Vid rec

[hazelk]

Origin Stories by 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.

Comments

"Origin Stories," part 2

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

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.

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

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

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?
I never saw Spike’s arc on Buffy or even on Angel as redeeming all his sins, just those committed in the name of love. On both shows all he gets in the end is death and glory (oh the irony). But returning to Robin I was being unfair if I implied that he was solely on the watcher’s side. He very clearly sees himself as his mother’s son, when Buffy uses her words against him he absolutely takes that on board, he even flings them right back at her in the next episode. At that point in the story all of them Buffy, Robin, Giles, Nikki herself are in thrall to the patriarchal injunction that it’s the mission that matters.

Nikki is only part of the story of how characters of color get fucked over in the Buffyverse - the past framed by the present.
I can’t argue with this. I think things did get a little better in season S7, Robin’s complexity being a large part of that but coming from a very low base. I was clipping Kendra’s S2 story recently for a slayer vid of my own and quite apart from the whole ‘Tragic Mulatta 101’ aspect Buffy’s attitude to her is incredibly dismissive and quite unremarked on. It’s only one remove from Cordelia’s treatment of her foreign exchange student, which was played as a big joke in one of the early episodes of the season.

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

I never saw Spike’s arc on Buffy or even on Angel as redeeming all his sins, just those committed in the name of love. On both shows all he gets in the end is death and glory (oh the irony).

My sense was that dying a hero's death was meant to redeem him pretty much in toto - getting his ticket punched in exchange for un/dying glory, especially the first time around. Or possibly I just had a greater impression of his death at the end of BtVS because Buffy gives him the final word of approval by saying she loves him, even if he verbally rejects it (which might be supposed to make him even more heroic - doing the right thing even though he claims he'll never really have her love).

In drawing the analogy between himself and Dana insofar as they're were both innocents who became "monsters," and acknowledging that he'd deserve whatever he got at her hands, Spike's taken a step toward understanding that white patriarchy is the monster who preys on and creates "monsters." Of course, what Spike leaves out is that Dana was already different from him before she became a "monster," given her gender, class, mental illness; also, the originary event for Dana was horrific abuse, and she only got the power to act as a merciless killer later on. Whereas of course Spike and Angel started out as young men who were transformed in a single event into conscienceless killers for pleasure (by women, no less). Female rage and action against patriarchal figures - nay, collective female rage and action, given that Dana is explicitly accessing Slayer experience across the ages - has to be freakish on AtS, a manifestation of illness. One way in which AtS undoes the work that BtVS did, for sure. It always hits me hard whenever I watch the part where Angel and Wesley take Dana down - it's as if even when we've got the experiences of every Slayer who's ever lived in one person, that's not enough for her to triumph over white patriarchy; they can't let it happen.

While Robin benefits to an extent from patriarchal systems, in another way (as explored by the vid) his actions and viewpoint aren't so far from hers; he's avenging the mostly-invisible past Slayer(s) on the White Male Figure of Authority who killed them. In fact, he has more concrete justification to do so, given that Spike's a walking time bomb at that point. Spike wins, and at the point appears to still be fooling himself that killing those Slayers was winning some kind of honorable duel, or just a couple of notches in the belt (the eyebrow scar from Xin Rong, Nikki's coat), rather than unforgivable murder. That probably changes in "Damage," but at the end of "Chosen" I'm pretty sure he still doesn't "give a piss" about Nikki Wood's life or what she meant to Robin. Then again, I guess the viewers don't really, either - I find that Spike's blaze of glory kind of obscures the other stuff.

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I can live with Spike’s ending in a blaze of glory by focussing on how the show has severely problematized the whole idea of a ‘noble death.' It was one of the things I liked a lot about the way it continued after The Gift. Also Spike has always been a character of extremes, he can be hero guy and he can be “I didn’t give a piss about your mum” guy but the one can never excuse the other.

Spike wins, and at the point appears to still be fooling himself that killing those Slayers was winning some kind of honorable duel
Or the nature of things that you and selenak were discussing over on her journal. I think what the show is reaching for here (and throughout the season) is not that vampires killing Slayers is natural but rather a natural consequence of the ‘One Girl in all the World’ set up. Spike was Nikki’s murderer but if she had killed him she still would have likely died in some other battle accepted as part of the mission she could never share or take a break from. Spike, misogynistic and brutal while he might be, is not the patriarchy but its instrument. The bigger enemy is the system that gave one woman the non-choice between a short life filled with violence and letting the whole world go to hell.

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

I can live with Spike’s ending in a blaze of glory by focussing on how the show has severely problematized the whole idea of a ‘noble death.' It was one of the things I liked a lot about the way it continued after The Gift. Good point about BtVS post "The Gift."

Also Spike has always been a character of extremes, he can be hero guy and he can be “I didn’t give a piss about your mum” guy but the one can never excuse the other. It's true that he's a character of extremes, although I feel it's not as difficult as it should be for viewers to conclude that even though Spike murdered thousands, it's all "worth it" because of how it led him to the end, dying to save billions of people. (More or less what Darla concludes before she stakes herself to birth Connor, except that she's not dying to save the world. We know Darla's sense of morals, if any, don't encompass caring about anyone else besides possibly Drusilla, very possibly Angel/us and now Connor, though.)

Spike was Nikki’s murderer but if she had killed him she still would have likely died in some other battle accepted as part of the mission she could never share or take a break from. Spike, misogynistic and brutal while he might be, is not the patriarchy but its instrument. The bigger enemy is the system that gave one woman the non-choice between a short life filled with violence and letting the whole world go to hell. Yes, this is all true.

