“It was pretty much the blond girl in the alley in the horror movie who keeps getting killed ... I felt bad for her, but she was always much more interesting to me than the other women. She was fun, she had sex, she was vivacious. But then she would get punished for it. Literally, I just had that image, that scene, in my mind, like the trailer for a movie what if the girl goes into that dark alley. And the monster follows her. And she destroys him.”
This quote taken from Joss Whedon, creator and executive producer of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), shows his interest in establishing an absolutely new type of show where a heroine – an apparently average high-school girl – is the focus of the storyline.
Nineteen-year old Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) personifies the Chosen One to save the world from dreadful demons, nasty vampires and other scary supernatural creatures. How Buffy copes with her duty as a Slayer, how she manages to overcome the separations from her two former boy-friends Angel and Riley and how she deals with her capricious teenage sister Dawn – all that can be learned during seasons one through five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This paper, however, focuses on an extraordinary episode in mid-season V called The Body, where we are confronted with an utterly vulnerable protagonist facing death and attempting to come to terms with the result of her mother’s passing away. This paper’s intention is to show how and why Joss Whedon decided to make Buffy‘s mother Joyce die on screen and to explore its significance for the story’s plot. My assumption is that this crucial impact was indispensable for the development of Buffy’s character as well as for her relationship with her younger sister Dawn. As Buffy’s father having deserted the familiy after his divorce from Joyce and taking off to live in Italy, it is Buffy’s duty to take care of her sister and assume full responsibility for her after their mother’s sudden death. That process of maturity leads gradually to the very end of season V where in the final episode The Gift Buffy sacrifices her own life in order to spare Dawn’s.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Whedon as the feminist Auteur
3. Sequence analysis
3.1. Act I
3.2. Act II
3.3. Act II
3.4. Act IV
4. Conclusion
5. Works cited
1. Introduction
“It was pretty much the blond girl in the alley in the horror movie who keeps getting killed ... I felt bad for her, but she was always much more interesting to me than the other women. She was fun, she had sex, she was vivacious. But then she would get punished for it. Literally, I just had that image, that scene, in my mind, like the trailer for a movie what if the girl goes into that dark alley. And the monster follows her. And she destroys him.”[1]
This quote taken from Joss Whedon, creator and executive producer of the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), shows his interest in establishing an absolutely new type of show where a heroine – an apparently average high-school girl – is the focus of the storyline.
Nineteen-year old Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) personifies the Chosen One to save the world from dreadful demons, nasty vampires and other scary supernatural creatures. How Buffy copes with her duty as a Slayer, how she manages to overcome the separations from her two former boy-friends Angel and Riley and how she deals with her capricious teenage sister Dawn – all that can be learned during seasons one through five of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
This paper, however, focuses on an extraordinary episode in mid-season V called The Body, where we are confronted with an utterly vulnerable protagonist facing death and attempting to come to terms with the result of her mother’s passing away. This paper’s intention is to show how and why Joss Whedon decided to make Buffy‘s mother Joyce die on screen and to explore its significance for the story’s plot. My assumption is that this crucial impact was indispensable for the development of Buffy’s character as well as for her relationship with her younger sister Dawn. As Buffy’s father having deserted the familiy after his divorce from Joyce and taking off to live in Italy, it is Buffy’s duty to take care of her sister and assume full responsibility for her after their mother’s sudden death. That process of maturity leads gradually to the very end of season V where in the final episode The Gift Buffy sacrifices her own life in order to spare Dawn’s. Thus, it becomes clear that she completely takes over the position of a mother-figure which would not have been possible had Joyce been still alive. Moreover, this fatal crisis shows Buffy the limits of her own power and isolates her temporarily as her mother having always been a strong bond to the “normal world” – a place where she desperately wants to belong despite of her Slayer status.
However, accepting her destiny as the Chosen One, death does not only become an almost ordinary part of Buffy’s every day life but also “her gift” – as she realizes in the finale of season V mentioned above. Still, The Body marks a turning point in dealing with the issue of death since Buffy has always been able to gain something essential from it. All the flaws and mishaps serve a certain purpose: the pain and sorrow she has had to endure so far have shaped her personality; her increasing experience, strength and final maturity are necessary for the development of her character as the Slayer.
This time all is different – or so it seems to be. Finding her mother lying motionlessly on the sofa in the living room and not being able to rescue her, leaves Buffy in a devastated state. Since Joyce has not died of some unnatural cause – neither a demonic creature nor a vampire attack having killed her – there is no chance for Buffy to handle the situation in a familiar way – pursuing the evil and fighting it. She cannot pass the guilt onto anyone else but on herself for not having found her mother in time. She is left behind in pure desperation, grief and helplessness. Gradually she becomes aware of the fact that she is no longer just Dawn’s elder sister but actually her legal guardian. Buffy has to leave her own youth and adolescence behind and needs to pass on to adulthood. Adding up to being “just a girl” protecting the world from blood-sucking monsters, she has to fill the vacant parent position; Buffy has to grow up and face life as it is: unpredictable, incomprehensible and sometimes utterly unjust. Not only does she mature as a Slayer, but even more as a human creature. From now on the challenge does not predominantly consist in saving the day from the supernatural, but mastering everyday life – her heroism is extended from the demonic sphere to the “evil” of the ordinary world.
