Writer's Intent: a bit of a rant

[maggie2]

gabrielleabellehas an interesting post up talking about the writers' intent to portray Xanders' speech to Buffy in Into the Woods as being The Take on Buffy's relationship with Riley.  Most people think that the writers want the audience to think it was good that Buffy ran after Riley and tragic that she didn't get there on time.  And if I recall from the script, there are cues in the Buffy/Xander scene (most notably "he's getting through to her") which sure sound like Xander has an important truth that Buffy needs to hear.

The subject of writers' intent comes up a lot in the context of critiques of the show.  I very often here the complaint that the writers tell us they were writing something different from the way it came across -- especially when people are complaining about season 6.  We were supposed to see Spike as just the bad boyfriend dragging Buffy down, but that's at odds with the far more complex relationship that ended up on the screen.

We could debate all day and all night about what the writers intended.   But I keep finding myself puzzled at why.  Joss is an existentialist.  That means there is no meaning "out there".  We are the ones who make meaning.  Insofar as Joss is the creator of the Buffyverse, he gets to tell  us what happened and what the rules are.  But he doesn't get to tell us what it means.  If he really is an existentialist, he shouldn't want to tell us what it means.  The writers can show us Xander making a speech to Buffy about why she should run after Riley.  That's in the text.  What's not in the text is any evaluation about whether he's right.  That's a judgment call that WE get to make. 

Well, does it matter that they comment on Xanders' speech by giving us the big Hollywood running after the helicopter scene with the big music and the dramatic editting?  Is that a way of telling us that it is just TRUE that Buffy should have run after Riley?  I don't think so.  Stuff like that is meant to reflect the characters' POV.  Buffy's tragic inability to catch up to Riley is how BUFFY is constructing that event.  There's no doubt that Buffy ends up concluding that Xander was right.  She constructs the end of B/R as being due to her failure. But that's how Buffy constructs the end of *all* her relationships.  Back in season one we were told that Buffy's deepest fear is that Hank left because of her.  She's going to see every other leaving through that lens.  And that's what the writers are showing us.  In Buffy's mind she just played out a tragic, dramatic scene to end her relationship wth Riley.  That's all the writers get to tell us.

The evaluation?  That's up to the audience.  I think Xander was full of crap, mostly talking about his own issues.  I think it's a bit sad that Buffy's emotional make-up is such that she was going to buy Xander's crap.  I can't work up a hatred of ITW on the grounds that the writers want me to feel something that I don't feel, because I don't think the writers get to tell me how to feel, and I don't think these writers want to dictate to me how I should feel.  Marty Noxon might think it's sad that Buffy let Riley get away, but all she gets to write is *that* Riley got away and how Buffy felt about it.   I quite like the episode.  It gives us a good portrait of the hows and whys of the B/R break-up.  It gives us some interesting insight into Riley's character.  Spike's role in the episode reminds us just how far Spike is from understanding what love is about, while also suggesting something about his character that grounds the subsequent growth in Spike's understanding of what love is. Best of all, ITW gets Riley gone.  And happily the writers don't drag it out in subsequent episodes.  Riley doesn't get moped over nearly as much as Parker got moped over, let alone the major epic endless mopage over Angel.  That's a portrait of where Buffy is emotionally.  We get to make of it what we will.

Comments

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

Agreed to a point. Typically, I'm not too attached to intent, because I love S6 and I think a lot of the brilliance was unintentional.

I think what peeves most fans (including myself) about Xander's speech is that it does act as the final word on the subject. Riley returns in AYW and we get no commentary on ITW at all.

And when the final word is that Buffy is deficient and wrong, it's very annoying. It's especially annoying because Buffy does take it to heart for the rest of the series. And it's extra annoying because it's unquestioned and unchallenged by anybody else.

Certainly, the writers are just laying it out there, and we all come to our own conclusions. But in this case, they're not putting out any alternative viewpoints on the matter, and when Xander's speech in ITW is set up as some ultimate truth reveal, that's what viewers are gonna take it as.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I don't think the writers get to comment on whether *anything* any character does is right or wrong. Given Joss's stated philosphical commitments, he shouldn't want to force the audience to conclude with him that something is right or wrong. There just isn't meaning built into the text. Only actions upon which we base all of our judgments.

