Whedon wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the intention of using it to empower women. He made the lead a strong independent female teenager who continually saved the world from things only her line of women could fight; she is the ideal feminist. At least, that’s what she is supposed to be. So why is Buffy all decked out in sexualized clothing? Why is she so entirely dependent on her male relationships?
Whedon really tries to drive home the feminist message in this final episode of BtVS. He makes the point blatantly in several scenes throughout the episode. For instance, when Buffy is explaining her plan she says in reference to the first Watchers, “They were powerful men. This (points to Willow) woman is more powerful than all of them combined.” Buffy wishes to overthrow the male structure of her world and replace it with an army of female heroines. He follows Willows successful empowerment of all those women with several scenes of women finding their inner strength and standing up to prove it.
EXT. BASEBALL DIAMOND - DAY
A young woman stands at the plate staring at the pitcher, waiting to bat. She looks a little nervous.
BUFFY (Voice Over)
From now on, every girl in the world who might be a slayer...
INT. HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY - DAY
A young woman breathes heavily as she leans on her locker for support.
will be a slayer.
INT. LIVING ROOM - DAY
A young woman is lying across the floor, having fallen out of her chair.
Every girl who could have the power...
INT. DINING ROOM - DAY
In a Japanese-style dining room, a young woman stands up at family dinner.
will have the power... can stand up,
INT. BASEMENT - DAY
A young woman grabs the wrist of a man who's trying to slap her face, preventing him.
will stand up.
EXT. BASEBALL DIAMOND - DAY
The girl at the plate changes from nervous to confident, smiling as she waits for the pitch.
Slayers... every one of us. Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?
So why do the writers counter the very theme (if we can even still consider it a theme with so many counter points made) that spurned the entire idea for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series? The final act of battle, the act that wins the war and saves the entire world, has nothing to do with Buffy; in fact, no women at all are involved. It is Spike, Buffy’s current male support, who saves the day in this grand finale. I don’t understand what they were trying to do. If the writers went through so much trouble to culminate the show by driving home the idea of female power, then why is this episode’s savior not a woman?
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Chosen?
New theme... doesn’t matter how special or supposedly unique you are, you are NOT alone. A motif of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been this idea of the chosen ONE, someone who is unique from all the others who must stand alone to face the enemies of the world. Well, I’m sorry to say it, but guess what Buffy? You are not alone; you never have been, so get over it.
The one time Buffy was ever actually alone was when she refused to believe that there were others standing right there beside, when she thrust them back and refused to acknowledge their presence. Yeah, then they gave up trying to be there for her after nearly a year or more of not being allowed to do reach their full potential, not being allowed to fight the evil.
Yet even then, she was not alone for long. Spike never left her, though she surely gave a fair attempt at shoving him away just the same as she did with everybody else. Still, he never budged from his position of support.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Buffy has never been alone. Regardless of what the prophecy says about one girl in every generation who alone can carry the burden, Buffy is not alone, and she should realize by now that the prophecy was decreed by the very council she has proven false. In fact, the prophecy was no longer applicable when Faith appeared in season 3; there are two slayers now, not one lonely hero. Buffy can’t even claim that Faith doesn’t count anymore because she’s fighting on the good side again.
Beyond just the slayer role, Willow, Xander, and even Giles have all proven on multiple occasions that they too have a part for which they were chosen to play. Granted they have a choice; they could all leave whenever they wanted, but the real fact is that they never shrink from bearing their burden.
Even the potentials have a role to play. They fight right there beside Buffy, and they kill vampires. None of them had a choice in the matter; they were all chosen by the same force that Buffy was, and they participate in all they are supposed to do. The only exception is when Buffy pushes them too far with her arrogance and disregard for their presence. They are not just weapons; they are people like Buffy; the almighty chosen one is surrounded by fighters, and I don’t understand why she continues to insist on her position as a lone figure.
The one time Buffy was ever actually alone was when she refused to believe that there were others standing right there beside, when she thrust them back and refused to acknowledge their presence. Yeah, then they gave up trying to be there for her after nearly a year or more of not being allowed to do reach their full potential, not being allowed to fight the evil.
Yet even then, she was not alone for long. Spike never left her, though she surely gave a fair attempt at shoving him away just the same as she did with everybody else. Still, he never budged from his position of support.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Buffy has never been alone. Regardless of what the prophecy says about one girl in every generation who alone can carry the burden, Buffy is not alone, and she should realize by now that the prophecy was decreed by the very council she has proven false. In fact, the prophecy was no longer applicable when Faith appeared in season 3; there are two slayers now, not one lonely hero. Buffy can’t even claim that Faith doesn’t count anymore because she’s fighting on the good side again.
