Give me something big and sharp!
Apr. 1st, 2005 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkLong and rambling thoughts about Buffy and weapons. With musicals! And cell phones.
Arms and the Girl – from Cymbal to Scythe.
Right from the beginning, when she discus-throws a cymbal to take the head off one of Luke’s disciples in The Harvest, Buffy shows a very distinctive attitude to weapons.
That's what's called resourceful
It’s not that she has a problem fighting with objects that are designed to function as weapons. The early seasons portray her being trained to use all manner of mediaeval fighting gear from the quarter staff to the cross bow and pains are taken to point out her natural aptitude for this aspect of her calling. Nevertheless, throughout her Slayer career Buffy seems constantly not to have brought the right weapon to the fight and is forced to improvise using random objects picked up in mid-battle.
To name but a few, in addition to that first season cymbal, there’s the thurible she lobs after Spike at the end of the big fight in What’s my Line 2; the gas pipe she ignites and turns on Laconis in Band Candy; the disabled blaster she uses to electrocute Maggie Walsh’s demon assassins in The I in Team; the chain she takes from the park fence to garrotte Snakey Wakey in Shadow; and the pool cue she flings at Sweet’s puppet henchmen in OMWF. By Showtime in season 7 the writers even have her making a special point of turning up unarmed and in Potential her makeshift tendencies form an explicit part of the fighting philosophy she’s shown passing on to the next generation
“Know your environment. Know what's around you, and know how to use it. In the hands of a slayer, everything is a potential weapon. If you know how to see it.”
So it seems that what Spike calls her resourcefulness is as deliberate a part of the Buffy persona as her blonde hair or trademark quippiness. Which begs the question why? One answer could be that, just as the blonde hair is a reference back to horror movies, the constant making of mundane objects into weapons echoes a similar refashioning of everyday paraphernalia in another genre of which Joss Whedon is a big fan, the Hollywood musical. Seeing Buffy using Anya’s wedding veil to strangle uninvited monsters or breaking off garden implements to dust the evil dead reminds me of a description of one of the classic set pieces from Singing in the Rain:-
“A whole batch of domestic objects is rounded up and danced with. These are precisely the connections that the great musicals are always making; our speech can be nudged into music; our way of walking can be edged into a dance; and the things in our house are all possible props for an improvised ballet” Michael Wood, America in the Movies
This is from a discussion of the Gene Kelly/Donald O’Connor dance routine to “Moses Supposes” but it could apply to any number of musical numbers in which the performers make use of props at hand to make the extremely artificial world of song and dance look natural and spontaneous. As well as distracting from the artifice involved in having people break into song, this use of everyday objects also helps to humanise the performers and foster the illusion that the audience could emulate them. In the same way that it’s possible to identify with a virtuoso dancer like Gene Kelly when all he appears to be doing is fooling around with a squeaky floorboard and an old newspaper in Summer Stock, it’s easier to put yourself in Buffy’s place when she’s poking monsters with a sharp stick than dazzling you with her skill at archery or her familiarity with Japanese akido terminology.
A Slayer must always reach for her weapon
Although one reason for Buffy’s reliance on improvisation may be to enhance her everywoman status, it seems unlikely that when Spike gives her this first lesson in not-dying his concern is that she’s not connecting with her audience sufficiently. In this context pointing out that Buffy, unlike previous Slayers, shouldn’t (and doesn’t) rely on specific weapons to do her job highlights the way in which this action heroine’s fighting style is used to express attributes of her character.
“Combat performances are the externalization of the protagonist’s inner conflict. In a pure genre work, the hero is defined by fighting skills….
A single pose or strike will carry many connotations that will inform the viewer about the character of the person performing that movement.” Dave West on Buffy and East Asian Cinema in “Reading the Vampire Slayer”
What attributes of Buffy’s character are defined by her improvisational tendencies with weapons? Well, Buffy doesn’t play by the book. She flunks the written, follows her own instincts, thinks outside the box and remakes the rules as she goes along. When she departs from this pattern things usually go badly.