The writers have obviously given us enough facts to think that Buffy had no business running after Riley. Most of us think that she had no business running after Riley and we only formed that opinion by watching the show they wrote. The writers can think whatever they want. The only gospel they deliver is what the characters say and do.

Even As You Were does not come with any textual claim that Riley was the one who got away. It shows Riley coming back. It shows Buffy reacting to him. Since the show is always POV, the idealization of Riley is how Buffy sees him. And that makes sense because she's in a bad place and as we've already said *she* thinks it was her fault that she lost Riley. Based on the facts that the writers showed, I think Riley is still a the total jerk who said some crappy things to Buffy in order to get an ego boost and who turns out to have had the sort of love for Buffy that would permit him to be married to someone else just one year after leaving. I think Xander is still fanboying Riley because Xander decided to identify with Riley many stations back. I think Willow is getting seduced because Sam and Riley are giving her what she needs and that's pretty much all Willow cares about. I think the episode makes them all look bad. But I believe they'd all behave that way. If Doug Petrie has a jones for Riley bully for him. He was a good enough writer to do a portrait of Riley that includes plenty of facts for me to still think the guy is a douchebag and that Buffy dodged a bullet when he left town.

[gabrielleabelle.livejournal.com]

You know I'm agreeing with you, right?

I'm just not overly impressed with the execution of whatever the hell the writers were doing as it apparently gives the message to the audience that Xander was right in what he was saying.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'm clearly having an off day -- my apologies.

You are right that the cues could be read one way by people who are used to having their emotions and reactions cued by the writer. The show actually does that quite a bit. We get the super-dramatic music, visuals of Buffys noble sacrifical death in The Gift. That's where all the cues go. But the actual words and actions are more layered than that. There's just so often a distance between the cues and the text that I'm in the habit of reading the gap as part of the story. I just naturally read the cues as indicating the meaning Buffy attaches to what is going on. The text usually gives me more than enough to see that her POV is as limited as any human's POV is and that she has her own set of distortions and so on. So I just don't read the cues as the writers' commentary on anything. But I agree that it's annoying that there's a good chunk of the audience that would follow those cues into some unfortunate conclusions about what's going on.

But I think I've said elsewhere, I'm a peculiar reader of the text.

I'm not sure that I see Xander's speech as a last word. Triangle undercuts it in a variety of ways. I think it's up to the audience to decide whether to see B/R through Xander's lens or the rather comic lens offered in the next episode.

[deird1]

You clever clever person!

I never realised this before, but I think you might be right.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[ms-scarletibis.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a chance to read Gabs post yet, but--

I will say that I always viewed Xander's speech as his point of view of the information he had, and in that respect, he wasn't wrong. However, what always confused the hell out of me is that Buffy, with both sides of the story, bought into Xander's unintentionally slanted assessment. I am not sure what it is the writer's wanted me to feel, since I the viewer saw it from all angles, but I am very confused as to what it was the writer's had Buffy feel and why. It was very...assbackwards and just plain odd (to me).

However...you make an interesting point that she hardly blinks in comparison to her break up/ending with Angel and Parker. We get some histrionic/"oh puhleeze" crying in "Triangle" and...that's pretty much it. Granted, things get all helter skelter a few weeks after Riley's departure, but still--she doesn't seem that affected by it.

My evaluation is that Buffy had a total brain fart after Xander's speech, but shortly recovered.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I think Buffy bought into Xander's speech because Buffy thinks there's something wrong with her and Xander just pushed that button. So that bit of writing does work for me.

And I *LOVE* your evaluation. Perfectly expressed.

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I'm still confused by all these posts insisting that the writers intend for us to feel that Riley is some paragon and that Buffy is somehow to blame from him leaving, when nobody posting or commenting actually feels that way. Every single poster has agreed to a greater or lesser degree that Riley was out of line, Xander was out of line, and that Buffy was lucky to be rid of the big doofus. So, why do people have so much trouble trusting their own take on this episode, in particular?