Beyond just the slayer role, Willow, Xander, and even Giles have all proven on multiple occasions that they too have a part for which they were chosen to play. Granted they have a choice; they could all leave whenever they wanted, but the real fact is that they never shrink from bearing their burden.
Even the potentials have a role to play. They fight right there beside Buffy, and they kill vampires. None of them had a choice in the matter; they were all chosen by the same force that Buffy was, and they participate in all they are supposed to do. The only exception is when Buffy pushes them too far with her arrogance and disregard for their presence. They are not just weapons; they are people like Buffy; the almighty chosen one is surrounded by fighters, and I don’t understand why she continues to insist on her position as a lone figure.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
The 4 Rs (They’re All the Same.)
I’m not sure that these are the best episodes in which to return to the topic of the God question I brought up in a previous blog post, but I will try to at least use a couple lines from these to clarify what I was saying before addressing anything new.
My main complain was that Buffy the Vampire Slayer uses several religious references throughout the entire series. They use the myths of different beliefs, traditions, and religions, but they never address the big question that comes from making these references. Is there a God in this series? Is there a devil? Are there greater forces out there?
The series keeps circling around these questions without ever attempting to provide an answer. In a show that deals in myth, we ought to know the structure of the myths. If crosses and Christian churches work against Vampires, then we need to know if that is because God truly has shunned them or is it simply an effect of the Vampires inborn recognition of its rejection from its previous life. Perhaps such creature do not to be reminded of the souls they no longer have, but if that is the case it would only make sense in vampires who were religious as humans. Why else would they care? Unless they realize through the process of being turned that there is a God or something that has rejected them.
I have been very unsatisfied that, while the series will explain demons and such, it will not attempt to answer the God question. The show doesn’t need to get philosophical, just explain the world that we are dealing with. We know the ancient religions work (Osris, Hecate); what about the ones people still practice?
In the blog post in which I brought up this topic, I was suggesting that season 7 might at least bring up this question if not answer it, and it seems to be starting to do just that. Father Caleb mentions Satan, not to deny him but to claim he has no power when he says, “Satan is a little man.” Andrew also clarifies for us the definition of faith that is being used in the show when he narrates, “Faith: a set of principles or beliefs on which you are willing to devote your life.” It will be interesting to see if the season addresses the God question any further. I hope it does.
I didn’t mean to write so much about that topic, but I will try to make my actual topic brief so as not to overextend this post too much. “Lies My Parents Told Me” and “Dirty Girls” both seem to be about one thing, well four things actually that amount to pretty much the same thing: righteousness, reformation, redemption, and revenge.
Reformation and Redemption are addressed as if they were exactly the same things in this series or, at least, coexisting things for which each requires the other. Then in “Dirty Girls,” righteousness is treated in almost the same way as revenge was treated in “Lies My Parents Told Me.” Father Caleb addresses the attack of slayers and potentials by simply commenting, “You girls are just blazing with righteousness!” He speaks as if he finds this fact amusing but distracting almost like when Buffy addresses Principal Wood by saying, “I’m preparing to fight a war, and you’re looking for revenge... I don’t have time for vendettas. The mission is what matters.” It’s almost as if Father Caleb sees their belief in their own righteousness to be little more than an excuse for revenge.
We’ve brought the four Rs (righteousness, redemption, reformation, revenge) down to two now, but we can take it one step further still. Revenge seems to be just as much a part of redemption as reformation is in this series. For instance, Spike in “Lies My Parents Told Me” comments, “I gave him gave him a pass, let him live, on account of the fact I killed his mother...He even so much as looks at me funny again, I promise I’ll kill him.” This is meant to be a sign that he is reformed and on the way to redemption, even though he beat Wood to a near unconscious pulp before stepping away. That beating was revenge for the beating Spike had just received, and so is his promise to murder, which seems to prove to Buffy that he is reformed and trustworthy.
Thus, redemption=reformation=revenge=righteousness. I think the wonderful people of Sunnydale need to learn to pick up a dictionary some time, before their connotations get even further from the actual denotation.
My main complain was that Buffy the Vampire Slayer uses several religious references throughout the entire series. They use the myths of different beliefs, traditions, and religions, but they never address the big question that comes from making these references. Is there a God in this series? Is there a devil? Are there greater forces out there?
The series keeps circling around these questions without ever attempting to provide an answer. In a show that deals in myth, we ought to know the structure of the myths. If crosses and Christian churches work against Vampires, then we need to know if that is because God truly has shunned them or is it simply an effect of the Vampires inborn recognition of its rejection from its previous life. Perhaps such creature do not to be reminded of the souls they no longer have, but if that is the case it would only make sense in vampires who were religious as humans. Why else would they care? Unless they realize through the process of being turned that there is a God or something that has rejected them.