In support of this notion, some of Buffy’s most memorable successes are associated with an atypical use of arms. In Innocence she commandeers a rocket launcher to take out the Judge and in Graduation Day 2 uses Faith’s knife not as a weapon, but to lure “Dick” into a library full of explosives, thus exploiting his human weakness for the memory of his protégé. An example of the problems that arise from a more conventional approach can be seen in Prophecy Girl. Trying to follow the Codex to the letter she goes armed with a crossbow that proves completely ineffective against the Master.
The subject of the quote heading this section supplies a particularly illuminating case study. Compare the flashback fight between Spike and the Chinese Slayer in Fool for Love with Buffy’s final battle against Angelus in Becoming 2. In both cases the Slayer is armed with a sword and if anything the Chinese Slayer’s fencing skills are noticeably superior to Buffy’s. Both get into trouble when their weapons are knocked from their hands. The Chinese Slayer makes the fatal mistake of reaching for hers and momentarily loses her focus on her opponent. Spike, ever the opportunist, takes advantage of the opening and goes for the kill.
Now on the face of it, when Buffy loses her weapon the situation looks much worse. She’s backed right up against a wall and as Angelus puts it:
“No weapons, no friends. No hope. Take all that away and what's left?”
And her answer is “Me”.
They make me feel all manly
Buffy’s style with weapons, as well as humanising her and expressing her individuality, can also be looked at in terms of her gender. Contrast her use of arms with that of the male protagonist on the other show. Amusingly (if you’re twelve) Buffy keeps her weapons concealed in a chest while Angel’s are pinned to the walls, on open display to the world and his wife. Anatomical symbolism aside, the most interesting difference between the two shows lies in their contrasting use of that most blatantly phallic of weapons, the sword.
The image of Angel striding off to do battle, sword in hand is so iconic that it even seems right and natural when Angel himself has been turned into a three foot high felt puppet (Smile Time). The sword doesn’t just look good it’s effective. Angel uses it to decapitate the head demon at the TV studio and win the day. Buffy on the other hand seems to have rather more ambiguous relationship with swordplay. In the entire series run, I can think of only two instances of her marching off to a big fight brandishing one. For the final battle against Angelus in Becoming 2 and en route to confront Anya in Selfless. She wins the fight with Angelus but it breaks her emotionally and against Anya we get to see once again how non-fatal a sword through the chest is to a vengeance demon. Interestingly, in both confrontations sword-wielding Buffy is acting in a way that brings to mind a discussion of feminist ethics on the Tea at the Ford site, of which I reproduce a part here:
“In the 80's a psychologist, Carol Gilligan, researched moral reasoning & discovered that there are two basic frameworks, not one, that people use for moral reasoning, and there's a striking correlation between framework used and gender. The two frameworks are the "justice perspective" and the "care perspective".
People who use the "justice perspective" are impartial, use reason to determine rights and duties, and deduce moral behaviour from abstract universal principles. They're concerned with rights, obligations, taking responsibility, and see themselves as essentially separate & independent.
People who primarily use the "care perspective" are interested in preserving relationships and in learning to care for themselves and others; they think that emotions are relevant to moral life; they make contextual judgments based on individual people and situations; they are concerned with avoiding hurt or harm to individuals, and with working out responsibilities to persons. They view themselves as embedded in relationships and essentially interdependent with others.”
- Klytaimnestra in The I in Team: Buffy and Feminist Ethics conversation
A purely "justice perspective" has been associated with patriarchal and male dominated systems, while feminist ethics attempts to give both perspectives equal validity. In both Becoming 2 and Selfless Buffy follows a clearly “justice” based ethic (she is the law), chooses abstract duty over personal relationships, bears a “male” weapon and uses it to “penetrate” her opponent through the chest. So it’s doubly interesting that in neither case does this completely work out for her.