It's just odd. To me.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And it's not like the writers didn't write the things that make us draw the conclusions they do.

[shapinglight]

I haven't had the chance to read all the posts, Maggie. But I agree with your interpretation. I do agree with Gabs, though, that like many Jossverse things, you're always left with the nagging feeling in the back of your mind that large swathes of the audience are not 'getting it' and think Riley/Xander are in the right. That's unavoidable, of course. We all bring our prejudices to the table, and as Joss says, it's a drama, not didacticism.

Erm - I'm ineptly trying to agree with you both here.

ETA: came back to change my icon, because this one seems so very appropriate.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Great icon.

And now that you've explained it, I agree with both of us too!

[shapinglight]

Great icon.

:Beams: It sort of sums up the whole problem with Riley, doesn't it? Like a haiku.

[quinara]

Insofar as Joss is the creator of the Buffyverse, he gets to tell us what happened and what the rules are. But he doesn't get to tell us what it means.

I don't know - I think there's a halfway house between those two options. Events happen, yes, and it doesn't matter what the writer was thinking when they wrote them, but they are always framed in certain ways and that context gives them meaning and makes certain readings more natural than others. We can turn around and actively resist that reading, but I don't think that's the default way that we interact with texts.

AYW comes at a pointed moment in S6 and Riley returning then does mean something different than him returning maybe after OMWF or Smashed or any other episode. OaFA has Buffy actually relatively happy in her house, but then Riley's perspective allows the show to highlight again Buffy's situation - her bad-paying, mindless job; the idea that, for better or worse, she doesn't know everything about Spike. He's given to us as a fantasy that's flawed (because, whoops, he has a wife), but he's a fantasy that casts a certain light on things (even if we take Spike and the eggs most simply as just something Buffy didn't know about).

Whereas I think Riley is so utterly, utterly wrong that he has no place in S6 whatsoever, not to mention in that role. That's a reaction I can have, of course it is, but it's a reaction, not an interaction (I can't really go anywhere with that, because it happened), and to me that's actually a sign of the show being flawed in that particular instance. That sort of blanket rejection of the episode is not what Joss or I wanted when I sat down to watch it.

(And I think I went off into my own little world there, hopefully it makes sense.)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

No, it does make sense.

It bugs me that Buffy never fully owns her share of the season 6 badness. The fact that the writers never suggest that's a problem means they probably don't think it's a problem.

I'm still free to give my own meaning to the text. And I really, really like the text as I read it. I see BtVS as a show that increasingly calls its central characters into question, but by centering on them and their POV, it allows them to fail to fully own their own issues and so the march off into the sunset in self-congratulatory mode without quite noticing that they aren't all that. Ironically the characters whose faults DO get vetted end up taking full responsibility for their failings and end up being wiser and generally more admirable. I think that's a pretty cool text -- where the more usual hero story is off to the side, while the one that is central is actually a commentary on the way our tendency to see ourselves as heroes actually diminishes our ability to actually be heroes.

Now, does it matter that the writers probably didn't mean it? Only to the extent that it makes me think more or less of them as writers. If what I value is not what they were trying to do, then I'm not going to give them credit for it. But the text still does what it does.

Is it a problem that most people go with a set of meanings that drive me crazy? The way I read the text that's exactly what *should* happen. Most people are going to just follow the cues and the expectations they have about heroes and that means they are not going to notice the way the text undermines their own reading. But it can still bug me, because of course I want everyone to agree with me about these things! And, also, because the contortions people have to make in order to make the straight-forward reading work are sometimes really quite unpleasant.

[quinara]

I think that's a pretty cool text -- where the more usual hero story is off to the side, while the one that is central is actually a commentary on the way our tendency to see ourselves as heroes actually diminishes our ability to actually be heroes.

That is a pretty cool reading. I don't know if I'd tend towards it because I love stories about heroes qua heroes too much (though not superheroes! As a classicist I claim there is a difference...), but I don't suppose I could ask you to point out a few scenes/moments/arcs where you think it really comes across? I don't mean that in a facetious 'justify yourself!' way; I'm just curious.

