while also presenting a great number of mixed-sex friendships (first and foremost being Willow/Xander)

In my mind even Willow/Xander is at best a superficial example of a successful mixed-sex friendship because she's been in love with him for almost the entire friendship. It's not platonic on her part. From a Doylist perspective, their OOC cheating in S3 indicates to me that the show is saying that platonic relationships will eventually succumb to romance/lust.

Overall the show doesn't allow successful/long-lasting purely platonic mixed-sex friendships between single, age-appropriate (i.e., excluding Dawn) characters. Part of this is just the way TV shows work, that most supporting characters are created or get increased screen time specifically to be love interests (Oz, Riley, Anya, Jenny), but even once characters are established on BtVS, they eventually cross the friendship line (Spike/Anya in "Entropy," Xander/Cordelia, and then there's Spuffy, of course). Superficially the Buffy-Xander friendship seems like an anomaly, but I don't think it's purely platonic either because he lusts after her for the majority of their friendship and only really gets over his crush once he falls in love with another woman.

So to me the show seems to say that men and women can only stay platonic if they're committed to someone else (and sometimes not even in that case). I don't think the show handles platonic friendships very well at all.

One interesting thing to me is the different presentation of hunting behavior for male and female vampires. Female vampires try to appear non-threatening (motherly or sexually inviting) to lull their victim into carelessness: e.g. Dru in this episode, Darla in the pilot, and Sandy in S4. Male vampires are more apt to just jump out and attack.

Buffy rarely plays the "I'm just a helpless female" card, even though she presumably could, especially in the early seasons when she's not yet famous. Her fighting/hunting behavior is more stereotypically masculine by the standards of the series.

Someone with a better knowledge of feminist theory could probably explicate this further. It's just something that occurred to me as I was watching the "Lie to Me" intro.

Drusilla cowers and whines.

This is also an example - which we kind of got into on the "School Hard" post - of Drusilla's means of getting what she wants by seeming weak. She seems to have all the power in the relationship, able to manipulate Spike into doing her bidding, but she does so by playing the helpless female. Whenever he's angry at her or disagrees with her, she whimpers and whines and he immediately caves.

How much of it is an act and how much is legit weakness due to her insanity and/or what happened in Prague is unclear, but there's a very deliberate pattern of her doing this, even when she's capable of taking care of herself (post-"What's My Line").

It's important to note, I think, that this is in stark contrast to Buffy's (masculine) power, which allows her to be much more proactive and self-reliant. And, of course, Buffy is the protagonist while Drusilla is an antagonist, which sort of seems to demonize the reliance on "feminine wiles" as a means of power - particularly when you couple this with "Halloween" and its denigration of the traditional female role as worthless and weak. Drusilla isn't nearly as silly or on-the-nose as Lady!Buffy, but she is exactly the sort of woman Buffy was worried about Angel liking.

Interesting, especially with regards to the madness/gender issue. I have no thoughts but I'm curious!

I would say, though, that the Willow/Angel exchange over having boys in her room reads as the programme making fun of the whole no-platonic-relationships, men-are-sexual-and-predatory thing. There's this rule, but it's helpless to stop Willow having boys in her room, and Angel is shown as neither threatening nor sexually interested in her.

1. Jealous dude is jealous. IDK, he may have ~suspected something, but the whole going-behind-Buffy's-back-to-investigate-her-male-friend-for-her-own-sake is fairly paternalistic.

3. Wow, complicated question! ;) Really undecided on this, so… Erm, no intelligent insights here. Might get a better grasp of how I feel after the halfway mark.

User froxyn referenced to your post from Saturday 24 September 2011 saying: [...] x. would like to have an open discussion about 'Lie to Me' from a feminist point of view [...]

Re Willow saying boys aren't allowed in her room, I always thought it was odd with the later reveal in Gingerbread that her parents are rather neglectful. If her mother doesn't realize she's cut her hair, how would she know that her daughter is having boys in her room?

Of course, bad retcon most likely. Yet you could also read it as Willow's parent's really don't give a damn and Willow is uncomfortable with having Angel in her room. So Willow attempts to invoke parental authority, which Angel brushes aside. Which could tie into people not taking women seriously when they say "no" and instead having to invoke the parents or big brother or football player boyfriend to get their point across.

That's reading far too into it though.

