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Vid rec
Origin Stories by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
giandujakiss has been recced all over and much commentated on already (also here). These are my mixed-up and conflicted responses:
This is a powerful vid. An angry and polemical vid that starts out with an establishing sequence as provocative as the final section of Women’s Work. The Dana story with which the vid ends is equally effective, the visual matching her tormentor’s drug stash with the Shadowmen’s demon essence box especially striking.
Those early shots of Nikki and Robin, Robin as an adult, Nikki, the Chinese slayer and Kendra have a visceral angry power that is shaming to watch. But it gets more complicated and diffused with the introduction of the potentials. Does their disproportionate whiteness signify that they’re part of the problem or is the vid rooting for them too. We see all them fighting and all of them dying, Rhona and Amanda, Chloe and Eve. The role played by Buffy is even murkier, she’s repeatedly shown taking Spike’s part, siding with the oppressor but other scenes portray her more sympathetically reacting to the death and injury of the potentials. Is it meant to be significant that the victims in these particular clips are white? Probably, there are similar scenes involving Kendra and Chloe that could have been used. In which case it does work as commentary on Buffy (the show) focussing disproportionately on those of the Caucasian persuasion and I should stop reacting with fannish defensiveness as if attacking my favourite character were all that were at issue.
Buffy, however, is not the main subject of this vid and I do think the vid itself blurs the boundaries between fannish loyalties and metatextual analysis by making Robin the main POV and ultimately only through him the non-eponymous Vampire Slayers. Robin has his own story to tell but having him speak for the Slayers, leading the potentials into the school, telling them where to go, re-appropriating his mothers coat, feels problematic. Robin when all is said and done is not Nikki. Biologically he’s her son but he was raised by a Watcher of unknown ethnicity in the privileged surroundings of Beverly Hills. Textually he cleaves to the Watcher’s side, it’s Giles he entrusts with his mother’s identity and when he speaks of the potentials as weapons, as soldiers, he's paraphrasing Quentin Travers and the Council's definition of them as instruments in the war against evil. The vid ends by cutting from Dana’s capture and shooting by ex-Watcher Wesley to Robin’s defeat by Spike to Spike putting his mother’s coat back on. There is justice in that but it feels as if some other point is being misappropriated. Robin, like Dana and the Slayers she remembers, has suffered at Spike’s hands but his heritage is also Wesley’s. I don’t know. It feels a little as if Nikki’s story has once again been set aside in favour of a narrative about two men fighting over her coat, as if that lousy piece of leather had more significance than she did.
giandujakiss has been recced all over and much commentated on already (also here). These are my mixed-up and conflicted responses:This is a powerful vid. An angry and polemical vid that starts out with an establishing sequence as provocative as the final section of Women’s Work. The Dana story with which the vid ends is equally effective, the visual matching her tormentor’s drug stash with the Shadowmen’s demon essence box especially striking.
Those early shots of Nikki and Robin, Robin as an adult, Nikki, the Chinese slayer and Kendra have a visceral angry power that is shaming to watch. But it gets more complicated and diffused with the introduction of the potentials. Does their disproportionate whiteness signify that they’re part of the problem or is the vid rooting for them too. We see all them fighting and all of them dying, Rhona and Amanda, Chloe and Eve. The role played by Buffy is even murkier, she’s repeatedly shown taking Spike’s part, siding with the oppressor but other scenes portray her more sympathetically reacting to the death and injury of the potentials. Is it meant to be significant that the victims in these particular clips are white? Probably, there are similar scenes involving Kendra and Chloe that could have been used. In which case it does work as commentary on Buffy (the show) focussing disproportionately on those of the Caucasian persuasion and I should stop reacting with fannish defensiveness as if attacking my favourite character were all that were at issue.
