chance, strategy, risk

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goldenboy

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Alright. Trying to formulate a thread here. Just finished up season 4 Angel. Got me to thinking about Buffyverse strategy and tactics for our heros. Team Angel eventually decide to accept Lilah's offer and take over WR&H. Angel was the domino that tipped the others, mainly it seems because he wanted to use their resources to give Connor a new life. So maybe slightly selfish, in the grand scheme of things. They're taking a calculated risk that they can stay one step ahead of the Senior Partners and do some serious damage to evil. But this could also be a complete disaster, playing into their hands and somehow assisting in an apocalypse. At what point does calculated risk become too risky to chance? When does it become not just a strategic but a moral question?

Likewise with Buffy. The Potentials are being picked off. They decide to round them up and bring them all to Sunnydale. Safety in numbers, goes the theory I guess. Does seem logical. But could this be a potential disaster too, right? They could somehow all be destroyed in one fell swoop. Just like the Watcher's Council was eliminated. Then what for humanity?

This all ties in with the moral considerations of warfare I think, "acceptable losses", calculated risk. When humanity's existence is at stake, is the logical, moral choice to bet the farm and see what happens?
 
It's interesting isn't it? When you look at it from that angle you can find similarities between the two final seasons. I've noticed that too.There's the whole power and responsibility thing.

It kind of makes sense to end Buffy and Angel that way I think, because throughout both series we see a lot of personal growth.

It has real world parallels. You grow. You acquire personal power, and responsibilities. You try to do the right thing, and at the same time succeed at whatever life strategy you've chosen.

Here's another thing I've noticed. It's possible to see both Buffy in her final season and Angel in his, as being in a sense the alternative Big Bads of the seasons. It's kind of like that line, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Remember at the end of Lessons when the first is talking about going back to the beginning, and he's transmogrifying into the different Big Bads from last to first. The last character he transforms into is Buffy herself. I don't know...works for me.
 
Yeah, I guess if you look at these Buffyverse wars in purely metaphorical terms, more about personal risk, growth, it's all working. I'm always wanting to apply a literal, real world interpretation to everything. Probably why I have such a hard time with the Buffyverse conception of "soul", or lack thereof. I do think the moral implications of these character's actions are possibly the most interesting thing about these shows. And I guess fantasy lets you take a step back and get a unique perspective on things. Reality can be so very distracting.
 
I'm not sure if this applies to what you're saying, but I think there is a mistake some people make in their viewing habits. They assume because someone like Joss presents a moral dillema for his characters to solve, like what to do in a "greatest good for the greatest number" situation that he is proselytizing a particular moral position.

I don't think that's necessarily the case. I think he's more just saying here's where the characters went, and here's what they had to deal with when they got there. The writer might have a view on the subject. It might seep into the text, but he's not automatically preaching it, just because it's there.

I'm not sure preaching works in fiction, and I don't think it's what the better writers like Joss try to do.
 
I absolutely agree! Whedon throws out dilemmas. OK, Angel was presented with scenario "X" and reacted this way. Isn't that interesing! What would I have done? He's not preaching. He's throwing out all the moral, ethical landmines for these characters. We bring our own judgements, morality to the program ourselves.
 
I'll have to think about this more but...We mentioned Tarantino as possibly a similar director to Joss. Both post-modern media whores. I think there's a possible danger in working that way. Detached, picking and choosing things from different contexts, smashing ideas together. It can actually lead to a moral vacuum.

Tarantino's stuff is brilliant, visually amazing, inventive, wildly entertaining. Yet ultimately, I think it leaves me a bit cold. His lead characters are usually criminals. Amoral at best, evil at worst. Anti-heros. His fistfights and gun battles are very bloody cartoons. The predominant themes are greed and revenge and sadism. Not much else that I can see. It's almost like he takes any kind of moral consideration out of his formula. With no moral component, it's less emotional, less interesting I think.

