rewatching buffy for the millionth time and contrary to my last opinion i think xander harris was a good man. he grew up in an abusive home and dedicated his life to help fight the ~good~ fight even though he was a normal civilian who had no powers and honestly could not do much. most people hate him because he got in between of their couples ships (bangel/spuffy) but honestly…he was justified. of course, with bangel he was jealous and everyone acts petty and hurt when their honey is w/ someone else but when angel came back no one knew if he was going to lose his soul again. and no friend would want to see their bestie shackin up with a soulless monster (spike) who tormented and tried to kill them for years. i don’t know. xander harris gets a lot of hate (from me previously) but he was just trying his best. i’m not excusing him for his dickhead moments but we also have to be aware of the type of environment he grew up in.
A lot of people don’t seem to understand what Barbara actually did as Oracle, so let me clear up some misconceptions. Oracle is first and foremost an information broker. She’s a data nexus, a living hub of information that crimefighters around the world could reach out to for assistance and mission coordination:
“So how’d you become the data nexus for every costumed crimebuster in the world?” “That’s gonna have to remain off the table too.”
Yes, that role centers her gift with technology, computers and hacking, and that is the area where Babs most often shines. And yes, those tech skills are incredibly formidable andabsolutely vital to her work! But theTECHNOLOGY isn’t what makes Babs special.
Babs’ tech skills positioned her as one of the most prominent fictional women in STEM in the 90s/early 2000s and gave her the ability to do things like build a VR fighting simulation room (eg, a Star Trek-esque holodeck) from scratch:
“Maybe we should move back to Greenie play level.” “But you designed this game, Babs. And this incredible virtual reality projection room.” -Birds of Prey (1999) #19
However, those skills are all ultimately secondary to her real gifts, which are her eidetic memory and her ability to gather, analyze, synthesize and distribute information to people:
“What I believe happened to Batman is too important to rely on my photographic memory…” /// “Having been blessed with photographic recall, I studied a dozen newspapers, four dozen magazines, and my main haunt: the computer bulletin boards.” -Showcase ‘94 #12/// “I was nine when I realized I could ace any test without really studying. The photographic memory thing.” -BOP (1999)/// “My memory is eidetic (i.e. perfect). It’s my greatest asset.” -Batgirl (2011) #35
Oracle wasn’t just a glorified hacker. She was the crimefighting community’s living computer and central information hub:
“There is little she doesn’t already know. There is nothing she can’t find out. If knowledge is truly power, Oracle is one of the most powerful people on the planet. Despite having her spine shattered by the Joker’s bullet, Barbara Gordon refused to give up. Recognizing she could no longer be the kind of superhero she had been, she instead devoted all her time to developing one of the world’s most complex and powerful computer systems and set to work accumulating information, renaming herself ‘Oracle.’ Blessed with a photographic memory, Barbara reads dozens of the world’s top newspapers and magazines daily. She’s also constantly gathering information from other, less public sources, such as the CIA’s mainframe, not to mention the data networks of the FBI, NSA, and Interpol (all without their knowledge or consent).” -Secret Files and Origins(2000)
“Now as Oracle, she uses information as her weapon. With her vast computer network, Oracle is linked up to every hero on the planet and is always ready to help.” /// “With a photographic memory, Oracle is considered information central in the superhero community. She’s a computer specialist and expert hacker–and she has files on every villain and hero.”
“But Barbara invented a new life for herself as Oracle-computer master and undisputed sovereign of data collection and dissemination. There is hardly a crimefighter on the planet that has not come to rely on her skills and dedication.”
“I’m keeping the secret identities and home addresses of every superhero in the world from being stolen. Think maybe that’s a little bit important?” -Countdown #39 ///“Oracle: The Living Mind of the Justice League. Oracle monitors and records the worldwide flow of information. She Analyzes. She Interprets. She Calculates.”
