could have given us to see why Xander, Willow, and Joyce actually have a point. But as it is we are so far inside of Buffy's POV that they all look like assholes to me. The idea that Buffy's friends are right and Buffy's behaved badly feels artificially imposed to me, and makes me resent the intent of the show rather than sympathize with it.

[seraphcelene]

Word! You've managed to capture pretty much everything I felt about the show, and that ep particularly, and then made it sound all academic and stuff. ;)

One of the eps, I think, that is better at demonstrating the dual perspectives is Two to Go, and by close association, Grave. I hated Willow in those eps because of the whiny, self-centered bent her uber tantrum is based in. I get that she's destroyed by Tara's death, but that doesn't mean you get to destroy the world. She tried to bring her back, it didn't work. Not to be so callous as to say, move on, but ... move on. (Well, okay, not really). The episode was better at showing how she was affected and how that gets twisted and released back out. It's interesting that I never sided with Willow, she was always out of bounds on that one, whereas Buffy was justified. Those exceptional rules, even if they're not in play in the show's 'verse, are in play in my mind. She gets a pass on running away because she killed her lover in order to save the world. AND she did it after he had regained his soul. Her self-sacrifice and her friends responses to it (or despite it) was what often killed me about the show. Willow's inferiority complex coming to light in Earshot, for example.

Okay, so, meanwhile, I am sure that I don't make sense, hopped up as I am on sugar. You know what's interesting. How sugar actually sounds like Shugar but is spelled sugar. Where did the "h" get off to?

[lettered]

hahhaha sugar. It's true! Words are weird.

I get what you mean about the S6 Willow thing, but then again, we're never deep inside Willow's POV. What's going on there seems a lot more traditional: we are looking at someone else's pain and empathizing, but at the same time standing a little back and seeing that she's taking it too far. What I'd like to see is something where we're so far entrenched in the person's POV that it seems right at first . . . and then we are forced to really see the others' perspectives and feel that they are right. I feel like Battlestar Galactica did that, actually, because I was totally on board with, "KILL THE ROBOTS KILL THEM KILL THEM THEY ARE EVIL!", but the show stubbornly and inexorably forced me to see the robots' pov, and I at last began to see that ROBOTS ARE PEOPLE, too!

But anyway, yeah. I think BtVS had the flaw of wanting us to be on Buffy's side while at the same time not wanting to espouse that idea of exceptional rules. Really, show, I could have still loved Buffy if you had been a little braver about exposing her flaws, and then I could have loved her friends more, too.

[seraphcelene]

That is a really good point: "I could have loved her friends more, too." From what we got to see of Firefly, Joss (aided mightily by Tim Minear) managed to finesse the idea of the ensemble and really make it an ensemble.

I want to say that there was another show that did the POV thing well, but I can't even remotely think of what it could be. Part of my brain is yelling Farscape at me, but I think that's wrong. It has been a really, really long time since I've seen Farscape.

[kita0610.livejournal.com]

Xander was always a self righteous ass. Least favorite regular character, hands down.

[seraphcelene]

Amen!

[diachrony.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, is that the ep where ... never mind, I don't need the blood pressure.

Sometimes I wanted to knock him on his self-righteous, unempathetic ass so effing bad it made me twitch & taste bile.

But you know what? I don't hate him. He was a good person with flaws. I love all the characters, even the ones who mostly inspire rage, because they ring so true to me.