The Mirror Cracked: "Dopplegangers" on BtVS (1/?): Xander, mostly

[red_satin_doll]

mcjulie challenged me to write a meta about dopplegangers on BtVS in the convo thread of her wonderful meta "Where Did I Go? A Farewell to the Buffybot".  The jist of her meta is that the Buffybot represents the "I'm Fine" mask that Buffy puts on to cover her grief and depression, starting with her mother's death in mid S5, and continuing through S6. (She also pointed out to me that Buffy is the only character on the show who gets two dopplegangers: the Buffybot and The First.)



First things first: a doppleganger ("double walker") is simply an exact "double or look-alike" of any person.  The double cannot be explained away by an optical illusion or reflection in the mirror, they are not an identical twin, and generally seems to have a physical presence and is glimpsed by the person themselves or someone who knows them. In other words, not a double seen only in a dream or hallucination, but seeming to have a real physical presence. (Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper is a relatively well-known literary example.)  In old folklore, the sight of a doppleganger was taken as a sign of imminent death or misfortune to the person so copied. Nowadays, the use of a doppleganger can be comic, tragic; they can be an antagonist or a means of self-awareness.

On BtVS, the dopplegangers that the Scoobies encounter serve a bit of all of these functions, but most specifically they represent the efforts of Buffy, Willow and Xander to grapple with personal identity, with selfhood, and especially with the difficult transition from childhood to adulthood.  In each case the dopplegangers serve slightly different functions. Willow's transformation into her own shadow self, into the darker, wilder self  (her rage, her sexuality, her desire for power and control) that she tried in early season to hide and deny - from Vamp Willow to Dark Willow - is well known enough that I hardly need mention it; instead I'll link to  norwie2010's meta "Giles and the Wild Woman";  and local_max has posted some superb in-depth analysis of Willow's personality here and here, as well as a look at how the finales of S2 and S6 mirror one another in terms of Willow, Xander, and Buffy's arcs.  

Interestingly enough, Willow has only one doppleganger: Vamp Willow.  VW becomes a doppleganger when she enters the world of the "real" Sunnydale in "Dopplegangerland".  Whereas her counterpart, Vamp Xander (NB in an unfairly underrated performance), is not technically considered a doppleganger because he never is similarly transported to the other side, merely an AU version of Xander, a "what if?" variation. Xander's literal doppleganger is the second self he sees in The Replacement: he has been split by the ray from a Toth demon and divided into two halves, the goofy, nerdish class clown familiar from the early seasons, and a successful, confident adult who dresses well, earns a promotion, and signs a lease on the mortgage: in other words, the more mature or "adult" side of Xander.

But there's a complication here: if a doppleganger is a double glimpsed by the person or someone who knows them, and if from a Doylian standpoint, the viewers function as residents of Sunnydale and friends to the Scoobies, even though as spectators rather than participants; or, going a bit further, the various characters represent "us" through our identification with them and so we as audience members are actually "in" the story as participants, then for us the AU versions of the characters are also "dopplegangers", even if the Scoobies themselves are not aware of them. And so Xander can be said to have two dopplegangers: Vamp Xander and Mature Xander ( or MX; I'll call him that for convenience sake).

VX, like VW, obviously represents Xander's darker sides at that point in the series.  As a fannish aside, NB is wonderful in The Wish: dark, sexy, dangerous; the scene in which VX and VW kill Cordelia together and VX cups his mate's head in his hand, as the camera circles around them is one of the most chilling AND erotic moments in the series. (Yeah, I said it.)  He never makes the transition to the "real" Sunnydale, and Xander never becomes aware of his existence.  But it isn't necessary on a story level because I think that Xander's less pleasant traits are much closer to the surface than are Willow's, and in fact they are not even hidden: sexual urges, slut-shaming (first Cordelia, later Anya and Buffy), jealousy (initially of Angel, later Spike), lying (Xander's lie in Becoming contributes to the trauma of S2's finale for Buffy and is not addressed until S7, Selfless), having an "affair" (if it can be called that) with Willow behind his best male friend's (Oz) back, and so forth.  

This is not to bash the character, and I don't mean to be overly-hard on him, because these qualities are interlaced with his loyalty, humor, courage, supportiveness, friendship, generosity and kindness. He is, in other words, a real and complex character and it's the combination that makes him so. And in some ways, the fact that these qualities are not particularly hidden may be healthier in the long run than Willow's attempts to quash her shadow selves, which ends up backfiring spectacularly and tragically in S6.  

