More thoughts about "Anne": Buffy's depression arc (2/?)
Note to self: Try rewatch an episode before writing meta about it. Because I rewatched "Anne" this morning, and it's even better than I remembered. In fact, I can say that it and "Bargaining" are my favorite season openers (Note to everyone else: I cannot get the lj cut tag to work, in either rich text or html, even after much effort. So I apologize for this all showing up on the Friends page. I assume you still love me anyway, gentle reader.) ETA: All fixed now, yay!
I mentione yesterday hat "Anne" is an encapsulation of S6's theme of Buffy's depression in a single episode. Watching it again this morning, for the first time since I finished the series, I realized that it's an encapsulation of pretty much the entire seven seasons, (And it captures pretty much everything that makes it my favorite TV show ever: humor and drama in perfect balance, wonderful character work, and a kick-ass fight scene.
[Buffy may be catatonic, but I've got a LOT to say about that...]First off, there's a lot going on in this episode, such as economic class issues, personified later in the season by Faith; and Xander and Cordy's difficult relationship, characterized by avoidance, dislike, insults and sex that masks genuine affection (shades of Buffy and Spike, anyone?) I'll talk about those in other meta posts, but for this one I want to focus on Buffy's depression arc as reflected in "Anne" and portrayed over the entire series. We tend to think of S6 (and late S5) as the "depression arc" but the show has been very careful to build that aspect of Buffy's character from the beginning of S2.
The opening scene with the Scoobies (Xander, Willow, Oz) trying to fight vampires in Buffy's absence, and botching it up (although I think they need to cut themselves some slack - half the vamps dusted is better than none, right?) will be repeated in "Bargaining": "We need Buffy". And their reaction to her return in the next episode, Dead Man's Party, will be called back in After Life: Taking her presence for granted once she returns, failing to ask her what's going on in her head, what she's been through, or what she might really need.
The reversal here of course is that in "Anne" she descends to a "Hell" from which she fights her way out; in the Gift she "ascends" to Heaven, only to be torn from it in "Bargaining" without her consent
"Anne":
(Buffy) "This isn't hell."
(Ken) "What is Hell? The total absence of hope."
After Life:
"Where ever I was, I think I was happy....I was finished. Complete....I think I was in Heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there, pulled out by my friends....Everything here is hard, and bright, and violen. Everything I feel, everything I touch - this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost. They [the Scoobies] can never know. Never."
Buffy's monologue in AL, poignant as it may be (all praise to SMG's delivery), is summed in the single shot in "Anne" at the top of this post: despair, depression, PTSD, the sense of having lost everything: family, friends, lover, childhood innocence; exiling herself to an urban setting (L.A.) that is "hard...and violent." Even the reference to her friends' actions in Bargaining, and "They can never know [where I've been, what I've gone through]" is relevant to Becoming/Anne: Buffy never mentions Xander's lie ("Willow said 'Kick his ass' ") and her perception that her friends abandoned her until S7's "Selfless".
The dark, fiery setting of the underground factory is a place she returns to both physically and emotionally throughout the series.
She descends to that hell, the utter absence of hope in S5: TWOTW and The Gift; most of S6 up to Normal Again; EP and Touched in S7, finally vanquishing it physically and emotionally in Chosen.
In each instance Buffy must fight to break through her depressive state by renewing connections to her Slayer instincts and to her friends and family on her own terms. The personal (Buffy) becomes the political (the Slayer). In both "The Gift" and "Chosen" her solutions to saving the world are also motivated by a desire to protect loved ones (Dawn in The Gift) or banishing her own fears (of dying alone, in "Chosen".) It's not coincidental that in most instances, with the exception of "Touched", this is facilitated primarily by other women, especially friends and family: Lily and Joyce in "Anne", Willow in TWOTW, Dawn in "Grave", Joyce again in "Normal Again". One of BtVS's strength is that it continually affirms and values relationships between women in a way that was (and is) still relatively uncommon in US movies and tv shows. (See gabrielleabelle's meta "Women, Connecting".)
