#theme:meta

[herinsectreflection]

To Live So Close To The Spotlight (The Zeppo)

I have, in essays past, referred to Xander Harris as one of the most controversial characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After spending more time in the current fandom landscape, I need to correct that statement. He’s simply one of the most disliked characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A lot of people hate him, and given his appearances up until now, it’s not entirely difficult to see why. Xander is an archetypical example of what I will call the Mild Nerd Guy; a trope born out of the 1980s and its Revenge Of The Nerds-led championing of geek culture. A trope that unfortunately came to dominate genre television throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

This is a character who is defined in opposition to more typical Dashing Action Hero archetypes. Where the Action Hero is strong and muscle-bound, the Mild Nerd Guy is physically weedy. He is often shy and lacking in self-confidence. He will appear creepy when he means to be charming – but in an innocent way that encourages us to feel sympathy with this helplessly befuddled young man. He has interests coded as “nerdy” – comic books, science, maths, Dungeons and Dragons. He will be unsuccessful with women, and more often than not will concentrate all his sexual energy onto a single desired target: a popular and attractive woman. This woman will - at least at the beginning of the story – neglects his silent pining in favour of clearly undeserving Bad Boys and Popular Jocks. This is where you get is your Scott Pilgrims, your Ross Gellers, your Tom Hansens, your Every Character Anthony Michael Hall Ever Played… and yes, your Xander Harrises. 

In essence, the Mild Nerd Guy is an alternate model of masculinity, one that certain types of men (shy, nerdy, physically weak) may relate to more than the Dashing Action Hero archetype. Unfortunately, while the trope often presents these men as more respectful towards women than their counterparts, the reality is that female autonomy is a secondary concern in both cases. These are competing models that men can use to Earn Women. Neither is actually concerned with the desires and goals of the women involved at all. 

The Mild Nerd Guy has obvious parallels to the sociological concept of the Nice Guy, a term that most in feminist circles should be comfortably au fait with by now. The Nice Guy feels deserving of the attentions of women solely because of his lack of overt hostility towards them, and resents them when this “niceness” is not immediately rewarded with sexual favours. While the two concepts should not be conflated – one is a writing trope while the other is a social phenomenon – they are inextricably linked. Media informs the way we interact with the world, and the world informs the way we interact with media. Male entitlement engorges itself with stories of men winning women through inaction - the implication being that men deserve the attentions of women by default, and should be upset when it is not automatically bestowed upon them.

Meanwhile, women who have firsthand experience of this entitlement and the behaviour it encourages will naturally be fed up with it, and will bring that frustration into their consumption of media. They will take one look at a Scott Pilgrim or Xander Harris and be immediately, justifiably repulsed. While the more fantastical crimes of Angel or Spike can be easily forgiven, everyday crimes cannot. Most women have never met a serial killer. We’ve all met a creepy nerd. 

This is not a criticism of viewers who have reacted in that way. The common accusation of Xander being a “Nice Guy” I believe an inaccurate read on his character and a misuse of a term meant for the analysis of reality and not fiction. However, I can’t blame anyone who makes that instinctive leap. In fact I would say that bringing one’s own experiences to the consumption of media is the only correct way to watch television. And yet, I can’t count myself truly among that crowd. Despite my distaste for the simpering entitlement this trope has encouraged in male nerd circles, and despite the times I have been disgusted by a line Nicholas Brendon has been made to deliver thus far, I can’t say that I don’t like Xander. In fact, I would say I like Xander, and this episode is a big reason why.

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#the zeppo #s3 #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #insect reflection #essay #meta #xander harris #theme:meta

[samwellslibrary]

Author: jedusaur

Rating: Teen and Up

Length: 1415

Type: Canon

Pairing: Jack/Bitty (pre-slash/mentioned)

Summary: Bitty comes out to Johnson in the Haus kitchen after baking four pies in a row. Bitty bakes when he’s nervous, but he also bakes when he’s happy, when he’s tired, when he’s irritated, and when it’s Tuesday, so it’s hard to draw conclusions. Unless you peeked ahead to the last panel first to check for cliffhangers, but Johnson would never do that.