The Self that Xander has a difficult time coming to terms with is his literal doppleganger, Mature Xander. Since S4 in particular, Xander has been experiencing a crisis of confidence, trying to find his way in the world.  After Graduation Day (S3) Xander, like many young people who had no particular focus or plans, has been set adrift after high school.  While Buffy and Willow seem safely occupied with college, Xander struggles to find a job, to remain part of Buffy and Willow's world; in addition, he grapples with his new relationship with Anya, and to define himself in relation to his parents, to extricate himself from their house and the abusive, dysfunctional family dynamic. (Portrayed vividly in his nightmares in "Restless".)

 But as with Willow's transformation into Dark Willow, a crisis arise when he tries to become MX.  Throughout S5 and S6 he goes through the motions of being a proper, functioning, mature adult, doing all that proper, functioning, mature adults are "supposed" to do in our society: the job, the girlfriend etc.  To that end he proposes to Anya at the end of S5, in part because the world is going to end, in part because he genuinely loves her (I saw nothing on the show to suggest his love wasn't genuine).  He has obviously been thinking about it - the proposal seems spur of the moment but he has a ring in his pocket to present her with, so it's something he's been thinking about - even if only for an hour beforehand.  

But there's another motivation I think, and that is, he is proposing to her because that is what one does, that is what a man does.  The apartment, the job, a marriage: they all fall together in our society's vision like dominos, one naturally following the other.  And certainly he wants to be the man, the husband, that his father never was. He is also acting from "the heart" rather than from the brain. (Remember, in "Primeval" Xander was the "Heart" in the spell to call the First Slayer.) He loves Anya, the world might end, therefore it seems right to propose.  But acting from the heart without the brain can lead to rash decision-making; once the threat of imminent doom is over, he acts again from the heart - in this case, through fear - rather than logic or reason, and rather Anya to reveal the engagement. Later in Hell's Bell's he again acts from fear, observing the demon's visions and his father's behavior and leaves Anya at the altar; then in S7 he runs to rescue her ("Selfless") but throughout the season is unable to articulate his feelings, to fully reunite or release her.

I don't know that he can be fully faulted even though  I don't condone his actions on many occasions and it's unpleasant to watch.  All the more so because some of the key moments in his arc feel somewhat "shoved" into the narrative, especially in Hell's Bells; this I consider a failure of the writers to craft his arc as carefully, or with as much attention, as they did to Buffy and Willow's (whatever the flaws of their arcs might be.)  Within the story, however, Xander has no strong male father figure or role model to look up to.  This is a major theme within BtVS: the lack of caring, nuturing parental figures, and the absence of functional, healthy relationships that would provide models to the Scoobies.  They have to grapple their way to adulthood surrounded by adults who are, on some level or another, abusive, neglectful, dysfunctional, etc.

In Xander's case, his father is abusive (verbally at the very least; and we can see where Xander gets his slut-shaming tendencies from in Hell's Bells); Giles never fully warms to Xander, and never seems to really particularly like him; and Angel and Spike are both rivals for Buffy's time and affection. The only males Xander really connects to are Oz, who is the most laid-back, non-threatening male on the show - except for those three days a month; and Riley.

Riley is almost a "special case" in that, as a soldier, he is on some level Xander's alter ego - remember that Xander transforms into a soldier in S2's "Halloween" - and while he is also Buffy's lover, Xander doesn't seem to regard him as a rival in quite the same way, probably because he isn't a vampire.  No, Riley is human, a sort of "improved" Xander, and if Xander identifies with him (as well as likes him) the way viewers identify with favored characters, then it makes sense that Xander pushes Buffy towards Riley in ITW.  (And I have no wish to get into in-depth discussions of that episode for obvious reasons, ie, I go all ragey and stabby at the thought of it.  Enough said.) And he may perceive Riley as being "more together" than he himself is, although the events of S5 prove otherwise.