It is for her alone to wield
To summarise the story so far: Buffy has a ‘whatever it takes’ attitude to the tools of her trade. On a meta level this helps the audience to identify with her, on a personal level it emphasises her free-thinking and self-reliance and on a political level it highlights her gender and differentiates her from traditional male superheros. To borrow a term from musical theatre, it’s a triple threat metaphor. So why does the series end by casting a talentless hack in the form of an obvious Excalibur knock-off? Why the Scythe?
One place to go looking for answers would be weapon imagery in the episodes preceding the Scythe’s appearance. Are there any significant differences from the earlier seasons? In hindsight S7 draws a surprising amount of attention to the pointy stuff. Kennedy, for example, seems to be constantly demanding to be armed (Bring on the Night, Showtime, Get it Done). Right at the beginning of the season Lessons showcases three different forms of weapon; purpose-built, the sword and stake Buffy uses while training Dawn; improvised, the bag-fu employed against the zombie ghosts; and novel, Dawn’s cell-phone, which is twice described as a weapon. The idea that communication, whether by cell-phone or by more traditional technology, is an important part of a General’s armoury is hardly new:
In night-fighting, then, make much use of signal-fires and drums, and in fighting by day, of flags and banners, as a means of influencing the ears and eyes of your army. Sun Tzu in The Art of War
Despite this, communication is rarely used as a weapon in the fight against evil during BtVS 1-6. The only two occasions I can think of take place when Buffy herself is absent (the walkie-talkies used by the Scoobies in Anne and Willow’s telepathy in Bargaining 1).
In the episodes following Lessons Buffy’s use of improvised and non-improvised weapons follows very much her standard pattern. I’ve already discussed her deliberate eschewment of standard arms in Showtime and her use of the sword in Selfless. The novel idea of communication devices as weapons, however, rather falls by the wayside. Literally during her graveyard fight with Holden in CWDP, but at least that time she’s remembered to bring a phone with her. In Potential and First Date she fails to even do that. So although a new weaponry related theme is introduced in S7, it’s unclear that it’s going anywhere and hard to see the slightest connection between it and the Scythe.
What then is this new weapon, this ‘axe-thingy’ as Angel calls it, supposed to represent? In End of Days Buffy tells Giles that she ‘King Arthured’ it out of the stone rendering the Excalibur connection textually explicit. Like Excalibur, the Scythe belongs to the Slayer by right (“It is for her alone to wield.”), like Cuchuliann’s Gae Bulga, Buffy wins it after outwitting her opponent (Caleb) and like Thor’s hammer it symbolises the essence of the bearer (“It is your sword and your scepter.”-Fray). All too clearly it’s meant to be one of those special weapons that represent a hero’s unique heritage. Could there be a more traditional metaphor?
It seems that what we have here is an inexplicable throwback to much earlier storytelling themes and devices. But then, at the last possible moment, Buffy does what she’s always done. She improvises. She takes a reactionary symbol of individual birthright and uses it, not for its original purpose, but as a means for communicating her own birthright and sharing it with any girl who chooses to stand up and make that choice. The last we see of the Scythe in battle it’s being tossed from Slayer to Slayer and back again as if this were always meant to be. And, in reference to the original symbol for communication from Lessons, it even has a ringing tone.
Here endeth the lesson
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a story about a girl. One girl in all the world with the strength and the skills…Through seven seasons of the show those skills have acted as a metaphor for her unique role and character. In the final season the whole one girl concept gets turned on its head and the metaphor too is transformed.
Right from the beginning, when she discus-throws a cymbal to take the head off one of Luke’s disciples in The Harvest, Buffy shows a very distinctive attitude to weapons.
That's what's called resourceful
It’s not that she has a problem fighting with objects that are designed to function as weapons. The early seasons portray her being trained to use all manner of mediaeval fighting gear from the quarter staff to the cross bow and pains are taken to point out her natural aptitude for this aspect of her calling. Nevertheless, throughout her Slayer career Buffy seems constantly not to have brought the right weapon to the fight and is forced to improvise using random objects picked up in mid-battle.