It’s part of why “Cop!Babs” is so insidious as a profession DC keeps pushing onto her, because Barbara Gordon is, at her core, a librarian. As Oracle, she gathered information and valuable resources and then coordinated with crimefighters around the world to help them access and utilize it. Her day job became her night job:
“From my days as Gotham’s head librarian, I knew how to find out whatever I needed. If I could do that for citizens, I could do it for colleges, non-profit corporations, private investigators…and superheroes.” -Showcase ‘94 #12
She’s not “just” a tech geek; librarians are trained to have specific sets of research, information analysis, and communication skills that others don’t have. And those are skills she has that the other Batfamily members do not, and they are skills she has regardless of whether or not she can walk:
“I was tired of being a victim. I had skills and abilities long before I was Batgirl. It was time to make them work for me again. It was time to stop being afraid.” -Oracle: Year One
This skillset also served her well as the co-founder and leader of the Birds of Prey; contrary to semi-popular perception, she’s not just the Birds’ 'Guy in the Chair.’ She’s the Birds’ Leader and Mission Control. She tells them where they need to go, what they need to do, and how to achieve their goals. To put it into James Bond terms, she’s their “Q”, but she’s also their “M.”
So if you look at Oracle and you only see “hacker and tech specialist,” you are seeing a very limited picture of who Barbara is, what her skillset is and how she uses it, and what her role in the crimefighting community was.
I’m talking about Book!Eowyn. This is important to remember because she’s so very different from Movie!Eowyn.
When I first read Lord of the Rings I was 11, which looking back was way too young to fully understand them. Rereading them when a was as a mature, wise eighteen-year-old (yes, that counts as an adult) I find myself looking at Eowyn differently.
As a kid, I felt like she was a good example of how to not write a female character. She was going to commit suicide just because a random guy didn’t like her, and she ends the story marrying a random dude and deciding to stay in the kitchen. Like a lot of people, I thought her entire character was pretty sexist. Of course, I loved Movie!Eowyn. She was my idea of a good female character: a spunky warrior who smashed the patriarchy.
Between 11 and 18 I’ve struggled with depression a lot. My experiences with that and other mental illnesses put Lord of the Rings in a completely different light. Its funny no one mentions exactly how much it’s about conquering depression. That’s practically the main theme of the book. Every character suffers from depression at one point, every character gives up all hope at least once, and it’s the constant, unseen enemy. The Nazguls personify despair, but we see less blatant examples too. Eowyn’s journey is possibly my favorite.
Eowyn’s situation when we first meet her is pretty terrible. Her cousin has recently died, her brother is banished and on a suicide mission, and there’s a creepy guy constantly trying to make moves on her. Her kingdom is about to be overrun and her people are being killed, and there’s nothing she can do about it. What’s worst, her uncle, who’s practically a father to her, is being manipulated and weakened. She watched him grow weaker every day and there’s no way she can help him. She’s royalty, born for greatness, but she’s stuck helplessly watching everything around her crumble and rot.
That sort of depression, the kind when you fear your own helplessness and inability more than anything when you are unable to fight back, doesn’t have a name. But those who have faced it know how draining and debilitating it is, especially when you feel that you have to stay strong for those around you.
Then Gandalf and co come in and save the day, Eowyn sees a way out. She sees Aragorn and becomes obsessed with him. Not because she’s actually in love with him, but because she sees him as a great king who will give her a chance to fight, a chance to be great, a chance of freedom.
But then he leaves on what seems like a suicide mission, and she knows her uncle and brother are on their way to a battle they probably won’t return from. She, however, is stuck once more, left behind to watch her world fall apart while she can do nothing.
Her soul has been worn away by the endless waiting. She has no hope left that the power of Mordor can be defeated because she has watched it invade her very home while she could do nothing. In many ways, she’s similar to Denethor, who was destroyed by doing nothing but watching the enemy creep closer. But Denethor’s paralysis was by choice. Eowyn has no choice, she rarely does. She has no control over anything. And the one person she thought could save her and her kingdom is leaving on what seems like a hopeless journey.
Eowyn is no longer afraid of dying. She’s reached rock bottom at this point. All she wants is a chance to make a difference, to make a choice for once in her life. So she disguises herself as a soldier and marches off to battle she doesn’t plan to come back from.
And of course, she takes Merry, who might not be as desperate but also feels pretty helpless.
We all know what happens next. That scene is so famous, it’s probably one of the best moments of the books. It’s way better in the book the movie: Eowyn laughs before her “I am no man,” line. But looking further into it the scene is about as heartbreaking as it is awesome. Eowyn’s laughing because at last, she’s doing something. At last, she’s able to at least try to make a choice. A choice at how she will die, heroically, defending her king and father-figure to the last. The Nazgul, whose weapon is soul-crushing despair, has no effect on her because she’s faced it day after day. And that despair had no face and no form and she couldn’t fight it. And now, finally, in her last moments, she has a chance to fight it.
