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

[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.