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gwynWarning! Spoilers for the Buffy episode 7/3 if you haven't seen it yet
I'm waiting for tonight's Buffy and in the meantime, have been thinking about last week. I've written some analyses of the forgiveness aspect on some message boards (I really believe that Willow being forgiven is an important sign that Spike will be, as well, and I don't see the idea of Willow being embraced again as somehow mutually exclusive of Spike being embraced eventually, too), but one thing I haven't had a chance to write thoughts about is identity.
The search for identity has always been a big personal interest -- I'm a twin, and adopted, and both of those characteristics have informed my life and my need to find an identity. Most of my life, people have asked me "Don't you want to know who you are?" as if by not knowing my birth parents, I couldn't possibly have a sense of identity. And the rest of the time, I was part of "the twins" with no specific name and no specific identity of my own that was separate from my sister's. People even gave us one present to share, often, as though we'd both want to have the same things all the time.
So it might be that I notice these things a bit more than the average bear. But the third ep, STSP, seemed to me to be not just about point of view, but also about the search for identity and where it leads you with the people in your life. Willow said, in Two to Go and Grave, that "Willow doesn't live here anymore" and variations thereof. She admitted earlier in the season that she never saw herself as anything special, just a girl that no one really cared about and had nothing much to offer without magic. And when she was torturing Warren, she talked about how it was through Tara's eyes that she felt she became something, and now that vision of herself was gone with Tara's life. It's clear that Willow has no idea anymore of her identity; the one she had when she was younger, the one she feared so badly in her dreams in Restless, is gone now, and the one she's created was destroyed in the events of season six.
Buffy is also searching for an identity. She made a promise to be a better person last year, and I think is now walking her talk. But she's still not sure where she is. Willow becomes invisible, existing in an alternate plane of reality, when she comes home because she doesn't know if the person she is -- and she's not entirely sure who that is -- will be acceptable to her friends; Buffy isn't entirely certain what she's becoming and probably herself is contributing to that anxiety of Willow's. Her uncertainty will communicate to others while she finds her footing. And this job may help; or it may not, because it may provide her with a distraction from her real identity of the Slayer.
I loved the ending, where Buffy is tentative and awkward with Will, and Will is with Buffy, but they soldier on and try to pretend they're not scared to death of each other now, but on the road to forgiveness. Because this way they can try to help each other forge new identities and build on the positive things of who they were in the past, and maybe, just maybe, recover from the very, very negative things.
Spike, most of all, is having a major identity crisis. Obviously he's acting mad at times; in other times he's lucid but barely in control, and how much of an influence demons and the hellmouth and whatever's brewing in the basement are affecting him, we don't know yet. The way he reacted to realizing no one could see Willow and that the three friends couldn't see each other indicates that he's aware of the identity and emotional problems they're struggling with, and I hope that helps him in some ways, because right now he's forging his own identity through the guilt and the pain and the suffering for what he's done before. It's fragmented and agonized and confused, but he's working on it. There is some William in him, clearly (he calls himself William and says things that are much like his William lines in Fool for Love), but there are also a lot of other bits floating around in his head, and the trick now will be sorting them out and creating a new identity for himself.
He's done it before. He created his Spike identity out of the remnants of William when he was turned into a vampire (taking on the name, changing his physical appearance, his accent, and so on), so I have no doubt that, with some healing influence and getting away from the demon/evil that's tormenting him in the basement, he can forge a new identity. In some ways, I'll miss the old Spike, but I think I will like the new one, just because there are still enough hints of old Spike there (the snarkiness, the wit, the droll humor) as well as potential neoSpike elements that could fuse to create an interesting, redemption-worthy character. He can go in a lot of directions, but the big thing is how much he heals.
It's really hard to know who you are in a world that doesn't tell you who you are. You have to rely on what other people tell you, and filter out all kinds of elements that could confuse the issue. Most people aren't self-aware enough, don't spend enough time self-analyzing, to really understand and accept who they are. All three of these characters, Buffy, Willow, and Spike, have been through severe trauma in the past season that has knocked their old identities completely out of the ballpark, and left them floundering around, trying to find the new ones.
I didn't like all of STSP, there were things in it I found displeasing especially as regards Spike, but overall, I thought these hints of identity issues and searching for a new identity were really interesting. It could be that my personal feelings about self-identity make me see something that isn't there, but in that ep I found some really interesting concepts I hope we'll see fleshed out in episodes to come.
