"Who Are You?"
Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode
Episode no.Season 4
Episode 16
Directed byJoss Whedon
Written byJoss Whedon
Production code4ABB16
Original air dateFebruary 29, 2000 (2000-02-29)
Guest appearances

"Who Are You?" is the 16th episode of season 4 of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Written and directed by series creator Joss Whedon, it originally aired February 29, 2000 on The WB.

Plot

Note: Buffy's and Faith's names refer to their consciousnesses, rather than their bodies.

Buffy, in (Faith's body) is abducted by the Watchers Council's team. Meanwhile Faith, (in Buffy's body) gives herself a makeover and heads to The Bronze, where she has ruthless fun at the expense of Spike and Tara. Tara recognizes that something is wrong, and she and Willow perform a spell to find the real Buffy. Faith visits Riley and has sex with him while Buffy escapes the Council's team and heads back to Sunnydale in search of Giles and her friends.

Buffy convinces Giles of her identity with the help of Willow and Tara. Meanwhile, Adam convinces a group of vampires of their superiority and they attack a church. Faith tries to leave town, but after seeing what is happening on the news, goes to the church to help while Buffy does the same. Faith and Riley each kill one of the three gang members, but the leader overpowers Faith. Before he can kill her, Buffy stakes him from behind. They fight, and Buffy, with the help of Willow and Tara's conjured Draconian Katra device, restores herself and Faith to their rightful bodies. Faith subsequently escapes and leaves town, and Buffy discovers that Riley had sex with Faith during the body swap.

Production

In a scene where Faith in Buffy's body tries to seduce Riley, the camera "cut[s] to a medium close-up shot of her leather-clad backside", ostensibly Riley's point-of-view shot. Jason Middleton notes that this is a rare case where the audience's gaze is "positioned in a highly fetishistic relation towards Buffy's body". However, Middleton notes, the show disavows this viewing position by reminding the audience that it is Faith's positioning the body, connoting its "look-at-me-ness"; Buffy herself is disconnected from this image of her body. Riley, with whom the viewer is identified, disavows the shot by appearing confused and taken aback rather than sexually predatory. Middleton concludes this covertly allows "a scopophilic position ... for the viewer, even as the show disavows this position".[1]

Analysis

Gregory Stevenson, in Televised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, finds it significant that Faith's moment where she "confesses the truth about herself and begins to experience the weight of moral responsibility" occurs in a church.[2]

In their book discussing existentialism in Buffy, Richardson and Rabb argue that this episode and the previous (intended or not) explore the impact of Sartre's Look - the outside view that causes a person to redefine themselves from the perspective of the Other. Faith can now literally see herself as Buffy sees her. When the real Buffy escapes from the Watchers' Council and challenges Faith, the two fight, and Faith (in Buffy's body) repeatedly punches her own face in a fit of self-loathing, shouting, "You're nothing! Disgusting, murderous bitch! You're nothing! You're disgusting!" According to Richardson and Rabb, "Faith is finally seeing herself as Buffy sees her and is even harder on herself than Buffy has ever been."[3]

Continuity

Buffy's crinkly, crimped hair signals that the episode contains characters who are different than usual, a little "off" or under a spell. See, for example, "Beer Bad," "The Zeppo," "Something Blue," "This Year's Girl," "Superstar," and "Where the Wild Things Are."[4][5][6]

References

  1. ↑ Jason Middleton (2007). "Buffy as Femme Fatale: The Cult Heroine and the Male Spectator". In Elana Levine and Lisa Parks (ed.). Undead TV. Duke University Press. pp. 158–160. ISBN 978-0-8223-4043-0.
  2. ↑ Stevenson, Gregory (2003), Televised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Oxford: University Press of America, p. 122, ISBN 0-7618-2833-8
  3. ↑ Richardson, J. Michael; Rabb, J. Douglas (2007), "Buffy, Faith and Bad Faith: Choosing to be the Chosen One", Slayage, 23, archived from the original on 2007-09-27, retrieved 2007-07-26
  4. ↑ "Recap / Recap / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S3 E13: "The Zeppo"". TV Tropes. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
  5. ↑ "Recap / Buffy the Vampire Slayer S4 E9 "Something Blue"". TV Tropes. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
  6. ↑ Dellamonica, Alyx (December 3, 2012). "Buffy the Vampire Slayer Rewatch: Slaying is Hard. Let's Go Shopping!". Tor.com. Retrieved January 7, 2024.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Who Are You?.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.