Joss also works in a post-modern style you might say. A collage artist too. Yet he's constantly interjecting moral dilemmas, questions into the mix. No preaching, but it's there. Maybe less visually interesting, but more satisfying on balance. (correct me if I'm wrong about Tarantino)
 
Goldenboy said:
I absolutely agree! Whedon throws out dilemmas. OK, Angel was presented with scenario "X" and reacted this way. Isn't that interesing! What would I have done? He's not preaching. He's throwing out all the moral, ethical landmines for these characters. We bring our own judgements, morality to the program ourselves.
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I know, llike take the little Angel speach in Home (I think it was), where he says something like "We live as if the world is as it should be, to show it what can be."

Someone might select that particular passage out from the total body of text, and say "look Whedon (or whoever the ME writer of that episode is) is preaching", but is he? The character Angel, who makes the statement is the same one who winds up killing an innocent in Drogyn, and ordering the assasination of Linsey.

So what are the writers really saying. Are they saying some moral standards are difficult to hold to in some situations? Are they saying Angel is a liar, and can't be trusted. Are they saying something else entirely? Or are they simply saying "Here it is. This is what happens, and this is the problem with it."?

I think our preference is towards the latter, right?
 
Regarding the literal/metaphorical issue. I'm trying to understand why this kinda makes me a little sad somehow. I can't reconcile the metaphorical buffyverse war logic with real-world war logic, if that makes any sense. War here may just a metaphor for personal improvement. Not a life and death struggle for existence.

I guess I feel like if the writers are working purely with metaphors here, then the characters are something like props, tools to explore human themes. They're not fully "real". I love my Buffyverse characters. I feel like I know them. They're not just "props" to hang ideas on, right? Sometimes a heavyhanded metaphor can take you out of the drama, make you one more step removed from the characters. Works best for me when things work well on a literal and metaphorical level.

Another example of clumsy metaphor. You may or may not agree. Wrecked or Smashed, can't remember which. Willow's magic as drug depencency thing. Driving while high, with Dawn. Just struck me as ridiculous somehow. A preachy obvious warning against drunk driving. Ugh. Wanted to throw something at the TV. Again, totally removed me from the characters and the drama. Maybe you have a different interpretation. That was my gut reaction.

Why must magic be equated with drugs? How about just power? How about "power corrupts"? I guess young people can all relate to the drug thing, more relevant or something. Sorry to sound all pissed. What am I not understanding?
 
I think I get what you mean. You don't want your metaphor so obvious that it comes to you like a preachy moral fable, right? because then it detracts from your willingness to connect to the characters on an emotional level.

I'm thinking the Tarantino thing you were mentioning is similar, in that you have so much coming at you, at the end there's nothing emotionally. It doesn't fully work when you're over powered by a writer's trick. We want to be able to connect to the characters on a human level.

Makes sense to me.

I think from a writer's standpoint it's a bit of a balancing act. Sometimes the tricks work. Sometimes you get a little too much here, and not enough there.

On the magic as metaphor thing, I actually think you're onto something when you say "why not just power?" In my opinion when we look at the Buffy series as a whole that's what it is. It may manifest itself differently at different times. With Willow and Tara it's sometimes used as the power of sexual energy. In Season six we get the power corrupts angle. In Season 7 it's power and control.

I'm with you though, it all works best when we're connecting with the scene on an emotional level first, and then when we consider it later we can find other stuff.

Here's an example. Unfortunately I can never remember where it's from and always have to be reminded. It's the scene where Willow and Tara are doing a spell, and they wind up getting enraptured by it. They fall backwards in a manner that appears orgasmic. You don't automatically go "OK, magic is sex". You're first reaction is..."Wow!"
 
I think it must also be the collaborative nature of TV. Different writers perceive characters differently. They each want to explore there own "pet" themes that they love and are interested in. So metaphorical conflicts and confusion can arise because of that. I gotta say, good, subtle fiction must be one of the hardest things in the world to write, let alone produce for TV on a weekly basis.
 
So true, otherwise you wind up with preachy sermons like Touched by an Angel, or borrowed messes like Charmed.
 
OK. I had said I felt a little sad cause I couldn't reconcile their war logic with reality. Is this reality? Metaphor? Yet, I was deeply satisfied with the ending of Angel. More so than Buffy. Seemed perfect, beautiful, noble to me.

Maybe the huge risks Angel&Co took were a good thing. This is a spiritual battle as much as physical one. We as individuals and as a society fight for goodness, even if it could result in huge, catastophic damage in this "earthly realm". Fighting for souls as much as continued earthly existence here. Well, at least that's the Christian conception anyway.

