Post by Riff on May 22, 2006 6:40:35 GMT -5
lolam said:
riff said:
Superb stuff! I think your critiques get better all the time. The true Darla is what we have at the start of this ep: she doesn’t know who she is, having played a role for so long, even during her first life as a human.
I’ve always felt she suffers from overcompensation syndrome, because she smiles too much (never a good sign) and is always quick to demonstrate she is “strong”. Unless pushed to extremes, true strength is usually invisible or at least quiet, since it has nothing to prove. Darla, by contrast, strikes me as insecure, which would hardly be surprising, given her life. It’s a bit like someone developing a superiority complex to cover an inferiority complex.
Which sets up a nice comparison of her to, gosh . . . Buffy! Who would have thought it! ;D
Blondes, eh? And Spike makes three!
Interesting idea. Because I've always thought that Gunn's story arc in season 5 contained some nice metaphor for issues that might face a black man in a predominantly white corporate environment.
There are other groups, too. For example, women are still not as represented as they should be, and to be a woman in a corporate environment involves a similar selling-out: taking on attributes such as aggression and competitiveness; making having a family a secondary consideration; having to be "assertive" in order for one's ideas to be taken seriously; etc. Or, to look at it another way, choosing to do these things and then being criticised politically for one's autonomous decisions by idiots like me.
Then there are the working classes, homosexuals, the disabled, anyone, in fact, who doesn't fit a particular mold. We like to kid ourselves that we live in age of equality and fairness - great progress has been made, but there's still a long way to go.
Why should Gunn have to change to be part of the corporate world? Why shouldn't he change, if he chooses freely to do so? As to how free he was in all this, we’ll never know.
Having said all that, his involvement with the Illyria thing makes any sympathies I might have had evaporate. ;D
Excellent analysis. As you point out when discussing Wes’s concerns, there is a lot of foreshadowing in this ep. Thinking about it, there are a number of stories in AtS involving babies and moral choices.
The baby is saved, but the family is lost. This is the kind of futility than undermines any moral message of the Angelverse, for me. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
The baby is saved, but the family is lost. This is the kind of futility than undermines any moral message of the Angelverse, for me. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?
;D I like to think of it as a bit of nasty reality poking its head into what would normally be a more straightforward and simple moral tale. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I. ;D
;D
You're right, but it's simple moral tales that help us to understand morality. The baffling moral ambiguity, relativism, and confusion of the real world only serves to make us all amoral. I utterly reject the idea that having reality intrude into fiction makes that fiction in some way more important, mature, or honest. It seems people will never cease to be embarrassed about make-believe.
*laughs* Reality can keep its head out, as far as I'm concerned.