To name but a few, in addition to that first season cymbal, there’s the thurible she lobs after Spike at the end of the big fight in What’s my Line 2; the gas pipe she ignites and turns on Laconis in Band Candy; the disabled blaster she uses to electrocute Maggie Walsh’s demon assassins in The I in Team; the chain she takes from the park fence to garrotte Snakey Wakey in Shadow; and the pool cue she flings at Sweet’s puppet henchmen in OMWF. By Showtime in season 7 the writers even have her making a special point of turning up unarmed and in Potential her makeshift tendencies form an explicit part of the fighting philosophy she’s shown passing on to the next generation
“Know your environment. Know what's around you, and know how to use it. In the hands of a slayer, everything is a potential weapon. If you know how to see it.”
So it seems that what Spike calls her resourcefulness is as deliberate a part of the Buffy persona as her blonde hair or trademark quippiness. Which begs the question why? One answer could be that, just as the blonde hair is a reference back to horror movies, the constant making of mundane objects into weapons echoes a similar refashioning of everyday paraphernalia in another genre of which Joss Whedon is a big fan, the Hollywood musical. Seeing Buffy using Anya’s wedding veil to strangle uninvited monsters or breaking off garden implements to dust the evil dead reminds me of a description of one of the classic set pieces from Singing in the Rain:-
“A whole batch of domestic objects is rounded up and danced with. These are precisely the connections that the great musicals are always making; our speech can be nudged into music; our way of walking can be edged into a dance; and the things in our house are all possible props for an improvised ballet” Michael Wood, America in the Movies
This is from a discussion of the Gene Kelly/Donald O’Connor dance routine to “Moses Supposes” but it could apply to any number of musical numbers in which the performers make use of props at hand to make the extremely artificial world of song and dance look natural and spontaneous. As well as distracting from the artifice involved in having people break into song, this use of everyday objects also helps to humanise the performers and foster the illusion that the audience could emulate them. In the same way that it’s possible to identify with a virtuoso dancer like Gene Kelly when all he appears to be doing is fooling around with a squeaky floorboard and an old newspaper in Summer Stock, it’s easier to put yourself in Buffy’s place when she’s poking monsters with a sharp stick than dazzling you with her skill at archery or her familiarity with Japanese akido terminology.
A Slayer must always reach for her weapon
Although one reason for Buffy’s reliance on improvisation may be to enhance her everywoman status, it seems unlikely that when Spike gives her this first lesson in not-dying his concern is that she’s not connecting with her audience sufficiently. In this context pointing out that Buffy, unlike previous Slayers, shouldn’t (and doesn’t) rely on specific weapons to do her job highlights the way in which this action heroine’s fighting style is used to express attributes of her character.
“Combat performances are the externalization of the protagonist’s inner conflict. In a pure genre work, the hero is defined by fighting skills….
A single pose or strike will carry many connotations that will inform the viewer about the character of the person performing that movement.” Dave West on Buffy and East Asian Cinema in “Reading the Vampire Slayer”
What attributes of Buffy’s character are defined by her improvisational tendencies with weapons? Well, Buffy doesn’t play by the book. She flunks the written, follows her own instincts, thinks outside the box and remakes the rules as she goes along. When she departs from this pattern things usually go badly.
In support of this notion, some of Buffy’s most memorable successes are associated with an atypical use of arms. In Innocence she commandeers a rocket launcher to take out the Judge and in Graduation Day 2 uses Faith’s knife not as a weapon, but to lure “Dick” into a library full of explosives, thus exploiting his human weakness for the memory of his protégé. An example of the problems that arise from a more conventional approach can be seen in Prophecy Girl. Trying to follow the Codex to the letter she goes armed with a crossbow that proves completely ineffective against the Master.
