Sorry about replying long after the comment, but I just "rediscovered" this thread had activity.
I really love what you've written here -- I am not sure where I myself would be classified.
On Anya, though, I tend to believe that Anya's hyperidentification with capitalism is actually a character point rather than a political point, though that in turn could perhaps become a political point. If we take Selfless as the skeleton key to her series characterization (and I do), the point is, I think, that Anya simply takes on the dominant ideology of her "society," whatever that society is at that time; until her turning point in the s6 finale (more in a minute), she simply "clings to whatever comes along." She has an altruistic philosophical core back in the beginning of the millennium, but turns her back on it once Olaf cheats on her, and after that is obsessed with *belonging* to some club or another, and playing her part as a cog in a vast machine. She wants to be D'Hoffryn's best vengeance demon, the best possible girlfriend and wife to Xander, and then the best possible employee to Giles and the best American. The actual triggers for her hypercapitalism are
1) learning that Xander can buy her more things in s4, 2) learning that the way to "win the game of life" is to collect money and have children in Real Me, 3) learning of her mortality after her arm is broken, and seizing on the dominant cultural model of having the great apartment and kids and pets and a boat in order to prevent her from having to worry about her mortality in The Replacement, 4) becoming a "working girl" and discovering that she is just *good* at working for Giles at the Magic Box, and 5) learning of the Watchers Council visit and deciding that she will best "pass" as a human if she takes on the most superficially stereotyped traits of the USA in Checkpoint.
None of these things have to do with Anya actually sympathizing with anyone -- 1, 3, 4 and 5 are motivated by what pleases her , and 2 is motivated by essentially *a* set of rules, one which is totally a caricature/cartoon of what "life" is. All of them suggest that Anya's commitment to other people is superficial, because of her inability to believe in herself and her fear of rejection -- which is also demonstrated in her vengeance demon days by her willingness to grant wishes that hurt the wishers (Cordelia in The Wish and the girl in Selfless both would have died from their own wish without outside intervention from Wishverse!Giles or Willow, and later Anya herself within-Selfless, respectively). In this sense, I think the political point is that Anya's ideologue tendencies are there to point out the shallowness of political commitment for most people -- a willingness to be totally gung-ho about whatever system that *currently* benefits them.
Anya's actual growth does come through her relationship with Xander (initially) and then the Scoobies as a whole, though there is some two-way exploitation (with Xander and Giles), indifference (with Buffy) and antagonism (with Willow); but eventually she chooses not to wreak vengeance on Xander despite the fact that that is what her vengeance-demon ideological framework would require, and sides with Buffy et al. against Willow *for Willow's sake* against what her current ideological framework says; her actual transformation away from accepting ideologies unquestioningly happens through personal commitments, which is how it happens for the entire cast (whose connection to political movements is almost always *positively* affected by personal connection to others rather than to abstract principles, which are easily manipulated and often rationalizations for self-serving and/or destructive behaviours). Which! presumably you know most of this, but I think that the portrayal of Anya's hyper-ideological nature is more to satirize thoughtless adherence to system without deeper personal investment rather than to actually make a point about a particular system (though -- by lumping capitalism and 21st century marriage in with various obscure and deliberately ridiculous demon rituals that Anya also believes in, they are making the point that the dominant cultural assumptions about what constitutes a good social order are not necessarily meaningful).
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branchandroot
Re: cont'd
Date: 2012-11-30 09:39 pm (UTC)I really love what you've written here -- I am not sure where I myself would be classified.
On Anya, though, I tend to believe that Anya's hyperidentification with capitalism is actually a character point rather than a political point, though that in turn could perhaps become a political point. If we take Selfless as the skeleton key to her series characterization (and I do), the point is, I think, that Anya simply takes on the dominant ideology of her "society," whatever that society is at that time; until her turning point in the s6 finale (more in a minute), she simply "clings to whatever comes along." She has an altruistic philosophical core back in the beginning of the millennium, but turns her back on it once Olaf cheats on her, and after that is obsessed with *belonging* to some club or another, and playing her part as a cog in a vast machine. She wants to be D'Hoffryn's best vengeance demon, the best possible girlfriend and wife to Xander, and then the best possible employee to Giles and the best American. The actual triggers for her hypercapitalism are
1) learning that Xander can buy her more things in s4,
2) learning that the way to "win the game of life" is to collect money and have children in Real Me,
3) learning of her mortality after her arm is broken, and seizing on the dominant cultural model of having the great apartment and kids and pets and a boat in order to prevent her from having to worry about her mortality in The Replacement,
4) becoming a "working girl" and discovering that she is just *good* at working for Giles at the Magic Box, and
5) learning of the Watchers Council visit and deciding that she will best "pass" as a human if she takes on the most superficially stereotyped traits of the USA in Checkpoint.
None of these things have to do with Anya actually sympathizing with anyone -- 1, 3, 4 and 5 are motivated by what pleases her , and 2 is motivated by essentially *a* set of rules, one which is totally a caricature/cartoon of what "life" is. All of them suggest that Anya's commitment to other people is superficial, because of her inability to believe in herself and her fear of rejection -- which is also demonstrated in her vengeance demon days by her willingness to grant wishes that hurt the wishers (Cordelia in The Wish and the girl in Selfless both would have died from their own wish without outside intervention from Wishverse!Giles or Willow, and later Anya herself within-Selfless, respectively). In this sense, I think the political point is that Anya's ideologue tendencies are there to point out the shallowness of political commitment for most people -- a willingness to be totally gung-ho about whatever system that *currently* benefits them.
Anya's actual growth does come through her relationship with Xander (initially) and then the Scoobies as a whole, though there is some two-way exploitation (with Xander and Giles), indifference (with Buffy) and antagonism (with Willow); but eventually she chooses not to wreak vengeance on Xander despite the fact that that is what her vengeance-demon ideological framework would require, and sides with Buffy et al. against Willow *for Willow's sake* against what her current ideological framework says; her actual transformation away from accepting ideologies unquestioningly happens through personal commitments, which is how it happens for the entire cast (whose connection to political movements is almost always *positively* affected by personal connection to others rather than to abstract principles, which are easily manipulated and often rationalizations for self-serving and/or destructive behaviours). Which! presumably you know most of this, but I think that the portrayal of Anya's hyper-ideological nature is more to satirize thoughtless adherence to system without deeper personal investment rather than to actually make a point about a particular system (though -- by lumping capitalism and 21st century marriage in with various obscure and deliberately ridiculous demon rituals that Anya also believes in, they are making the point that the dominant cultural assumptions about what constitutes a good social order are not necessarily meaningful).