.GIFing the Sunnydale Library

My final project research focuses on the ways that Buffy treats different spaces of research and the systems of knowledge that are constructed therein. For this exercise, I’d like to look at what I see as a very important scene for my train of thought: our very first impression of the Sunnydale library in “Welcome to the Hellmouth.” I’m asking how this scene (actually, there are two of them, but occur within the same 5 minutes of runtime) constructs the Sunnydale library as simultaneously a site of antiquation and of absolute relevance.

When Buffy first enters the library, it’s deserted. When Buffy next enters the library, it’s deserted. In fact, the library is nearly always void of Sunnydale students (save the Scoobies; this will go on past the pilot to become a significant recurring joke).

It’s quite an exercise of dramatic irony that the library’s collection is exactly what all these kids being hunted down by monsters need, but it’s the last place they think to look.

Back to the scene: Buffy calls out “Is anybody there?” to no reply: the suspense is building. She, and we, approach the counter, and see a newspaper laid out with the headline “Local Boys Still Missing” circled emphatically in red pen. I propose that in the 15 seconds of runtime I have so far described, the library’s ambivalent positioning as a space of antiquation and of urgent relevance has already been communicated.

The dead quiet of desertion is suggested immediately upon Buffy’s entrance: the wooden double doors emit a slow creak as they open and an exaggerated, echoey thud as they close. As Buffy edges further into the space, an eerie high-pitched synth kicks in. These auditory cues make us feel like the library is a church: some kind of sacred, foreboding place you wouldn’t go unless you had to (speaking for myself).

I think the image of the circled headline seeks to counter, or at least, complicate, the brief though significant impression of the Sunnydale library we’ve been given. There are two elements of this image doing the heavy lifting of countering our impression. First, the word “still.” In this word I see already a characterization of the library, its contents, and its librarian as urgently concerned with those issues to which mainstream institutions (e.g., the Sunnydale police, which have “still” not located the missing boys) pay not enough attention. He, being Giles, seems to have been so concerned so as to seek out not just any pen, but a red one, to circle the headline with.

In my research, I argue that the Sunnydale library works to allegorize the way that alternative systems of knowledge are marginalized in mainstream society as ‘myths’ or otherwise. This accounts for the simultaneous antiquation and revolutionary potential of the Sunnydale library collection and the epistemologies it represents: perhaps because of their marginalization, they are forced into a position of antiquation, of being dated out of mainstream consciousness.

 

 

 

 

The Ethics of Wiki Editing: Respectability and Creativity

As I edited the Buffy wiki page for the character Joyce Summers, I came across a sentence I felt in need of some revision. “She,” reads the Personality section of the page, “was a fan of . . . the movie Thelma and Louise (being Kristine Sutherland practically looking as a perfect twin of Susan Sarandon) . . .” I changed the sentence to a more casual, and intelligible, intertextual reference. But part of me felt guilty. Was I embarking on an elitist editing streak?

Part of me thinks that, however unfortunately, “proper” grammar and syntax might legitimize a wiki page (and in turn, the entire wiki) for new readers, particularly. If I had little experience with Buffy, and I went on to one of its wiki pages looking for answers, only to encounter entries sprinkled with errors, would I trust it? Perhaps not. At the same time, isn’t it worth trying to resist the idea of proper grammar and syntax (that is, effectively, education level and/or class) as a one-to-one designator of intelligence? And would that that resistance mean, as an editor, leaving errors in a page?

All this being said, it struck me that the Buffy wiki seemed to make more space for more ‘objective’ observations about the show than it did for analysis and interpretation (beyond inferences, e.g., that Joyce likes to ski because she owns ski poles). I struggled, for instance, to find a spot for my (critical?) note that the show privileges Joyce’s parental role over her work as a gallerist. So, if the wiki mostly represents a database of facts and inferences, is it wrong to want to make those facts as clearly legible as possible?

I’m looking forward to further perusing the wiki for spaces of “fanalysis” — and I’ll keep my hands to myself if I do!

Responding to Saif’s “post three: i hate feminist.”

In his post of October 2nd, Saif argues that Joss Whedon’s discussion of the word ‘feminist’ in his “Make Equality Reality” speech “unravel[s] several decades worth of important and extremely well thought out work by feminists in order to reduce it all to the term ‘genderism.'”