The subject of the quote heading this section supplies a particularly illuminating case study. Compare the flashback fight between Spike and the Chinese Slayer in Fool for Love with Buffy’s final battle against Angelus in Becoming 2. In both cases the Slayer is armed with a sword and if anything the Chinese Slayer’s fencing skills are noticeably superior to Buffy’s. Both get into trouble when their weapons are knocked from their hands. The Chinese Slayer makes the fatal mistake of reaching for hers and momentarily loses her focus on her opponent. Spike, ever the opportunist, takes advantage of the opening and goes for the kill.
Now on the face of it, when Buffy loses her weapon the situation looks much worse. She’s backed right up against a wall and as Angelus puts it:
“No weapons, no friends. No hope. Take all that away and what's left?”
And her answer is “Me”.
They make me feel all manly
Buffy’s style with weapons, as well as humanising her and expressing her individuality, can also be looked at in terms of her gender. Contrast her use of arms with that of the male protagonist on the other show. Amusingly (if you’re twelve) Buffy keeps her weapons concealed in a chest while Angel’s are pinned to the walls, on open display to the world and his wife. Anatomical symbolism aside, the most interesting difference between the two shows lies in their contrasting use of that most blatantly phallic of weapons, the sword.
The image of Angel striding off to do battle, sword in hand is so iconic that it even seems right and natural when Angel himself has been turned into a three foot high felt puppet (Smile Time). The sword doesn’t just look good it’s effective. Angel uses it to decapitate the head demon at the TV studio and win the day. Buffy on the other hand seems to have rather more ambiguous relationship with swordplay. In the entire series run, I can think of only two instances of her marching off to a big fight brandishing one. For the final battle against Angelus in Becoming 2 and en route to confront Anya in Selfless. She wins the fight with Angelus but it breaks her emotionally and against Anya we get to see once again how non-fatal a sword through the chest is to a vengeance demon. Interestingly, in both confrontations sword-wielding Buffy is acting in a way that brings to mind a discussion of feminist ethics on the Tea at the Ford site, of which I reproduce a part here:
“In the 80's a psychologist, Carol Gilligan, researched moral reasoning & discovered that there are two basic frameworks, not one, that people use for moral reasoning, and there's a striking correlation between framework used and gender. The two frameworks are the "justice perspective" and the "care perspective".
People who use the "justice perspective" are impartial, use reason to determine rights and duties, and deduce moral behaviour from abstract universal principles. They're concerned with rights, obligations, taking responsibility, and see themselves as essentially separate & independent.
People who primarily use the "care perspective" are interested in preserving relationships and in learning to care for themselves and others; they think that emotions are relevant to moral life; they make contextual judgments based on individual people and situations; they are concerned with avoiding hurt or harm to individuals, and with working out responsibilities to persons. They view themselves as embedded in relationships and essentially interdependent with others.”
- Klytaimnestra in The I in Team: Buffy and Feminist Ethics conversation
A purely "justice perspective" has been associated with patriarchal and male dominated systems, while feminist ethics attempts to give both perspectives equal validity. In both Becoming 2 and Selfless Buffy follows a clearly “justice” based ethic (she is the law), chooses abstract duty over personal relationships, bears a “male” weapon and uses it to “penetrate” her opponent through the chest. So it’s doubly interesting that in neither case does this completely work out for her.
It is for her alone to wield
To summarise the story so far: Buffy has a ‘whatever it takes’ attitude to the tools of her trade. On a meta level this helps the audience to identify with her, on a personal level it emphasises her free-thinking and self-reliance and on a political level it highlights her gender and differentiates her from traditional male superheros. To borrow a term from musical theatre, it’s a triple threat metaphor. So why does the series end by casting a talentless hack in the form of an obvious Excalibur knock-off? Why the Scythe?
