Episode 17
SUPERSTAR: Do you think you’re who they say you are?
18-Aug-03
- Joining the fun - Fleeting moments
– Direction – What’s worked its way
in – Centralizing power – Buffy’s
instincts & confidence – Damaging effects – No shortcuts – Sensing the truth –
Conclusion – Spicy extras for
James Marsters fans -
Right
from the start, we’re invited to join in the fun of Superstar. Danny Strong, in his reoccurring role as
Jonathan Levinson, appears in the opening credits! He’s diffusing dynamite!
He’s wielding weapons! He’s
looking suave and dangerous! Oh,
Jonathan!!
By the end of the
episode we learn that Jonathan has used a spell to create an alternate
Jonaverse, in which he is a superstar extraordinaire. In the first scene, we see that all the characters in the
Buffyverse have been sucked into the Jonaverse. And the addition of Jonathan to the opening sequence suggests
that all of BtVS’s creators (producers, directors, cast and crew) are now
residing in the Jonaverse as well! As
the show progresses, we also find ourselves enchanted by Jonathan’s strength,
smarts and charm. Again, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer succeeds in creating stepping-stones right into our
individual hearts, brains and living rooms.
It’s a domino effect: the
characters tumble, the BtVS creators crumble, and we follow suit.
There’s no show
like this Buffy-show, like no show I know.
We turn on our TV sets, we open our pupils wide, and we let it all in.
Everyone, from The
Viewers to the most incidental of BtVS characters, is captivated. Jonathan even looks like someone else - a
much more attractive someone else. And
it’s not just his sharp, tailored clothes or his flattering haircut – it’s his
manner, his confidence, and his bearing.
We quickly understand that Buffy is no longer our trustworthy hero –
Jonathan is. We know to whom we’d turn
if times got rough: Jonathan. My, how fickle is our favor, how fleeting is
our fidelity to Buffy!
We are definitely being hammered with the
message that fame is fleeting – and that, by extension, the moments, and the phases, and the
whole of our lives are as ephemeral as (to quote from Macbeth) “a walking
shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then
is heard no more.” (Adam, to a vampire
follower: “You are all just shadows.”)
References to the
passage of time, in particular to speed and amounts of time, are continual –
listen carefully and you’ll pick up multiple references in every scene. Keeping in mind the image of Buffy flipping
through Giles’ “Jonathan Swimsuit Calendar”, read below for a few other
examples of references to the passage and quantities of time:
BUFFY: “Thanks Anya. That won’t keep me awake all night.”
RILEY: “Sir, how long will it last?
JONATHAN: “Essentially forever.”
JONATHAN: “I’ll be right there.”
XANDER: “Effective time management?”
But it’s not just about time. It’s about space,
it’s about direction:
So life is not
just about the amount of time allotted to us, or how fast we accomplish our
ends, is it? Life is a vector with a
direction as well as a magnitude. It’s
about whether we come from the left or the right, whether we are heading north
or south, whether we make a figure-eight or a straight line or go around in
circles. In short, life is about the journey,
not the destination. Life, after all,
will always end in death – sooner or later, whether you’re heading east, west,
north or south.
Notice that Xander doesn’t mention only
speed and direction however.
He also mentions splinter issues –i.e., what’s worked its way
inside. And listen to Adam telling a
vampire lackey about human beings:
“Humans sense so little of what they carry inside.”
The quality of our
lives is about the quality of the journey, and the quality of that journey is
ultimately about what we each carry inside.
There are the instincts and temperaments and the talents we are born
with, as well as the attitudes, beliefs and perceptions that have been shaped
by our interaction with the outside world, and the influences of others. Food and eating are used as metaphors for
the internalization of external messages and stimuli – a few examples:
·
We watch five
vampires feed off of a single victim in the opening scene (WILLOW: “I don’t care if it is an orgy of death,
there’s still such thing as a napkin.”).
·
BUFFY (about
the vampire feeding orgy): “And they
say no one eats without the TV on anymore.” (This particular reference
underscores the fact that TV is also something which is consumed and
internalized, and in an episode showcasing the effects of celebrity, it is
particularly fitting).
·
JONATHAN
(threatening Spike): “You’ll be pretty
indistinguishable from, oh what should we say . . . instant soup mix?”
·
BUFFY (to
Riley): “I mean . . . you’re not . . .
eating The Initiative’s Technicolor food of strongness?” (Notice the reference to the media again in
the word “Technicolor”).
·
BUFFY: “You’re pretty much relying on butcher’s
blood these days, right, Spike?”
·
Anya refers
to eating shrimp, and jokes that they are Jonathan’s “prawns” when Buffy
suggests they are all his “pawns.”
And listen to what
Jonathan has to say to the Initiative soldiers about Adam, the only being who
is immune to Jonathan’s spell:
“Men, before we
can locate Adam we need to understand him better. And there’s something that’s bothered me almost from the
start. He doesn’t eat. We’ve known him to kill but never to eat the
kill.”
