tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post6163940898029075277..comments2024-01-15T02:19:13.716-08:00Comments on Fragments Of My Imagination: Normal AgainMark Fieldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16661801011668244109noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-90390153443611270502016-07-27T11:05:31.863-07:002016-07-27T11:05:31.863-07:00Very clever episode with really good 'mise en ...Very clever episode with really good 'mise en abyme', subtexts, winks and meta.<br /><br />Whether the viewer wants to believe which reality is 'real' or not, in real life, depression usually doesn't cure itself like that and in the previous episodes, I think they showed very well all the different faces of depression and they're kind of stuck really - which I think AYW shows by rubbing stuff we already know in our face again and not very subtly. <br /><br />So taking medication, going to see a psychologist and maybe going to the hospital (ok, not the asylum, and its depiction is probably a bit too extreme) are often needed in cases of strong depression. It's after several "sessions" in the alternate reality that Buffy starts to open up, and in that conversation with Willow to accept that she is depressed and it has been a while. <br /><br />Contrary to what I wrote in AYW comments, I don't think Riley was a wake-up call (ouf!) and we can see that she is still "lost" in Normal Again - although she might seem to be better in Hell's Bells for instance. But SMG plays very well the chirpy Buffy with a touch of fakeness which reminds me of the Buffybot. Anyway, she is not "cured" and there has been no wake-up calls so far - if ever this is what is needed against depression. <br /><br />But going to see a doctor and opening up again are certainly good starts. Of course, the point of the series is not to explain depression and how you fight against it, so lots of questions remain unanswered but I feel NA is the closure of a "mini depression arc".<br /><br />Which started when? After The gift? or after The Body? I don't know, not sure if it matters really. After the Body, Buffy said to Giles that she was not sure Joyce knew that Buffy loved her, that she felt like she was loosing the ability to love, and later on she said again to Giles how she wished her mom was here. The same Giles told her in at the beginning of season 6 how Joyce taught Buffy what she needed to know to face 'normal' life but Buffy has been clearly doubting it.<br /><br />And so the "wake-up" scene (if there is really one) is really, really good: in a world of surreal fiction, Buffy can, for real, experience being with and talk to her dead mother in an "alternate" reality which wants her to believe her surreal world is not real!! And what her mother tells her is probably what she needed to hear - a message to be strong for sure but also a goodbye she couldn't have:<br /><br />Joyce: "Buffy? Buffy! Buffy, fight it. You're too good to give in, you can beat this thing. Be strong, baby, ok? I know you're afraid. I know the world feels like a hard place sometimes, but you've got people who love you. Your dad and I, we have all the faith in the world in you. We'll always be with you."Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09719310561876644512noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-83553765533275199612012-11-25T13:50:48.766-08:002012-11-25T13:50:48.766-08:00I do think Buffy became more post-modernist in S6 ...I do think Buffy became more post-modernist in S6 and S7. It was right around this time, in fact, that manwitch began posting on that topic at AtPO. That said, though, the concept of constructing one's own life is, I think, consistent with existentialism even if the basic idea came later.<br /><br />Nice points about the "one step forward, two steps back" nature of Buffy's reactions here. She moves tentatively towards her friends, as you note, but the underlying resentments still hold her back. She makes a confession to them -- very unusual for her -- but note that she doesn't completely explain the asylum or what it might mean to her. Only later does Dawn realize that Buffy might see the asylum as a way out. Dawn personalizes this when she shouldn't, but it's true in a way.<br /><br />Good points about Spike's words and the nature of his feelings for her.Mark Fieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16661801011668244109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-88262366998998780372012-11-25T13:05:03.375-08:002012-11-25T13:05:03.375-08:00All of this is very good, on one level: it indica...All of this is very good, on one level: it indicates that Buffy was beginning to choose life before the basement scene, even if the shock of the poison’s effects were part of the impetus. On the other hand, I think that these very moments increased her ambivalence, for the feeling of engagement of the world, while gratifying in some ways, also produced panic in others: when recovering from depression, the first feelings of life can be frightening, painful—akin to coming back to life, thus returning Buffy to that trauma… (Think of the first four lines of The Waste Land… ) Notice that Buffy returns to the asylum after moments of connection or attempted connection with Dawn or the group (we don’t see it after the moment with Willow, but that is because of the understandable desire for the segue to Xander and Spike hunting the demon). <br /><br />Spike’s words function in a related manner: I, too, see him as dishing out tough love, although in part because he gets it right by getting it wrong (per usual)—although he is also right about some things, too. He was right in saying she was drawn to the misery, because at that point, she was—she was never a “creature of the dark”—that was Spike’s dream and delusion. And he was right in his demand that she “let [herself] live,” for that was precisely what she was not able to let herself do—although doing so was far from a simple matter of will, as his demand made it sound… if it were, depression would not be so intractable a disease…. He was even right in saying that he helped her, and right, I think, in thinking that that help came from his love for her, but not fully right in his imagination of how that