Buffy, however, is not the main subject of this vid and I do think the vid itself blurs the boundaries between fannish loyalties and metatextual analysis by making Robin the main POV and ultimately only through him the non-eponymous Vampire Slayers. Robin has his own story to tell but having him speak for the Slayers, leading the potentials into the school, telling them where to go, re-appropriating his mothers coat, feels problematic. Robin when all is said and done is not Nikki. Biologically he’s her son but he was raised by a Watcher of unknown ethnicity in the privileged surroundings of Beverly Hills. Textually he cleaves to the Watcher’s side, it’s Giles he entrusts with his mother’s identity and when he speaks of the potentials as weapons, as soldiers, he's paraphrasing Quentin Travers and the Council's definition of them as instruments in the war against evil. The vid ends by cutting from Dana’s capture and shooting by ex-Watcher Wesley to Robin’s defeat by Spike to Spike putting his mother’s coat back on. There is justice in that but it feels as if some other point is being misappropriated. Robin, like Dana and the Slayers she remembers, has suffered at Spike’s hands but his heritage is also Wesley’s. I don’t know. It feels a little as if Nikki’s story has once again been set aside in favour of a narrative about two men fighting over her coat, as if that lousy piece of leather had more significance than she did.
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It is certainly a gutsy vid, and I think it can be read on many levels.
For example, I found it an effective vid about the nature of Slayerness and Vampirism in and of itself, even setting aside questions of race. (You know, not that you should, just that there was a lot in the vid to think about.)
It took me a while to get used to the idea of Robin Wood as a Slayer, because I am accostumed to (and enjoy/like) the grrrlpower! part of Slayerness, but once I grasped that aspect of the vid, I really enjoyed and respected its powerful story and masterful storytelling. I can see why you think that portrayal might be problematic, though.
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"Origin Stories," part 1
As for your first point, the sense of the argument that I got from the vid was that for all the sympathy and grief Buffy shows over the deaths of the Potentials, her major close-ups in vid footage are when she's with Spike: Buffy lying in bed with Spike's arm around her, Buffy holding the bag of blood at arm's length for Spike - which is an interesting image in itself insofar as it captures a sense of sometimes-unwilling collusion with the enemy. But (as far as the vid's concerned) it's still collusion, and all the sympathy she shows for the Potentials - and by extension, for the women we Spike see murder in the vid pre- and post-soul - isn't enough to make up for the complicity that kills.
As for the Potentials themselves, I think you're right in positing that the vid's shift to them is commentary on the show's disproportionate focus on white characters; obviously, they're also victims of white patriarchy, as we see in the Caleb shots. golexmachina has some incisive thoughts on the show's dangerous tendency toward fetishizing girls getting exploited and violated, which I've linked in my rec post. As Patricia Hill Collins says (http://mindthegapuk.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/feminism-101-patricia-hill-collins-black-feminist-thought-in-the-matrix-of-domination/), "Depending on the context, an individual may be an oppressor, a member of an oppressed group, or simultaneously oppressor and oppressed"; I think the vid pretty explicitly characterizes the Potentials as members of that last category.
Which leads us to Robin's story!
Robin has his own story to tell but having him speak for the Slayers, leading the potentials into the school, telling them where to go, re-appropriating his mothers coat, feels problematic.
These are great points. That whole Watchers-are-almost-all-dudes (except Lydia-who-appears-once and evil Gwen Post) and Slayers-are-young-girls thing always brings up the specter of patriarchy, because it is a patriarchal system; Buffy telling off the Watcher's Council in S5 didn't kill it. In fact, I think it's perfectly valid to see Robin leading the Potentials into the school as an extension of that patriarchal hold on the Watcher-Slayer relationship, and that's a valid critique of the Robin POV in "Origin Stories." Again, see Collins quote above re: simultaneously oppressor and oppressed.