"Touched" twists the pattern around a bit: Spike, arguably the most "androgynous" of the male characters (he and Buffy have shifted male/female role expectations fluidly, if not easily, throughout their relationship) reestablishes the emotional connection that allows her to break through and reclaim her identity and purpose. That can be interpreted positively: the male and female halves of Buffy (as well as Spike), the anima and animus, joined together in strength rather than weakness; or negatively: women will ultimately betray one another, and a woman's most important connections are with men. I'm not wanting to engage in a "Spuffy-centric" conversation here, btw; I'm just trying to parse out the writers' intended and unintended messages in the gender twist to the pattern.
Buffy then reconnects with Willow and Faith ("Good thing we're such hot chicks" / "Takes the edge off") to create the Slayer spell and connect through and with them with all the Potentials all over the world. That the spell has a some very unpleasant implications - violation of personal agency, the creation of a master race, etc - is something that has been thoroughly discussed and I'm going to put aside in-depth consideration of it for the moment - again, I'm trying to look at it only in the context of Buffy's depression arc. In "Anne" both the positive and negative implications of the Slayer spell are foreshadowed in Buffy's command to a scared and reluctant Lily (a sort of proto-Potential, if you will) that she lead the other workers out of the factory: "You can handle this - because I say so". She acts as "General Buffy", commanding the troops, delegating tasks, and empowering another girl, or more precisely giving permission (via a verbal kick in the ass) to claim her own power; but she has also makes an assumption about the other girl's ability or willingness to do the task out of immediate practical need without prior proof that Lily can step up to the plate, and is proven only by happenstance. (What if Lily hadn't pushed Ken off the scaffold?)
That her depressive episodes reoccur over the run of the series (and I am purposefully excluding the comics as I do not consider them head-canon, at least) indicate that simply "getting over herself" is not sufficient to solve her underlying issues. The show's attitude towards professional therapeutic help ("Beauty and the Beasts", and "Normal Again") is a bit of a mixed bag, and I want to on more in-depth on the subject in another meta. Suffice it to say, Buffy never receives real help, except of the bootstrap variety; no therapy - or rest - for the Slayer.
I mentione yesterday hat "Anne" is an encapsulation of S6's theme of Buffy's depression in a single episode. Watching it again this morning, for the first time since I finished the series, I realized that it's an encapsulation of pretty much the entire seven seasons, (And it captures pretty much everything that makes it my favorite TV show ever: humor and drama in perfect balance, wonderful character work, and a kick-ass fight scene.
[Buffy may be catatonic, but I've got a LOT to say about that...]First off, there's a lot going on in this episode, such as economic class issues, personified later in the season by Faith; and Xander and Cordy's difficult relationship, characterized by avoidance, dislike, insults and sex that masks genuine affection (shades of Buffy and Spike, anyone?) I'll talk about those in other meta posts, but for this one I want to focus on Buffy's depression arc as reflected in "Anne" and portrayed over the entire series. We tend to think of S6 (and late S5) as the "depression arc" but the show has been very careful to build that aspect of Buffy's character from the beginning of S2.
The opening scene with the Scoobies (Xander, Willow, Oz) trying to fight vampires in Buffy's absence, and botching it up (although I think they need to cut themselves some slack - half the vamps dusted is better than none, right?) will be repeated in "Bargaining": "We need Buffy". And their reaction to her return in the next episode, Dead Man's Party, will be called back in After Life: Taking her presence for granted once she returns, failing to ask her what's going on in her head, what she's been through, or what she might really need.
The reversal here of course is that in "Anne" she descends to a "Hell" from which she fights her way out; in the Gift she "ascends" to Heaven, only to be torn from it in "Bargaining" without her consent
"Anne":
(Buffy) "This isn't hell."
(Ken) "What is Hell? The total absence of hope."