I'm waiting for tonight's Buffy and in the meantime, have been thinking about last week. I've written some analyses of the forgiveness aspect on some message boards (I really believe that Willow being forgiven is an important sign that Spike will be, as well, and I don't see the idea of Willow being embraced again as somehow mutually exclusive of Spike being embraced eventually, too), but one thing I haven't had a chance to write thoughts about is identity.
The search for identity has always been a big personal interest -- I'm a twin, and adopted, and both of those characteristics have informed my life and my need to find an identity. Most of my life, people have asked me "Don't you want to know who you are?" as if by not knowing my birth parents, I couldn't possibly have a sense of identity. And the rest of the time, I was part of "the twins" with no specific name and no specific identity of my own that was separate from my sister's. People even gave us one present to share, often, as though we'd both want to have the same things all the time.
So it might be that I notice these things a bit more than the average bear. But the third ep, STSP, seemed to me to be not just about point of view, but also about the search for identity and where it leads you with the people in your life. Willow said, in Two to Go and Grave, that "Willow doesn't live here anymore" and variations thereof. She admitted earlier in the season that she never saw herself as anything special, just a girl that no one really cared about and had nothing much to offer without magic. And when she was torturing Warren, she talked about how it was through Tara's eyes that she felt she became something, and now that vision of herself was gone with Tara's life. It's clear that Willow has no idea anymore of her identity; the one she had when she was younger, the one she feared so badly in her dreams in Restless, is gone now, and the one she's created was destroyed in the events of season six.
Buffy is also searching for an identity. She made a promise to be a better person last year, and I think is now walking her talk. But she's still not sure where she is. Willow becomes invisible, existing in an alternate plane of reality, when she comes home because she doesn't know if the person she is -- and she's not entirely sure who that is -- will be acceptable to her friends; Buffy isn't entirely certain what she's becoming and probably herself is contributing to that anxiety of Willow's. Her uncertainty will communicate to others while she finds her footing. And this job may help; or it may not, because it may provide her with a distraction from her real identity of the Slayer.
I loved the ending, where Buffy is tentative and awkward with Will, and Will is with Buffy, but they soldier on and try to pretend they're not scared to death of each other now, but on the road to forgiveness. Because this way they can try to help each other forge new identities and build on the positive things of who they were in the past, and maybe, just maybe, recover from the very, very negative things.
Spike, most of all, is having a major identity crisis. Obviously he's acting mad at times; in other times he's lucid but barely in control, and how much of an influence demons and the hellmouth and whatever's brewing in the basement are affecting him, we don't know yet. The way he reacted to realizing no one could see Willow and that the three friends couldn't see each other indicates that he's aware of the identity and emotional problems they're struggling with, and I hope that helps him in some ways, because right now he's forging his own identity through the guilt and the pain and the suffering for what he's done before. It's fragmented and agonized and confused, but he's working on it. There is some William in him, clearly (he calls himself William and says things that are much like his William lines in Fool for Love), but there are also a lot of other bits floating around in his head, and the trick now will be sorting them out and creating a new identity for himself.
He's done it before. He created his Spike identity out of the remnants of William when he was turned into a vampire (taking on the name, changing his physical appearance, his accent, and so on), so I have no doubt that, with some healing influence and getting away from the demon/evil that's tormenting him in the basement, he can forge a new identity. In some ways, I'll miss the old Spike, but I think I will like the new one, just because there are still enough hints of old Spike there (the snarkiness, the wit, the droll humor) as well as potential neoSpike elements that could fuse to create an interesting, redemption-worthy character. He can go in a lot of directions, but the big thing is how much he heals.
It's really hard to know who you are in a world that doesn't tell you who you are. You have to rely on what other people tell you, and filter out all kinds of elements that could confuse the issue. Most people aren't self-aware enough, don't spend enough time self-analyzing, to really understand and accept who they are. All three of these characters, Buffy, Willow, and Spike, have been through severe trauma in the past season that has knocked their old identities completely out of the ballpark, and left them floundering around, trying to find the new ones.
I didn't like all of STSP, there were things in it I found displeasing especially as regards Spike, but overall, I thought these hints of identity issues and searching for a new identity were really interesting. It could be that my personal feelings about self-identity make me see something that isn't there, but in that ep I found some really interesting concepts I hope we'll see fleshed out in episodes to come.
