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mamajoanMy analysis of last night's Buffy episode "Selfless"...
First, let me just say that I liked this episode a LOT. I've liked Anya pretty much from the beginning, and it was really nice to finally have a whole episode centered around her. (Although, it still didn't really explain why she hates bunnies! Unless it's just by association.) There was a lot to like in this episode, especially the depiction of Anya's pre-demon self and her self at the height of her demon-ness (Anya started the Russian Revolution? LOL!). I also really enjoyed the Willow stuff, even the somewhat scary black-eyed-magic-Willow part. I thought Alyson Hanigan and Emma Caulfield were amazing.
I also was extremely pleased to hear them finally address Xander's Big Lie from "Becoming," which has been a point of fandom contention ever since -- the Xander-lovers justifying it, the Xander-haters using it as further reason to castigate him. Frankly, Xander has indeed been hypocritical in many instances over the years; and me, I still like him and all, but it does get tired. As those who know me know, I'm a big fan of continuity and bringing back plot-points from long ago, so I was delighted to hear Buffy reminding Xander that she killed her True Love not very long ago.
The Anya-singing scene was fun and I liked how they integrated it into the events of OMWF by putting in a little bit of mustard-song. Cute! And Emma Caulfield has definitely been taking singing lessons or something, because she sounded much more confident and capable in this song than she did in "I'll Never Tell."
I also, of course, liked the Spike scene. It's interesting that in his madness Spike is envisioning Buffy saying the things he does but doesn't want to hear, namely "I'm here for you, we'll get through this together," and so forth. He's definitely got a passive-aggressive thing going on, where he wants Buffy to want to help him, but he doesn't actually want her to help him. I won't say much more about the whole Spike-soul thing here, since it's all being said elsewhere in my LJ anyway. The other interesting thing about that scene, IMO, was the way they played the entrance of the "real" Buffy, so we can't really be sure whether that was the actual Buffy or a second hallucination of mad-Spike. Notice that the first Buffy, the one saying "I'm here for you", was wearing white, whereas the second, the one saying "Get out of here," was wearing black. However, even Get-out-of-here-Buffy wasn't being mean or heartless; she was still trying to help Spike, pointing out that being in that particular basement was bad for him. When he said "I have nowhere else to go," you know he was kind of hoping she'd offer *her* basement or something; but she didn't, which could mean that it was the real Buffy, or not. It's hard to say, and I really like that ambiguity.
But now, on to the things that I liked less about the episode.
First of all, the way Buffy jumps immediately to killing Anya upon hearing what happened. What the hell?? Anya's your friend and a useful contributing member of the Scooby Gang for three years, and the minute she does something questionable you have to *kill* her??? Whereas you let Spike live for years even though he a) was *not* a very helpful member of the gang (yes, he helped, but reluctantly and erratically) and b) had a history of killing people just as bad as Anya's? (You could argue that Anya has probably killed more people than Spike, but she did it for a reason and at others' behests, whereas Spike just killed for the hell of it.)
Secondly, the implication that the love of a good man (Xander) can reform even the most reprobate of women. That really irks me, and as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jennyo pointed out, it's a theme that's endemic in the Jossverse. It would be almost as easy for the writers to twist it such that what turned Anya around was being a member of the Scooby gang, helping them help people and finding out how good it feels to be on the good side; but they didn't play it that way, and it annoys me. We've seen that pre-demon Anya was similar to post-demon Anya in personality; she didn't have a lot of social skills, didn't understand a lot about the world, asked a lot of weird or dumb questions, and so forth. So a lot of the behavior that Xander spent the last few seasons "training" her out of was not "I've been a demon so long I forgot how to be human" stuff, but "I never learned this stuff in the first place." That could be a really interesting point to develop. I just don't like that it has to be ALL about her
relationship with the man.
Having said all that, I do recognize that there was more to it -- there was the Anya/Willow scene, which I really, really liked. I'd love to see more development of that relationship (I don't mean that in a romantic way, although that could be interesting too) as they have so much in common and both have traumas/issues that they're working through. And I was pleased that the episode didn't end with Anya falling into Xander's arms (although the soap-opera-watching part of me was a little sad).
Finally, a few words on the episode title, "Selfless." In common parlance this word is taken to mean altruistic, helping people without asking for anything in return. More literally, of course, it means "having no self" (or sense of self), which is how Anya was portrayed in this episode. I think it's clear that pre-demon Anya (Aud) doesn't have much sense of who she is or what she wants out of life -- she's making a start at it by suggesting that she give away her bunnies to get other people's good-will, but obviously that didn't go anywhere before D'Hoffryn came along. Demon Anyanka also doesn't have a sense of self, although it doesn't bother her; she's not interested in any of the entertainments that Halfrek (and presumably the other vengeance demons) enjoy, and she defines herself purely in terms of her work.
