True Blood and Buffy the Vampire Slayer

[shadowkat]

1. Just finished watching True Blood finale - and it was great, would have been better without the bar scenes and the pregnant fairy, but we can't have everything.
Besides I'm willing to bet there are people who loved the pregnant fairy. Watched too many soaps and lurked around too many fandoms to not realize this is the case.

Favorite line?

Sookie: Jason, don't be a fool.
Jason: I assert my god given right and privilege as a proud American to be a fool if I want to.
Sookie: Oh. Okay.

Ball does satire quite well.



* Well, I didn't see that coming. They have made Bill completely irredeemable, and a monster. He's died and been reborn in Lilith's blood. A literal translation of the Judeo/Christian and I think, it's a been a while, Egyptian and Babylonian mythos. The whole man is reborn as God bit goes back before Christianity. Religions aren't very innovative as rule, they tend to borrow ruthlessly from each other, often copying whole bits from other religions then subverting them to their own ends. Minor in mythology and it will kill your religion. Theology won't. Cultural Anthropology, philosophy and mythology will.

Found what they did with it rather amusing actually.

Also nice parallel to Sam.

Sam is swallowed by the female vampire and bursts her shell coming out sheafed in blood.
Bill swallows Lilith, who bursts Bill and is reborn as Bill from the blood taking his form.

At any rate, I liked the fact that Sookie couldn't save Bill, that Eric was wrong about Bill and wrong about Bill's affection for Sookie as was Sookie, that it is not real.

That surprised me. Usually they do the opposite.

* Jason is hilarious. Poor Jessica.

* Tara/Pam - my new favorite ship. Actually I adore, Eric, Pam and Tara.

Eric to Nora: She's family be nice to her.

Eric to Nora: You can't eat Sookie, she saved my life countless times and allowed me to pay off an ancient debt, for which I'm forever grateful.
Nora: But I want her.
Eric: You're really this undisciplined? Father would not be pleased.

I adore Eric. Why Sookie prefers Bill, I'll never understand.

At any rate, having the gang team up, rescue Pam and Jess, and attempt to rescue Bill (okay that was just Sookie and Eric - which neither Pam nor Jason understood, right there with you guys). So now Bill has taken Russell Edington's place as the Big Bad, nifty.

* Granny Wolf got some chutzpah and had Alicide help her take down the bad pack master.

* Okay, is Luna dead or alive? They never told us. (If they spent less time with the drunks watching the fairy birth at the bar, we might have found out.) Rather liked the Sam/Luna and Emily (baby wolf) storyline. Was rather suspenseful. Also admittedly gross.
Sam was quite clever. Eric and Sam should join forces, they appear to be the brightest cogs in the series, with Tara and Pam close seconds. Bill's not completely stupid - he did outwit Salome, granted it wasn't that hard.

Overall? Best season to date. And bonus, Ball's taking a sabatical and we only get 10 episodes next season - which means it will be tighter and possibly less over-the-top satirical?



2. While reading beer_good_foamy's essay about Buffy S7 -
weird ideas popped into my head. I don't know if they make sense to anyone but me or not.

Actually a lot of weird ideas.

I don't know if these ideas quite work. So I'm Playing with them. This is written off the cuff, expect lots of typos and errors.

* There's a dramatic trope, such as Six Characters in Search of an Author, in which the fourth wall is broken and no longer exists. The writer loses control of the narrative.
It becomes owned by the characters - who are literally looking up at the writer and out at the audience and commenting on the action and their own. Thornton Wilder played with it a bit in Our Town. Stephen Sondheim plays with it in Into the Woods. And Whedon plays with it in Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse and Cabin in the Woods.

The idea that the lead protagonist is looking at the creator and saying wait, you don't exist. What are you talking about. Get out of my face. You don't define me.

Here, Whedon takes this idea a step further...in that he is not only commenting on this existential dilemma, but...he's commenting on the "male" narrator telling the female protagonist's tale. IF you think about it that way and what that means - it changes everything you see on screen. The victimized little girl trope suddenly is thrown in a whole new light - since Whedon is basically stating, yes, this is how men tell this story in this genre, but is this story real - or is it our romantic notion?

