Buffy Season 8 - Safe as a Living Doll
May. 13th, 2009 07:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatLiving Doll written by Doug Petrie with art by Georges Jeantry as others online have noted, completes the Predators and Prey arc. The only other review I've read to date on this is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aycheb - who lately I've been agreeing with on tv shows and comics. She also did a good review of Dollhouse, as did 2maggie2 - both articulated quite well my reaction to that series, which I may or may not write a review on at a later date.
Before I launch into my spoilery analysis - I enjoyed this issue quite a bit, far more than I expected to. Doug Petrie can be hit or miss as a writer, and here, I felt he hit all the necessary marks both plot-wise and character-wise. The story completed the thematic arc, and Dawn's thematic/story arc, with humor and finesse. Also, Georges Jeanty's art has either grown on me or gotten better, because I rather liked it, and thought he did a far better job than Cliff Richards who drew the last issue. Comic art by and large, like most art of this sort, is in the eye of the beholder. Whedon is a fan of Nick Sook or the guy who drew the Dru & Spike comic as well as some of the Marvel gothic ones. I'm not a fan of Sook. Find his art to be rather ugly. But Whedon prefers the gritty less pretty art. I'm guessing he may not be a huge fan of Urru who is smoother in line and draws a softer pic. I like less lines. Sorry, you won't get the above unless you are a huge fan of the graphic novel form - I fell in love with the format not for the writing but for the art. I like picture books, always have.
At any rate, this issue finally completes the arc regarding Dawn's multiple transformations which was begun in Long Journey Home. It is fitting that it is completed in a mini-arc of one-shots entitled "Predators and Prey", although whether Dawn is a predator or prey is questionable here. Another on-going theme in this arc as well as just about everything else Joss Whedon headlines.
Whedon in both Dollhouse and the Buffy series, seems to be asking the question - who is the predator and who is the prey? And is the prey actually a victim? Defenseless? If we look to the animal world - prey isn't always defenseless - it comes up with defense mechanisms - such as a stink bomb for a skunk, or camoflage for a lizard or spine for a porcupine. Another on-going theme in Whedon's work is gender politics - or an analysis/commentary on how women are still viewed as objects or prey in our society and men, generally, predators. Although as he notes in the classic Buffy episode Teacher's Pet - in the insect world, often the female is the predator - a la A Black Widow spider or a Pray MAntis - and she kills when she mates.
Which leads us to third theme - sex and love, and how wanting one or both makes you do the wacky.
In the first issue of this mini arc, Harmonic Divergence, Harmony was definitely the predator. She was also a woman, and the classic Marilyn Monroesque/Lana Turner femme fatale.
Beautiful, dumb, but deadly. Manipulating the media to show her and her kind in an appealing manner - which would enable her to do whatever she wanted, while her prey protected her and paid her for it. And she was able to paint Buffy and her slayers in a negative light, getting revenge on her rival, in a manner neither Drusilla nor Darla ever quite managed.
This issue was soon followed by Swell - which addressed gay stereotypes as well as gender stereotypes. Satso is visited by Kennedy, they do not stereotypically fall into Lesbian bliss, but rather have a talk about what it means to be gay in a straight society. As well as deal with the traditional view of what their roles aught to be in that society. Women should be good girls, stay at home, have kids, dress up as geishas to serve their men, be pretty dolls. Much as Harmony is in Divergence. Harmony is a doll - perfect, never aging, never changing. A guy's dream, until the fangs emerge.
Then we get Predators and Prey - about a group of rogue slayers who capture a "spider" who builds webs. The spider was summoned/breed by Andrew - the geeky guy, who dreams of controlling the slayers much as he controls his pet spider. But instead, the slayers capture him in their web, just as the spider captures him in its. He is out of his depth and must get Buffy's assistance. Who is prey and who is the predator? At first it appears that Andrew is the predator, but in truth it is the rogue slayers - who are anything but dolls.
Next is Safe - where the female slayers and the children of a town of watchers are fed to a monster that feeds on their guilt and their remorse. Remorse for living their lives behind, not being the women their families wanted, the daughters their parents craved, the weapons the watchers could control. Again the tables are turned, Faith and the other slayer fight back, they kill the beast, and the watcher who fed them to it - and empower the town with Giles assistence to fight back.