Re Drusilla's insanity. There's this societal notion that men have enough power to ruin women. This can range from the Don Juan who woos a maiden, has sex with her, and leaves, leaving her a fallen women unsuitable for marriage to the rapist who forces a woman to experience a "fate worse than death." Don't know if Angelus raped Drusilla or whatever, but he did torture her and kill her family.

I like to take the view that people can recover from grievous injury and traumatic events. Yes, something happened that was bad and horrible. The victim can be forever changed. That doesn't mean that they have to be forever "damaged."

Otto Frank survived Auschwitz. His wife and two teenage daughters perished. When Auschwitz was liberated he was literally skin and bones and had been through hell himself (he nearly didn't survive it). Yet he was able to build a life for himself again. There are other people like Otto Frank.

Ugh, this is long and rambly, but what I'm trying to say is the human spirit is resilient, and the concept of an evil man "breaking" a "pure, innocent" woman gives that man way too much power and the woman way too live IMHO.

Drusilla has always fascinated me (really, how exactly does a mob hurt a vampire leading to a slow death over months or possibly years?). Dru is in some ways one of the saddest characters on the show while weirdly also being simulataneously one who gets some laughs.

Her insanity is, to some extent, not quite insanity in my opinion. She knows more than everybody else, which means she's not so much babbling as she's talking over everybody else's head. For example, if Drusilla claims she's hearing voices, she's not hallucinating; she actually IS hearing voices. It's the rest of the world that isn't picking up on all the things that are perfectly obvious to her. She's like a nuclear physicist in a roomful of preschoolers.

However, it's fair to say she's also suffering some form of PTSD, and given what she went through, that's only human (and therefore humanizes her). The scene with the bird on one level shows us she isn't understanding reality, but on another level, she's wishing the dead alive again, and more than likely out of a sense of guilt, something dovetails with her experience of Angelus murdering her family. Probably the clearest bit of dialogue she ever gets is later this season when she reminds Angel of what he did to her family in remarkably lucid detail.

While I'd say Drusilla has some very serious physical and mental issues, I wouldn't call her a weak character. She actually turns some of the things Angelus did to her into another form of power, some of it manipulative, some of it coercive, and some of it based on her really being the smartest one in the room.

Hmm, okay, I was trying to think of something to add and the first thing that popped into my head was that Buffy references how she used to listen to the song "I Touch Myself" when she was crushing on Ford. But she's quick to add that she didn't know what the song was really about.

So, embarrassment about the expression of her sexuality? Did she really not know or was she pretending not to because she's ~good~ and thus should not be experimenting sexually (esp. with masturbation -- only boys need that release, amirite)?

There is an unusual camera angle of Buffy during her conversation with Angel in her kitchen. It's shot from above so we, the audience, are looking down at Buffy. I don't think we've ever had such an angle on the Slayer before, and this type of camera angle usually denotes submission on the part of the subject. We're far more used to Buffy power shots, which are shot while looking slightly up at Buffy.

It's an interesting power dynamic. Buffy's the one interrogating, but she's also the one who seems totally vulnerable. She's putting Angel on the spot, but she's doing so in the most non-threatening manner possible. Like you say, it's the anti-powershot, which drives home to me how Angel's been consolidating his power in their relationship by keeping information from her. A LOT of information. It's a paternalistic form of control, like with Giles. And Angel continues in this vein by going on an information hunt behind her back. Because Buffy can't ~handle~ the truth, big strong men must bear this burden. (Heh. Angel probably figures that if he managed to get on her good side, then this Ford guy must also be a soulless serial killer who comes across as a romantic love interest for the Slayer. US DARK HANDSOME DUDES ARE SO GOOD AT TRICKING THE SLAYER INTO FALLING FOR US, HO HO HO.)

Just rewatched this ep and I thought I'd add some rough notes to the comments:


DOYLIST: Buffy's going bra-less which is in reaction to a fan game where people pointed out where her bra strap was showing early

Chanterelle -- Angel says, "You're a fool;" once again negging on women like those foolish women in the 18th century, oi. "I need them to bless me" -- they're superior beings and Chanterelle wants in, but that power is beyond her. She's "a fool" and she'll never get that power because vampires are picky and she's clueless. Eesh. It's interesting how it's a woman who's looking to be ~uplifted hierarchically by vampires.

Ford wants to "die young and stay pretty" => "I may be dead, but at least I'm still pretty" => makes me think of Buffy's early mortality rate, but also women historically, dying young due to childbirth. Ford cares about dying while he's still beautiful -- (a subversion of how this trope is typically reserved for women? Of course, men aren't oppressively reduced to just ~pretty) -- where as Chanterelle views it as spiritual upliftment.