At some point Angel is convinced that evil will always exist. "WR&H", the Senior Partners will always be around in some form, apocalypse or not. He's never going to redeem himself by eradicating evil for all time. Not possible. "What am I doing here?", he's thinking. Towards the end of the season, he discovers a unique opportunity to to the most damage he'll probably ever be able to do. So he takes the risk! The success is in the doing, fighting for what's right even if it's unfair and "victory" is impossible. The success is in saving your "soul", not your life. I can't tell if he ever thought this final attack might actually somehow instigate an apocalypse. Maybe he's thinking an apocalypse is eventually inevitible anyway, so take the fight to them. Don't play by their rules.

And, of course taking huge risks works on that pesky metaphorical level too, achieving personal success, growth through risk-taking.

It is kinda eerie, the last seasons of Angel, Buffy. They're both in unjust, impossible circumstances. Angel doesn't deserve to be a cursed vampire. Buffy doesn't deserve to be burdened with Slayerhood. Yet, they are both moral beings, or they have a similar morality. Similar sense of responsibility. Both feel a sense of duty. Not a duty foisted upon them from outside per se. "Duty" is their conscience nagging at them you might say.

They also both feel "outside the law" so to speak. Buffy doesn't feel obliged to do what she does because she's an indentured servent to the Watchers or those original bastards that created the Slayer bloodline. It's the right and moral thing to do and she has the ability to do it. Therefore, Because she's not beholden to anyone, she can devise strategies outside "the box". She's very clever and figures out away to spread the Slayer wealth, create new rules.

Likewise, Angel feels outside the law. Not only outside any supernatural guides, rules, but human rules to a degree. This can actually lead to some questionable moral decisions on his part. And likewise Angel is outside the box in his strategic thinking, allows for very creative solutions in the end.

Both proved you can be a creative, unique individual, a rebel. Yet still a moral, responsible being.
 
I think Buffy said it pretty good in the Becoming, "No-one else can do it, Mom. Only I can."

As far as the moral responsibility thing goes, I like what Anne says to Gunn in Not Fade Away, when Gunn asks her something like "What would you do if you knew there was no hope of ever doing any real good, because evil was always going to be there?" She answers "I'd get that couch on the truck".

Really Angel and Buffy aren't doing any different than Anne. They're doing the best they can with the tools they have, to do what feels right.
 
goldenboy said:
I'll have to think about this more but...We mentioned Tarantino as possibly a similar director to Joss. Both post-modern media whores. I think there's a possible danger in working that way. Detached, picking and choosing things from different contexts, smashing ideas together. It can actually lead to a moral vacuum.
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Goldenboy: Whedonesque links to this article today on postmodernism and Illyria. Although it's about Illyria, it applies to a lot of stuff, and I couldn't help remembering what you said above. You might want to check it out. You might get a kick out of it. It deals with postmodernism, and confusion of self in an environment that delivers multiple conflicting signals- that sort of thing.

It's HERE

Here's the final paragraph for a taste:

Illyria's postmodern journey from being a Self to becoming a self in process by mediating aspects of Fred with her self reminds viewers that we are much more than definitions and categories, beyond our perceived realities and selves. The character provides us a rich and intellectually stimulating vision of the endless possibilities that come from having a fluid and chaotic self. While the absence of traditional identifying systems may seem unsettling, Illyria's journey demonstrates that having power to become rather than be lends a kind of openness in terms of identity that one may find potentially liberating. As a self in process, one may playfully experiment with and reinvent one's self as desired.
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Just dipped my toe into the artlcle. Need go back. But before I get too incredibly confused and overwhelmed by it...

Just a few thoughts. I've seen "postmodernism", the term, bandied about for quite awhile now. Seems to relate primarily to a late 20th century phenomenon. Following so-called "modernism". Modernism being a rejection of God, traditions, archaic styles and cultures.

My knowledge of history is spotty. But variations on this theme actually go quite a ways back, right? The Enlightenment, the rejection of superstition and faith for the glories of reason.

