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Writer's Intent: a bit of a rant
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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.
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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.)
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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.
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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...
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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).
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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!