Adam is so self
contained that he is unaffected by the external. Unlike the others he “doesn’t eat”, i.e., he doesn’t internalize
the external, he’s not a consumer of either earthly delights or worldly woes –
so Adam knows immediately that the images on the television are “lies.”
Jonathan
also tells us that cutting off Adam’s head “is useless
- killing Adam means annihilating him completely.” Unlike human beings, Adam has so perfectly integrated his every
part and piece (“I know every molecule of myself”) that he is not dependent on
any particular part. Human beings
literally cannot function without their heads, but also - unlike Adam - they
turn to others for leadership and guidance (notice Anya’s mention of
assassinated U.S. President William McKinley, who was murdered in the name of
anarchy in 1901. And note also the way
Adam’s vampire follower suggests killing Jonathan as a way of disrupting the
altered Universe).
Adam’s qualities
of self-containment, and of unswerving confidence in his own internal cues,
seem an asset in this episode. But
Adam’s isolation, and his inability to understand the concept of cooperation,
will eventually lead to his undoing by those who do know how to interact
with others. He’ll be defeated by
people go ahead and get their nourishment taking a big bite out of the world,
chewing, and swallowing. Yes, they risk
food poisoning, but they can gain strength as well, just as surely as Popeye
does from a can of spinach.
The folly of
isolating oneself and centralizing power is clearly a theme in this episode
(this season, this series!), as we begin to understand that for Jonathan, life
as an idol and icon is very lonely. We
see it in his manner as he stares into the fire at his mansion, while his
one-of-kind existence is emphasized by the appearance of twins at the top of
stairs.
And in the
alternate reality Jonathan has created, there is room for only one at the
top. Being alone can be kind of creepy
or scary or sad:
·
JONATHAN: “Vampires form nests to make hunting
easier. They’re not big on
cooperation. They mostly like to hang
out all creepy and alone in the shadows . . . right, Spike?”
·
WILLOW (about
Tara hiding in a closet): “I think she
was there all night – she was all alone.”
(An aside – an interesting image
here, in the context of Willow hiding her relationship with Tara).
·
SPIKE (to
Buffy): “Someday, sweet Slayer, I would
love to take you on. See you face the
evil alone for once.”
In the Jonaverse,
in every field of endeavor, the person at the top is the one and lonely
Jonathan Levinson. The wastefulness and
determent of such unshared supremacy is pointed out by the references above,
and by the negative effect Jonathan’s superhero status has on Buffy’s abilities
as The Slayer. With Jonathan as the
ultimate basketball player, recording artist, relationship counselor and
military strategist, we can only assume that somewhere, Michael Jordan, Garth Brooks,
Dr Ruth, and Colin Powell sit, wasting their talents and twiddling their
thumbs, feeling like something isn’t right here.
But Buffy feels that too – something isn’t right here. She may not be aware of every molecule” of
herself and of “everything around” her (as Adam claims to be), but she isn’t
without ability to sense lies and distortion.
The dialogue is full of references to sight and sound and Tara says
about Buffy dealing with the aftermath of the Faith/Buffy body switch: “That whole thing with Faith pretty much
freaked me out, and I was just sensing it from a distance.”
Eventually, as the
clues add up, Buffy shakes off the negative influences of others opinions of
her (RILEY, about The Initiative: “If
they’d just put a little trust in me, then I know I could get the job
done.” BUFFY: “I’ve felt that way my entire life.”). Buffy uses her senses, and she goes with her gut – and if there
is one thing Buffy always has (and I mean always, they never fail, not
really), it’s good gut instincts. Once
she stops internalizing the doubts of naysayers, her confidence and abilities
soar – compare her first encounter with Spike to her second encounter, or her
fighting at the beginning of the episode with her fighting at the end.
The powerful
influence of the opinions and expectations of others is also emphasized by the
way Jonathan attempts to mitigate the oppressing, stifling influence of his
omnipresent superiority. Though he has
no inclination to give up his top dog status, he does ply the masses with
constant “feel good, you’re special and important” words. He praises Buffy for killing two vampires,
tells Willow she would surely have thought of a plan to break into the crypt,
encourages Riley in his quest to make up with Buffy, and is unfailing gracious
to all his fans. He even puffs up Spike
a bit with words that are surely music to the neutered vamp’s ears: “Careful, he’s still pretty dangerous.” (This
is another warning that will go in one ear, and eventually completely out the
other, for our Miss Buffy).
With Jonathan’s side-effect monster
symbolizing the evil effects of every kind of unnatural favoritism we can imagine (racism,
sexism, ageism, etc), we see that both the recipient of unearned reward, and
those who are stifled as a result of such weighted favoritism, are personally
damaged - as is society as a whole.
Everyone is missing out on Buffy as the best Slayer ever (not to mention
missing out on the enjoying the talents of Michael, Garth, Ruth and Colin,
etc).