Now, finally we come to Living Doll - the last chapter in this arc. And in my opinion, next to Harmonic Divergence, potentially the best. Dawn has been through the equivalent of growing pangs, changing from a giant to a centaure/wood nymph to a living porcelain doll. In each incarnation she has had to cope with how the world views her. The first incarnation - made her too big to fit into any new clothes or the castle, she was put in the basement. But she was not a victim - stomping through vampire held Tokyo with much aplomb, and on the zombies that Amy magicked to life. Eventually she confides in Xander, telling him that she was turned into a "giant slut" - her words not his - by a spell that Kenny cast. It was not, she insists, Kenny's fault - so much as her own for betraying him. She slept with his roommate. And Kenny, a thricewise demon who can take on human shape, cursed her for it.
She goes through two more incarnations before the gang finally catchs up with Kenny and we get an explanation for why Dawn slept with his roommate and why he cast the spell - the reason is sort of lame, but in keeping with the general thematic structure of both the series and the comics in regards to sex and love, which I'll come back to later. The second incarnation is a wood nymph or centaur - half horse/half human. And as Dawn states at one point, after riding hard through the rain, I feel as if I've been ridden hard and put away wet. (This is sexual connotation, a really skanky one, that women state about women they consider old whores.) Next, comes the living doll.
The issue opens with Dawn in the workshop of a toymaker, who looks quite a bit like Geppeto from Pinnochio - a rather demented Gepetto. (Not the first time, Whedon and his crew have taken a decidely dark twist on a beloved fairy tale.) Gepetto/toymaker informs Dawn as he picks up a scapel to heal a break in her porcelain face - that he will keep doing this to her until she is safe. If your face breaks open, your soul will scatter into many different lights and matter. A reference to the ball of energy that Dawn began her life as - the key, now her soul. None of his other dolls has this light, they aren't alive, they are only seemingly so by his magic touch. He makes them and keeps them safe - perpetual children that will never leave, never grow old, but by the same token have no free will - they can only do what he bids. They aren't real boys and girls.
Being real means having a soul - the ability to choose your own path without someone or something else dictating it for you.
Dawn - states to Buffy that she had thought she wanted to be safe, that she wanted Buffy to keep her safe, but it isn't what she wants and it isn't something Buffy can do any longer.
The toymaker is a standin for the father figure, the protector boy-friend. As Dawn tells Kenny - she felt safe with him until he wanted to sleep with her, her feelings for him were so intense, that she chickened out, and slept with his roommate - who was safer. She picked the safe route - the one she felt would cause her the least emotional discord. It makes sense she chose it - after all she does share Buffy's memories of what happened with Angel, not to mention what occurred with her father, Riley, and Spike. Buffy's romances have been far from safe. Satsu in some ways was safe - for Buffy did not have intense feelings for Satsu, it was simple for her. Just sex. But, as both Dawn and Buffy learn - sex and love are NEVER simple, and there are always consequences. Satsu is deeply hurt by Buffy's response to her - as we learn in Swell. As is Kenny hurt by Dawn's reaction to his heartfelt affection. Tromping on someone's heart to protect your own does not end well.
But then..Safe is a questionable concept. Are we ever truly safe? With one another? With ourselves? A friend of my brother's stated to me recently that half the time we are our own worst enemies. To which, I retorted - half? I'd say 100% of the time. We aren't ever safe.
If we try to protect ourselves from the world - we end up shutting out what the world has to offer us. To truly feel happiness, we have to risk landing on the thorns, pricking our fingers, and having our hearts stomped on.
Dawn's actions to protect herself - land her into far greater jeopardy than if she had trusted Kenny and taken a leap of faith. Granted Kenny hasn't exactly proven himself trustworthy here, but neither has Dawn.
Who is the predator and who is the prey? Who is the victim? Kenny? Dawn? Or neither? It's not clear. Kenny much like Xander way back when..is the victim of loving someone who is afraid to love him back. Buffy, I can't help but wonder, fears giving into any sexual attraction to Xander because to do so would destroy what they have - something she's come to depend up on.