I totally agree with Saif’s take, and I’d like to build on it a little by pointing to another way that Whedon obfuscates the complex history of feminism in his speech. Saif notes how Whedon’s proposal of ‘genderism’ ignores the countless processes of labour that have built and constituted feminist movements. But Whedon equally ignores the many historically legitimate resistances to feminism, lumping all such resistance together under the umbrella of ‘unenlightedness’ or ‘ignorance’ or something like that, and smugly dismissing the whole bunch. He thus incorrectly characterizes feminism as an ahistorical political belief or yes/no question, when feminism is in fact a political movement — a set of practices that is constantly evolving and becoming.

Early suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and her close associates all spent significant time in contact with the Mohawk and Seneca First Nations, and as Sally Roesch Wagner argues compellingly, appear to have modelled several of their rights platforms around totally unacknowledged citation of Indigenous knowledge. Thus, when later (white) feminists would preach values to some Indigenous women which had existed commonly amongst their communities for centuries, it read as highly hypocritical, given these white women’s participation and complicity in colonial invasion.

Later, in the 20th century, the feminist fight for (deserved) reproductive rights actively ignored the reproductive violences being enacted en masse to black, Indigenous, and other women of colour, especially in the 1970s and 80s. By focussing on rights to abortions, mainstream feminism ignored that such a right could be, and was being, used to justify forced sterilizations and hysterectomies specifically on Indigenous and women of colour. Afraid to weaken their case for ‘choice’ by acknowledging reproductive violence, these feminists abandoned Indigenous and black women particularly.

These are only two historical examples that justify specific resistances to feminism on the parts of communities of Indigenous and black women. Clearly, feminism has a fraught and complex history that just can’t be dismissed as Whedon wishes to do.

McRobbie defines postfeminism as a mentality that we are ‘past’ feminism, that it is no longer necessary. Whedon exhibits post-post-feminism: the mentality that we are past negotiating feminism, that feminism is the obvious outcome — when clearly, it is always in a process of negotiation.

 

Critiquing Fanfic: “Beautiful” by Kei Tree

Kei Tree’s short fanfic piece “Beautiful” reads as an internal monologue by Spike of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in which the vampire pines over Buffy in quite emotional terms. Even as it centralizes a heterosexual relationship, this fanfic performs a kind of subdued version of the genderswaps discussed in Busse and Lothian’s “Bending Gender.” By feminizing Spike (in stereotypical terms, of course) and masculinizing Buffy, Kei Tree not only broadens their characterizations as established by the source program, but opens up Spike in particular as a more safely accessible site of desire, explaining away his masculinist violence and snark with the revelation of a mushy, emotional interior.

By its very nature as a monologue, “Beautiful” provides the reader a sense of intimate connection to Spike not found in Buffy: Spike isn’t always around, and when he is, he’s often terrorizing Buffy and friends or doling out cutting witticisms. Our entrance into Spike’s mind in “Beautiful” represents the crossing of a canonical boundary, allowing us access to Spike’s innermost thoughts. Unlike in the series, this means that the reader-viewer is aligned subjectively with the vulnerable Spike, while Buffy appears unemotional and resistant to the former’s gooey attraction. Although the association of these traits with clear-cut notions of femininity and masculinity is obviously imperfect, Kei Tree’s deployment of these tropes in reverse says less about what women and men “are” and more about what they (in particular Spike) could be, outside the limitations of canon.

A screencap from BtVS: Buffy and Spike cuddle as in Kei Tree’s “Beautiful.”

The language and content of Kei Tree’s piece further implies a genderswapped positioning of the two characters. “Beautiful” is replete with grand metaphors and flowery language, mostly in service of Buffy’s titular beauty. Spike describes knowing “the rainbow of her eyes and the dark sweep of her lashes by heart” and wanting to see her “consumed by dawn’s fire and lit as brightly without as she was within,” amongst many other gushing remarks. Kei Tree’s replacement of Spike’s canonical snark with genuine, excessive emotion (think Linda Williams) situates Spike squarely in the realm of the stereotypically feminine, especially as juxtaposed with Buffy’s characterization as an unflinching killer with the “beauty . . . of pure steel.”

The subdued genderswap of “Beautiful” has two related functions. Firstly, and in the vein of Penley’s “Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture” (linked is an effective summary), I think that Kei Tree’s feminization of Spike makes him more accessible and safe as a site of desire, particularly for straight women fans (at whose demographic much of Spike’s canonical violence is deployed). The author thus tempers Buffy and Spike’s abusive canonical relationship by suggesting that underneath Spike’s machismo and violence, there lies a gooey heart of gold. As such, “Beautiful” serves both as a kind of genderfuck fic, as well as something of a fix-fic — though of course, its success in ‘justifying’ Spike and Buffy’s abusive relationship is another story (or fic) entirely.