azdak

Giles gets his share of the limelight...

The great 19th century biologist, JBS Haldane, asked what could be inferred about the Almighty from a study of His creation, replied ‘An inordinate fondness for beetles’ (one fifth of all known species are beetles – about 350,000 have been discovered so far). What we can infer about Joss from a study of his musical creation is that he has an inordinate fondness for internal rhyme. There may not be 350,000 examples of it in OMWF but it crops up with remarkable frequency. Internal rhyme, for those who didn’t have to sit through Introduction to Poetry, is the technical term for when words rhyme within a line rather than at the end: ‘It’s getting eery, what’s this cheery singing all about?’ is a good example. ‘This is the man that I plan to entangle, isn’t he fine?’ packs in even more. Internal rhyme crops up all over the place in Joss’s songs, but two of them (‘I’ll Never Tell’ and ‘Standing in Your Way’) make such frequent and consistent use of the device that it’s worth looking in more detail at what it contributes to the meaning. In fact, this is going to be the technical essay. I know this can get boring super fast, but I feel I owe it to Joss to point out his facility with language as well as blathering about his characters, because his songs really are as tightly constructed as poems.


It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that internal rhyme is the motor of ‘I’ll Never Tell’. ‘Standing in Your Way’ makes less use of the device, but it’s nonetheless a crucial component of the structure. One of the things internal rhyme does is draw attention to the words that are affected, setting up a link between them in the hearer’s mind (in this respect, it’s just like normal end rhyme). It’s noticeable that Joss likes to the rhymes to coincide with beats in the music, thus underlining still further the words in question. Take a look at the –ay rhymes in Giles’s two refrains

I wish I could say the right words
To lead you through this land.
Wish I could play the father
And take you by the hand
Wish I could stay here
But now I understand
I'm standing in the way[...]

I wish I could lay your arms down
And let you rest at last
Wish I could slay your demons
But now that time has passed
Wish I could stay here
Your stalwart, standing fast
But I've been standing in the way.

The end rhymes here, the ones that we normally pay attention to, are land/hand/understand and last/passed/fast, but the rhythm of the music and
the internal rhyme combine to make the –ay rhymes just as salient. It creates an effect of circling round a central point, constantly returning to it. Even as Giles sings about not staying, the song curls around the word ‘stay’. It gives us an idea of just how hard it is for Giles to leave, that however much he may feel that the dynamic action of leaving is the right one, in practice his thoughts and desires keep returning to the static point of staying. Notice that this is reinforced by the recurring use of the word ‘stand’, not just in the repeated line ‘I’m standing in your way’ but also in ‘understand’ and ‘standing fast’. executrix has also pointed out the extreme frequency with which the -st- consonant cluster occurs (rest, last, passed, stay, stalwart standing fast etc) and argues that this creates the same effect – inability to escape the starting point – as the other devices.

The song also conveys how hard it is for Giles to reach the decision to leave by having him literally unable to articulate what he wants to say. The first two verses end with ‘But I...’ and then the sentence breaks off. When he finally does pick up on this beginning, he says something quite different, not ‘But I’m standing in your way’ (though we finally get that later in the song) but ‘I wish’, so not what he believes he must do but what he wishes he could do (ie. stay, not go). It takes a couple of these false starts before he can finally bring himself to say that he’s standing in her way. Note that he never actually says he must go, just that by being there he’s limiting Buffy. The conclusion that he must therefore leave is left implicit, because it’s too painful to state out loud.

In addition to the use of rhyme and repetition of sounds, there’s a very structured switch back and forth between the two pronouns ‘I’ and ‘you’ that runs throughout the song. It might be easier just to lay out the whole song rather than describe the pattern:

You're not ready for the world outside
You keep pretending, but you just can't hide
I know I said that I'd be standing by your side
But I...

Your path's unbeaten and it's all uphill
And you can meet it, but you never will
And I'm the reason that you're standing still
But I...

I wish I could say the right words
To lead you through this land.
Wish I could play the father
And take you by the hand
Wish I could stay here
But now I understand
I'm standing in the way.

The cries around you, you don't hear at all
'Cause you know I'm here to take that call
So you just lie there when you should be standing tall
But I...

I wish I could lay your arms down
And let you rest at last
Wish I could slay your demons
But now that time has passed
Wish I could stay here
Your stalwart, standing fast
But I've been standing in the way.
I'm just standing ... in the way.

Note that in each verse and in the refrain there is only one line in which both pronouns occur. All the others are either ‘I’ lines or ‘you' lines, reflecting the lack of communication between them (there is no ‘us’). This reinforces the central function of the song as a failed attempt to communicate (we even get a rather cheesy shot of Giles reaching his hand out to Buffy, in which the focus shifts from Giles to the hand itself, before he waithdraws it again). Giles is trying to explain to Buffy why he feels he must go. Perhaps he even hopes that this will shake her up so badly that she’ll come to her senses. But Buffy, of course, is so wrapped up in her own misery that she isn’t listening to him. Ironically, the very fact that she doesn’t hear him (‘Did you just say something?’) just confirms his belief that she is ceasing to hear ‘the cries around her’, failing to take responsibility for ‘the world outside.’ Giles misunderstands catastrophically what Buffy’s state of mind is. Remember, she has been keeping her depression a secret from her friends – they see some of the effects, like the disconnect (‘Dawn’s in trouble. Must be Tuesday’), but have no idea how she’s feeling, or, as Buffy herself puts it, ‘Why I froze.’ This misunderstanding is carefully tracked in the episode. We get the first hint of it in ‘I’ve Got a Theory’ when Buffy sings ‘I’ve got a theory. It doesn’t matter.’ The reaction shots of Giles show that he is at first troubled by this apparent lack of caring on Buffy’s part, giving way to relief when she starts to elaborate that ‘it doesn’t matter’ because when they work together they can defeat anything. In ‘Walk Through the Fire’ he decides to go and help Buffy, not because he’s afraid she can’t handle Sweet but because he’s afraid she has so lost sight of her responsibilities that she actually might not bother to rescue Dawn (‘Am I leaving Dawn in danger?/ Is my Slayer too far gone to care?’). Given that he doesn’t know about her depression (and in Tabula Rasa the onset of Willow’s spell prevents her from explaining it to him), Giles’s decision to leave doesn’t look like such a bad judgment call, and the song does a wonderful of conveying how incredibly hard it is for him to muster up the strength to go.