Post-demon Anya has come a ways toward figuring out who she is, but as her song shows, she still defines herself in terms of others. She's Mrs. Xander, not a person in her own right. This feeling can only have intensified after Xander left her at the altar, which explains why she was so eager to go back to demoning -- a job where, as she remembers, she never worried about self-identification. But she finds that she can't go back to that way of thinking again. She still wants to know who she is and what she's about. When forcibly immersing herself in work by killing all those guys doesn't work, she's ready to give up, which is why she was willing to let D'Hoffryn kill her.
At the end of the episode she still doesn't know who she is, but Xander at least gives her hope that she can figure it out. Which is cool, although as I already said, it would have been nice if she could have gotten that hope from inside herself. But hey, like she said, it's a start.
I didn't get to watch SV last night on account of getting home from chorus a bit late and wanting to watch the baseball game after I finished Buffy. Hopefully I'll be able to watch SV tonight, especially as it looks like West Wing is a rerun.
First, let me just say that I liked this episode a LOT. I've liked Anya pretty much from the beginning, and it was really nice to finally have a whole episode centered around her. (Although, it still didn't really explain why she hates bunnies! Unless it's just by association.) There was a lot to like in this episode, especially the depiction of Anya's pre-demon self and her self at the height of her demon-ness (Anya started the Russian Revolution? LOL!). I also really enjoyed the Willow stuff, even the somewhat scary black-eyed-magic-Willow part. I thought Alyson Hanigan and Emma Caulfield were amazing.
I also was extremely pleased to hear them finally address Xander's Big Lie from "Becoming," which has been a point of fandom contention ever since -- the Xander-lovers justifying it, the Xander-haters using it as further reason to castigate him. Frankly, Xander has indeed been hypocritical in many instances over the years; and me, I still like him and all, but it does get tired. As those who know me know, I'm a big fan of continuity and bringing back plot-points from long ago, so I was delighted to hear Buffy reminding Xander that she killed her True Love not very long ago.
The Anya-singing scene was fun and I liked how they integrated it into the events of OMWF by putting in a little bit of mustard-song. Cute! And Emma Caulfield has definitely been taking singing lessons or something, because she sounded much more confident and capable in this song than she did in "I'll Never Tell."
I also, of course, liked the Spike scene. It's interesting that in his madness Spike is envisioning Buffy saying the things he does but doesn't want to hear, namely "I'm here for you, we'll get through this together," and so forth. He's definitely got a passive-aggressive thing going on, where he wants Buffy to want to help him, but he doesn't actually want her to help him. I won't say much more about the whole Spike-soul thing here, since it's all being said elsewhere in my LJ anyway. The other interesting thing about that scene, IMO, was the way they played the entrance of the "real" Buffy, so we can't really be sure whether that was the actual Buffy or a second hallucination of mad-Spike. Notice that the first Buffy, the one saying "I'm here for you", was wearing white, whereas the second, the one saying "Get out of here," was wearing black. However, even Get-out-of-here-Buffy wasn't being mean or heartless; she was still trying to help Spike, pointing out that being in that particular basement was bad for him. When he said "I have nowhere else to go," you know he was kind of hoping she'd offer *her* basement or something; but she didn't, which could mean that it was the real Buffy, or not. It's hard to say, and I really like that ambiguity.
But now, on to the things that I liked less about the episode.
First of all, the way Buffy jumps immediately to killing Anya upon hearing what happened. What the hell?? Anya's your friend and a useful contributing member of the Scooby Gang for three years, and the minute she does something questionable you have to *kill* her??? Whereas you let Spike live for years even though he a) was *not* a very helpful member of the gang (yes, he helped, but reluctantly and erratically) and b) had a history of killing people just as bad as Anya's? (You could argue that Anya has probably killed more people than Spike, but she did it for a reason and at others' behests, whereas Spike just killed for the hell of it.)
Secondly, the implication that the love of a good man (Xander) can reform even the most reprobate of women. That really irks me, and as
jennyo pointed out, it's a theme that's endemic in the Jossverse. It would be almost as easy for the writers to twist it such that what turned Anya around was being a member of the Scooby gang, helping them help people and finding out how good it feels to be on the good side; but they didn't play it that way, and it annoys me. We've seen that pre-demon Anya was similar to post-demon Anya in personality; she didn't have a lot of social skills, didn't understand a lot about the world, asked a lot of weird or dumb questions, and so forth. So a lot of the behavior that Xander spent the last few seasons "training" her out of was not "I've been a demon so long I forgot how to be human" stuff, but "I never learned this stuff in the first place." That could be a really interesting point to develop. I just don't like that it has to be ALL about herrelationship with the man.
