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Nostalgia but also new stuff
I watched a couple of FNL vids recently and it made me think how region/nation specific sporting associations are. Like food, there are foods that are just what’s for dinner and there are foods that remind you where you come from. Marmite and candy shrimps, soggy chips and soft fruit. In the summer mother bought us cherries in brown paper bags.
Most sports bring up less pleasant associations, I have a deeply conflicted relationship with football (soccer) being something of a widow to the game and yet strangely drawn to it. Rugby is good in 10 minute bursts, like watching herds of wildebeast, while cricket is a strange religious rite that goes nowhere and lasts days. Still I think I could watch a movie about any of those and it would mean something whereas American Football has no more resonance than a videogame. It’s a theoretical point really, what sporting movies are there that aren’t Bend it like Beckham or about baseball? Although baseball movies are curiously watchable. Maybe from playing rounders at school, or perhaps because most of them seem to be metaphors for something else. The Natural that was about King Arthur wasn’t it? Or Lancelot and Morgan Le Fay and Robert Redford was shiny back in the day.
So if you made it past the spoiler warning you already know that in S8 Dawn is a giant. She was a giant in the first issue already although maybe not for long as at that stage she hadn’t started to worry about the implications of being trapped in one set of clothes. She was still a giant when last seen (in issue 7), which means it’s been going on for at least a week – in comics time like so many things doesn’t conform to the laws of physics. Although actually the thing I like best about giant Dawn is that she is very bound by her physicality, she eats and drinks and sweats and stinks and bleeds all over the castle. Her transformation rather than being fairy tale-like resembles that of Gregor in Metamorphosis, every panel she’s in has some reminder of the physical details, the problems of finding enough to eat, or shelter from the cold, of having no clothes to change into. And everyone’s talking about her but she can’t talk to them, she waited for Willow but Willow has no time and makes the same crass assumptions that Buffy did.
Gregor was the hero of his own story and a metaphor for his own self-loathing and inability to make human contact. Dawn is a secondary character in Buffy’s story and although at first sight her giganticism looks like an allegory for teen pregnancy or the sexual shame/pride of first timers or a cry for attention Dawn denies such literal interpretations and the story makes fun of them in Buffy’s dreams. More interesting, I think, is the way larger-than-life Dawn is a metaphor for Buffy’s new celebrity status. It used to be that everybody underestimated her but no more. She’s feared by her enemies, adored by her followers, envied by aristocrats, spied on by sorcerers, sponsored by the rich and everybody wants to be her. Everybody’s talking about her, her clothing choices are constrained, and if she’s not thinking about food she’s consuming or regurgitating it.
Clearly this state of affairs isn’t ideal for all readers, myself I’ve always thought Dawn was a character who worked best as a foil or in the background. The two Dawn-centric episodes All the Way and Older and Far Away are the twin low points of S6 but she was wonderful in Bargaining and Dead Things and in her own little section of CWPD. My favourite run of Dawnness actually comes after that episode watching her let Joyce’s warning fester and sublimating her frustrations by bonding with Anya and torturing Andrew until the boil was finally lanced in Potential. I think the ending of that episode often gets misread as a sign that Dawn’s real talent lies in research but the point of Xander’s speech isn’t that everybody is special in their own way but that even those without any particular star quality can be extraordinary. Of course being a star isn’t quite how it looks from the stalls. Giant Dawn bursts into the limelight and finds it uncomfortable and overexposed yet still hard to relinquish. It’s the fractal follow up to Potential the same and yet different, shown more than told.
Most sports bring up less pleasant associations, I have a deeply conflicted relationship with football (soccer) being something of a widow to the game and yet strangely drawn to it. Rugby is good in 10 minute bursts, like watching herds of wildebeast, while cricket is a strange religious rite that goes nowhere and lasts days. Still I think I could watch a movie about any of those and it would mean something whereas American Football has no more resonance than a videogame. It’s a theoretical point really, what sporting movies are there that aren’t Bend it like Beckham or about baseball? Although baseball movies are curiously watchable. Maybe from playing rounders at school, or perhaps because most of them seem to be metaphors for something else. The Natural that was about King Arthur wasn’t it? Or Lancelot and Morgan Le Fay and Robert Redford was shiny back in the day.