Comment: I mean, who doesn't love a good meta fic in Johnson the Metaphysical Goalie's POV? Nobody, that's who! This was SO meta in so many ways, and so funny to read, I absolutely loved it.

#omgcheckplease #rating:teen and up #length:1k5k #type:canon #theme:meta #pov:johnson #pairing:jackxbitty #reccer:dynah #100px to the right

[herinsectreflection]

An Episode Within an Episode: An Analysis of ‘The Zeppo’

The Zeppo is one of those episodes that so consistently shows up on fan lists of “underrated” episodes, that I don’t know if it can really be considered “underrated” anymore, but I think it deserves a little extra appreciation. It’s definitely an episode that takes a second viewing to appreciate, thanks to how oddly it is constructed, in a way that isn’t immediately advertised to the viewer. Other episodes with unusual styles such as Once More With Feeling or Hush very much wear their concepts on their sleeve; you can’t watch them and not immediately realise what they are doing. That’s not a knock against those episodes - part of what makes them so great and iconic is that they get right to the point and so can do interesting things with the concept. The Zeppo is just a quieter kind of unique. It uses the limited perspective of both the characters and the audience themselves to show a cracked-mirror version of the world. It’s an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer told from the perspective of somebody looking in on another episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s fun and weird and I want to dig into it a little bit.

We start off with a very typical Buffy scene. In its third season now, the show is pretty aware of and confident in its own tropes, and trusts the audience to be too. We don’t need any build-up explaining exactly what Giles has found out and what spell Willow is performing and what these monsters are doing and exactly how Buffy and Faith know how to kill them. We’ve all seen an episode of Buffy before, and we can fill in the blanks pretty easily. This confidence in the show’s own tropes and what the audience expects of it is key to what makes this episode work. We know exactly how a typical episode of Buffy goes, so we can receive this barely-cliff-notes version of one and understand it perfectly. It’s an episode that can only be done in a show’s third year, when viewers have become fluent in the show’s language.

After the fight and exposition is over, Xander stands up from the garbage, as out of context as we are as viewers. As this is a Xander-centric episode, he becomes the audience identification figure. As the one character not supernaturally gifted or linked in any way (as the episode points out several times), Xander makes sense as the viewer stand-in. Xander comments on how he wants to be more involved in the fights but is firmly rebuffed - and it’s clear he wouldn’t be able to impact them anyway. All he can do is watch the fights and plots happen from a distance. In this sense, Xander is no different to the viewer, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, unable to affect it in any way.

This is where the structure of the episode comes into play. The A plot is a fairly meaningless runaround with zombies, while the B-plot is a finale-worthy epic apocalyptic showdown. We only catch glimpses of it, but it seems to contain all the standard hallmarks of a Buffy apocalypse - an evil cult, opening the hellmouth, tearful Buffy/Angel melodrama. Specifically, it echoes the previous two season finales, with the final showdown apparently featuring both the literal monster from the S1 finale, and some kind of sacrifice that involved Angel (evoking the S2 finale). The very last bit of dialogue we hear during this plot is “Faith, go for the heart!” from Buffy, encouraging her to kill the demon in the library, which you could argue foreshadows the S3 finale, where Buffy will use the Mayor’s love for Faith to kill him in the library. This plot is a facsimile of a Buffy season finale, giving us everything we expect and have seen before, stripped of all context, the very bare bones of a story. 

What this achieves is that it alienates the viewer from this story-within-a story, forcing us into an intentionally uncomfortable position, where it feels like we’re watching an episode through a keyhole. It intentionally exacerbates the divide between viewer and show, to highlight our inability to fully perceive or at all impact this world we tune into each week.