Listen to what
Buffy, upset about her troubles with Riley, has to say about Faith: “It’s all Faith’s fault:”
·
“She’s like
poison.” You can be destroyed from the inside out. Jonathan’s self-loathing has led him to this self-destructive
path.
·
“No worse,
she’s like acid.” You can be destroyed from the outside in. Negative messages can eat their way in from the outside.
·
“Maybe she’s
a bomb.” You can be the victim of general, impersonal, environmental chaos. Jonathan’s spell creates a monster that
hurts people indiscriminately.
And notice that
Adam doesn’t mind the imposition of the Jonaverse: “I don’t need to do anything.
These magicks are unstable, corrosive.
They will inevitably lead to chaos.
And I am interested in chaos.”
Also underlining
the interplay between internal and external forces, in both providing strength
and creating weaknesses, are these comments:
·
WILLOW (about
Buffy): “Oh yeah, I know she’s not over
the whole Riley sleeping with Faith thing.
Oh, you know . . . I mean, Faith’s insides and Buffy’s outsides, when
her insides were out.”
·
RILEY: “These
spells – do they really work? I mean,
can you really ‘turn your enemies inside out?’
Or . . . learn to excrete gold coins?”
I wonder what you’d have to eat to excrete
gold coins? Well, according to Willow, it can be done,
but it takes concentration, and being attuned to the forces of the Universe –
and Anya tells us it’s not much fun.
This echoes advice Jonathan gives to Buffy about fixing her relationship
with Riley: “It’s not going to be easy,
Buffy. But you guys are very special
together. That’s worth a little hard
work.”
This advice comes
back to haunt Jonathan at the end of the episode, when Buffy runs into him,
“back to his usual self”, and says to him:
“Jonathan, you can’t keep trying to make everything work out with some
big gesture all at once. Things are
complicated. They take time and work.”
There are no
shortcuts – our journeys through life are our journeys through life. Yes, Jonathan figures out another way into
the vampires’ crypt after Willow tells him, “Oh! No back way in, just one entrance.” But the path to real success – to true peace and happiness – must
be traveled step-by-step. It takes
time, and it takes work, and you can’t, like Rosie Ruiz, ride the subway to the
final mile of the Boston Marathon, and expect the limelight to keep shining for
long.
The truth will out. With Buffy & Riley’s wordless
understanding as a symbol of instinctual communication, we understand that
people get twitchy; they have inherent abilities to detect truth. Jonathan mentions that Professor Walsh’s
design “attempts to hide” Adam’s power source, and Tara uses a spell to create
a sort of smoke screen to confuse the monster – but Jonathan finds the Uranium
235, and the monster still follows Tara to her closet. Even Xander, as always representing The
Viewers and Everyman in his super-fan reaction to Jonathan, is not without some
feeling that things aren’t right – notice his complaint that Anya moaning “Jonathan”
during sex doesn’t “fluff up the old ego.”
And finally,
Superstar makes many references to
size – some examples:
·
biggies (BUFFY:
“No biggie. I bet I could do it,
I know I could take at least two.”)
·
shrimp (ANYA:
“Say you really like shrimp a lot.
Or we could say you don’t like shrimp at all.”)
·
big guns (GRAHAM “It’s about time we brought out
the big guns,”)
·
big guys (SPIKE:
“You’re feisty when the big guy’s standing beside you.”)
·
augmentation (WILLOW:
“Jonathan did an augmentation spell!”)
So I’m pretty sure
than the most important message in the entire episode is one that really
doesn’t get out there often enough: Size
matters. Or wait. Is the message: Size doesn’t matter?
Well . . . best to keep some things an eternal mystery,
Spicy extras for James Marsters fans:
·
That is quite
a spicy little scene between Spike & Buffy, when he runs his hand down her
chest and tells her he’d “love to take her on.” Spike is no doubt emboldened by two things – Buffy’s meekness,
and his very recent encounter with “Buffy” at The Bronze. If Riley remembers his encounter with
Faith-in-Buffy, surely we can assume Spike remembers his as well. And Buffy’s “first move” has been answered
with a counter move in this scene. It’s
the first time we’ve seen Spike make an overt, sexual advance toward Buffy.
·
The way Buffy
backs Spike up against the wall is very reminiscent of the way Faith backed him
up against the post at The Bronze - only Spike doesn’t look nearly as enchanted
with the message.
·
Notice how,
at the end of the episode, the first thing Buffy remembers about Jonathan’s
advice isn’t about Riley, it’s about watching out for southpaws. But of course, she’s going to end up pawed,
nonetheless.
·
Why does
Spike grab his head during his last encounter with Jonathan and Buffy? Are we to believe his strong desire to bite
them is causing him twinges? Maybe
so. The chip does work well as a
metaphor for internal, instinctual messages – for what’s inside.