I have been very unsatisfied that, while the series will explain demons and such, it will not attempt to answer the God question. The show doesn’t need to get philosophical, just explain the world that we are dealing with. We know the ancient religions work (Osris, Hecate); what about the ones people still practice?
In the blog post in which I brought up this topic, I was suggesting that season 7 might at least bring up this question if not answer it, and it seems to be starting to do just that. Father Caleb mentions Satan, not to deny him but to claim he has no power when he says, “Satan is a little man.” Andrew also clarifies for us the definition of faith that is being used in the show when he narrates, “Faith: a set of principles or beliefs on which you are willing to devote your life.” It will be interesting to see if the season addresses the God question any further. I hope it does.
I didn’t mean to write so much about that topic, but I will try to make my actual topic brief so as not to overextend this post too much. “Lies My Parents Told Me” and “Dirty Girls” both seem to be about one thing, well four things actually that amount to pretty much the same thing: righteousness, reformation, redemption, and revenge.
Reformation and Redemption are addressed as if they were exactly the same things in this series or, at least, coexisting things for which each requires the other. Then in “Dirty Girls,” righteousness is treated in almost the same way as revenge was treated in “Lies My Parents Told Me.” Father Caleb addresses the attack of slayers and potentials by simply commenting, “You girls are just blazing with righteousness!” He speaks as if he finds this fact amusing but distracting almost like when Buffy addresses Principal Wood by saying, “I’m preparing to fight a war, and you’re looking for revenge... I don’t have time for vendettas. The mission is what matters.” It’s almost as if Father Caleb sees their belief in their own righteousness to be little more than an excuse for revenge.
We’ve brought the four Rs (righteousness, redemption, reformation, revenge) down to two now, but we can take it one step further still. Revenge seems to be just as much a part of redemption as reformation is in this series. For instance, Spike in “Lies My Parents Told Me” comments, “I gave him gave him a pass, let him live, on account of the fact I killed his mother...He even so much as looks at me funny again, I promise I’ll kill him.” This is meant to be a sign that he is reformed and on the way to redemption, even though he beat Wood to a near unconscious pulp before stepping away. That beating was revenge for the beating Spike had just received, and so is his promise to murder, which seems to prove to Buffy that he is reformed and trustworthy.
Thus, redemption=reformation=revenge=righteousness. I think the wonderful people of Sunnydale need to learn to pick up a dictionary some time, before their connotations get even further from the actual denotation.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Id
Dreams, dreams, dreams. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has consistently used dreams to reveal important information within the series (“Restless” being the most obvious example of this). Usually the important message is obvious, though; sometimes there are some deeper meanings that are more convoluted, but usually the really important message is right there on the surface.
In the article we read, “Spirit Guides and Shadow Selves: From the Dream life of Buffy and Faith,” Donald Keller writes, “dreams tend to give a symbolic representation of the dreamer’s current state and suggest what the dreamer needs to do next: not a prediction but a prescription.” He continues “the function of the dream in Buffy: dramatizing internal attitudes, symbolically representing crucial interrelationships, summing up episodes or longer narrative arcs and oracularly hinting at events to come; in short, it is a crucial and unique narrative tool for presenting a maximum of information in the briefest and most resonant manner.”
So, what is the role of Spike’s dream in “Showtime?” The blatant meaning doesn’t seem that important. Spike loves Buffy; we’ve known this for several seasons now. His need for her is no great realization that requires some special dream sequence to relay, and the dreams didn’t use any thought-provoking symbolism to remind us of this. It doesn’t predict what will happen because Spike never is able to break free on his own. Buffy has to come to cut him free and carry him out. The dream doesn’t exactly provide a lot of quick information either; it’s just his tortured, pain-enhanced hallucination. Why do they show it then? Why not just cut that scene and let us hear him chanting his belief that Buffy will come? That would have showed us his love and belief in her faster than the dream.
Perhaps than the dream is a prescription after all. Spike has clearly been having some issues since he got his soul back. Things didn’t turn out the way he had expected; there hasn’t been that perfect happy ending, and he doesn’t seem to know how to deal with it. Maybe the dream shows us what he needs to do to be able to find himself again. Maybe Spike’s unconscious doesn’t like the idea of being the, ah...vampire in distress; maybe he needs to do some rescuing of his own in order to order to gain his former strength.
In the article we read, “Spirit Guides and Shadow Selves: From the Dream life of Buffy and Faith,” Donald Keller writes, “dreams tend to give a symbolic representation of the dreamer’s current state and suggest what the dreamer needs to do next: not a prediction but a prescription.” He continues “the function of the dream in Buffy: dramatizing internal attitudes, symbolically representing crucial interrelationships, summing up episodes or longer narrative arcs and oracularly hinting at events to come; in short, it is a crucial and unique narrative tool for presenting a maximum of information in the briefest and most resonant manner.”