So Xander has no males to really connect to, or that he is able to connect to, especially ones older than himself who could "show him the way" to manhood.  One of the unfortunate aspects of this is that IMO, he and Spike have chemistry - and I don't mean in the 'shippy way, although there's that as well - and actually seem like they could be genuine friends once they got over their differences.  Think of the way they work together in "Him" to solve the problem of the love spell that plagues the women on the show, for instance.  Or the comedy gold of Spike in Xander's basement apartment in S4 - which is repeated for dramatic rather than comic effect when Xander takes him into his apartment again in S7.  It may be at Buffy's insistence, but it's a reminder of Xander's capacity for loyalty (Buffy) and kindness (Spike).  I think there may actually be a streak of genuine brotherly liking or affection between the two; and like brothers - or like Spike and Angel - it's hidden in most cases behind snark and insults.  (Xander possesses the warm humanity and the friendly, nonsexual connection to Buffy that the man in Spike craves; Spike has is her confidant in ways he used to be but isn't after Bargaining, as well as the sexual connection to her he wanted so badly. And so it goes.)

So the task of Xander's arc in the end of S6 and throughout S7 is to come full circle, to truly become a man, to fully inhabit "himself": goofy Xander, Vamp Xander (wonderfully called back at the end of S7 when chloroforms Dawn) and Mature Xander.  This includes reconnecting with Anya, the woman whose heart he ripped out carelessly, not out of deliberate cruelty, in  HB.  
There's a lot of talk in fandom - and in the show itself - about Buffy's inability to love, about her inability to articulate or say the word "love" or her struggle to define it. In this way her struggle mirror's Xander's own: both Buffy and Xander, in rejecting and then accepting their demon partners, even if in flawed and imperfect ways, are learning to come to peace with their own inner demons.

Of course, it always comes back to Buffy in my head...and I have many thoughts about Buffy's dopplegangers that I'll save for another post.

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Yeah, def. I even like Riley, overall, but I think that he is someone who ultimately tries to, but doesn't, break out of the patriarchal system that nurtured and created him. That doesn't make him a villain; as a soldier, post-ITW, he's presumably not doing any more experiments on demons, and he seems to have an equitable relationship with his wife. But he's not really able to handle Buffy and an environment that lacks the structure he craves, and that structure is not Buffy's structure.

While the fact that Willow's dream is about her fears that she's pretending gets all the press (as it should), the fact that she seems to think nearly everyone else in the world is in costume, playing roles, too, suggests that subconsciously she doesn't think anyone's fully authentic, even Buffy. (Well, her present/former lovers, Xander, Oz and Tara aren't involved in the production, so.) Though as a flapper, Buffy is still way closer to the modern era than "cowboy" and "milkmaid" are.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

(Well, her present/former lovers, Xander, Oz and Tara aren't involved in the production, so.)

Fascinating - I'll have to think on that.

Though as a flapper, Buffy is still way closer to the modern era than "cowboy" and "milkmaid" are.

Hmm, norwie called Buffy a "flapper" in his meta (as opposed to a true "wild woman"); I wonder if that was conscious or subconscious on his part? More to the point, is it conscious or subconscious on the part of the writers? (the "flapper" being a female who seems to break all the rules and reject traditional authority and boundaries on her sexuality but doesn't really transgress the patriarchy or attempt to break free of it entirely.) Or maybe I'm reading too much into all of it...

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I think that Willow assumes greater authenticity in her lovers than she has herself. Though with Tara, she also knows that she somewhat writes on / about her and imbues her with meaning. But it's complicated, because Tara is also someone who Willow sees as mysterious and far above her and who intimidates her.

I don't think that's reading into it. I do think that, and this is weird/partial, but I do think that Willow is, by the end of the series, more transgressive than Buffy, in both positive and negative ways -- Buffy is the person I'd term as the better person, but Willow the more dangerous and POSSIBLY the greater symbol of hope; Buffy accepts power that's hers, Willow takes power that isn't initially hers and makes it part of her. I think seeing Buffy as being somewhere in the (relatively, compared to Riley and Harmony) recent past w.r.t. female power, subconsciously, makes sense. Of course, Buffy does have the power over Willow (to strip her bare) in the dream.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I think that Willow assumes greater authenticity in her lovers than she has herself. Though with Tara, she also knows that she somewhat writes on / about her and imbues her with meaning.