After Life:
"Where ever I was, I think I was happy....I was finished. Complete....I think I was in Heaven. And now I'm not. I was torn out of there, pulled out by my friends....Everything here is hard, and bright, and violen. Everything I feel, everything I touch - this is hell. Just getting through the next moment, and the one after that, knowing what I've lost. They [the Scoobies] can never know. Never."
Buffy's monologue in AL, poignant as it may be (all praise to SMG's delivery), is summed in the single shot in "Anne" at the top of this post: despair, depression, PTSD, the sense of having lost everything: family, friends, lover, childhood innocence; exiling herself to an urban setting (L.A.) that is "hard...and violent." Even the reference to her friends' actions in Bargaining, and "They can never know [where I've been, what I've gone through]" is relevant to Becoming/Anne: Buffy never mentions Xander's lie ("Willow said 'Kick his ass' ") and her perception that her friends abandoned her until S7's "Selfless".
The dark, fiery setting of the underground factory is a place she returns to both physically and emotionally throughout the series.
She descends to that hell, the utter absence of hope in S5: TWOTW and The Gift; most of S6 up to Normal Again; EP and Touched in S7, finally vanquishing it physically and emotionally in Chosen.
In each instance Buffy must fight to break through her depressive state by renewing connections to her Slayer instincts and to her friends and family on her own terms. The personal (Buffy) becomes the political (the Slayer). In both "The Gift" and "Chosen" her solutions to saving the world are also motivated by a desire to protect loved ones (Dawn in The Gift) or banishing her own fears (of dying alone, in "Chosen".) It's not coincidental that in most instances, with the exception of "Touched", this is facilitated primarily by other women, especially friends and family: Lily and Joyce in "Anne", Willow in TWOTW, Dawn in "Grave", Joyce again in "Normal Again". One of BtVS's strength is that it continually affirms and values relationships between women in a way that was (and is) still relatively uncommon in US movies and tv shows. (See gabrielleabelle's meta "Women, Connecting".)
"Touched" twists the pattern around a bit: Spike, arguably the most "androgynous" of the male characters (he and Buffy have shifted male/female role expectations fluidly, if not easily, throughout their relationship) reestablishes the emotional connection that allows her to break through and reclaim her identity and purpose. That can be interpreted positively: the male and female halves of Buffy (as well as Spike), the anima and animus, joined together in strength rather than weakness; or negatively: women will ultimately betray one another, and a woman's most important connections are with men. I'm not wanting to engage in a "Spuffy-centric" conversation here, btw; I'm just trying to parse out the writers' intended and unintended messages in the gender twist to the pattern.
Buffy then reconnects with Willow and Faith ("Good thing we're such hot chicks" / "Takes the edge off") to create the Slayer spell and connect through and with them with all the Potentials all over the world. That the spell has a some very unpleasant implications - violation of personal agency, the creation of a master race, etc - is something that has been thoroughly discussed and I'm going to put aside in-depth consideration of it for the moment - again, I'm trying to look at it only in the context of Buffy's depression arc. In "Anne" both the positive and negative implications of the Slayer spell are foreshadowed in Buffy's command to a scared and reluctant Lily (a sort of proto-Potential, if you will) that she lead the other workers out of the factory: "You can handle this - because I say so". She acts as "General Buffy", commanding the troops, delegating tasks, and empowering another girl, or more precisely giving permission (via a verbal kick in the ass) to claim her own power; but she has also makes an assumption about the other girl's ability or willingness to do the task out of immediate practical need without prior proof that Lily can step up to the plate, and is proven only by happenstance. (What if Lily hadn't pushed Ken off the scaffold?)
That her depressive episodes reoccur over the run of the series (and I am purposefully excluding the comics as I do not consider them head-canon, at least) indicate that simply "getting over herself" is not sufficient to solve her underlying issues. The show's attitude towards professional therapeutic help ("Beauty and the Beasts", and "Normal Again") is a bit of a mixed bag, and I want to on more in-depth on the subject in another meta. Suffice it to say, Buffy never receives real help, except of the bootstrap variety; no therapy - or rest - for the Slayer.