Take Storyteller for example - Andrew is clearly a standin for the male narrative voice, the writer who has created this male dominated genre. This is similar in a way to what he does in Cabin in the Woods - with the male scientists watching and controlling what is on screen, and geeking out over it - they are adult versions of Andrew. And it's also similar to Topher in Dollhouse, who geeks out over his control of the female dolls...Echo and Amy Acker's character. But in each case, at the end, the female character subverts it. She fights back. Changing the story or trying to (well with the possible exception of Cabin.)
She turns the camera on her the male standin narrator.

It also sheds new light on Angel and Spike who are both "red-shirts" - the characters Buffy is supposed to kill. Spike even wears a red-shirt all the way through a vast majority of the series - like a big target on his chest declaring to both actor and audience that he does not have long to live. But Buffy refuses to kill him. She considers it. But instead...she reforms him, turns him into her informant, ally, partner, and champion. In the genre - the male dominated vampire genre - Spike sucks her blood and she dies or becomes his doll and plaything. That's the trope. But that's not what happened.

* Another way of looking at it is philosophically...sort of like that classic Star Trek Next Generation Episode, where Jean Luc Picard comments that maybe they are all just characters in a box that someone out there is watching, as they watch their characters and stories on the holodeck. A box, within box, within a box. To what degree is the narrative controlled by the writer?

Whedon stated in a recent interview (don't ask me where, it's referenced somewhere in my lj) - that he had no problems with fanfic, because stories weren't pets, they were children, they grow up, leave home, and talk back to you.

The writer has little control over the story. The story creates itself and in essence continues long after the writer has left it or finished with it. The characters living in perpetuity. Or rather in the minds of the readers.

Which begs the question...to what degree is our path pre-ordained or pre-written? Are we the writers of our paths or is someone else? Can we essentially create our own narratives?

Add to this - the desire of the gender/race/class in control to write the narratives of those who are not. To form their narratives. To structure those narratives and impose them.
You see this a lot in advertising and marketing media - where the attempt is made to write a narrative that defines what women are or their roles. Religion's do this as well - defining roles, labling people.

In the episode Restless - Buffy's dream, Buffy comes upon Riley and Adam building forts with coach pillows and stating they have to go off and name things, and Riley wonders what her name is, and names her demon. He lables her. But Buffy in her dream, questions the lable - am I a demon? In the male mythos - the woman is other, demon, part of his rib, taken from him (see the Pervert's Guide to Cinema for examples of how this has been conveyed historically in film.) . When she comes upon the First Slayer, shortly thereafter, she continues to question - and she refuses to be easily defined or labeled. I am Buffy Summers. I am a vampire Slayer. I am myself.

Note, in Welcome to the Hellmouth - when Giles tells her that she's the slayer, she denies him, no, she says - I'm not. I don't choose to be. I'll let you know when I change my mind.

And later...when Kendra appears, and she discovers there's a manual, he informs her he gave up on it - because she defied it, fell out of bounds.

In Season 5, Checkpoint - she retorts to the head of the predominantly male and/or patriarchial Watcher's Council - "This is about power, I have it, you don't. I'm changing the rules. I'm redefining us both." Later in S7, the Watcher Council is blown up by Caleb, the epitome of the male patriarachy, the male narrative voice. Caleb symbolizes the male narrator of this genre going back a hundred years. He's almost a cliche, a stereotype, complete with bible thumping southern twang. And he's supposed to be. She vanquishes him by ripping him in half, from gonads to skull.

Caleb in addition represents...religion, God, the male God. Yet, notably the God he worships, takes Buffy's form...not his.

And Buffy discovers power is in redefining the narrative framework. She gets rid of the watcher council. She changes the rules regarding slayers. She changes her own role and Faith's. It's no longer "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by the end of the series. She's one of many.

* The idea of labels or names...and words, what they mean. Whedon in Buffy questions our assumptions, questions the cliches, and the stereotypes. He is a bit like a magician - provides the illusion, fools you, then at the last minute...shows what is real. And how you were fooled.

