I don't want to write about this episode.
It's so poignant and heavy and emotional I feel incapable of saying anything, much less something profound. I am familiar with death. But I am unfamiliar with losing someone close to me. At a church I used to attend there were a lot of old people, so we went to two or three viewings and funerals a year, on average. Just recently a family friend died (I hadn't seen her in a few years), and I went by myself to the viewing. It was an experience that seemed...unreal somehow. I always felt like everything about the process after someone has died was so choreographed and unquestioned that the emotion was taken right out of the situation. But now I realize, courtesy of this episode, that it's because everyone is numb and just trying to maintain some sense of normalcy and composure.
In "The Body," Whedon reaches past the facade of appropriate taste and flower arrangements and straight to the uncomfortable reality of what happens around and to grieving people. Someone in class said, "You just want time to stand still" but it won't and you have to move and speak and absorb the shock and still live. Buffy suffers the brunt of this, but the scoobies and Dawn and Giles are just as lost in the vacuum the tragedy has caused. Even I get lost in it.
5 comments:
I like your comments about how the "process" we have regarding death -- the order of things, arrangements to be made, etc.
What "The Body" also made me realize is how often television usually focuses on the funeral, but not the moments immediately after the initial shock. From my experience, those moments and days before the funeral are often described as "a blur," and we make decisions and call people with bad news and do all of these things even though we want to fall apart.
So, I think Whedon perfectly illustrated those moments with great integrity. So many things about the episode are so great, but the reasons behind their greatness come from sad or scared places within the viewer, so I definitely understand how you opened this post by saying, "I don't want to write about this episode."
I agree that the "choreography" of death is a common occurence. I think that it only happens so that by human nature it is our only way to cope. when a person dies nothing is left but the body. Therefore the "choreography" of death helps us disassociate the fact that there is no one there anymore.
@Hannah,-- Love your comment about the "blur" this is the blur literally, the calling 911, the telling your siblings, the being told you should eat dinner later that night. When I list the details like this is almost seems like you can generalize about death because these same little things usually occur, but the powerful thing about this episode is the truth and reality that the writers and actors give to these little things, that all of us who have experienced this kind of death, know happen.
Smart conversation going on here! I am thinking of another TV show to handle the death of a parent recently: _How I Met Your Mother_. (Yes, a very different show, but bear with me...)
HIMYM handled the death of Marshall's father very well (in terms of "good television"). It was surprising (sort of), moving, and realistic. Powerful stuff. But at the same time, they also skipped from the "news" part of someone dying (Marshall hearing about it from his wife) to the funeral. Compare that to how _Buffy_ handled Joyce's death. Very different.
I could go on, but you get my point: Hannah's point about our culture focusing on the funeral is an important one.
I continue to be amazed at how well written many of these "Buffy" episodes are. I totally underestimated the show and have been pleasantly surprised.
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