I honestly don't believe it matters one jot what the writers intended (if I ever say something that approaches that please slap me down), because I don't think working that out has any value. I discuss Buffy (ultimately) to understand what it means as a piece of communication in our culture today, not to work out what goes on in Joss's (divine, natch) brain. And like you say "the text still does what it does" - I think there is a goal to be reaching for in terms of finding out what it actually does do (which is why I disagreed with the sense that I thought I got from your post that any event can be read in a multitude of ways with equal merit).

Most people are going to just follow the cues and the expectations they have about heroes and that means they are not going to notice the way the text undermines their own reading.

I will admit, though, that this makes me go hmm...

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I love that you're a classicist! Homer rocks!!!

Zeppo explicitly tells us that the frame of the story can be misplaced.

The evidence is how the text works: there is widespread disgruntlement about the last two seasons... the heroes are seriously compromised and a lot of viewers have a feeling of ambivalence about them as they walk off into the sunset. And the viewers who insist on them being pure heroes are quite sure that seasons 6 and season 7 were badly written exactly because they told a story about some other character's redemption and because there were too many actions that were OOC because it's not something their heroic character would do. Some of them specifically hate those seasons *because* the story lines got inverted (which means that they are actually seeing the inversion).

[quinara]

Homer does rock!! And Virgil too! And all the tragedians (including the Roman ones)! Tacitus wrote the best prose in the whole world. *nods*

Good point about the Zeppo.

I suppose I've never really seen the disgruntlement with the last two seasons as particularly mainstream - rather an extreme sector heavily divergent from the 'average' response. Chosen being the exception to that, because I rank my own disgruntlement much higher... ;) I generally take it as the Scoobies being extremely insular, but then I've never gone anywhere with that thought, just whinged about it, so that's definitely something to think about!

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Good points, all. :)

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I've just re-read the shooting script of 'Into The Woods' (since S5 is not one I've re-watched all that often).

You know, I do think Xander is meant to be giving us an Important Truth. But it's a truth about Buffy, not about Buffy and Riley. Buffy does close herself off emotionally - it's central to her character in the later seasons. And I do agree with Xander that Buffy was doing that with Riley, and that's partly why he left. I'm not sure Buffy realised that before, and that was part of her epiphany. Of course, after Riley had gone anyway it only reinforced her tendency to seal herself away.

Should she have run after him? That's up to her. Xander was telling her it's something she needs to decide for herself: and while it's obvious that he, personally, wants her to say "Yes", the important thing I took from it was that it was still her choice. She wanted to pass the blame onto Riley; to tell herself that he'd made the decision, done the deed, so she was absolved of all responsibility and could happily blame him for betraying her. Xander reminded her that as long as she still has power to move and speak, she can make her own choices. It would be her own pride, not anything Riley did, that could stop her going after him; and it was up to her to choose which was most important to her.

I'm not saying that sacrificing her pride is something that Buffy should, well, be proud of. But in its own way it's kind of heroic, too.



If he really is an existentialist, he shouldn't want to tell us what it means.

I'm not sure that follows exactly. There may be no inherent meaning in an object, but that doesn't mean we can't attempt to persuade other people that the meaning we give to it is the one they ought to give to it too. I'd say it's human nature to want to do that: it's a fundamental part of our character to tell stories about things, and to try to give them meaning.

I think Joss likes to deliberately subvert that sometimes - for example, by providing dramatic musical cues and sweeping camera work for something that actually doesn't warrant them. It's part of his work's quirky appeal, and it's there to warn us that in the end, we can only find our own meanings in things. But even Joss often falls back into the more conventional forms of story-telling; and, of course, the other writers on his shows don't necessarily subscribe to his own philosophy. I'm not sure that Marti Noxon or Doug Petrie are also Existentialists...

[next_to_normal]

Good points, especially that last bit. It's pretty obvious from the S6 interviews that the writers had Very Firm Opinions about how things should be viewed and interpreted. I can't imagine that they would be able to keep that out of their writing, even with Joss the Existentialist supervising. I really doubt he was looming over everyone's shoulders policing their work to eliminate all attempts at meaning.