- Buffy...tiny, less than 90 pounds, blond, valley girl, former cheerleader, sort of ditzy.
Yet, she can take on a monster three times her size and dispatch him or her in record time.
People underestimate her. Their eyes fool them.

- Angel - beautiful on the outside, the dream date, the mysterious older guy, the classical hero...yet, manipulative, destructive, brings about the end of the world.
Yet he means well. Not at all what you see.

The trick...vampires can wear a human face, but when they change, put on their game face - they are hidieous and ugly. Their real face? Or is that the human one? Depends on the vampire? It's a question that's never answered.

- Willow - geeky, damsel in distress, cute high voice, perpetual victim - turns into a more powerful witch than anyone, so powerful she can beat Buffy. And wickedly smart.

Nothing is what it seems on this show. Not quite.

Glory/Ben - the hell=god who wears heels and a bad perm, who sounds and acts like Buffy the Cheerleader or S1 Cordy, and Ben - the good Doctor and healer.

Dawn to Ben, after he tells her that he values his life over her's and all her friends: I want Glory back, you are the real monster.

And the interesting bit about the Glory/Ben villain, is the male is the prison for the female. But of the two, Ben is the caregiver and Glory the fighter. Glory's narrative defines who Ben is, not the other way around, even though Ben keeps trying to define Glory - with Ben and Glory - you see the first two points fought out. God vs. Man, Male vs Female. Writer vs. Character - the character confined inside the writer or is it the other way around?

And each character has other names. Angel/Angelus/Liam, Buffy/Vampire Slayer, Willow/Wills/DarkWillow, Spike/William, Dawn/Key, Xander/Alexander/Bricklayer/Zeppo...Giles/Ripper
Names provide us with a way of figuring out how to deal with each other, how to identify and distinguish. There are the names people call themselves and the names others call them.

Is Buffy - The Slayer or merely just "Buffy"?

It's an idea that Whedon plays with in Cabin in the Woods and in Dollhouse as well. What is in a name or a character trope? There's the jock, the nerd, the virigin, the whore, the last girl standing...words we use in analyzing and critiquing genre. But as the characters in Cabin state - that's not who I am. The virgin had sex with her professor. The whore is insecure about having sex with her boyfriend and is rather inexperienced. The jock is actually an intellectual, while the nerd is a stoner and could care less about school, and the intellect isn't that bright. And even those lines aren't that neatly drawn. People, Whedon stipulates in Buffy, Dollhouse, Firefly and Cabin aren't so easily pigeon-holed, we don't fit into character tropes or categories. Defining them in this manner, distances us from them, they cease to matter - they become red-shirts to be disposed of on-screen or in a video game.

* The framework or structure of a text or piece of art is often ignored in reviews and critical analysis which is odd, considering it is literally the foundation of the work itself. It is like a house. Without the frame or narrative structure, the story folds in on itself. How the framework or structure is set up defines in some respects the story.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as beer_good_foamy stated far better than I am, is a title that defines the structure of its story. It is a joke. It is riddle. And it is a mislead. Those who judge a book or tv show by its name, will ignore it or dismiss it out of hand. While those who see the inside joke within the title, will venture inside to see.
A bit like the house going up three buildings behind me. It's a rather small house, that sits on top of a warehouse, painted neon green. The title Buffy the Vampire Slayer - tells us right off the bat that this is a character piece, that the title character may well be at war with the narrative itself, the other thing it tells us is that the story will most likely either subvert or mock the very genre it is within.

But that's not what is most interesting...that has been done before, what is interesting is the self-awareness of the narrative...in most cases not all. The writer seems to almost be apologizing for narrating the female character's tale. He shows how men do it. How men make it about themselves. How he makes it about himself. The nerd Trio, Xander, Jonathan, Andrew...and even Spike are all commentaries on this. And he shows how his character, Buffy, keeps pushing back.

I'm not sure he succeeds all the time here. There are missteps, and it is sloppy in places, the restraints/constraints of the medium that he is working within being what they are - and well, I think this sort of thing is hard to pull off. It requires a deft touch.
But I see signs that he attempted it.


I don't know it's late, and perhaps I'm too sleep deprived to see straight. Make of the above what you will.