And she does.
But instead of dying, she’s wounded, and yet when Aragorn heals her she finds that not much has changed. She still believes that their defeat at the hands of Mordor is inevitable, and she’s still determined to die in the best way she can. If she can’t control her life, she might as well control her death.
But she can’t even control that. Aragorn and the others insist that she stays behind to heal while they once again head off to a hopeless last stand. Yet again she’s trapped, helpless, waiting for Mordor to win and overrun everything.
She killed a Ringwraith, but nothing much changed.
Then she meets Faramir. He’s the first person she lets see her as anything but strong. She allows herself to cry before him, and later on, draws close to him when she thinks the armies of Mordor are coming. This is a sharp contrast to the way she treated Aragorn, constantly trying to prove her strength to him. She lets Faramir see her pain and her fear. Faramir knows quite a bit about despair himself, and he’s watched at least one loved one (his father) be destroyed by it already. He wants to save Eowyn from her own hopelessness. The two grow close, and Eowyn allows herself to melt a little.
Finally, after Mordor falls, Faramir asks her if she loves him, or Aragorn. Like many love triangles, this one is symbolic. Aragorn offered what she thought she needed: a chance to have control of her life, to be great queen, to have control over her world. But he was never going to love her back, and great deeds were never going to heal her.
Faramir offered a simple life. He wasn’t a king, her place as second in line to Rohan was much higher than his. But he loves her, and she loves him. He gave her a chance to be a healer, a mother, and a wife. She was never going to heal chasing the impossible, striving for a last heroic stand. She had to stop fighting and let herself heal.
Ironically enough, killing the personification of despair didn’t conquer Eowyn’s depression, finally accepting someone else’s love and letting herself a chance to heal did.
Eowyn’s story is not about a battle against evil hordes or even the patriarchy, but of a battle against depression. She is so much more than a spunky heroine or a tragic lover. Her character is complex and her despair feels very real because many of us have felt it.
Many people, including me at first, felt like Eowyn’s ending was sexist. But Tolkien never saw battle as heroic or good. We naturally see it sexist that our heroine retires to become a healer and wife because we’ve been taught that those things aren’t ‘heroic’ or ‘cool’. But Tolkien’s heroes rarely are skilled in battle, and over and over again we are given the message that true strength is not what it seems.
The great ones: Denethor, Boromir, Theoden, and Saruman are easily corrupted. The small, unimportant hobbits who like to cook and garden (fairly traditionally feminine activities) are the strongest of all. Even Aragorn is recognized as a king due to being a healer, not a warrior.
Eowyn’s story is another one in which Tolkien shows us that true strength isn’t killing a terrifying demon but letting yourself hope again.
There has been a half-complete version of post on my Dreamwidth journal under a “Private” filter (my eyes only) here since 9 December, 2018, just waiting for me to get the energy and mental focus to write an essay outlining all the textual evidence in Act 4, scene 1 (Ophelia’s “madness” scene). But at this point, I don’t think the required energy for that will ever come – at least, not for the long essay format.
So I’m just going to post my conspiracy theory Thesis Statement here:
Ophelia did notcommit suicide – she was murdered. By Queen Gertrude (probably).
And I can’t help but wonder how this play would be taught and performed if this interpretation were the standard one
Here’s a bit of a presentation by Shakespearean actor and scholar, Ben Crystal, on his interpretation of the “To be, or not to be?” soliloquy, and how he no longer thinks Hamlet was suicidal at that point in the play, either (though he was, earlier on): Ben Crystal talks about Original Pronunciation, 20 July 2017 (it’s at a point about 40 minutes in to the whole thing).
So what if suicide is nota recurring theme of the play? How does that change things?
Reblogging myself already, because my brain won’t let go of it.
Just imagine how classroom discussions, and essays in literary academic journals would go if it were read that Ophelia did notbreak under the weight of a cruel world, but instead had to be eliminated because she knew too much, and was on the brink of inciting a rebellion against King Claudius (Yes, that’s actually alluded to in the text).
If, while the men of the play were scheming and faffing about, the play pivoted on the actions of a middle-aged woman on one side, and a teenage girl on the other.