The jealous boyfriend Angel behavior gets rewarded; there is something going on with Ford, though his "research" informs the audience about the plot, but in no way actually ~helps Buffy. So Angel's stalking gets rewarded in addition to his keeping secrets from Buffy gets rewarded with Buffy admitting "I love you" because he withholds information and holds power over her.

Keeping secrets as a way to attain power over others; Ford, Angel, and Giles all do this. Meanwhile, Buffy keeps her Slayer identity a secret, but she does it to ~serve~ others, not for personal or hierarchical gain. Neither does she use her identity to "impress cute boys." (HAR HAR Giles, that Buffy would use her position of power for dating prowess; because using information for personal gain when it's a woman is always about romantic gain; when in reality, it's Angel who does this with Buffy.)

When Spike speaks harshly to Drusilla, Dru uses exaggerated affectation: she literally whines/whimpers like a kicked puppy. I'm no expert, but I don't think that's typical socialized behavior in Victorian times. And she immediately flips to being in control of Spike once he's apologized and is in line. She's in no way cowed by him, but has rather put him back in line: "Can I eat him now, love?" He's deferring to her. She manages to avoid talking about Angel, gets Spike to apologize, and then he's back under her influence.

Angel, in response to Buffy demanding the truth, asks, "Do you love me?" What? She only deserves the truth if she loves him? Does she have to be in love with him before he'll risk being honest with her? The woman has to be under his emotional power before he'll open up. It's a play for dominance. How many times has Angelus used his good looks to get in good with a woman before letting his dark side show? Like Pocochina has pointed out, his M.O. for treating Buffy resembles how he treats his prey.

Buffy's wearing white in her confrontation with Angel, like Drusilla in the beginning. After he breaks the news, she's wearing black trickling down to white at her feet (black weighing her down). This color symbolism in fiction is often used to reflect good and evil. The show references this later with: white hats and black hats.

Ford plots to sacrifice Buffy in order to move up the food chain, a man sacrificing a woman/slayer to ensure his own safety/longevity. Yep, reflections of Buffy's larger role in the narrative.


"The more I know, the more confused I get." She'd like "to stop" growing up. She wants to take comfort in Giles' lie of clearly distinguished villains (but Drusilla's wearing white). Can she take the truth? She rejects the lie: "Liar." Keeping the woman outside of knowledge doesn't maintain her purity/innocence -- it endangers her. So what's the motive? See above: control over women and male self-preservation.

Everyone's looking to manipulate and influence Buffy -- she hasn't reached the point in "Checkpoint" where she realizes that they're doing this because she has power.


Edited at 2011-09-25 08:32 am (UTC)

On Drusilla:

It's interesting to me that, of the fanged four, she was the only one who didn't want to be turned. Darla, Angel, and Spike are all shown as unhappy with their current lives in various ways - Darla was actively dying - and all take very little convincing before the bite. Drusilla, conversely, wants absolutely nothing to do with vampires and evil when we first meet her. This is illustrated by how Angel and Spike both kill their families when they're turned, but Drusilla's family is killed by her sire before she was turned. I wonder if her madness is perhaps in part due to her personality being so incompatible with an evil demon. She cannot be who she was before, because she - a sane version of her - would never survive as a vampire.

That she then turns around and, as a vampire, is loyal to Angel and Darla - that she speaks in AtS and in Crush about reuniting her family - is deeply disturbing. And frankly, it's disturbing in a way that warrants more exploration. But Drusilla is given to us in fairly broad strokes, her past and motivations are not explored like Spike or Angel's, despite the fact that her personality is so interesting. She's viewed like one of her dolls, pretty and broken, without really exploring who she is now and how she functions given her past. It's a shame, because given her place in Spike and Angel's lives they really did have the excuse to do more with her.

This has very little to do with Lie to Me, sorry. But the discussion here about Drusilla made me think of it.

One thing that strikes me about the Scoobies as platonic friends is that while they are all either attached or not interested in each other by virtue of sexual orientation in the later seasons, that's not what I see as being emphasized about the friendship. It's worrying that they can't just be friends without those outside attachments, but I think the show also evolves in its treatment of the friendship - in the early seasons even characters being attached to other people is not enough to stop romantic feelings from creeping into the platonic cross gender relationships, but by the end of the show the platonic friendships hold even when Xander and Buffy are single. It's not perfect, but it's a definite improvement from what we see in this episode.