Visceral Horror in My TV Shows

[itsnotmymind]

TV shows the give me feelings of visceral horror:

Jessica Jones is really, really, the worst in terms of a single character. Torchwood Children of Earth is also very awful, but it’s the whole situation rather than what’s happening to one character that really gets to me. One of the most horrifying moments of Jessica Jones, to me, is when Kilgrave tells her he’ll leave Malcolm alone if she sends him pictures herself. Somehow the fact that he’s asking for selfies, not nudes, just makes it creepier. He has this much control over her, and she has no real choice but to go along with it. And if she doesn’t do it at the right time, he gives implied threats.

Two others that I find very horrifying are Sam Winchester (in Supernatural seasons 3, 4, parts of 5, and the first half of 7, specifically), and Drusilla from Buffy. Drusilla’s situation is more horrifying than Sam’s, but Sam’s is visceral for me as much if not more because he’s a protagonist and we get a stronger sense of his experiences, and also because I love him more.

There’s really no redeeming factor to Dru’s story. People have tried to find it. I've heard argued that the redeeming factor of Drusilla’s story is that she is happy, when Angel gave her eternal life in order to punish her forever. That may be true, but it seems very, very tiny considering that she has become the very “evil thing” that she was desperate to avoid. Another fan, after pointing out accurately that Dru can’t be a survivor because she’d dead, argued that Dru was…I don’t remember her exact wording, but because Dru just existed. Continued. She remains Drusilla.

Except she wasn’t always Drusilla. We don’t know her human name, but if it was Drusilla I’ll eat my hats. Whoever that girl was, perhaps she wasn’t completely and utterly destroyed, she does still exist as that monster, but she was transformed into the thing she least wanted to be. There is no redemption for her.

And that’s horrifying.

And yet...maybe those fans aren't so wrong. Drusilla is dead, to be sure - but also not. She still exists. She’s not miserable. Angel has turned her into what he wanted her to be. He made her, he designed her. She was, indeed, his art.
But she’s not…she’s not forced, not anymore. She makes her own decisions. “I could pick the wisest and bravest knight in all the land - and make him mine forever with a kiss.” And she does.

She’s insane. Angel and Darla made her insane. They took her sanity and they made her a monster - but they don’t control her. She’s not a prisoner. She’s a very different being now, she’s the “thing” she didn’t want to be. What happened to her was not her choice. As others have pointed out, Dru is the only one of the fanged four who does not get some form of redemption…because she does not need redemption. She’s a victim. An eternal victim.

Dru is a monster, but she is a monster who makes her own decisions about what to do. Angel and Darla can’t, for example, keep her from vamping Darla again. She’s the monster, now, and they are the victims. Dru is out of her mind, but her insanity is hers. She has visions and she says things that make no sense and Angel and Darla can never understand. She’s a Cassandra who has no desire to be understood. She loves. She loves “quite well. If not wisely.” She’s not the young woman who begged Angel to help her be good. And yet…"In the end, we all are who we are, no matter how much we may appear to have changed." Drusilla is her own being, her own independent agent.

Comments

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I remember a decade ago, when I did some rp with Jossverse characters at theatrical_muse, all rp-lers agreed that resouling Drusilla would be the cruelest thing you could do to her, so no one would; in her state, she's happy, the first and probably still the most impressive of Joss' mad Ophelias out for murder. But yes, the girl she'd been would not have chosen this.

Though that brings us to the question of Jossverse vampire identities. I once wrote a ficlet about Darla where during her pregnancy and varies attempts to end it she sires a Watcher (for his knowledge) to help her, and he revenges himself by telling her the Watchers have theorized that not only are the original Liam, William, Not Yet Darla and Not Yet Drusilla dead and gone - because why would their souls hang about after their bodies died and were resurrected with a demon inside - but that the original vampire Darla also is gone, and who she is after each resurrection is a new person who simply has the cellular memories from her body and thus believes herself to be the same. Darla promptly stakes him and never tells anyone about this. For what it's worth, I don't believe that this is the narrative intention - despite Angel's dithering on the subject in Orpheus, most of his storylines would make no sense if he wasn't the same person (minus any superego restraints when soulless) throughout, and his relationships to the other vampires certainly wouldn't. And it's not what I believe most of the time. But it's a plausible interpretation within the set up. So is Drusilla, physical shape aside, in any meaningful way that girl whom Angel (and Darla) victimized? But if she remembers, there's meaning right there, and they definitely remember, so I guess that answers the question.

Re: Kilgrave and Jessica: Somehow the fact that he’s asking for selfies, not nudes, just makes it creepier.

That's true, and I think it's because it ties to the horror of him fashioning the relationship into a romance in his mind, and the mundane every day ness of selfies. (That, and of course it's such a great narrative set up for the last thing Jessica ever says to him, ahem.)

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

I don't remember reading that ficlet. I could see the watchers believing that.

I wonder, if Dru isn't the girl Angel victimized, who is she? Where does the demon in a vampire's body come from?

[lokifan]

Jessica Jones is such terrifyingly effective horror. I totally agree about the selfies. It's so so awful.

Drusilla is a fascinating character. I tend to agree with both you and pocochina, who I think is the one who made the point that Drusilla is the eternal victim - and can't be framed as a survivor because she didn't survive Angel (and Darla) - but she's happy, she's loved, she's herself. All the things people are told "victims" can't be, especially (afaik) in the crazily self-reliant American culture.

[itsnotmymind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I recall pocochina saying something along those lines. Arguing that being a "victim" isn't automatically a bad thing - which I think is a wise thing to say.