Oooh, I love how your brain works. That's lovely and intriguing, I'll have to think that over. (You're of course referencing the body-painting scene in Restless, itself an homage to the movie "The Pillow Book", and one of my favorite images in the entire show.) If I'm understanding your meaning correctly, you're saying that Willow thinks her lovers are more "themselves", more "real"/ authentic and perhaps less complicated and thus more easily "known" (she assumes) than she herself is?

But it's complicated, because Tara is also someone who Willow sees as mysterious and far above her and who intimidates her.

I had to read that twice because the show would seem to imply the opposite - Tara is intimidated by Willow. (Although I think their argument in Tough Love was another "we need this for the plot" moment, because I didn't know where Tara's accusation that Willow was scaring her with her power came from. We don't really see that happening in S5 up to then.)

But there's an aspect to Tara that intrigues me; mainly, the way she actually connects with Buffy on an emotional/spiritual level from Who Are You? (she's the only person to know that Faith isn't Buffy and yet she's never met Buffy, another instance of Buffy's friends failing to "see" her - think the Buffybot in Intervention, and S6 before the reveal in OMWF), through Restless, Joyce's death, Dead Things/OAFA. And clearly that is something Willow is actually jealous of, in Tough Love - just as she was initally jealous of Buffy's relationship with Faith in S3. Willow hates being "out of the loop"; she wants to think herself an "authority". She's also unnerved by Buffy being able to hear Oz's thoughts in Earshot - she's jealous that Buffy has knowledge that she herself doesn't have. And Willow is very much about "knowledge" (knowledge is power), but without maturity or reason to use it wisely. I think there's also an aspect of Willow that's as possessive as Xander when it comes to Buffy.

but I do think that Willow is, by the end of the series, more transgressive than Buffy, in both positive and negative ways -- Buffy is the person I'd term as the better person, but Willow the more dangerous and POSSIBLY the greater symbol of hope; Buffy accepts power that's hers, Willow takes power that isn't initially hers and makes it part of her.

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from with that - Certainly Willow is the one who says at the end of Chosen "Slayers are awakening, all over", and she seems thrilled by it, by becoming part of something greater than herself. It's what I suppose she has wanted, in a sense, has envied in Buffy and tried to match with magic, and it makes sense that Willow is all about power while Buffy's goal was simply to "get the job done". (The rousing speech in Chosen aside, I doubt it's a course of action Buffy would have taken if it wasn't necessary in her mind. It's certainly not something she sought to do prior to this. And part of it was very personal: "You'll die alone".)

I think seeing Buffy as being somewhere in the (relatively, compared to Riley and Harmony) recent past w.r.t. female power, subconsciously, makes sense.

Not sure I understand, could you elaborate a bit? and btw what is "w.r.t."?

[local-max.livejournal.com]

I'm still not getting e-mail notifications for comments so I only discover these by going through my lj inbox periodically.

Warning: long, alas, but these are things I've been thinking about a lot lately.

Yeah, that's right on the first paragraph, more or less.

I had to read that twice because the show would seem to imply the opposite - Tara is intimidated by Willow. (Although I think their argument in Tough Love was another "we need this for the plot" moment, because I didn't know where Tara's accusation that Willow was scaring her with her power came from. We don't really see that happening in S5 up to then.)

There's no reason both Willow and Tara can't both be intimidated by each other. That Tough Love scene in fact is explicitly about both members arguing that they are the powerless one (Willow says she's the junior partner, Tara reassures her by saying that Willow is way more powerful than she is).

In season four Willow constantly describes Tara as being a way more powerful witch than she is; in Restless dream!Tara says "You don't know everything about me" and certainly Tara *is* lying to Willow about what Tara thinks is a fundamental part of her nature. Willow casts Tara implicitly as her mother figure and Tara does actually run with it much of the time. And Willow sees Tara as one of the things that validate Willow's existence. Tara is the person whom Willow needs to impress and stay on the good side of in order to feel that she's doing right and good. Willow eclipses Tara in terms of magical power very quickly, but she's also really intimidated by Tara and doesn't feel she can be fully honest with her. There's more to the story (always is).

As far as set up for the Tough Love fight, what we do see with Tara is: being weirded out by Willow doing the really big light in Out of My Mind; being annoyed at Willow making everything about her friends in Family; thinking that Willow shouldn't get into conflict with Anya in Triangle ("maybe you should just pay for them"); saying that "if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times: no more teleportation spells" in Crush when Willow has headaches; possibly suspecting Willow gave Dawn the book in Forever.