Now, when she might actually consider it, might actually be attracted to him, she veers further away - for the reasons that we see detailed in Long Way Home - and her dream sequence in the first two issues of the season 8 - where Buffy kisses Xander and his head comes off.
Everyone she loves in a romantic way - dies or leaves. Much like Dawn, Buffy is protecting herself. Shutting herself off from romantic feelings, from love. She doesn't want to feel the pain.
But by doing so, they both become dolls, porcelain doll who can't feel beneath it's tough external shell. Ironic, considering porcelain is a fragile substance and easily broken.
Also a metaphor for Buffy - who appears to be tough on the outside but is actually quite fragile, brittle even, she breaks into a million pieces and has had to put her heart back together so many times she rivals Humpty Dumpty. So the question here becomes who is really the living doll? Dawn or Buffy? Or both?
Back to the underlying theme of female empowerment and gender politics that is the through line in this series - women have historically and traditionally been depicted as fragile, brittle, and porcelian dolls. Something to be put on a shelf and taken down whenever the guy wishes to play with them. Not to speak. Not to argue. Not to think. To be pretty. To serve.
To wear nice clothes and have nice nails. Have you ever noticed that when men dress up to be women - they put on dresses, paint their nails, wear makeup and put on heels and fancy lingeri? Like dolls one might find in a store. Or in films from Pretty Women to She's All That to Devil Wears Prada - the girl is madeup and dressed up like a doll. It's taken for granted that that's what women do. Yet Buffy in the latter seasons seldom wore skirts or dresses, hardly practical and not exactly comfortable. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that dressing up and painting one's nails makes one dollish. Just that often this is all people see or focus on. Men like to dress up too, and yes, even get manicures, and no they aren't necessarily gay. Gay has zip to do with it.
But being a doll...being at someone's beck and call, being their servant, their assistant, their toy. It goes back to the Geisha - or rather how she is viewed in Western mythos, in Eastern mythos it isn't much better, by the way.
Harmony is a living doll by appearance, she acts like the stereotype - girlish, with nice clothes, and the puppy dogs, and the flirtly lashes. But she's a predator. Deadly. And no one's toy.
Buffy is also slight, small boned, and pretty - but equally deadly, strong, and tough. No one's toy. With soliders who listen to her commands. Xander is her sidekick, not the other way around.
At the end of the story, Dawn and Buffy and Kenny come to an understanding of sorts. Dawn tells Buffy she doesn't want to be safe. Doesn't want to be protected like a fragile doll any longer. And Buffy informs her sister that she has intense feelings for her, she loves her intensly, more than anyone else. The others are her soliders, not her sister. She loves Dawn no matter what. Dawn is a part of her, the part she could never really be, and in some respects the closest thing Buffy will have to child, not to mention the only part she has left of her mother and her family. Sibling relationships are odd things, there's a bond there no matter how much you don't get along. I felt it with my brother recently, when he came up and hugged me with little words after my Grandmother's funeral, and during it, when he made me laugh. It's by no means a perfect relationship. But none are. Kenny meanwhile removes the curse and goes his separate way, somewhat chagrinned for his actions...which he realizes were not justified. Whatever Dawn did, he overreacted and in a way demonstrated that Dawn was correct not to fully trust him, and to run into the arms of another. But love as they say, can make us crazy.
This issue along with the four that come before it, closes some plot lines, but open others.
A major plot-thread appears to be Buffy's own isolation, how she is like Dawn shutting herself off. Another plot-thread appears to be how the slayers are handling the outside world and the vampire threat. The rogue vampire mauraders who turn out to be about six drunken frat boys turned into vamps. A hilarious bit, played well. Once again the local bums underestimating the women fighters held up in their neighborhood castle - hardly damsels these. The threat of female empowerment - womens and mens fear of it. The cult of the celebrity, the love of all thing vampirish and gothic...male dominance, and surrender.
All of these appear to be themes that will be examined in more depth going forward.
According to the spoilers - at the end of the letter's page, and an interview with Jane Espenson, up next is a vampire tale - where we get to see things from their perspective. (Not sure why - we do, after all have both Angel and Spike series for that purpose, but whatever.)
Then finally, OZ makes his return engagement. About bloody time.