Couldn't a case be made that America, the nation, was the world's first experiment in something like postmodernism, on a national scale? (if you substitute "the enlightenment" for "modernism") America, originally founded by religious refugees desiring a very traditional, faithful existence in a new world. Yet, other cultures, ideas eventually fell into the Puritan mix.

America became this weird, "postmodern" mix of themes: the glories of traditional faith, religious freedom, simultaneously combined with reason, science, innovation on a grand scale. A strange "postmodern" paradox.

Anyways, postmodernism as practiced in academia always did strike me as a moral vacuum. Moral relativism. Even amorality.

The genius of Western Civilization is its constant innovation. It's constantly examining everything, especially itself. Postmodernism taken to extremes seems like Western Civilization eating itself, even it's moral underpinnings. If you call into question everything, even the basic moral precepts of a culture, couldn't it collapse at some point?
 
You've sold me on that "America the postmodern" idea.

I'm also thinking the idea that essay writer proposes of how postmodernism creates a confusion of self might apply there.
 
That was fun. Good article. Felt like I was back in psych 101. That article was very pleasing to my inner geek for many reasons.

The assertion is that the Whedonverse "soul" is not literal. And the "soul" is not just the conscience either. It's the psyche. Fred's soul wasn't destroyed as in eliminated, completely vaporized. It was broken into chunks. And these chunks can pop up to the surface Illyria at times. And, my inner geek says, theoretically at some point in the future, the chunks could come together. Fred could truly reappear "whole". She could dominate, sort of like how Angel dominates Angelus. Or Fred and Illyria could work as a team, sharing the same body, a symbiotic arrangement.

I think some people thought that Illyria was a weird, interesting, yet pointless addition to the Buffyverse. In retrospect, to me she seems like the perfect summation. The ultimate personification of the postmodernist conflicts Joss was exploring. A final, appropriate capstone for the Buffyverse.

OK. So, you could equate some things, it seems to me, analogize. A pre-modernist is like a theist. Belives in a god who grants free will and demands morality from a person. A "believer", irrational.

A modernist is like an atheist. "There is no god! Reason! I live by the rule of reason alone!" This position always strikes me as slightly emotional and, ironically, irrational. Like the theist's position. Very declarative, absolutive. "A god is just a skybully!"

The postmodernist is like an agnostic. "Is there a god? Don't have enough information to say, one way or the other. Hmm. two conflicting ideas, faith, reason. I know, I'll take both ideas and use them, keep them spinning like a top. If I stop the spinning, it will all crash down into nothingness so I keep it moving."

The danger of postmodern thought, it seem to me, is the slip into amorality and nihilism. "All these ideas cancel eachother out! Everything is pointless! I think I'll just off myself right now, get it over with."

Illyria managed to survive postmodern despair, keeping multiple, conflicting ideas in her head simultaneously and using them. Whether they're "true" or not. Very, very liberating.
 
Absolutely. I agree with everything you say, especially this bit:

goldenboy said:
I think some people thought that Illyria was a weird, interesting, yet pointless addition to the Buffyverse. In retrospect, to me she seems like the perfect summation. The ultimate personification of the postmodernist conflicts Joss was exploring. A final, appropriate capstone for the Buffyverse.
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Now if we can just convince Lady Lavina to see the light on that issue. She has an uhh... other opinion. I think it goes something like, the writers just stole the character from Star Trek and slapped it in as their own.
 
Hmm. Well, that speaks to the concept of "originality", right? Illyria is a rip-off of Data, who's a rip-off of Spock, who's a rip-off of The Silver Surfer, etc, etc. The "alien philosopher". He stands outside humanity, looking in. "What does it all mean? What does it mean to be 'human?'".

Not positive Joss is "original", but he's very good, interesting in the way he presents his ideas. It's kind of an illusion anyway, seems to me. I can remember being in this painting class, this kid's next to me, talking. "You know, I don't think I want to take any art history. I don't want to know what other painters did. I want to be an original." And I'm thinking, "How can you know if you're 'original' if you don't see everything that's out there? You may be treading over ground that's been trodden upon by thousands already."

I think as far as creative stuff goes, you throw your little pebble on the huge mountain of the collective creativity of the ages. If you're really good, or even just lucky, it's something unique. Or at least an interesting variation on a theme.
 
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