Here's my theory. And she could be frightened of Willow's power because subconsciously she still believes that power in a witch is intrinsically scary. Tara grew up with two conflicting sets of values -- her mother's holistic love-based spiritual magic, and her father's view that magic came from demon-ness. Willow views magic with an engineer's brain and doesn't really, deep down, view it in spiritual terms in season five, and in s5 is primarily accumulating power in order to do things like fight a God rather than as a means of getting a deeper connection to Tara and to the ~spirit realm~ and the like which is the primary basis of magic in season four. Meanwhile, Tara genuinely is attracted to and impressed by Willow's power, especially the spiritual component: "[My mother] had a lot of power, like you" (Hush), "But your power shone brighter than any I've known" (OMWF).

[local-max.livejournal.com]

In Forever, Tara is explaining that resurrection is Wrong because Wiccans take an oath, and Willow is explaining that they haven't heard of it being successful and Tara immediately cuts Willow off saying "That's not the point." If you take the view that resurrections are intrinsically morally wrong, then Tara is right to make sure Dawn gets the right message, but I'm skeptical on that front. I think a strong case can be made against resurrections for metaphorical reasons and for practical ones, but the idea that it's absolutely wrong because People Took An Oath doesn't really strike me as particularly relevant in comparison to the actual reasons presented more viscerally later in the episode -- the fact that Dawn wanted it for the wrong reasons and that it is incredibly risky. Still, Tara's somewhat religious, conservative even perspective (Wiccans used to do X and they should continue to do X) is an advocate for caution whereas Willow completely ignores the possibility of anything going wrong in a self-centred way. The Willow/Tara conflict in TL is usually framed in fandom stuff as being "Tara is right and Willow is a bitch," primarily because in season six Willow goes full-on abuser, but I think that it's more complicated, that Willow has a radical streak that is not wholly bad but that runs counter to Tara's belief system, and Tara is actually afraid of Willow having power in a way that's not entirely good. And further, while there is a huge selfish streak in Willow's power growth in season five and I think she is VERY wrong in Forever to give Dawn the book and (worse yet) not to own up to it (giving Dawn the book in secret is part of her being afraid of Tara -- she is NOT willing to admit to this, or to argue with Tara openly, whereas Tara IS able to contradict Willow harshly with "That's not the point"). But Tara is frightened of Willow's power at a time where Willow is accumulating power TO FIGHT A GOD -- that's not her sole motivation, but while Tara may be looking out for Willow when she advises Willow not to do more teleportation spells, she's also perhaps missing that teleportation spells are the only thing that stood between Dawn and being very dead the previous week.

I've had a recent fandom debate with someone who thinks that Tara is poorly written in OAFA because Tara wouldn't advocate Willow stopping magic entirely -- but to me, I think it's consistent with Tara being afraid of Willow's magic before Willow has actually abused it, which is consistent with her being freaked out by Willow having a too-powerful light in Out of My Mind, which is consistent, I think, with someone who hasn't entirely gotten over some innate training that magic power = demon = bad, and she's managed to accept that SHE isn't a demon but subconsciously can't deal with Willow's outsize amount of power. Tara also subconsciously registers Willow's amorality (c.f., for example, their differing views of Quasimodo in Crush, where Tara has strong feelings that Quasimodo is not a moral figure and thus shouldn't be regarded with much sympathy, and Willow ~just wants people to be happy~) and that frightens her as well (with some justification).

[local-max.livejournal.com]

This is admittedly a bit of a harsh read of Tara, though I think that the fact that Willow actually does have a large amoral streak at his time (because 1) she's had to learn that the rules she grew up with are wrong, and 2) she's never having a full-on reckoning before s6 with the consequences of her actions -- the biggest ones were Lovers Walk, Doppelgangland and Something Blue, but they were smaller) mitigates the fact that I do think Tara is not entirely fair w.r.t. Willow's power. Some of the reasons that I think the narrative justifies that Tara actually does "hold Willow back" in terms of being able to really come into her own in terms of power, IN ADDITION to being a positive moral force in her life (and of course in addition to them both loving each other) is that in season seven, as people not me have pointed out, in season seven The Killer in Me has Willow accepting the loss of Tara running parallel to Spike having his chip finally removed; and (this is all me) in CWDP the First uses the idea of Tara to argue for a complete-giving-up-of-magic for Willow, when Giles and the Coven argue for a more balanced approach, and Willow buys it because Tara metaphorically *is* somewhat of a voice for dialing her power back. These two incidents emphasize that in order to come into her power and save the world, Willow actually has to move beyond constraints related to Tara, though some of that is also more about Willow moving beyond the guilt over how she abused her power over Tara.