Re: "Origin Stories," part 1
Re: "Origin Stories," part 1
Re: "Origin Stories," part 1
"Origin Stories," part 2
With respect to Robin confiding in and enlisting Giles in the Spike Goes Down! operation, this underscores that aspect of alliance with the patriarchy, but I think it also highlights how isolated characters of color are in the show - if Robin needs an ally, he has to be able to appeal to that person on some common ground, and Council-thinking-with-patriarchal-overtones is his best bet, since the show gives him very few other connections with Buffy's crew. Which is not to say that Robin himself doesn't believe in his reasoning, but if we're looking at Nikki's Legacy: Who's Got the Right to Uphold It and How, I think the vid casts serious doubt on Buffy's right to appropriate Nikki's words, if Buffy's the other serious candidate for that banner. I think the show explicitly gives us that choice and goes for Buffy's right, Robin's wrong. Again, as I've alluded to above, the vid argues that in choosing Spike time and again, Buffy does weigh him in the balance against the threat of future victims - possibly the Potentials - and still values him over them. The Potentials, while not completely expendable, must be valued in accordance with their use as soldiers in her army, given that she allows Spike to live even after his murders post-soul (and reiterates it for Robin's benefit) because Spike's the best fighter. As skywardprodigal says in commentary I've linked at halfamoon, how the hell did Buffy-the-show equate redeeming problematic power with putting it squarely in the hands of the epitome of young white womanhood and undying, white manhood provided it's subordinate to white womanhood?
It feels a little as if Nikki’s story has once again been set aside in favour of a narrative about two men fighting over her coat, as if that lousy piece of leather had more significance than she did.
etothey notes that black men appear in the show as aggressors, faces of the patriarchy, which we see in the vid; I think one of the goals of "Origin Stories" is to highlight, question, and partially reclaim the role of black men and characters of color in the show, and making us see things through Robin's eyes is a big step in that direction. After all, a significant part of Robin's portrayal on the show is the big black male aggressor who tricks, traps, and tries to kill Spike. I also thought the Robin POV was a good way of showing how the intimate responsibility to redress the injustices we've seen perpetrated on the past line of all-nonwhite Slayers - who are defined by their deaths at Spike's hands - keep falling on people (Robin, Dana) for whom society is set up such that they'll never be allowed the authority to do the job.
And it is an intimate responsibility - they act because they identify with those dead Slayers who are women of color, and in some ways that's coded as going straight down to the blood - Robin was brought up by a Watcher precisely because of that originating event, Nikki's death - his whole life has been shaped by what happened to his mother the Slayer and how; Dana's tuned into all the Slayers of the ages, and the vid flashes from the paint-striped face of the black First Slayer to Dana's face striped with blood. Not that this is an unproblematic attitude for the show to take, but it helps the vid's Robin POV make sense for me, since I really do feel it has to be as much about the unhappy legacy he inherits as it is about Nikki herself, given that Nikki is only part of the story of how characters of color get fucked over in the Buffyverse - the past framed by the present. (skywardprodigal's interpretation of the vid is "It's Nikki Wood's fucking coat = how white women betray women of color while fighting for the same things, robbing children of color and the adults those children eventually become. If they manage to live.")
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
Re: "Origin Stories," part 2
"Origin Stories," part 3
As for a Wesley/Robin parallel, it's certainly there. However, I think it serves as a good critique of the dangers of allying yourself with the Great White Patriarchy - if Robin's alliance with Giles is a silent one in the vid, Dana's story makes it clear that those Watchers are as likely to shoot you up and shut you down as support you, depending on their own interests, if you're acting against the GWP. Really, I see either Angel (as the head W&H honcho) or Wesley as more analogous to Buffy in the Dana vs. Spike / Robin vs. Spike episodes, given that Wesley strikes the final blow in shooting down Dana, and Buffy's words to Robin are the final blow after Spike taunts and beats the crap out of him. Robin's already losing to Spike when Buffy arrives to rescue Spike / tell Robin off; Dana's succeeded in cutting off Spike's hands when Angel and Wesley arrive to rescue Spike. But the two episodes end the same way: Spike wins in that he gets to sets the final terms of how we think about their stories. The Robin POV reframes things so it's as if Robin looks to the past and sees Slayers who are women of color, defeated by Spike; looks to the present and sees Slayers who either collude with Spike or fall victim to that collusion / white patriarchy; looks to the future in Dana, who has access to all Slayer experience, and still sees defeat all over again. Robin himself has failed - or rather, the Buffyverse narrative has failed him. Robin's position allows him a unique perspective on the persistent racial failures of the Buffyverse and the stories it tells.
Re: "Origin Stories," part 3
Re: "Origin Stories," part 3