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

[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.