So if you made it past the spoiler warning you already know that in S8 Dawn is a giant. She was a giant in the first issue already although maybe not for long as at that stage she hadn’t started to worry about the implications of being trapped in one set of clothes. She was still a giant when last seen (in issue 7), which means it’s been going on for at least a week – in comics time like so many things doesn’t conform to the laws of physics. Although actually the thing I like best about giant Dawn is that she is very bound by her physicality, she eats and drinks and sweats and stinks and bleeds all over the castle. Her transformation rather than being fairy tale-like resembles that of Gregor in Metamorphosis, every panel she’s in has some reminder of the physical details, the problems of finding enough to eat, or shelter from the cold, of having no clothes to change into. And everyone’s talking about her but she can’t talk to them, she waited for Willow but Willow has no time and makes the same crass assumptions that Buffy did.
Gregor was the hero of his own story and a metaphor for his own self-loathing and inability to make human contact. Dawn is a secondary character in Buffy’s story and although at first sight her giganticism looks like an allegory for teen pregnancy or the sexual shame/pride of first timers or a cry for attention Dawn denies such literal interpretations and the story makes fun of them in Buffy’s dreams. More interesting, I think, is the way larger-than-life Dawn is a metaphor for Buffy’s new celebrity status. It used to be that everybody underestimated her but no more. She’s feared by her enemies, adored by her followers, envied by aristocrats, spied on by sorcerers, sponsored by the rich and everybody wants to be her. Everybody’s talking about her, her clothing choices are constrained, and if she’s not thinking about food she’s consuming or regurgitating it.
Clearly this state of affairs isn’t ideal for all readers, myself I’ve always thought Dawn was a character who worked best as a foil or in the background. The two Dawn-centric episodes All the Way and Older and Far Away are the twin low points of S6 but she was wonderful in Bargaining and Dead Things and in her own little section of CWPD. My favourite run of Dawnness actually comes after that episode watching her let Joyce’s warning fester and sublimating her frustrations by bonding with Anya and torturing Andrew until the boil was finally lanced in Potential. I think the ending of that episode often gets misread as a sign that Dawn’s real talent lies in research but the point of Xander’s speech isn’t that everybody is special in their own way but that even those without any particular star quality can be extraordinary. Of course being a star isn’t quite how it looks from the stalls. Giant Dawn bursts into the limelight and finds it uncomfortable and overexposed yet still hard to relinquish. It’s the fractal follow up to Potential the same and yet different, shown more than told.
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:-)
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Did you read my In Defence of S8 post?
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Well if you manage to survive the sugar poisoning, it's a lovely book! :)
And I've not only *defended* Riley, I've made people who don't like him feel sorry for him. I'm very proud of that!
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Hee, my students are 10 year olds, I suppose they'll like it, not sure about myself. I already have A Little Princess Sara as back up, but that's one depressing story for kids.
And I've not only *defended* Riley, I've made people who don't like him feel sorry for him. I'm very proud of that!
That's cool, I made many Xander haters and Spike haters like them in the end, and it took awhile. Now I'm in a defend Riley mood... and since when did Willow become so hated?
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Giant Dawn bursts into the limelight and finds it uncomfortable and overexposed yet still hard to relinquish.
I like these thoughts. Thank you. (And, just for the record, I always had the same interpretation of 'Potential' as you.)
ETA: Not saying that you've convinced me or anything, but I'm tired of arguing, and your meta is nice.