So, what is the role of Spike’s dream in “Showtime?” The blatant meaning doesn’t seem that important. Spike loves Buffy; we’ve known this for several seasons now. His need for her is no great realization that requires some special dream sequence to relay, and the dreams didn’t use any thought-provoking symbolism to remind us of this. It doesn’t predict what will happen because Spike never is able to break free on his own. Buffy has to come to cut him free and carry him out. The dream doesn’t exactly provide a lot of quick information either; it’s just his tortured, pain-enhanced hallucination. Why do they show it then? Why not just cut that scene and let us hear him chanting his belief that Buffy will come? That would have showed us his love and belief in her faster than the dream.
Perhaps than the dream is a prescription after all. Spike has clearly been having some issues since he got his soul back. Things didn’t turn out the way he had expected; there hasn’t been that perfect happy ending, and he doesn’t seem to know how to deal with it. Maybe the dream shows us what he needs to do to be able to find himself again. Maybe Spike’s unconscious doesn’t like the idea of being the, ah...vampire in distress; maybe he needs to do some rescuing of his own in order to order to gain his former strength.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Death's Lessons
A girl is stabbed in Germany. Another drops dead of a heart attack after being saved from sacrifice and flying arrows. Twelve more die of a hyperbole-ified wish. The last is the death of an ignorant friend in place of a fatal penance. There is no obvious common thread in season seven’s rise in the death of innocents except one thing. Death has a message. Be it lesson or warning, there is something to be gleaned from these casualties.
The girl in Germany is one of two young women so far stabbed by cloaked men with curved knives. They’ve both been part of the introduction scene of the episode, and they’ve both been alone, running and fighting alone. Whoever or what ever these cloaked, masculine figures are, the women have a strong resemblance to slayers, and they are being tracked down and killed one by one. Like all slayers though, their death is not without meaning; Buffy receives messages from their last moments through her dreams: something is coming “from beneath you.”
Cassie’s death is the most disappointing to the audience. After all that Buffy did to save her, all the evils she staves off, the girl dies of natural causes anyway. She too has a few meaningful last words, but they are not exactly epiphany worthy. We all could have figured out that Buffy will save the world yet again. Cassie’s real lesson is that there are some things Buffy can’t control. There are some things no one can control. Throughout all the previous seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the idea of a higher plan or power has always been... inconclusive at best, if not entirely unrepresented. With the death of Cassie, fate is proven. It was her time to die, and neither Buffy nor anyone else could do anything about it. It proves there is some kind of higher plan that can’t be changed, not even by the Scoobies.
The 12 students may not be entirely innocent, but their actions hardly warranted their gruesomely painful death. So remember friends, be careful what you wish for! Actually, that lesson has already been learned previously in the series on multiple occasions. What their deaths teach is the difficulty of the kill, for Anya and for Buffy. Anya learns that killing isn’t always the answer, and Buffy learns she has to be willing to kill her friends, and she has suddenly realized the need to accept it. I think it is ironic that this realization comes in the form of Willow, the friend who tried to win the world and was stopped only with words of love. (Or is it a message that she needs to rethink the idea of killing those who might help? Maybe the lesson is the same for all there of them.)
Then there is the end of a vengeance demon’s life in exchange for the undoing of the death of the 12 boys. Again, it is proven that there is a plan, of which we are unaware, that we cannot control or change. It was not Anya’s time yet; she couldn’t just use the role of self-sacrifice as an excuse to give up. We are not the ones who choose are own path; something else determines our purpose at critical moments.
It seems to me that this season is one of higher powers. There is a great power beneath us, and a higher plan we cannot control. For once, Buffy the Vampire Slayer may finally answer the God question. So far, that answer has come on the lips of death.
The girl in Germany is one of two young women so far stabbed by cloaked men with curved knives. They’ve both been part of the introduction scene of the episode, and they’ve both been alone, running and fighting alone. Whoever or what ever these cloaked, masculine figures are, the women have a strong resemblance to slayers, and they are being tracked down and killed one by one. Like all slayers though, their death is not without meaning; Buffy receives messages from their last moments through her dreams: something is coming “from beneath you.”
Cassie’s death is the most disappointing to the audience. After all that Buffy did to save her, all the evils she staves off, the girl dies of natural causes anyway. She too has a few meaningful last words, but they are not exactly epiphany worthy. We all could have figured out that Buffy will save the world yet again. Cassie’s real lesson is that there are some things Buffy can’t control. There are some things no one can control. Throughout all the previous seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the idea of a higher plan or power has always been... inconclusive at best, if not entirely unrepresented. With the death of Cassie, fate is proven. It was her time to die, and neither Buffy nor anyone else could do anything about it. It proves there is some kind of higher plan that can’t be changed, not even by the Scoobies.
