thinky thoughts about Buffy & CoE
Feb. 7th, 2010 11:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmRight, so in the great Buffy watchathon, we just watched "Passion," which actually makes me want to talk about Children of Earth.
So in Buffy, a main character's romantic interest dies, and it's fucking awful, and he hares off alone to deal with it, and then his friends come after them and he tries to push them away and they say "No."
Whereas in Torchwood the wounded man gets away.
Of course, there's no real way to stop Jack from getting away and his wounds are more significant (that whole thing with Stephen), but there are similarities:
- romantic loss
- of a romance where chances have been wasted
- sex deferred
- involving a surviving party who arguably had tried not to get involved.
Here's the thing, I think "Passion" works marvelously. And, in the way it resolves, there's this balm -- not of healing, but of this sense of enduring and healing (of course, the graveside moment helps).
In CoE, which I also thinks works marvelously, there is no balm to speak of, and the thought of Jack's endurance is nausea-inducing, because it seems as if this moment will be forever.
It's much easier for me to understand now, having seen "Passion," why and how people are so angry with how CoE was handled (although I also understand that that's about a whole slew of other things too in various combinations, I'm just looking at this one little sliver).
And yet, for me and my interests (narratively and emotionally and academically), the Buffy episode actually speaks to why CoE _also_ works for me.
It is, as Angel says in that voiceover that somehow manages to work by the skin of its teeth (it wouldn't without the death, just the way the slo-mo stuff in Day 4 wouldn't without Ianto's death), about "the ecstasy of grief."
Ecstasy, of course, is the key word. It's exactly right. God, I _hated_ how I fetl in the immediate aftermath of Day 4, but it was also amazing. I remember it, and the thought of watching the episode again (which I must for scholarly reasons) makes me tense with misery, but that crystal, perfect moment of the initial experience of it was so pure and bright and just vivid. It was like, biting into an orange, I guess. At least in recollection, in the sense of the arc of emotional sensation for me. Anyway....
"The ecstasy of grief." That's the key really. We can't fuck these people. But we can mourn them. And when the property doesn't (among other things); we do.
This, mostly written down so it wends its way into my Bristol paper.
So in Buffy, a main character's romantic interest dies, and it's fucking awful, and he hares off alone to deal with it, and then his friends come after them and he tries to push them away and they say "No."
Whereas in Torchwood the wounded man gets away.
Of course, there's no real way to stop Jack from getting away and his wounds are more significant (that whole thing with Stephen), but there are similarities:
- romantic loss
- of a romance where chances have been wasted
- sex deferred
- involving a surviving party who arguably had tried not to get involved.
Here's the thing, I think "Passion" works marvelously. And, in the way it resolves, there's this balm -- not of healing, but of this sense of enduring and healing (of course, the graveside moment helps).
In CoE, which I also thinks works marvelously, there is no balm to speak of, and the thought of Jack's endurance is nausea-inducing, because it seems as if this moment will be forever.
It's much easier for me to understand now, having seen "Passion," why and how people are so angry with how CoE was handled (although I also understand that that's about a whole slew of other things too in various combinations, I'm just looking at this one little sliver).
And yet, for me and my interests (narratively and emotionally and academically), the Buffy episode actually speaks to why CoE _also_ works for me.
It is, as Angel says in that voiceover that somehow manages to work by the skin of its teeth (it wouldn't without the death, just the way the slo-mo stuff in Day 4 wouldn't without Ianto's death), about "the ecstasy of grief."
Ecstasy, of course, is the key word. It's exactly right. God, I _hated_ how I fetl in the immediate aftermath of Day 4, but it was also amazing. I remember it, and the thought of watching the episode again (which I must for scholarly reasons) makes me tense with misery, but that crystal, perfect moment of the initial experience of it was so pure and bright and just vivid. It was like, biting into an orange, I guess. At least in recollection, in the sense of the arc of emotional sensation for me. Anyway....
"The ecstasy of grief." That's the key really. We can't fuck these people. But we can mourn them. And when the property doesn't (among other things); we do.
This, mostly written down so it wends its way into my Bristol paper.
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no subject
Date: 2010-02-08 12:45 pm (UTC)I'm very calm about death in RL, I never mourn much, the main feeling in my grief is the loss of positive possibilities. That's what is painful for me in this two onscreen deaths: the loss of possibilities in a very not-TV, realistic way. Not for some Great Cause, not in a staged way, but in a very real, hit-by-the-bus way, if not factually then emotionally. I would also say that the fan campaign in Ianto's case is (at least for some of its' members) another side of this feeling of possibilities lost: you can't bring back a person in RL, but you can do it in fiction, to fill the gap left.
I wonder, though, how much people cared about Jenny? When I was watching Buffy a few months ago, the death of Jenny was Giles' loss, as well as character death in S6 was also lover's loss, and it were the lovers I cared about, but the death in S7 and Ianto's death were my losses.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-09 09:42 am (UTC)Yes, exactly, this is how I've been describing it too. Now (thanks in large part to Buffy, and learning how these things work) I've learned that as soon as a couple is happy one of them will die. Also, a main character's love-interest is always, always at risk. So ever since Jack hooked up with Ianto properly, I'd been seeing a scythe above Ianto's head.... and yet his death still completely destroyed me.