Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Shall We Compare Thee to a Silent Episode (week 4)
While watching "Once More, with Feeling" I was constantly reminded of the episode we watched two weeks ago, "Hush." While the two ideas are complete opposite, they were also very similar. As we know, everyone in "Hush" was silenced, but the silence made them express their emotions more than they would with words. Likewise in "Once More, with Feeling" the characters were able to express more of their emotions through song. Many musical numbers were the characters most personal thoughts. An example of this was when Anya and Xander were singing about being together. They stated many things that they liked and disliked about one another, something they would not do when speaking. Another great example of this was when Buffy and Spike tell each other how they feel, in song. This scene particularly reminded me of Buffy and Riley kissing when they could not speak in "Hush." Likewise, in both of the episodes there were creepy, human like characters for the bad guys. These men had doll like characteristics, and while they wern't the exact same face, they had similar features. The silence or singing was caused by the bad guys in both as well. The main difference between the two episodes was that "Hush" was silent and "Once More, with Feeling" was a musical. However, because these are the two extremes I found this to be a characteristic that made them even more alike than different.
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5 comments:
This is a really smart post, Michelle, and I think you are onto something comparing these two episodes. Both are about exposing what people are really thinking/feeling through ways other than ordinary language.
And yeah, I love the title of your post.
wow... I didn't think about any of those parallels, but I must say that I think you're right! Both episodes do focus on the expression of emotion, they merely resort to different mediums to do so. I would say, however, that "Hush"is more about the expression of positive emotions (mainly romantic love), while "Once more, with Feeling" is more negative, focusing on Buffy's dissatisfaction with life and Willow's betrayal of Tarra.
Jonathan - I think you're right about the negativity in "Once more, with Feeling," and the positivity in "Hush." What I think is neat is that we typically associate silence with negativity and happiness with music, but in this case it is the opposite.
I'm so glad someone else noticed these parallels. When I was reading the recent Wilcox article we discussed in class, I highlighted the passage on p.193 where it says, "The device of the episode--having the characters magically forced to sing their true feelings..." That one line made me think about "Hush" because the characters have to once again express emotions in some way other than talking. I never thought about the positivity vs. negativity aspect, but it definitely makes sense.
It is very interesting to see the how the differences in the episodes make them similar. I hadn't put any thought into the fact that the bad guys in both episodes had human like characteristics. I think the Anya and Xander song was my favorite part of the episode.
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