Xander is very purposefully chosen as the POV character for this experience. He is feeling very insecure and ineffectual - unable to help with either brains or brawn, and not having a whole lot of impact on the story. He feels alienated from his friends, fearful that they will leave him behind. The structure of this episode highlights this feeling of ineffectualness. Xander feels so alienated from the events and people around him that he, like the audience, becomes separated from them. A character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer becomes an outsider to the story, watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We are encouraged to empathise with Xander because we are in the same position. We too have been robbed of our usual intimacy with this group of people, forced to perceive the shadows of an episode. This meta-emotion dovetails with the character’s internal mental state nicely.

I think my favourite instance of this meta-perception being played with is in the scene between Buffy and Angel, where we are dropped without context into a tearful, dramatic argument where apparently Angel’s life is in the balance, filled with declarations of love and poetic exaltations, backed by this sweeping orchestral score - and then Xander pops his head in. The music immediately stops, he exchanges a few awkward lines with them before realising they have bigger things to worry about. As he leaves, Buffy turns back to the melodrama and the sweeping music surges back in. It’s brilliantly funny - it feels like Xander put an episode on pause for a quick interjection, then re-started it where we left off. It’s a joke relying entirely on the audience’s expectations of the kind of epic melodrama we might get from Buffy and Angel, and it works really well. In this moment, Xander completely becomes the viewer, peeking in on these two actors, observing through glass.

The Zeppo is very concerned with meta references, TV, and the act of watching. Obviously the title is a reference to Zeppo Marx, and there is also a running gag likening Xander to Jimmy Olsen. We are encouraged to think of Xander in relation to his narrative function as a fictional character, and so to watch this episode through this meta lens. One key shot just after Faith and Xander sleep together shows the two of them literally reflected in a TV screen. We are literally seeing a distorted reflection of reality in a TV screen, which on one level is essentially all we do whenever we watch any television show, but is also what we are seeing within this episode - a fuzzy reflection of a Buffy episode within a Buffy episode.

There’s another shot later that I like, of one of the zombies pausing during the final chase scene to look through the library window at the demon emerging from the hellmouth. We see him looking through the glass at this apocalypse monster for a couple of seconds before continuing on with his chase, like a channel-hopping viewer taking a brief glimpse of Buffy, momentarily enraptured, before switching back to what they were watching before.

One thing that stood out to me on this rewatch was how the villains are described. We purposefully get very little on the group, but what we do get is telling. “’Sisterhood of Jhe. Race of female demons, fierce warriors...' Eww. '...celebrate victory in battle by eating their foes.’”

A race of all-female warriors sounds very much like Slayers. They apparently eat after battles too, which according to Faith is also a feature of Slayers. The villain in this story is kind of a representation of the central concept of the show, which makes sense since it deals with Xander navigating around a typical episode of the show. You could also read it as representative of Xander’s pathologies when it comes to women and specifically women who are stronger than him.

What I like about this episode is that it doesn’t conclude by giving Xander a big important role in stopping the apocalypse, proving his worth to the group. That’s what a lesser show might have done. I like that here, Xander never gets involved with the epic finale-esque plot. He carries on existing in the spaces around it, becoming instead the hero of the monster-of-the-week runaround episode he has found himself in. Xander cannot be the hero of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because he’s not Buffy. But he is still a human being, and all of us as human beings are the protagonists and heroes of our own stories. He can be the hero of his own life. 

S3 is largely about identity and forging one’s own path in life - obviously Buffy starts by having given up her name, then has to deal with facing off against her dark equivalent and making major decisions about her future. This season’s focus-episodes for the other characters reflect that: Giles is stripped of his role in Helpless, Willow rails against hers in Doppelgangland. This episode is all about Xander coming to terms with his narrative role within Buffy - as the non-powered comedic relief and occasional pep-talker. He could become frustrated with that, throw up his hands and let himself be at the mercy of his narrative function. But this episode allows him to find his own space, his own story. He accepts that he can’t colonise Buffy’s story, but he is still in control of his own decisions, and he can still have his own story. He can create a little one-off episode of Xander the Zombie Fighter that can co-exist peacefully with the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer happening at the same time. It’s a smaller, quieter story without the same world-shaking melodrama - but that’s OK. As Xander says himself, he likes the quiet.