The 12 students may not be entirely innocent, but their actions hardly warranted their gruesomely painful death. So remember friends, be careful what you wish for! Actually, that lesson has already been learned previously in the series on multiple occasions. What their deaths teach is the difficulty of the kill, for Anya and for Buffy. Anya learns that killing isn’t always the answer, and Buffy learns she has to be willing to kill her friends, and she has suddenly realized the need to accept it. I think it is ironic that this realization comes in the form of Willow, the friend who tried to win the world and was stopped only with words of love. (Or is it a message that she needs to rethink the idea of killing those who might help? Maybe the lesson is the same for all there of them.)
Then there is the end of a vengeance demon’s life in exchange for the undoing of the death of the 12 boys. Again, it is proven that there is a plan, of which we are unaware, that we cannot control or change. It was not Anya’s time yet; she couldn’t just use the role of self-sacrifice as an excuse to give up. We are not the ones who choose are own path; something else determines our purpose at critical moments.
It seems to me that this season is one of higher powers. There is a great power beneath us, and a higher plan we cannot control. For once, Buffy the Vampire Slayer may finally answer the God question. So far, that answer has come on the lips of death.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Circle Circles Back
I was originally going to title this blog “You are Your Own Greatest Enemy,” but I thought that would be just a tad too unoriginal, perhaps even cliché, in fact not at all unlike the ending of the finale for season 6. Everyone has seen some major hero brought back from the dark side by hearing the words “I love you” at least once if not a dozen times. Seriously, if you didn’t see that one coming, then you haven’t been exposed to enough mythology and popular culture. I was really hoping for a finale that was a little more...new. I guess they just couldn’t best the death of the main hero.
Anyway, whether the ending was creative or not is beside the point. I am not trying to analyze the series according to whether it makes a good show but as literature, as art. Art has meaning and reason, and those pre-requisites were definitely present in the three episodes we watched.
One of the articles we read for class said, “fiction represents [things] as they might be and ought to be.” I think that is what this scene was trying to do. We all struggle with a darker side of ourselves. We might not all submit to the level of addiction that Willow has but we are often the ones we must fight most strongly against; I hate to use this line but, we are our own greatest enemy. What saves us, what prevents us from giving in to ourselves is the people we love or, more accurately, those who love us. All of season 6, has been about fighting yourself and fearing who you are or might become; it is only right that the finale depicted how we are rescued when we lose this fight. Personally, I think Whedon could have shown us a little better style in his presentation of this point, but the point was clearly made.
Beyond this though, season six has been about life. There is no great evil; there are only humans, criminals yes but still just human. It has been about trying to find your place in the world, about where we all fit into the grand scheme of life. I think that the end of season six and the beginning of season seven really show that it’s all just a circle, and we journey along the wheel.
When Xander saves her, Willow reverts not to who she was right before Warren killed Tara, not even to who she was before the magic started to become an addiction, but to who she was at the very beginning. She looks like the Willow we knew in high school. She isn’t the only person we see circling back to her roots; Dawn has become who Buffy was complete with her own version of “Xander” and “Willow.” Buffy has even finally found her own place in the world, right back at the high school where her journey began in a position where she can guide others along the same (or at least similar) path.
Can we say crone, anyone?
Anyway, whether the ending was creative or not is beside the point. I am not trying to analyze the series according to whether it makes a good show but as literature, as art. Art has meaning and reason, and those pre-requisites were definitely present in the three episodes we watched.
One of the articles we read for class said, “fiction represents [things] as they might be and ought to be.” I think that is what this scene was trying to do. We all struggle with a darker side of ourselves. We might not all submit to the level of addiction that Willow has but we are often the ones we must fight most strongly against; I hate to use this line but, we are our own greatest enemy. What saves us, what prevents us from giving in to ourselves is the people we love or, more accurately, those who love us. All of season 6, has been about fighting yourself and fearing who you are or might become; it is only right that the finale depicted how we are rescued when we lose this fight. Personally, I think Whedon could have shown us a little better style in his presentation of this point, but the point was clearly made.
Beyond this though, season six has been about life. There is no great evil; there are only humans, criminals yes but still just human. It has been about trying to find your place in the world, about where we all fit into the grand scheme of life. I think that the end of season six and the beginning of season seven really show that it’s all just a circle, and we journey along the wheel.