Tell us more! Tell us more!
First off – my mistake: it’s Act 4 Scene 5, not scene one. And it opens thusly (lines that merit attention are bolded):
QUEEN GERTRUDE: I will not speak with her.
Gentleman: She is importunate, indeed distract: Her mood will needs be pitied.
QUEEN GERTRUDE: What would she have?
Gentleman: She speaks much of her father; says she hears There’s tricks i’ the world; and hems, and beats her heart; Spurns enviously at straws; speaks things in doubt, That carry but half sense: her speech is nothing, Yet the unshaped use of it doth move The hearers to collection; they aim at it, And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts; Which, as her winks, and nods, and gestures yield them, Indeed would make one think there might be thought, Though nothing sure, yet much unhappily.
A bit later, Ophelia comes in, singing. Not of flowers, yet, but alternating between a mourning song, and a very bawdy song that a young noble lady of sixteen years should not be singing in public, just in time for Claudius to hear her.
KING CLAUDIUS: Conceit upon her father.
OPHELIA: Pray you, let’s have no words of this; but when they ask you what it means, say you this: [translation: You want to know what it means? I’ll tell you what it means!]
Sings To-morrow is Saint Valentine’s day, All in the morning betime, And I a maid at your window, To be your Valentine. Then up he rose, and donn’d his clothes, And dupp’d the chamber-door; Let in the maid, that out a maid Never departed more.
KING CLAUDIUS: Pretty Ophelia!
OPHELIA: Indeed, la, without an oath, I’ll make an end on’t: [Let me finish!]
Sings By Gis and by Saint Charity, Alack, and fie for shame! Young men will do’t, if they come to’t; By cock, they are to blame. Quoth she, before you tumbled me, You promised me to wed. So would I ha’ done, by yonder sun, An thou hadst not come to my bed.
[So here’s a song about a woman having sex out of wedlock because a guy promised to repay her… and then he reneges on his promise because she had sex with him]
And then Ophelia exits, spouting seeming madness, and Claudius says to Horatio:
Follow her close; give her good watch, I pray you.
So Claudius suspects something – whether that’s a suicide watch, or to make sure she doesn’t inspire rebellion – isn’t explicitly stated in text. But in any case, Ophelia’s notalone.
Then, Leartes comes in, leading a mob of commoners, who are chanting that he should be king (see the comment of Gentleman, above). And we have this exchange:
Leartes: Where is my father?
Claudius: Dead.
Gertrude: But not by him.
That, right there, is a singleline of iambic pentameter. Which means that Gertrude literallydoes not skip a beat to defend Claudius before thinking of protecting her own son.
And now Ophelia comes in and sings her “mad flower song.” This Wordpress article outlines the symbolism of each flower and herb (It also spells out specific actions by Ophelia which are not spelled out in the original). The meaning flies right over our heads, but audiences of the time would have grokked it immediately; There’s “Grief” and “remembrance;” there’s also “flattery” and “deceived lovers” and an herb commonly used to induce abortions…
And the next news we hear of Ophelia is that she’s “Drowned herself.” Who delivers this news? Queen Gertrude – with an overabundance of minute detail of the scene as it happened.
Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault…
AndthenI realized that Hamlet had to have the murder plot revealed to him by the ghost of his father, because he was away at school, but Ophelia was there at court, the whole time, and could have seen everything going down. But who pays attention to teenage girls hanging around the edges, or worries about what they see or don’t see, amirite?
Idothink Ophelia was having a mental breakdown, triggered by grief and shock. But I think it was more of the “loss of situational awareness” and “blind to the danger” variety, instead of “no longer have the will to live” variety.
And that’s my analysis. And I’m sticking with it.
Oh, this is splendid!
*bows*
Thank you.
And then there are these lines from Queen Gertrude, after she agrees to talk with Ophelia, and Horatio exits to go fetch her:
To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss: So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt.
I’ve always liked that line about spilling something because you’re trying too hard not to (because RELATABLE). But I only just now realized that Shakespeare was putting underlines and circles and arrows around the whole issue of the queen’s quilt (and activerole in the whole scheme with Claudius), by making those lines a pair of rhyming couplets, when nothing else in that scene rhymes.