As viewers, we can never shape the course of the media we watch. That’s part of the appeal - we don’t always know what we want or need - a problem Xander faces himself when he clutches at things like “being cool” or “a car” for things that might make him happy - but a good show gives us what we didn’t realise we needed. But it remains an eternal frustration, that we can connect on a deep emotional level with these characters, but can never help them or solve their problems. A good set of characters can feel like family, but a character can never love you back. When Xander faces up against this same uselessness as he observes an episode of Buffy from afar, it is the same uselessness the viewer feels. When he accepts this and inhabits his own story, it reminds us that we can do the same thing. Television can be a great comfort, but it is not our lives. Because we can affect our own lives. We aren’t in control of them, but we can guide and impact them, and we can each be the hero of our own individual existences.

#xander harris #the zeppo #btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #meta #s3 #theme:meta #theme:identity #theme:choice

[herinsectreflection]

Buffy vs Dracula is an underrated episode. The standard takes on this episode seem to range from “it’s dumb but fun” to “it’s dumb”. But I think this episode is more than that. It’s an assault on the narrative from another story. It’s main plot isn’t “Dracula comes to Sunnydale to fight Buffy”. It’s “Dracula tries to replace Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.  

Joss Whedon has been quoted saying his original vision of Buffy stems from the image of a blonde girl in an alley with a monster - but instead of getting killed by the monster, she kills it. The base inspiration for the show is this simple subversion. How much this was an actual common trope is up for debate - it’s not uncommon for horror movies to feature a spunky blonde “Final Girl” who defeats the villain at the end, but at the very least it was a subversion of the perceived trope, and iconic for that reason. The very opening scene of the show is an homage to this subversion, with the blonde girl turning out to be the dangerous vampire.

The high school years are basically a story of Buffy accepting her role as the Hero. She takes on the responsibilities of the Slayer in S1, faces the difficult choices that the Slayer must make in S2, and throws off the shackles of authority in S3. By the time we reach Buffy vs Dracula, she has fully claimed her role and incorporated into her identity. So now we see the purest example of that foundational image. Buffy isn’t just subverting the scene by seeming to be a victim only to turn around and kick the monster’s arse. She’s totally flipped the script and stepped into the role of the monster (in a good way, she’s still the Hero). She is no longer a victim who successfully fights back - she is the hunter, chasing down the terrified vampire. She has totally effectuated the show’s original vision.

Dracula threatens that. He enters from a different story - an older, more conventional story, where the vampire threatens the beautiful, innocent, helpless virgin. And he offers Buffy knowledge of her Slayer powers that she does not have. The idea he presents is a dangerous one - what if the narrative that Buffy foundationally rails against is actually right? What if it has some wisdom that Buffy must receive? Buffy has gone up against in-universe symbols of authority before - the Watchers, the Mayor’s office, the military - but this is beyond that. This is authority on a meta level. It’s the tradition of fiction built by and for straight white men, that dictates the acceptable tropes and techniques of future fiction. A self-sustaining patriarchy of the pen. 

Buffy’s immediate reaction is to dismiss Dracula and the narrative tropes he represents as irrelevant - posturing crap, like the fanboys calling themselves Lestat. She sarcastically asks him if he knows what a Slayer is - i.e. if he knows what show he’s in. His simple response - “Do you?” - is effectively disarming. Perhaps they are in one of Dracula’s movies now. Dracula and the Slayer are both held up as icons of vampire fiction, each having heard of the other’s legend. The question posed by the episode is whether the icon of Dracula is more powerful than the icon of Buffy.