I think what it comes down to is that Joss allows us the freedom to determine meaning on our own, without throwing a tantrum if we disagree with him. But that doesn't mean the text itself doesn't contain a bias toward a certain meaning, and I certainly don't blame the audience for noticing that bias - or for being annoyed when it conflicts with their view.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I really don't think any character's voice gets privileged as the one that speaks the "truth"... especially not when it's essentially a take on the very-well established central character. Buffy is very complex. There are many ways of seeing her. Xanders' way has some truth and some distortion. I just don't see anybody at ME as being about having one character be the oracle who gives the final verdict on how we should see a character or judge her actions.

The thing about Joss as an existentialist is that he's the God in his universe. He creates these characters and sets the rules for how things works and so on. If Joss-as-creator starts stuffing meaning into his world he's supporting a view (worlds have meanings encoded in them) that he actively resists.

On the final paragraph. Once Joss starts subverting the cues then all of the cues are available to be read as subversions. Even if Noxon et.al. thought it was a heaving tragedy that Buffy didn't catch up to Riley, I'm free to see it as a subversion of the notion that Buffy should be seen as the heroine in a romance movie. And if I can find other details in the text that amplify that reading (Triangle as commentary on B/R, for example) then I think I have a reading that is actually doing some work in terms of giving me interesting ways of looking at the text which don't seem to do violence to what's actually presented on screen.

On your last line: Joss is the executive producer and the writers have always said it was his baby. Once he's shaped the series as a whole to have this existentialist/subversive stance, it doesn't matter if the staff writers think they are doing something else. Their more conventional story telling is available to be read subversively because the subversion is part of the show. Indeed, one suspects that the details which do all the undermining might well have been dropped in by Joss without having it register on the other writers that their take on the story just got subverted.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

I just don't see anybody at ME as being about having one character be the oracle who gives the final verdict on how we should see a character or judge her actions.

That's why I said A truth not THE truth. :-)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Let me try to be a bit more precise. Xander said something that you and I both agree was "a" truth. But having Xander say it does not make it true.. since Xander is certainly capable of misjudging people or situations. He's not some oracle. Indeed, while the writers might well believe that Buffy is emotionally closed off, there is no way for them to tell us that in the text in a way that says "even if you don't agree, this is true about Buffy". They've either shown us a Buffy who is closed off, which would lead us to agree with Xander, or they haven't. All they can have meant by having Xander say it is that Xander sees her that way or at least wants Buffy to think he sees her that way. Whether we buy it or not is up to us.

[stormwreath.livejournal.com]

Sure. Sometimes, when a character says something on the show it's signposted as being self-interested, or All About Them. BtVS does that often enough to be a trademark, in fact. I don't think Xander's was that sort of speech. I think it was the writers saying to us "Here's one interpretation of the Buffy/Riley situation which we think is a valid approach to take; please consider it." The're not saying it's the final and ultimate truth, but it wasn't presented as being wrong either.

Which is where I think that polarisation we were talking about before comes in. Far too many people seem to assume that if you say the blame isn't entirely 100% on one person, you must be saying that it's 100% on the other. (Personally, I tend to think that Riley had a valid point about Buffy's inability to open up and share with him, but the way he went about trying to express himself was wrong, and she had a damn good excuse for behaving that way at that particular time in her life. But nuances like that seem to get lost too easily.)

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

I'd actually say everything anybody says is inflected by their self-interest or projections. Which is not to say there aren't truths in there. Just that as in life it can be hard to sort out how the filter impacts the message. And I really don't think the writers were saying that we should take Xander's remarks seriously in some special way. He's got some insight and he's got some blinders. Spike says a lot that's true, but he's also got blinders and it'd be wrong to say that he's an oracle when it comes to naming important truths about Buffy. In all these cases we have to sort -- and what we sort on is not the writers making some meta statement about who's "right" but rather the details and situations they show us. Given everything I know about Buffy and Riley, my task is not to nod my head at Xander's wisdom -- it's to sit back and think about what he's got right and what he's got wrong and then maybe to think about what that says about him and some more thoughts about how that speech impacts Buffy and on and on. Tis what I like about the show. It shows the complexity of everything and it exactly doesn't boil down to packaging take home messages like "Buffy should have run after Riley a bit sooner".