Willow's possessiveness of Buffy runs deep, and it stems in great part from fear of rejection -- which, you know, Buffy runs out of town for three months right after Willow goes into a coma and then is in a wheelchair for a while, so, she has reason to fear that Buffy's going to run out on her (she seems to have internalized that it wasn't about her by The Freshman, at least, with the "but there were circumstances!"). She is afraid that Buffy knows Oz better than her, but Oz is also a problem because he makes himself so completely unknowable. She's definitely terrified of Tara knowing Buffy better than her in Tough Love in a possessive way; and she also views Tara as siding with Buffy over Dawn and implicitly over Willow. Which is like the nightmare of Tara and Oz flirting in the classroom; she's always certain that ranks are going to close and she'll be on the outside. While Tara is right to emphasize how understandable Buffy's position is, I also get why that causes the panicked reaction in Willow, because I think Willow viewed Tara as her safe space in which she was able to criticize Buffy for treating Dawn if she felt the need (Tara somewhat criticized Buffy to Willow for not letting Dawn in to do Scooby stuff back in Real Me, so there is relationship-precedent) and without realizing it Tara took that away, leaving no possible room for Willow to disagree with Buffy. Which is, er, a big part of Willow's issues (i.e. not just that she's forever in Buffy's shadow, but that she can't ever be in disagreement with her). (Well, or anyone who isn't a Designated Rude Person like Cordy/Faith/Anya.)

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I can see where you're coming from with that - Certainly Willow is the one who says at the end of Chosen "Slayers are awakening, all over", and she seems thrilled by it, by becoming part of something greater than herself. It's what I suppose she has wanted, in a sense, has envied in Buffy and tried to match with magic, and it makes sense that Willow is all about power while Buffy's goal was simply to "get the job done". (The rousing speech in Chosen aside, I doubt it's a course of action Buffy would have taken if it wasn't necessary in her mind. It's certainly not something she sought to do prior to this. And part of it was very personal: "You'll die alone".)
True, but it’s Buffy’s plan, and Buffy does smile at the episode’s end as a result of what’s happened and the way she is *no longer alone*. I don’t think it’s actually entirely true either that Willow is “all about the power,” and certainly Willow was not excited about the plan and wasn’t exactly itching to go to the place of profound, overwhelming power again given that she didn’t know what it would do to her. I do think though that Willow recognizes on some level that she is not whole because she is so powerless. The three most central arcs in the series are Buffy’s, Willow’s and Xander’s, and Buffy’s is to accept her power, Willow’s is to become powerful, and Xander’s is to accept that he of limited power and to figure out what to do with that. The reason Willow needs to take power is that the universe simply doled her out an unfairly low amount—in the sense that if Willow didn’t take power, she would literally die. She can’t just wait around for Buffy to save her (as is her primary role in season one), because one day Buffy *won’t* save her (no fault of Buffy’s, it’s the reality): she has to figure out how to manage herself. In Doppelgangland, in particular, we learn that Willow has a whole chunk of her identity hidden away from her, including her sexual orientation, because she doesn’t have the power to express herself, she’s so constrained by social expectations and people demanding things from her with her having no power to talk back to them or refuse unreasonable requests, including from her friends. The reason that magic is so deeply intertwined with her relationship with Tara is not just because the metaphors get all mixy, but because magic always represents both power and the ability to discover one’s true self (or, perhaps more worryingly, to create false selves), all the way through the show. I don’t think Willow needs to be an uberwitch in order to be authentically herself, but she does need to be something other than the girl whose mother picks out clothes for her but whose mother also barely notices she’s alive. Power *is* personal, power is what allows her to be unafraid of being herself. The difficulty is how to be herself without encroaching on others, but even in season six, many of her worst violations are because she was still unable to fully realize that she could be and love who she actually was.

well, that paragraph was probably unnecessary, I just want to emphasize that Willow's desire for power (and knowledge) is not a wholly bad thing nor is it purely about power for its own sake; she actually does need it, at least initially, though of course she doesn't know how to deal with it when she gets it initially.