Having said all that, I do recognize that there was more to it -- there was the Anya/Willow scene, which I really, really liked. I'd love to see more development of that relationship (I don't mean that in a romantic way, although that could be interesting too) as they have so much in common and both have traumas/issues that they're working through. And I was pleased that the episode didn't end with Anya falling into Xander's arms (although the soap-opera-watching part of me was a little sad).
Finally, a few words on the episode title, "Selfless." In common parlance this word is taken to mean altruistic, helping people without asking for anything in return. More literally, of course, it means "having no self" (or sense of self), which is how Anya was portrayed in this episode. I think it's clear that pre-demon Anya (Aud) doesn't have much sense of who she is or what she wants out of life -- she's making a start at it by suggesting that she give away her bunnies to get other people's good-will, but obviously that didn't go anywhere before D'Hoffryn came along. Demon Anyanka also doesn't have a sense of self, although it doesn't bother her; she's not interested in any of the entertainments that Halfrek (and presumably the other vengeance demons) enjoy, and she defines herself purely in terms of her work.
Post-demon Anya has come a ways toward figuring out who she is, but as her song shows, she still defines herself in terms of others. She's Mrs. Xander, not a person in her own right. This feeling can only have intensified after Xander left her at the altar, which explains why she was so eager to go back to demoning -- a job where, as she remembers, she never worried about self-identification. But she finds that she can't go back to that way of thinking again. She still wants to know who she is and what she's about. When forcibly immersing herself in work by killing all those guys doesn't work, she's ready to give up, which is why she was willing to let D'Hoffryn kill her.
At the end of the episode she still doesn't know who she is, but Xander at least gives her hope that she can figure it out. Which is cool, although as I already said, it would have been nice if she could have gotten that hope from inside herself. But hey, like she said, it's a start.
I didn't get to watch SV last night on account of getting home from chorus a bit late and wanting to watch the baseball game after I finished Buffy. Hopefully I'll be able to watch SV tonight, especially as it looks like West Wing is a rerun.
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I agree on nearly all counts.
Date: 2002-10-23 04:27 pm (UTC)As for Anya's self-worth/self-realization thing... I understand the desire "it would have been nice if she could have gotten that hope from inside herself." To me, though, that's a very modernist understanding of the human self. Now, it may be that I've been a heathen living among Christians too long, but I place quite a lot of value on a communal sense of self.
Now, granted, modern psychotherapy etc. considers this to be unhealthy. People should be able to have their own self-worth without recourse to others to define it. An anecdote, then, to clarify my peculiarity:
CPE - Clinical Pastoral Education - is a requirement at many seminaries. This entails the minister-to-be working in a clinical (usually hospital) environment as the chaplain or chaplain's aid (usually the former). The job of the chaplain is, naturally, to be present when patients or families or even doctors need to work through traumatic or desperate issues and situations. Sometimes they just translate doc-speak into normal English; sometimes they offer their services as grief counselors; sometimes doctors come to them when they've lost a patient and need to talk to someone about their value as doctors.
One such seminarian/chaplain went through CPE and when the hospital administrators evaluated her for the CPE board, they gave her a negative evaluation. Why? Because she didn't take enough time to take care of herself. She directed all of her energies toward helping other people. The administrators were working under modern-psychology assumptions about what it means to be a Person. The seminarian, on the other hand, was working under pastoral-servant assumptions about what it means to be a Christian. The two are eternally at odds.
I see the same thing happening here, with Anya. We *want* her to feel self-worth as an individual, through the individual, because we're conditioned to give primacy to the individual person. "Everyone is unique" - that sort of thing. It's very post-Enlightenment, very Western. Now I *personally* find this conditioning to be deplorable, but even if I didn't, I'd still have to point out that this conditioning is actually *uncommon* historically, and even currently. Human beings have traditionally been group-beings and social animals. Under this other type of conditioned psychology, it would actually be *immoral* for Xander to anything other than try to support Anya's self-worth, and it would actually be *unhealthy* for Anya to gauge her value on the basis of herself alone.
All of this to say that I'm much *more* satisfied with the way "Selfless" turned out than I would have been if Anya had decided to seek self-worth on the basis of her own individuality. I'm more satisfied with the way these writers generally treat such things, especially since we have the counterexample of Buffy herself, the quintessential solitary, unique person. She is "the law" - and she hates it, because it means that there will always be a barrier between herself and her friends. She has an unreachable self; and it kills.