Okay, off now to watch Lost. Or attempt to watch Lost, tis getting late.
aycheb - who lately I've been agreeing with on tv shows and comics. She also did a good review of Dollhouse, as did 2maggie2 - both articulated quite well my reaction to that series, which I may or may not write a review on at a later date.Before I launch into my spoilery analysis - I enjoyed this issue quite a bit, far more than I expected to. Doug Petrie can be hit or miss as a writer, and here, I felt he hit all the necessary marks both plot-wise and character-wise. The story completed the thematic arc, and Dawn's thematic/story arc, with humor and finesse. Also, Georges Jeanty's art has either grown on me or gotten better, because I rather liked it, and thought he did a far better job than Cliff Richards who drew the last issue. Comic art by and large, like most art of this sort, is in the eye of the beholder. Whedon is a fan of Nick Sook or the guy who drew the Dru & Spike comic as well as some of the Marvel gothic ones. I'm not a fan of Sook. Find his art to be rather ugly. But Whedon prefers the gritty less pretty art. I'm guessing he may not be a huge fan of Urru who is smoother in line and draws a softer pic. I like less lines. Sorry, you won't get the above unless you are a huge fan of the graphic novel form - I fell in love with the format not for the writing but for the art. I like picture books, always have.
At any rate, this issue finally completes the arc regarding Dawn's multiple transformations which was begun in Long Journey Home. It is fitting that it is completed in a mini-arc of one-shots entitled "Predators and Prey", although whether Dawn is a predator or prey is questionable here. Another on-going theme in this arc as well as just about everything else Joss Whedon headlines.
Whedon in both Dollhouse and the Buffy series, seems to be asking the question - who is the predator and who is the prey? And is the prey actually a victim? Defenseless? If we look to the animal world - prey isn't always defenseless - it comes up with defense mechanisms - such as a stink bomb for a skunk, or camoflage for a lizard or spine for a porcupine. Another on-going theme in Whedon's work is gender politics - or an analysis/commentary on how women are still viewed as objects or prey in our society and men, generally, predators. Although as he notes in the classic Buffy episode Teacher's Pet - in the insect world, often the female is the predator - a la A Black Widow spider or a Pray MAntis - and she kills when she mates.
Which leads us to third theme - sex and love, and how wanting one or both makes you do the wacky.
In the first issue of this mini arc, Harmonic Divergence, Harmony was definitely the predator. She was also a woman, and the classic Marilyn Monroesque/Lana Turner femme fatale.
Beautiful, dumb, but deadly. Manipulating the media to show her and her kind in an appealing manner - which would enable her to do whatever she wanted, while her prey protected her and paid her for it. And she was able to paint Buffy and her slayers in a negative light, getting revenge on her rival, in a manner neither Drusilla nor Darla ever quite managed.
This issue was soon followed by Swell - which addressed gay stereotypes as well as gender stereotypes. Satso is visited by Kennedy, they do not stereotypically fall into Lesbian bliss, but rather have a talk about what it means to be gay in a straight society. As well as deal with the traditional view of what their roles aught to be in that society. Women should be good girls, stay at home, have kids, dress up as geishas to serve their men, be pretty dolls. Much as Harmony is in Divergence. Harmony is a doll - perfect, never aging, never changing. A guy's dream, until the fangs emerge.
Then we get Predators and Prey - about a group of rogue slayers who capture a "spider" who builds webs. The spider was summoned/breed by Andrew - the geeky guy, who dreams of controlling the slayers much as he controls his pet spider. But instead, the slayers capture him in their web, just as the spider captures him in its. He is out of his depth and must get Buffy's assistance. Who is prey and who is the predator? At first it appears that Andrew is the predator, but in truth it is the rogue slayers - who are anything but dolls.
Next is Safe - where the female slayers and the children of a town of watchers are fed to a monster that feeds on their guilt and their remorse. Remorse for living their lives behind, not being the women their families wanted, the daughters their parents craved, the weapons the watchers could control. Again the tables are turned, Faith and the other slayer fight back, they kill the beast, and the watcher who fed them to it - and empower the town with Giles assistence to fight back.