When Xander saves her, Willow reverts not to who she was right before Warren killed Tara, not even to who she was before the magic started to become an addiction, but to who she was at the very beginning. She looks like the Willow we knew in high school. She isn’t the only person we see circling back to her roots; Dawn has become who Buffy was complete with her own version of “Xander” and “Willow.” Buffy has even finally found her own place in the world, right back at the high school where her journey began in a position where she can guide others along the same (or at least similar) path.
Can we say crone, anyone?
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Rape! OR It Happens
I have to ask, what possible necessity drove the writers of BtVS to ruin Spike’s character and the audience’s love for him by turning him into a rapist. The fact that Buffy was able to fight him off doesn’t negate his attempt. According to Webster’s College Dictionary, the denotation of the word “rape” is the crime of using force to have sexual intercourse with somebody; that is what Spike did. Whether he succeeded in achieving the end result or not does not matter; it is his abuse and violation of trust, Buffy’s and ours, that has us horrified.
However, “Rape” can also mean the violent, destructive, or abusive treatment of someone or something. This is what happened to Willow, Buffy, and Tara in the other two episodes covered in this blog. There is not some big, bad evil trying to bring about the next apocalypse. It’s a much more present evil this time. A member of the Trio has raped each of the above characters in some way. That is all, yet it is more terrible than anything we have seen so far in the series.
What the Trio did to Buffy with their demon’s poison in “Normal Again” goes beyond the normal evil magic we have seen; it was a rape of her mind. They violently destroyed her sense of sanity and self, abused her reason, until she no longer knew what was real and what was fantasy.
What Warren did to Willow and Tara also constitutes as violent and destructive treatment. In “Seeing Red,” he murdered an innocent bystander right in front of her lover. He violated her sense of security. As we learn in “Villains,” this is something she cannot get past. It’s not a spell or a demonic power. It’s just man; it’s life.
Part of what bothers us so much about these scenes is that they were normal. It’s not a demonic force or some inhuman evil that’s attacking these girls. What Spike and Warren did are things that happen everyday in normal life; it’s not fantasy anymore.
The writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are using date rape and drive by shooting to show us that evil is not just fantasy. It’s real, and it happens everyday in the very world in which we all live. I think “Normal Again” really helps to show the writers’ intent: you don’t need to live in Sunnydale to see evil; bad things do happen in real life.
However, “Rape” can also mean the violent, destructive, or abusive treatment of someone or something. This is what happened to Willow, Buffy, and Tara in the other two episodes covered in this blog. There is not some big, bad evil trying to bring about the next apocalypse. It’s a much more present evil this time. A member of the Trio has raped each of the above characters in some way. That is all, yet it is more terrible than anything we have seen so far in the series.
What the Trio did to Buffy with their demon’s poison in “Normal Again” goes beyond the normal evil magic we have seen; it was a rape of her mind. They violently destroyed her sense of sanity and self, abused her reason, until she no longer knew what was real and what was fantasy.
What Warren did to Willow and Tara also constitutes as violent and destructive treatment. In “Seeing Red,” he murdered an innocent bystander right in front of her lover. He violated her sense of security. As we learn in “Villains,” this is something she cannot get past. It’s not a spell or a demonic power. It’s just man; it’s life.
Part of what bothers us so much about these scenes is that they were normal. It’s not a demonic force or some inhuman evil that’s attacking these girls. What Spike and Warren did are things that happen everyday in normal life; it’s not fantasy anymore.
The writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are using date rape and drive by shooting to show us that evil is not just fantasy. It’s real, and it happens everyday in the very world in which we all live. I think “Normal Again” really helps to show the writers’ intent: you don’t need to live in Sunnydale to see evil; bad things do happen in real life.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Mind Games, It's a Trip
An accident that's not, a geek, a nerd, and a shadow, the big bads in Buffy the Vampire Slayer have traditionally been... well, big and bad, but season six has something different. This time the enemy is a few, lame males (I say males because they hardly count as men, and they are too old to be boys.), yet they have wrecked more havoc than any other villain in the show. (That is not to say they have caused the most harm or evil. It is merely havoc they cause, not apocalyptic destruction.) So what is it about the Trio that makes them so much better?
In actuality, it is not the Trio that is stronger than the rest of the evils the gang has faced; it is Buffy who is weaker. The Trio is merely clever. They do not attack the slayer with strength; they would quickly lose. They have gathered a whole horde of information on the slayer, and they are using it play tricks with her mind. Buffy is lost and Vulnerable, and the Trio is using that to their advantage.
For instance, in “Dead Things” they managed to convince the slayer that she had murdered an innocent. Such a ploy never would have worked in previous episodes when she was more sure of herself and her goodness, but having been yanked out of Heaven, there must be something wrong with her; she must be receiving punishment for something, right? Buffy is so convinced of this that she is willing to believe that she has killed an innocent girl in need of her help even though she never even touched her. Buffy is vulnerable, and the successes of the Trio only serves to highlight her weakness and insecurities.