I think I've given the impression I think the break up is all Riley's fault. That's not at all my opinion. I don't like how Riley handled himself in this episode. I don't think Buffy should have run after him. And a lot of Xander's take on it bugged me. But the relationship broke apart because they didn't fit. Buffy's heart has shut down for business (and actually, the death knell isn't Angel -- it's Parker -- though Parker is obviously a proxy for Angel). I think the fact that she's trying to force something (I'm a normal girl) that doesn't fit puts a wedge in their relationship that's very hard for Riley to get around. And, frankly, I think she had a lot on her plate and really didn't have room for a guy. She's got a new sister, a dying Mom, and new urgency about figuring out what it means to be a slayer. It'd have been weird if it had worked out. And one feels for Riley because he's ready for something that she just isn't ready for. It doesn't make sense to me to assign blame. The relationship just didn't work and it was never going to.

[mulder200.livejournal.com]

What a very interesting debate here. I like it.

As for the speech, I don't think Xander was full of crap but simply offering Buffy his advice on the subject based on the evidence he had. It was Buffy herself who knowing all sides of it who chose to run after Riley.

[green-maia.livejournal.com]

Joss Whedon said that one reason he wanted to create Buffy was that he had seen so many horror movies where a blond girl goes into an alley and gets killed by a monster, and he wanted to create a story where the blond girl goes into the alley and kicks the monster's ass.

But: "a blond girl goes into an alley and kicks a monster's ass" is not a fact, it's a narrative. And to narrate is to interpret.

Reality is too complex for the human mind to grasp, and narrative is how we make meaning out of it. The stories we tell ARE our interpretation of reality.

No human story is unbiased; telling a story means choosing what to include, what to focus on, what words or images to use, how to frame it. Every choice excludes another choice.

Good stories are nuanced. Good stories can be interpreted in many different ways. Good stories are complex. Good stories are ambiguous. Good stories are layered.

But nuance and complexity and ambiguity and layers don't mean that the meaning is entirely in the eye of the beholder, because all that nuance and complexity and ambiguity and layers are not Reality but
reality-as-narrated-by-a-limited-human-mind.

The meaning is in the eye of the beholder AND in the eye of the storyteller - and neither eye can see it all.

No story lacks inherent meaning, because a human made it, and human beings can't make anything without putting meaning into it.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Yes. I agree. Sort of and with qualifications. For now I'll just say this:

There are some really great artists who just see the world well and are very good at creating a mirror of it. I actually think that does go with the complexity -- which is often the reflection of the fact that the writer fully inhabits the POVs of the various characters and doesn't try to impose an omnicient POV on anybody. That doesn't mean they aren't building meaning into their work. But it does mean that they are not likely to be building in meaning the way this debate is talking about -- namely trying to say in the text that it was good that Buffy listened to Xander and a tragedy that she missed the helicopter. Indeed I think one of Joss's main meanings is that we should never expect writers to tell us what to think of their characters. The goal is a polysemic text which completely goes against a text aimed at getting the audience to root for certain characters in certain ways.

As Rebcake points out -- the vast majority of us don't buy the "meaning" of ITW -- which makes it a bit hard to see that this was the meaning they were trying to shovel into their world.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You reminded me of something Whedon said during that recent Cultural Humanist Q&A - when asked about intent and the contradictions in his stories. The person asking the question - wanted to know how an athesist and existentialist reconciled the "magic snow" scene in Amends with say "Objects in Space" or the scene in
Epithany - Angel S2. Whedon responded that he is telling a story and there are multiple voices and perspectives in his head. What you see on the screen are all those voices arguing with each other. I don't
often know. And as a story teller, if I picked just one, it would become didatic not story.

I agree with your take on ITW. I think people forget that it is told through Buffy's pov mainly, then Xanders and finally Riley's. We are getting multiple perspectives.