help worked. For I think that at this point Spike still believes that Buffy is coming to love his, that she has feelings akin to love, feelings that would be love if she would let herself… Rather, he helped her by being a repository for her pain when that was all she could desire: at the point at which they began sleeping together, I would argue, Buffy was in so much pain, felt so alienated from her friends, and was so depressed that her ability to desire was itself contracted to a perversion of her power, and Spike gave that an outlet through their exchange of sexual violence. This fits in with the main themes of the season, but I’ll save fuller elaboration for my comments on the finale. <br /><br />Ultimately, I think that Buffy pours out the antidote less out in response to Spike’s threat, important though that is, more in response to his earlier demand that she let herself live: it is life, itself, not Spike’s revelation, that she finds most painful and frightening, and even though she knows that the antidote will not end her depression, she has felt the thawing, the stirring of the dull roots, knows that if she drinks the fluid she will begin to come back to real life… <br />StateOfSiege97https://www.blogger.com/profile/07100795610748395322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-32834340916765782172012-11-25T13:04:03.886-08:002012-11-25T13:04:03.886-08:00A few thoughts—
I love this episode, and I like y...A few thoughts—<br /><br />I love this episode, and I like your reading of the final shot. I would point out, however, that in your last comments you are moving away from an existntialist position, toward a postmodern one… <br /><br />Buffy’s relationship with her friends is in this episode complex: on the one hand, there is the violence and hostility of the basement scene, but on the other, and before that, there are signs of a thaw… We see her talking to Willow about Tara—having, that is, girl-talk, as they would have of old—and then we see her accepting Xander with open arms, telling him “you don’t have to explain to us,” and even giving him a bit of tough love, “you mean, between the sobs?”—again, speaking to him, and speaking to him with Willow, as she would have of old. And although one might say, and I would to an extent agree, that this might another instance of Buffy making gestures toward her friends without being willing to accept any in return, I do think that there has been something of a change even before the demon’s effects become very noticeable. Xander’s failure at his wedding, along with his failure to talk to either Buffy or Willow, I would argue, shocked both women into facing, on some level, how far they had drifted from each other, had drawn them closer, opened them to each other, at least a little, if not on a conscious level. But at this point, of course, Buffy is still hiding her experience of the evening before, indicating that however much her feelings may have melted a bit, she remains ambivalent, unready to trust her friends completely again. <br /><br />She does, however, tell them that night, after they see her collapse—and I find it very significant that she then tells them the truth, that she does not brush it off as a momentary bout of exhaustion, that she does not simply lie about it, as I think she would have done a few months earlier. A number of factors are at work here: 1) Xander’s wedding. 2) Her realization that leaving Spike did not solve her problems. (I do not think she initially saw Spike as her primary problem, but think she may have come to believe him to be that at the end, in part due to Riley’s visit—but then she broke up with him and felt no better… ) 3) The sheer affective force of the experience—and I think we have to call it an experience, not a memory or a feeling or a hallucination—of the asylum. For not only does she tell W/X/D the truth of what is happening to her, but she later confesses her current depression, her inability to “snap out of it” as she characterizes it, and Willow confesses, in turn, her sense that they have all been failing themselves and each other, which is how I read the line “We’ve all been kinda slumming”—and then Buffy, who, as Mark notes, has been given, with good reason, to hiding so many things, particularly this, tells of being in the asylum, to which Willow responds with empathy. A moment of real connection occurs.<br />StateOfSiege97https://www.blogger.com/profile/07100795610748395322noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-41470009276792693592012-11-23T10:12:38.116-08:002012-11-23T10:12:38.116-08:00Counter-factual histories are always interesting. ...Counter-factual histories are always interesting. Caesar came to power as a populist supporting the people of Rome against the landed oligarchy of the Senate. You never know how someone like that will actually rule, but I tend to be pretty cynical about it.<br /><br />Still, Caesar had a well-deserved reputation for mercy with his oligarchical opponents, and that plus his military talent might very well have allowed him to transition the Republic to the Empire in a favorable way. By the time Augustus took control, the latest round of civil war had destroyed that possibility.Mark Fieldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16661801011668244109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-35949613265022466822012-11-23T10:02:24.881-08:002012-11-23T10:02:24.881-08:00Readinf about quote of Mark Antony’s funeral speec...Readinf about quote of Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar you remain me about one interesting article I've read recently: <a href="http://www.bestessay.com/essays/what-if-julius-caesar-survived-his-assassination.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.bestessay.com/essays/what-if-julius-caesar-survived-his-assassination.php</a>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5913356479406165601.post-78366733977529727792012-11-23T05:25:38.538-08:002012-11-23T05:25:38.538-08:00"Cheers resounded throughout the nation when ..."Cheers resounded throughout the nation when Buffy gagged Dawn." Never have you stated a truer thing, sir.Zelda Knapphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00654314419681927384noreply@blogger.com