In actuality, it is not the Trio that is stronger than the rest of the evils the gang has faced; it is Buffy who is weaker. The Trio is merely clever. They do not attack the slayer with strength; they would quickly lose. They have gathered a whole horde of information on the slayer, and they are using it play tricks with her mind. Buffy is lost and Vulnerable, and the Trio is using that to their advantage.
For instance, in “Dead Things” they managed to convince the slayer that she had murdered an innocent. Such a ploy never would have worked in previous episodes when she was more sure of herself and her goodness, but having been yanked out of Heaven, there must be something wrong with her; she must be receiving punishment for something, right? Buffy is so convinced of this that she is willing to believe that she has killed an innocent girl in need of her help even though she never even touched her. Buffy is vulnerable, and the successes of the Trio only serves to highlight her weakness and insecurities.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Slayer, Crone, Addict
Addiction has been a common theme in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Vampires are addicted to blood; Riley was addicted to passion and blood houses; Willow is addicted to magic. There is no doubt that addiction is evident in the show, but what about the slayer? In the episodes addressed in this blog, we see Buffy as the crone and the first slayer (“Bargaining Part Two”), but we also see her as an addict.
Previously in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike informed Buffy that the secret obsession of every slayer is death, specifically her own death. Whether it is killing demons, determining the role of the slayer as killer, fulfilling her duty by stopping the death of innocents, or hating the life that has been returned to her, this obsession has become an addiction for Buffy. She cannot let go of her relationship with death, even when given the opportunity, which Dawn offers her.
This is an addiction that has been passed down since the first slayer. In “Restless,” we see that the first slayer is so obsessed with her relationship with death that there is no room in her life for anything else; it all falls beneath addiction, and she expects all slayers to follow in her footsteps. This addiction gets in the way of the slayer’s ability to live, and, as Spike said, it will lead to Buffy’s downfall as it always has in the slayers before her. It causes her to be reckless, and, now that she is unable to accept life and become attached to the things within it, there is nothing keeping her from her death wish, which though it has lost its curiosity seems to have grown all the stronger because of her knowledge of the afterlife.
Previously in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Spike informed Buffy that the secret obsession of every slayer is death, specifically her own death. Whether it is killing demons, determining the role of the slayer as killer, fulfilling her duty by stopping the death of innocents, or hating the life that has been returned to her, this obsession has become an addiction for Buffy. She cannot let go of her relationship with death, even when given the opportunity, which Dawn offers her.
This is an addiction that has been passed down since the first slayer. In “Restless,” we see that the first slayer is so obsessed with her relationship with death that there is no room in her life for anything else; it all falls beneath addiction, and she expects all slayers to follow in her footsteps. This addiction gets in the way of the slayer’s ability to live, and, as Spike said, it will lead to Buffy’s downfall as it always has in the slayers before her. It causes her to be reckless, and, now that she is unable to accept life and become attached to the things within it, there is nothing keeping her from her death wish, which though it has lost its curiosity seems to have grown all the stronger because of her knowledge of the afterlife.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Class Discussion Questions
Here are all the actual questions I had prepared to ask for the class discussion. Feel free to use any of them in your blogs.
1) What is emotion? What is it's worth/purpose as an aspect of humanity?
2) Was Ben innocent? How do we determine innocence?
3) In "Weight of the World," Glory claims that "Gods don't pay [they're not supposed to feel anything." Are gods above guilt? What is guilt?
4) How can gods feel guilt if they can do no wrong? Think about the biblical myth of Noah and the Arc (God promised never to kill so many again) and the ancient Egyptian myth of Ra who regretted separating Nut and Geb. Hercules too felt guilt and he was half human like Glory.
5) What role does guilt play in the slayer's world?
6) Why does Dawn say Buffy isn't guided by her emotions when Buffy has proven on multiple occasions that she is very emotional? (refer to her discussion with Kenya, her search to gain emotion in "Intervention," and how Giles puts her heart as her greatest asset in "Spiral") Does Dawn believe what she tells Glory? Has Buffy perhaps harnessed her emotions so she is no longer controlled by them?
7) There are a lot of allusions to the Christ image in these three episodes. She is portrayed as the savior, sacrificed, and resurrected. Is she really the savior though, or is she just giving up? Some of her last words to Dawn are "It's harder to live in this world than to die for it."
8) How is worship portrayed in BtVS?
9) Compare Buffy to other heroes and superheroes. How is she different from them? From Christ?
10) Buffy has fulfilled the death wish Spike said would destroy her. Is she now unbeatable? She's no longer curious; she's been dead for three months.