One place to go looking for answers would be weapon imagery in the episodes preceding the Scythe’s appearance. Are there any significant differences from the earlier seasons? In hindsight S7 draws a surprising amount of attention to the pointy stuff. Kennedy, for example, seems to be constantly demanding to be armed (Bring on the Night, Showtime, Get it Done). Right at the beginning of the season Lessons showcases three different forms of weapon; purpose-built, the sword and stake Buffy uses while training Dawn; improvised, the bag-fu employed against the zombie ghosts; and novel, Dawn’s cell-phone, which is twice described as a weapon. The idea that communication, whether by cell-phone or by more traditional technology, is an important part of a General’s armoury is hardly new:
In night-fighting, then, make much use of signal-fires and drums, and in fighting by day, of flags and banners, as a means of influencing the ears and eyes of your army. Sun Tzu in The Art of War
Despite this, communication is rarely used as a weapon in the fight against evil during BtVS 1-6. The only two occasions I can think of take place when Buffy herself is absent (the walkie-talkies used by the Scoobies in Anne and Willow’s telepathy in Bargaining 1).
In the episodes following Lessons Buffy’s use of improvised and non-improvised weapons follows very much her standard pattern. I’ve already discussed her deliberate eschewment of standard arms in Showtime and her use of the sword in Selfless. The novel idea of communication devices as weapons, however, rather falls by the wayside. Literally during her graveyard fight with Holden in CWDP, but at least that time she’s remembered to bring a phone with her. In Potential and First Date she fails to even do that. So although a new weaponry related theme is introduced in S7, it’s unclear that it’s going anywhere and hard to see the slightest connection between it and the Scythe.
What then is this new weapon, this ‘axe-thingy’ as Angel calls it, supposed to represent? In End of Days Buffy tells Giles that she ‘King Arthured’ it out of the stone rendering the Excalibur connection textually explicit. Like Excalibur, the Scythe belongs to the Slayer by right (“It is for her alone to wield.”), like Cuchuliann’s Gae Bulga, Buffy wins it after outwitting her opponent (Caleb) and like Thor’s hammer it symbolises the essence of the bearer (“It is your sword and your scepter.”-Fray). All too clearly it’s meant to be one of those special weapons that represent a hero’s unique heritage. Could there be a more traditional metaphor?
It seems that what we have here is an inexplicable throwback to much earlier storytelling themes and devices. But then, at the last possible moment, Buffy does what she’s always done. She improvises. She takes a reactionary symbol of individual birthright and uses it, not for its original purpose, but as a means for communicating her own birthright and sharing it with any girl who chooses to stand up and make that choice. The last we see of the Scythe in battle it’s being tossed from Slayer to Slayer and back again as if this were always meant to be. And, in reference to the original symbol for communication from Lessons, it even has a ringing tone.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a story about a girl. One girl in all the world with the strength and the skills…Through seven seasons of the show those skills have acted as a metaphor for her unique role and character. In the final season the whole one girl concept gets turned on its head and the metaphor too is transformed.
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no subject
Date: 2005-04-01 10:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 03:32 am (UTC)and even there Wesley+guns is often depicted with a pathological edge to it.
Could you explain/expand? It sounds intriguing.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 05:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-04-02 09:15 pm (UTC)Other than that my memory, which may be entirely faulty, is that Wesley’s routine gun use came to the fore at about the same time as his bitter, unshaven and mentally somewhat unstable persona.
I can see this-- Lineage springs instantly to mind. But I want to say, very badly, that not everytime Wesley pulls out a gun it is because he is stubbly&bitter. He uses guns all the time, throughout the series, including-- I think-- the first couple of seasons, where he's stabler.
He also uses other weapons when unhinged. Take Billy, the episode where he's arguable at his creepiest. He chases Fred through the hotel with an ax. [Though later in the episode Lilah kills, in revenge, Billy with a gun. Cordelia, who is unable to kill him, took a crossbow.]
I'm never going to watch the shows the same again, you know.
no subject
Date: 2005-04-03 11:18 am (UTC)In the second case, the shotgun scene, in Reprise/Epiphany, it should be noted that he's still in his wheelchair, in a very vulnerable state, and of course the gun use doesn't work.
(I suspect it's a coincidence that these incidents cover Cordelia's first two demon rape/impregnations)