What I have always found amusing about posts on ITW and Xander/Anya, is the irony that everyone appears to be missing. Xander's speech to Buffy is a huge projection. Every word he says could be applied to his relationship with Anya. And Buffy calls him on it.
Which motivates him to tell Anya she is amazing and further his relationship with her. He even proposes. Yet, look what happens in Hell's Bells - he basically does to Anya what he is accusing Buffy of doing to Riley. He's never honest with her or himself. He doesn't see their relationship clearly until Hell's Bells. Xander has also to a degree romanticized Riley and Buffy. He hasn't heard her side, so much as Riley's and he doesn't know everything regarding Riley.
He thinks he is being a good friend, but he isn't.
His speech is selfishly motivated. As the writer shows later in both AYW and in Hell's Bells. It's great - because what it shows us is that even though our friends may be well-meaning, their advice is not always in our best interest. We have to make our own choices.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

You and I have identical takes on all of this. Brilliant, of course!! I think it's one of those happy "accidents" that Xander's speech here is the point where he and Anya head into much more serious territory, culminating in Hell's Bells. Xander romanticized B/R just as he romanticized A/X. If the latter was a disaster, one could be forgiven for thinking that it was good that Buffy missed the helicopter.

And the Scooby's friendships with one another have always been laden with self-interest, distortions, projections, envy and a host of other less than pleasant things. They inflict a lot of damage on each other. There's plenty of good in their friendships as well. It's just that like all real human relationships we have to take the bad with the good. As Joss explores our objectification of others in Dollhouse it becomes clearer that this has always been a theme in his work -- how we can't fully escape the tendency to use others or see them in our own image and so on. One of the reasons I heart the man.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

As Joss explores our objectification of others in Dollhouse it becomes clearer that this has always been a theme in his work -- how we can't fully escape the tendency to use others or see them in our own image and so on. One of the reasons I heart the man.

Agreed. We are definitely on the same page here. It is one of the reasons I find myself gravitating to Whedon's work and why, regardless of the flaws, I heart his work.
And you are correct it is a definite theme - I saw it in Toy Story - which he won the Oscar for.

And it's what he said so clearly in his speech at the Cultural Humanist society...
that he believes we all objectify each other to some extent. Often without realizing it.

AYW - a difficult episode for me to watch without yelling at the tv set for some reason - is actually quite brilliant, if you read it through that lense. Everyone in that episode is romanticizing Riley and Sam. It is filled with so many misdirections and misleads. From Willow's conviction that her power is merely an addiction (supported by Sam) to Xander/Anya's view of each other.
I bring up AYW because I see it as the mirror to ITW. It like ITW has an unreliable narrator.

[ladyofthelog.livejournal.com]

As ever, I like your commentary on this.

I wonder, too, how much disagreements on how to read the show have to do with how one originally saw it. I saw it on DVD - am I remembering correctly that you did, too? - in its entirety, and watched almost all of the series before reading anything about it. There was no incentive to approach this text in any other way than I would normally approach any text.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yes, I think it makes a difference that I saw the show without commentary or the general mayhem of the fandom. I just got to read the text and think about it hard for quite a while.

[candleanfeather.livejournal.com]

Hi Maggie. I've been wanting to comment on this post for a while now but had to delay it because work is claiming for his due. Kicks work!

It's a difficult subject you tackle here and it opens many questions: on one hand intent is necessary for an author to construct his work, without intent no direction, no form, no meaning and I do think that in academic analysis especially, taking into account the author's intent is important to understand a work. But and the problem (or the richness) is there, we all know that there's isn't such a thing as a total mastery of one's work, hence the possibility of multiple readings. Now as for the particular scene you evoke I don't know how people came to the conclusion that Xander's speech was the voice of the author dictating how to understand the B-R relationship, I believe though that Xander's speech revealed one layer of their relationship (Buffy closing off), it gave meaning to little facts interspersed in the text of the show. But it was only one layer. What always struck me in Btvs, is how the show generally avoided to impose one meaning by carefully constructing the POV of the protagonists, one of the best examples being in season 7 the Buffy-Giles confrontation about Spike. Both have good reasons supporting their respective positions, none of them is evidently wrong.