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

He very clearly sees himself as his mother’s son, when Buffy uses her words against him he absolutely takes that on board, he even flings them right back at her in the next episode. At that point in the story all of them Buffy, Robin, Giles, Nikki herself are in thrall to the patriarchal injunction that it’s the mission that matters.

These are really excellent points - I remember I was relieved that Robin wouldn't let it go unchallenged after that episode. I'm not sure BtVS ever completely resolves that problem of conflicting values: the value of the individual vs. the value of the mission. The final battle in NFA comes down pretty squarely on the latter side, but sadly that makes a lot of sense in view of the patriarchal nature of "the mission that matters." When the spell gives all the Potentials in the world the chance to be Slayers (and I think the question of whether or not they're actually given a choice is important with respect to this discussion and also to Dana), in one sense the empowerment of all of those disparate individuals is an affirmation of their value as individuals. And almost all of the new worldwide Slayers we see are white. On the other hand, it only happens because that spell is the last hope of Buffy's army, which has to fulfill the mission or evil wins (i.e. no individual will be safe, etc.). From one perspective, it's a question of whether or not that spell gives those girls across the world a chance or just "enlists" them like the Shadowmen did the First Slayer; of course, the vid makes that connection between the Shadowmen and Dana's story.

I was clipping Kendra’s S2 story recently for a slayer vid of my own and quite apart from the whole ‘Tragic Mulatta 101’ aspect Buffy’s attitude to her is incredibly dismissive and quite unremarked on. It’s only one remove from Cordelia’s treatment of her foreign exchange student, which was played as a big joke in one of the early episodes of the season.

I'll look forward to seeing your Slayer vid! Yes, it's a little hard to pick which point's the nadir for BtVS treatment of characters of color, and Buffy-the-character's and Buffy-the-show's attitude toward Kendra was really cringe-inducing.

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

And almost all of the new worldwide Slayers we see are white.
Actually of the five in the montage at least three are some shade of brown but the little baseball girl who begins and ends the sequence is unambiguously white. It looks as if the show was trying to make a point of diversity but not able to or paying close enough attention to make it clear. Another example, of the named potentials I think the ration is 4:6 CoC:white but the group as a whole looks much more white-dominated. I wonder if it has something to do with the way the industry recruits extras, in the comics where that isn’t an issue the balance is much better. I also remember noticing that Robin’s crew of baby Slayers were all chromatic. The artist is black and might have some input on aspects of the imagery that the plot doesn’t specify.

On the other hand, it only happens because that spell is the last hope of Buffy's army, which has to fulfill the mission or evil wins (i.e. no individual will be safe, etc.). From one perspective, it's a question of whether or not that spell gives those girls across the world a chance or just "enlists" them like the Shadowmen did the First Slayer.
I thought it was more that Buffy only came up with the idea because she had to fight the First’s army but that it was something that should have been done irrespective of that situation. The whole season constantly makes the point of how the problem with being the Slayer isn’t because Buffy would prefer a normal life or fears becoming a killer, those issues were resolved in previous seasons. The problem is that ‘there is only her’ or, as she and Faith agree, Slayerness is a burden that can’t be shared. She can be grateful for her friends but they can’t be her. The Shadowmen forced power on that one girl but what made her work for them was the fact of being the only one who could. With multiple Slayers there are other choices available than fulfill the mission or let evil win. For me it also ties in to the fact that patriarchal systems are quite happy to tolerate single powerful women, the Glorianas and the Thatchers, as long as they remain just that, singular and don’t grow into a ‘monstrous regiment.’

Re: "Origin Stories," part 2

[ticketsonmyself.livejournal.com]

Sorry, screwed up html first time around:

Another example, of the named potentials I think the ration is 4:6 CoC:white but the group as a whole looks much more white-dominated. This is true. I need to watch "Chosen" again and have another look at the montage!

I also remember noticing that Robin’s crew of baby Slayers were all chromatic. The artist is black and might have some input on aspects of the imagery that the plot doesn’t specify. Oh, see what you've done - now I'll have to take a look at the comics, too! *g* I have already heard that there are significant named chromatic Slayers in the comics, which sounds like a promising step up. I really hated it when Chao-Ahn had to rely on looking at flashcards and was lactose intolerant but no one understood - the latter in particular is a relatively minor but quintessential issue that POC often run into in the United States, since POC are much more likely to be lactose intolerant than Caucasians. (See Barbara Kingsolver's Pigs in Heaven for one fictional treatment of the issue; a white woman adopts a Native American child and is bewildered as to why her daughter keeps getting stomach aches until a pediatrician, an African American woman, tells her what's really going on.) Inability to communicate made the problem of survival far more potentially dangerous for Chao-Ahn than it was for the other Potentials, but the show consistently treated it as a joke.

I thought it was more that Buffy only came up with the idea because she had to fight the First’s army but that it was something that should have been done irrespective of that situation. True.

The Shadowmen forced power on that one girl but what made her work for them was the fact of being the only one who could. With multiple Slayers there are other choices available than fulfill the mission or let evil win. For me it also ties in to the fact that patriarchal systems are quite happy to tolerate single powerful women, the Glorianas and the Thatchers, as long as they remain just that, singular and don’t grow into a ‘monstrous regiment.’ Well said. The choices those singular women make are often compromised by patriarchal systems, which is a problem that in turn helps deflect the pain of a wronged past and present for CoC to what it's "really" supposed to mean for characters more privileged in the narrative.