I think the common interpretation of Ophelia has been handed down to us by literary critics and theater directors, who have all been men, and idealized the manic pixie dream gilrl, so they’ve always cast Ophelia as the tragic and doomed version of that.
When really, she was the brightest candle in the chandelier – and had she lived, she might have led the revolution to put her brother on the throne – so she had to be snuffed out.
Okay – I’d like to post a CORRECTION to this paragraph, that I wrote, above:
Finally, there’s the fact that Ophelia was being hastily buried in the churchyard – even though that was strictly forbidden for suicides. The younger gravedigger thinks that’s because Ophelia was a privileged noblewoman, and getting special treatment. The older gravedigger reminds him (and the audience) that not all people who die by drowning are at fault…
I went back and reread that bit (which really should be included in the list of evidence thatHamlet is a black comedy – in the script, the two gravediggers are named “First Clown” and “Second Clown.”
Anyway, it’s the eldergravedigger who argues that Ophelia committed suicide, but in the process, reminds the audience that it shouldn’t be counted as such. I’ll just quote that bit:
Give me leave. Here lies the water; good: here stands the man; good; if the man go to this water, and drown himself, it is, will he, nill he, he goes,–mark you that; but if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself: argal, he that is not guilty of his own death shortens not his own life.
So, he’s arguing that because Ophelia went into the water, she must have committed suicide – but we, in the audience, who’ve just witnessedOphelia’s madness just a few scenes earlier (even ignoring Queen Gertrude’s suspicious behavior), know that Ophelia did not“Wittingly” go into the water, because she was (at the very least) so lost in madness that she fell in accidentally.
Now, I’m not one of those people who stan Shakespeare in everything he wrote (a few of his plays are just hot messes), but here, I do agree that he’s at his peak, with what characters know which, (or should that be which know what?), and telling us the story of what happened, not through some Authorial voice on High, but many different limited points of view.
Reblogging to add a link to this postfrom@bisexual-evanhansen about re-imagining the “Get thee to a nunnery!” scene wherein Ophelia plays an active role in directing the “stage fight” between herself and Hamlet, and it’s played for laughs.
Because I really think it adds to my pile of evidence that Ophelia was murdered.
That warm, fuzzy feeling when a mutual reblogs a post that you were debating about whether to reblog, yourself.
(Instead, I opted to post something new, to put fresh thoughts in my brain)
But this still deserves to be signal boosted. ‘Cause Ophelia was done dirty. First, in-story, by Gertrude, and then, in the centuries after, when Literature teachers and theater directors shape how her story is interpreted.
As someone who first suggested Hamlet is not a tragedy in my tenth-grade English class (I didn’t know the phrase “black comedy” at the time but yeah, it totally is), I would agree with all this, and IN ADDITION:
I would suggest Ophelia’s murder didn’t start with the drowning, and that it wasn’t even entirely related to Laertes.
So first, we have her song about sex out of wedlock. It’s worth noting that much earlier in the play, when she and Laertes speak right before the “to thine own self be true” speech, there are hints that she herself is already “a maid no more,” at Hamlet’s hand. Now keep in mind the rest of the play takes place over the course of, at a minimum, several months, and:
If that’s true, and if perhaps Ophelia has a Little Problem, that little problem–legitimate or not–is heir to the throne.
So if it gets out that Claudius might have been responsible for the death of Hamlet, Sr–and Hamlet, Jr gives us plenty of reasons to be suspicious even before the ghost appears–then he’s almost certainly going to die at the hands of a mob. In which case Hamlet would ascend to the throne, but–oh, what’s this? Hamlet’s dead? Well, then the next in line is–
–a commoner’s child.
Yikes.
So Gertrude offers Ophelia some help with her Little Problem. All of the plants mentioned in the “mad flower song” could be used, in conjunction with each other, as abortifacients, but there’s one very important thing to note about them:
They have to be very, very precisely measured. Or they can cause sudden severe mood swings, hemorrhaging, excessive bleeding, disorientation, lack of focus, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, unconsciousness, and death.
You know. As might be implied by “singing small snatches of songs” and laying in a creek apparently unaware you’re doing so and unable to pull yourself out. And, as noted above, Gertrude knows one hell of a lot about this scene; as my high school English teacher pointed out, why didn’t anyone help Ophelia, if they could see her so damn well they could describe the whole thing?