Not sure I understand, could you elaborate a bit? and btw what is "w.r.t."?

w.r.t. = with respect to. Um, it's used in math proofs a lot so I assume everyone uses it, but it is probably a specialized expression.

What I meant was: Harmony is mostly (in Willow's mind) a total follower, superficial, concerned about boys and clothes and being pretty. Riley is a cowboy. Both are -- really outdated in today's world. Regressive gender identities, which date back well before the 20th century (though Harmony's particular valley girl stuff incarnation is more recent). (Also, Harmony is more complicated than that, just as Riley is.) If Buffy is a flapper, she's much more progressive -- much closer to the modern human. That was sort of my point, if badly stated.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Forgive the long delay - I've been reading and trying to formulate intelligent responses to your comments (and procrastinating - recent leg injury and throbbing pain does NOT help my cause in that regard); but I read a meta written in June this year by coracle33 and they start off with a brief Willow in S6 analysis, and the ways Willow and Buffy mirror each other that season (and W/T - B/S) that made me think of you immediately and I think dovetails very nicely with your analysis. Have you read it? It's brief but manages to touch on some things I hadn't thought of. (They've only ever made two entries on LJ, unfortunately, I'd love to see them write more.)
http://coracle33.livejournal.com/1175.html

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Buffy as the Flapper is also interesting as its a role constructed in reaction to traditional feminine values. In terms of women's history, this is the first era of sexual freedom in reaction to the Victorian traditionalism of the 19th century. JAZZ AND SEX. Buffy's all improv and wearing black and she stakes men in their sales quotas.

Funny also how Buffy's monologue captures the theme of the title -- "death of a salesman" -- in an extremely literal way. So her role makes sense to Willow, Buffy's there for a reason, whereas what is a Riley Cowboy Guy or a Harmony Milkmaid for?

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

this is the first era of sexual freedom in reaction to the Victorian traditionalism of the 19th century

And Buffy being the first Slayer (that we know of) who has taken on a vampire lover, and two at that - you would think the WC would be doing everything in it's power to put a stop to that sort of thing. (Of course in my twisted little mind, there has to have been at least ONE other Slayer before Buffy to take on a demon lover/mate in thousands of years - and surely the WC would have had the girl killed and all mention of her wiped from their records.)

I know they don't become "real" on the show until S3, but still...She's the de facto Slayer with Faith in prison. And as they represent "the patriarchy" on the show, I'm surprised they didn't think to go in that direction. I think it might have added an interesting layer to the power struggles already there. but the WC don't seem to have been really well thought-out.

I can also imagine them going to war against Buffy for her plan to open the Slayer line, had they not been blown up and the Slayer spell kept until the last ep. (Now my mind is spinning with a rewrite of S7 : Buffy comes up with the idea to open the Slayer line much earlier, and has to battle not only the First (the Shadow-Self, psychological demons) but the WC (the patriarchy, institutionalization. forces of culture).

Back to the Flapper, as I mentioned upthread, she seems trangressive but really isn't. It's notable that the flappers enjoyed the fruits of the freedoms won by their mothers and older sisters - the right to vote, for instance; and greater sexual freedom and openness had actually begun in the late 19th century and especially in the Edwardian era in reaction to Queen Victoria's death, culminating in the post-war blow-out of the Jazz Age; but flappers weren't activists themselves (and I know I'm painting with a broad brush); and there was something childlike in the portrayal of them in film and magazines, etc. They seem somewhat regressed, bodies depicted as slender, boyish, with little or not breasts and hips. Like an adolescent, the flapper just wants to "party", have fun. Which definitely describes Buffy in S1 but not by S7, even if she isn't a truly transgressive character.

Buffy's there for a reason, whereas what is a Riley Cowboy Guy or a Harmony Milkmaid for?

Maybe local_max has the answer to that one? I haven't read any good analysis on that point yet. I know JW said that the Cheese Guy was the only thing on Restless that didn't mean anything (if I've read correctly), but I can't help seeing Riley and Harmony in Willow's dream as - just funny? I can't imagine the symbolism of "milkmaid" (other than the old stereotype of the milkmaid as a hapless and helpless wench, someone without family or dowry, someone to be taken or viewed sexually.