This episode is scrapping it out with The Zeppo as possibly the most meta episode of the series. Throughout, the characters are crazy aware of their own narrative roles. Willow refers to the group as the sidekicks in the opening scene. Xander fights back against his assigned role at the Renfield (aka. The Butt Moneky) of this story. Giles seems aware that the necessity of his role as a mentor is rapidly declining. Buffy’s prevents Dracula’s post-climax comeback explicitly thanks to Buffy having seen his movies. (This also doubles as another S1 callback, given how much that season loved the sequel tease ending). There is an intentional unreality to the proceedings; an awareness of the fictional nature of the show that invites us to see Dracula not as a character, but as a narrative cipher; an image reflecting another kind of story. Giles even helpfully tells us that the key to defeating him is separating fact from fiction - i.e. understanding and learning to control the narrative around them.

From the moment he enters the frame, Dracula does not fit. With his black cloak and heavy white makeup, he is absurd pretentiousness next to Xander’s hawaiin shirt and mocha slushie. He comes with a set of powers totally contradictory to this universe. It’s handwaved away as “showy [romani traveller] stuff” by Spike, but the obvious usefulness of these powers makes that handwave insufficient. Rather, it feels like Dracula’s presence is warping the rules of this world. He has stepped in from another fictional universe to bend the logic of this one. Buffy starts to lose control of her own show as Dracula’s power rises. This is a character whose narrative gravity is so strong he can make a “great honking castle” spontaneously appear in Sunnydale. 

The switch of power comes in the scene where Dracula enters Buffy’s bedroom. It is eventually explained that Joyce invited him in earlier, but it doesn’t even feel strange at first that he enters without an invitation - it’s just another way that Dracula has distorted the narrative. This scene is intimate and disturbing, because it’s not a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It’s a scene from Nosferatu. It’s the classic image of the vampire coming in through the window to feed on the young woman. Buffy is unable to fight Dracula because she has lost control over her own story, and it is becoming Dracula’s.

The interesting part is that this isn’t just Buffy being consumed by the Dracula story because he’s just that more powerful an icon than her. There’s an ambiguously voluntary aspect to it. Buffy wants information, to understand her own power better. She lets herself become enthralled to get what she needs from this traditional narrative. But that’s a dangerous slope - in these older narratives, every woman was a victim, so by metaphorically inviting this story in, she lessens her own power.

She never completely relents it though. There is an interestingly gendered dynamic here. Initially, all the girls (sans Tara) are kind of enamoured with Dracula’s intrigue and apparent sex appeal, while the boys are universally unimpressed and dismissive of him. But as the story goes on, it’s only male characters who surrender entirely to the new narrative. Xander’s will is bent and he completely becomes the Renfield of the story. Gile’s is rendered completely useless by the three wives. Perhaps because these stories traditionally center men, it is men who more easily relinquish control to it.

Buffy arrives at Dracula’s Big Honking Castle, and tries to flip the script back on Dracula, but fails at first. She has let him in and so his narrative gravity is stronger. He offers his blood - his life, his knowledge, his valuable wisdom - to her, and tells her to “find her nature”. He wants her to relent totally to his narrative. What Dracula doesn’t realise is that these are contradictory. He thinks that Buffy is a character in a Dracula story, where she can only be a victim seduced into darkness. But Buffy’s nature, her fundamental essence, means the fundamental essence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And so we go back to that foundational image - that trope subversion on which Buffy is built. The flashes Buffy sees - the first Slayer, the vampire running through the graveyard - these all appear in the opening titles. It’s as if Buffy, when asked to see her nature, sees the opening titles of her own show. 

She quips - “That was gross” - and suddenly the script is flipped. Buffy has reclaimed the fundamental nature of the show, and now Dracula is a character in a Buffy story again. She literally uses the iconography of Dracula - the flaming torches on the castle wall - against him. He tries to use his Dracula powers again, but Buffy has reclaimed the narrative, so they don’t work. She demonstrates that she understands his story better than he understood hers, and so can use that power to defeat him. Buffy beats Dracula because Buffy the Vampire Slayer beats Dracula.

#btvs #buffy the vampire slayer #buffy summers #dracula #s5 #meta #buffy meta #buffy vs dracula #theme:meta