Now, finally we come to Living Doll - the last chapter in this arc. And in my opinion, next to Harmonic Divergence, potentially the best. Dawn has been through the equivalent of growing pangs, changing from a giant to a centaure/wood nymph to a living porcelain doll. In each incarnation she has had to cope with how the world views her. The first incarnation - made her too big to fit into any new clothes or the castle, she was put in the basement. But she was not a victim - stomping through vampire held Tokyo with much aplomb, and on the zombies that Amy magicked to life. Eventually she confides in Xander, telling him that she was turned into a "giant slut" - her words not his - by a spell that Kenny cast. It was not, she insists, Kenny's fault - so much as her own for betraying him. She slept with his roommate. And Kenny, a thricewise demon who can take on human shape, cursed her for it.
She goes through two more incarnations before the gang finally catchs up with Kenny and we get an explanation for why Dawn slept with his roommate and why he cast the spell - the reason is sort of lame, but in keeping with the general thematic structure of both the series and the comics in regards to sex and love, which I'll come back to later. The second incarnation is a wood nymph or centaur - half horse/half human. And as Dawn states at one point, after riding hard through the rain, I feel as if I've been ridden hard and put away wet. (This is sexual connotation, a really skanky one, that women state about women they consider old whores.) Next, comes the living doll.
The issue opens with Dawn in the workshop of a toymaker, who looks quite a bit like Geppeto from Pinnochio - a rather demented Gepetto. (Not the first time, Whedon and his crew have taken a decidely dark twist on a beloved fairy tale.) Gepetto/toymaker informs Dawn as he picks up a scapel to heal a break in her porcelain face - that he will keep doing this to her until she is safe. If your face breaks open, your soul will scatter into many different lights and matter. A reference to the ball of energy that Dawn began her life as - the key, now her soul. None of his other dolls has this light, they aren't alive, they are only seemingly so by his magic touch. He makes them and keeps them safe - perpetual children that will never leave, never grow old, but by the same token have no free will - they can only do what he bids. They aren't real boys and girls.
Being real means having a soul - the ability to choose your own path without someone or something else dictating it for you.
Dawn - states to Buffy that she had thought she wanted to be safe, that she wanted Buffy to keep her safe, but it isn't what she wants and it isn't something Buffy can do any longer.
The toymaker is a standin for the father figure, the protector boy-friend. As Dawn tells Kenny - she felt safe with him until he wanted to sleep with her, her feelings for him were so intense, that she chickened out, and slept with his roommate - who was safer. She picked the safe route - the one she felt would cause her the least emotional discord. It makes sense she chose it - after all she does share Buffy's memories of what happened with Angel, not to mention what occurred with her father, Riley, and Spike. Buffy's romances have been far from safe. Satsu in some ways was safe - for Buffy did not have intense feelings for Satsu, it was simple for her. Just sex. But, as both Dawn and Buffy learn - sex and love are NEVER simple, and there are always consequences. Satsu is deeply hurt by Buffy's response to her - as we learn in Swell. As is Kenny hurt by Dawn's reaction to his heartfelt affection. Tromping on someone's heart to protect your own does not end well.
But then..Safe is a questionable concept. Are we ever truly safe? With one another? With ourselves? A friend of my brother's stated to me recently that half the time we are our own worst enemies. To which, I retorted - half? I'd say 100% of the time. We aren't ever safe.
If we try to protect ourselves from the world - we end up shutting out what the world has to offer us. To truly feel happiness, we have to risk landing on the thorns, pricking our fingers, and having our hearts stomped on.
Dawn's actions to protect herself - land her into far greater jeopardy than if she had trusted Kenny and taken a leap of faith. Granted Kenny hasn't exactly proven himself trustworthy here, but neither has Dawn.
Who is the predator and who is the prey? Who is the victim? Kenny? Dawn? Or neither? It's not clear. Kenny much like Xander way back when..is the victim of loving someone who is afraid to love him back. Buffy, I can't help but wonder, fears giving into any sexual attraction to Xander because to do so would destroy what they have - something she's come to depend up on.
Now, when she might actually consider it, might actually be attracted to him, she veers further away - for the reasons that we see detailed in Long Way Home - and her dream sequence in the first two issues of the season 8 - where Buffy kisses Xander and his head comes off.
Everyone she loves in a romantic way - dies or leaves. Much like Dawn, Buffy is protecting herself. Shutting herself off from romantic feelings, from love. She doesn't want to feel the pain.
