Thank you. Re: Willow I think yes, Buffy's not the only one with both a superiority and an inferiority complex although with Willow I suspect she has an superiority complex about feeling inferior rather than the other way round.
The trouble with subverting storylines, is that sooner or later it becomes so expected that the trick no longer works. Subversion isn't just about suprising the audience though (speaking as a complete sucker for every trick in the book). In BtVS it's more about commenting on previous stories, criticising the underlying assumptions by showing it doesn't have to be that way.
Why should curiosity cause all sin generally? I wonder how culture specific that is. The folk tales, Bluebeard etc, are more about the risks for the girl herself and then you have Pandora and Eve but I don't know if there are equivalents to those women in non-Western mythologies (I tried googling but to no avail). Curiosity is about challenging authority both Eve and Pandora aren't just curious but curious about something they've been expressly forbidden to do yet Pandora is written very differently from Prometheus who broke the original injunction. I keep thinking that curiosity being a childish trait has something to do with it too.
It depends as well on who's telling the story and interpreting it. Marina Warner is very strong on the idea of folk tales as stories told by women, old wives, mother goose. The really virulent versions of Bluebeard etc are adaptations by aristocrats like Perrault and contempory critics were adamant that the moral was very much that wives should obey their husbands. It wouldn't take much though to put a pro-curiosity spin on the story, her curiosity is what saves the last bride from the fate of her predecessors.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2007-07-20 02:30 pm (UTC)The trouble with subverting storylines, is that sooner or later it becomes so expected that the trick no longer works.
Subversion isn't just about suprising the audience though (speaking as a complete sucker for every trick in the book). In BtVS it's more about commenting on previous stories, criticising the underlying assumptions by showing it doesn't have to be that way.
Why should curiosity cause all sin generally?
I wonder how culture specific that is. The folk tales, Bluebeard etc, are more about the risks for the girl herself and then you have Pandora and Eve but I don't know if there are equivalents to those women in non-Western mythologies (I tried googling but to no avail). Curiosity is about challenging authority both Eve and Pandora aren't just curious but curious about something they've been expressly forbidden to do yet Pandora is written very differently from Prometheus who broke the original injunction. I keep thinking that curiosity being a childish trait has something to do with it too.
It depends as well on who's telling the story and interpreting it. Marina Warner is very strong on the idea of folk tales as stories told by women, old wives, mother goose. The really virulent versions of Bluebeard etc are adaptations by aristocrats like Perrault and contempory critics were adamant that the moral was very much that wives should obey their husbands. It wouldn't take much though to put a pro-curiosity spin on the story, her curiosity is what saves the last bride from the fate of her predecessors.