The episode The Body also introduces Buffy’s friends Willow, Xander, Tara and Anya acting as family substitute and mental and active support. Their struggle for understanding and coping with the inexplicable as well as their failure to gain control of that completely alien situation is amazingly intensely portrayed. A nightmarishly depressing and thus utterly realistic atmosphere is masterfully created. That is achieved above all by the complete lack of music throughout the whole episode in order to avoid any easygoing comfort or release for the audience, as Joss Whedon points out in the audio commentary of The Body. Furthermore he entirely omits any supernatural features except the very last scene where Buffy has to save Dawn from an awakened vampire thus bringing her life “back to normal”.
The reason why I would like to stress on The Body of all episodes is as Rhonda Wilcox (2005), scholar and Buffy expert, puts it in “Why Buffy matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer” on page 13:
“Buffy matters for the same reason that all art matters — because it shows us the best of what it means to be human.”
And The Body may be the best episode to portray exactly that: being human by revealing the weaknesses and shortcomings of our super heroine.
2. Whedon as the feminist Auteur
Especially in the episode The Body the Auteur theory[2] is exemplarily applied as Joss Whedon, writer, director and producer clearly left his fingerprints: “... I usually direct an episode when there is something I desperately want to say — where there’s a moment that I want to capture, an idea I want to try out.”[3], and he admits in the audio commentary that a lot of his personal experiences influenced the creation of The Body.
“Directors have to be storytellers and all that stuff, and some are better than others. ... But, you know, as Jeanine put it once, or probably more than once, ‘A director doesn't have to create anything, but he is responsible for everything.’ Same thing goes for an executive producer on TV. I don't have to write a line of the script — although there's not a script for my shows that I don't have a line in, or a scene, or a pitch, or something.”[4]
Buffy reverses the common concept of the male gaze and the female object constantly being looked at[5] and thus perverts the power relations between men and women subverting the gender roles. That cinematic approach is probably partially due to Whedon’s personal background. By his own account his mother, who had died in 1992 – the year the movie of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired – was a great source of inspiration and has shaped his work decisively.
“I've struggled with my ability to write women. My whole life I've wanted to make sure that I didn't idealize them, that I just didn't sort of scratch the surface. ... But I have always been interested in feminism, partially because I was raised by a very strong woman, and partially because being small and 'fragile, and not taken seriously by anybody, I could identify with the way I perceived women were being treated once I got out of my house, where they 'were treated like equals, lender and feminism has just always been a big area of study for me. It's what I concentrated on in film.”[6]
Moreover, Whedon had previously pursued a staff writer’s job on the television series Roseanne (1988-1997) , another strong female character. He voices his position towards feminism clearly by saying: “If I can make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of a situation without their knowing that’s what’s happening, it’s better than sitting down and selling them on feminism.”[7]
It is true that especially in earlier episodes of season one and two Buffy, albeit her superpowers, is depicted as a well-dressed and –styled girly type of character. As the story progresses, however, her physical appearance gradually changes into an average young woman facing normal teenage problems (e.g. her relationship with her mother, her peers and particularly boys) who the audience can identify with all too easily. The character of Buffy’s former boy-friend Angel (handsome David Boreanaz) – a cursed vampire with a soul – however, was mainly introduced because he turned women “into puddles the moment he walked into the room”[8]. His function as the “eye-candy” – a fate usually predetermined for the beautiful, but useless female accessory in action movies – breaks with the gender conventions since this time it is the male figure being more or less purely reduced to his good looks and thus sexualized. “My interest in women is mainly their strength. My interest in men is mainly their flaws. I realize both have both, but that's how it falls out. It's an identification with Otherness – call it Cinematic Drag.”[9], emphasizes Whedon his point of view.
[...]
[1] Joss Whedon on his idea to create a rather unusual heroine. (Quoted in Vint, para. 6) Vint, Sherryl. "Killing us Softly: A Feminist Search for the 'Real' Buffy". Slayage 5. December 9, 2002. found on http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage5/vint.htm access: August 4, 2007
[2] ‘Auteur theory: An individual, inevitably the director, whose contribution to a film’s style and theme is considered so significant that he or she can be considered the “author” of the film despite that a film’s production is dependent on a larger number of people with specific skills and talents working collaboratively. An auteur establishes his or her identity across the body of films which can be seen to bear a distinctive “signature”.’ See: An Introduction to Film Studies p. 429
[3] Joss Whedon quote. See http://www.slayageonline.com/pages/Wit_Wisdom_Joss_Whedon.pdf Strikingly he set up his own production company Mutant Enemy to produce Buffy in 1997. See http://www.tvshows.nu/article.php3?id_article=4756 access: August 4, 2007
[4] Joss Whedon quote. Compare http://www.slayageonline.com/pages/Wit_Wisdom_Joss_Whedon.pdf (my italics) access: August 4, 2007
[5] Compare feminist film theory e.g. Laura Mulvey’s essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema", 1975 in Movie and Methods Volume II ( ed .) Bill Nichols
[6] Joss Whedon quote. Compare http://www.slayageonline.com/pages/Wit_Wisdom_Joss_Whedon.pdf access: August 4, 2007
[7] Joss Whedon quote. Bewitching teen heroines by Ginia Bellafante. Compare http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,986288,00.html Monday, May. 05, 1997 access: August 4, 2007
[8] Joss Whedon, audio commentary of Buffy’s Season One “Welcome to the Hellmouth” DVD, 2001
[9] Joss Whedon, in an on-line Q&A answering questions from various fansites, "Joss Answers Questions" September 29, 2005 http://whedonesque.com/comments/11829 access: August 4, 2007
- Quote paper
- Julia Koehler (Author), 2007, Realism featured in fantasy series:The portrayal of death, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/83935
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