But by doing so, they both become dolls, porcelain doll who can't feel beneath it's tough external shell. Ironic, considering porcelain is a fragile substance and easily broken.
Also a metaphor for Buffy - who appears to be tough on the outside but is actually quite fragile, brittle even, she breaks into a million pieces and has had to put her heart back together so many times she rivals Humpty Dumpty. So the question here becomes who is really the living doll? Dawn or Buffy? Or both?
Back to the underlying theme of female empowerment and gender politics that is the through line in this series - women have historically and traditionally been depicted as fragile, brittle, and porcelian dolls. Something to be put on a shelf and taken down whenever the guy wishes to play with them. Not to speak. Not to argue. Not to think. To be pretty. To serve.
To wear nice clothes and have nice nails. Have you ever noticed that when men dress up to be women - they put on dresses, paint their nails, wear makeup and put on heels and fancy lingeri? Like dolls one might find in a store. Or in films from Pretty Women to She's All That to Devil Wears Prada - the girl is madeup and dressed up like a doll. It's taken for granted that that's what women do. Yet Buffy in the latter seasons seldom wore skirts or dresses, hardly practical and not exactly comfortable. Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying that dressing up and painting one's nails makes one dollish. Just that often this is all people see or focus on. Men like to dress up too, and yes, even get manicures, and no they aren't necessarily gay. Gay has zip to do with it.
But being a doll...being at someone's beck and call, being their servant, their assistant, their toy. It goes back to the Geisha - or rather how she is viewed in Western mythos, in Eastern mythos it isn't much better, by the way.
Harmony is a living doll by appearance, she acts like the stereotype - girlish, with nice clothes, and the puppy dogs, and the flirtly lashes. But she's a predator. Deadly. And no one's toy.
Buffy is also slight, small boned, and pretty - but equally deadly, strong, and tough. No one's toy. With soliders who listen to her commands. Xander is her sidekick, not the other way around.
At the end of the story, Dawn and Buffy and Kenny come to an understanding of sorts. Dawn tells Buffy she doesn't want to be safe. Doesn't want to be protected like a fragile doll any longer. And Buffy informs her sister that she has intense feelings for her, she loves her intensly, more than anyone else. The others are her soliders, not her sister. She loves Dawn no matter what. Dawn is a part of her, the part she could never really be, and in some respects the closest thing Buffy will have to child, not to mention the only part she has left of her mother and her family. Sibling relationships are odd things, there's a bond there no matter how much you don't get along. I felt it with my brother recently, when he came up and hugged me with little words after my Grandmother's funeral, and during it, when he made me laugh. It's by no means a perfect relationship. But none are. Kenny meanwhile removes the curse and goes his separate way, somewhat chagrinned for his actions...which he realizes were not justified. Whatever Dawn did, he overreacted and in a way demonstrated that Dawn was correct not to fully trust him, and to run into the arms of another. But love as they say, can make us crazy.
This issue along with the four that come before it, closes some plot lines, but open others.
A major plot-thread appears to be Buffy's own isolation, how she is like Dawn shutting herself off. Another plot-thread appears to be how the slayers are handling the outside world and the vampire threat. The rogue vampire mauraders who turn out to be about six drunken frat boys turned into vamps. A hilarious bit, played well. Once again the local bums underestimating the women fighters held up in their neighborhood castle - hardly damsels these. The threat of female empowerment - womens and mens fear of it. The cult of the celebrity, the love of all thing vampirish and gothic...male dominance, and surrender.
All of these appear to be themes that will be examined in more depth going forward.
According to the spoilers - at the end of the letter's page, and an interview with Jane Espenson, up next is a vampire tale - where we get to see things from their perspective. (Not sure why - we do, after all have both Angel and Spike series for that purpose, but whatever.)
Then finally, OZ makes his return engagement. About bloody time.
Okay, off now to watch Lost. Or attempt to watch Lost, tis getting late.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 10:04 pm (UTC)Well IDW has the ensouled vampires, I'm guessing that Darkhorse will not be looking from the POV of any vampires with souls! But I'm spoiler free so I don't know what this particular Tales of the Vampires will bring...
Like you, I'm really looking forward to seeing Oz again!