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1) You're absolutely right that Gregor was the hero of his own story, and that's significant. The reason his transformation becomes such a perfect metaphor is because we actually get to live it with him. It wouldn't have been the same story if it had focused entirely on his sister (who, of course, is a very important character in Kafka's story as well) with Gregor a secondary character, if we had never gotten to know how he feels and WHY. Because even if the exact logical reason for the transformation is never explained, there's hardly any doubt about the emotional logic, the metaphor of it: he feels like a vermin and so he is one. So far, all the Giant!Dawn segments have left us (or at least me) pretty confused about what Dawn's feelings here are and despite two different hints of why she could be a giant - because of Kenny or because she did something herself - neither of those has the same effect since we don't see the reason for either of them turning her into a giant, we don't get inside Dawn's (enormous) head the way we get inside Gregor's.
2) The reaction of others. "Metamorphosis" is a story about alienation. Everyone who looks at Gregor either loathes him, fears him or, at best, pities him - his parents even try to kill him (and, arguably, succeed). In contrast, while Dawn probably does feel pretty alienated at this point, others' reaction to her is quite different: Buffy's slight sternness in #1 aside, people are actually trying to help Dawn - and she's refusing to be helped. She won't talk to Buffy and prefers to talk to Willow. When Willow gets there, she won't tell her either. Gregor could no longer communicate at all. Dawn is free to communicate, is being urged to by those who love her, and by her own choice doesn't. Why? We don't know.
3) The effect on others. Gregor's situation is disastrous for his family, who depend on him and react with even more anger precisely because of this, which just fuels his depression. Dawn's situation... is less disastrous for Buffy; it's annoying and no doubt Buffy worries about her (at least the canonical Buffy would) but it's not like she's stopping anyone from saving the world from vampires. In fact, she can even help by stomping witches. Dawn isn't nearly as helpless as Gregor (or at least shouldn't be).
4) This is a point which I know is hard to argue, de guffawus non est disputandum, but I'm going to do it anyway: Kafka is funny, Giant!Dawn is not. This is something a lot of people miss out on about Kafka, and which apparently annoyed him quite a bit: his stories are chock full of very, very dark humour. Gregor's situation is utterly hopeless; since he essentially lives in our world, his turning into a vermin is unfixable; nobody even tries. The only way to treat it is as a very sad joke, the laughter of a guy who's about to be executed when a pigeon craps on his head. Dawn, on the other hand, lives in a world where people are routinely turned from one thing into another and back again with magic, and we are not shown any reason for her NOT to be turned back. All jokes about her situation fall flat, because with no good reason for her to stop being a giant, it's not funny when she or anyone else suggests that maybe she should stop being a giant; it's just common sense. ("I hate wearing red sweaters." "Do you want me to get you a blue sweater?" "No.")
Also, I honestly hope that Buffy won't decide that the only solution is to lock Dawn up and let her starve to death. ;-)
That's my 2 cents: while the stories are similar, the emotions and metaphors they raise are quite different. Like I said, I don't expect you to agree, but it was such an interesting comparison and I just couldn't help myself... :-)
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I know what you mean... when I think about Dawn's scenes, what sticks in my memory is Buffy hanging head down from the balcony to talk to her; Xander politely turning his back when she's bathing, and then getting soaked; floaty Willow buzzing through the air around her. Like she's just a feature of the landscape for other people to interact with - even though she herself is just behaving pretty much as she always does, except for being ten times larger. It's just fun.
I like your thought about Dawn's condition being a metaphor for Buffy's new public status. Although I'm still tempted by my idea that it's actually intended as a meta-comment on fans' need to read metaphors into everything on the show... :-) "The truth? There is no truth. There's just what you believe" as Rona would say.
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"Joss ... actually pointed out, case in point, that he had the idea of Dawn becoming big when he was doing the series but he could never effectively do that and not make it look cheesy in some way; and now that we are doing the comic that was one of the first things he wanted to do, was to make her a giant because he has an arc for her that’s going to lead her in places that you don't even want to know yet."
Looks like it's not going to be a case of "oh, that's why she's big. Let's get her back to normal sizer again in the next episode" after all...
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Not to mention the whole underage sex thing... ;)
(Seriously though, that quote make me raise my expectations by a teeny, tiny fraction.)