11) At the end of "Buffy vs. Dracula," Buffy set out on a quest to learn more about where she comes from. By the end of "Bargaining Part One" has she accomplished this?
12) There has been a lot of character development with both Willow and Xander. How have they each matured in season 5?
13) These episodes make it pretty clear that Willow is second in command. She becomes the leader when Buffy is out of commission. One of the essays we read talked about how the structure of the scooby family allows each person to develop on their own. We've spent a lot of time talking about where Buffy is on the female hero's journey, but what about Willow? How has she progressed on this path?
14) In "Bargaining" when they are arguing about resurrecting Buffy, Xander tells Willow, "It's done. She's buried." and Willow responds, "That was just her body." How does the series usually look at death? Do they associate the person as the body, the mind, or the soul? Is it different when it's Buffy?
15) The show has consistently used demons as metaphors for everyday issues? What might Ben/Glory symbolize? What about the Buffy bot?
We've learned a lot more since the first episode of season six so some of these questions might no longer be applicable, but these are what I have.
1) What is emotion? What is it's worth/purpose as an aspect of humanity?
2) Was Ben innocent? How do we determine innocence?
3) In "Weight of the World," Glory claims that "Gods don't pay [they're not supposed to feel anything." Are gods above guilt? What is guilt?
4) How can gods feel guilt if they can do no wrong? Think about the biblical myth of Noah and the Arc (God promised never to kill so many again) and the ancient Egyptian myth of Ra who regretted separating Nut and Geb. Hercules too felt guilt and he was half human like Glory.
5) What role does guilt play in the slayer's world?
6) Why does Dawn say Buffy isn't guided by her emotions when Buffy has proven on multiple occasions that she is very emotional? (refer to her discussion with Kenya, her search to gain emotion in "Intervention," and how Giles puts her heart as her greatest asset in "Spiral") Does Dawn believe what she tells Glory? Has Buffy perhaps harnessed her emotions so she is no longer controlled by them?
7) There are a lot of allusions to the Christ image in these three episodes. She is portrayed as the savior, sacrificed, and resurrected. Is she really the savior though, or is she just giving up? Some of her last words to Dawn are "It's harder to live in this world than to die for it."
8) How is worship portrayed in BtVS?
9) Compare Buffy to other heroes and superheroes. How is she different from them? From Christ?
10) Buffy has fulfilled the death wish Spike said would destroy her. Is she now unbeatable? She's no longer curious; she's been dead for three months.
11) At the end of "Buffy vs. Dracula," Buffy set out on a quest to learn more about where she comes from. By the end of "Bargaining Part One" has she accomplished this?
12) There has been a lot of character development with both Willow and Xander. How have they each matured in season 5?
13) These episodes make it pretty clear that Willow is second in command. She becomes the leader when Buffy is out of commission. One of the essays we read talked about how the structure of the scooby family allows each person to develop on their own. We've spent a lot of time talking about where Buffy is on the female hero's journey, but what about Willow? How has she progressed on this path?
14) In "Bargaining" when they are arguing about resurrecting Buffy, Xander tells Willow, "It's done. She's buried." and Willow responds, "That was just her body." How does the series usually look at death? Do they associate the person as the body, the mind, or the soul? Is it different when it's Buffy?
15) The show has consistently used demons as metaphors for everyday issues? What might Ben/Glory symbolize? What about the Buffy bot?
We've learned a lot more since the first episode of season six so some of these questions might no longer be applicable, but these are what I have.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sound, Scene, and Symbolism
The atmosphere “Hush” created has been tripled if not quadrupled in “The Body.” In “Hush,” our attention was on the background noise, the music. In “The Body,” there is no music, no background noise at all; in fact, all sound (meaning voice, since this is very nearly the only sound) has been hushed in this episode.
It is dramatic; it is eerie, it is significant of an end, but most importantly, it rivets the audience’s attention. We as the viewers are glued to the screen. So used to listening to the music to clue us in to what is happening and how we are supposed to feel about it, without sound we are left searching every inch of the scene for clues. We pay attention to every detail due to the lack of the usual atmosphere...
Such as the fact that all the windows are open. In Buffy house, when she leaves the body the window by the back door is left open and we hear the fist sound that is not vocal since she found her mother’s body... wind chimes. Faint, delicate, moved by a touch of the air, this Romantic harp has often been used in poetry as a symbol of the spirit or soul.
Perhaps the idea of these little details that we, as viewers are now so focused on is the release of Joyce’s spirit. Open window let her pass out of their lives, but they don’t shut them on her as she leaves. Buffy opens all the doors she passes (the back door of her house, the front door at Giles’s entrance, the door to Dawn’s classroom) and leaves them open, almost as a sort of goodbye she doesn’t want to accept.
Dawn, in her denial and search for closure, closes all the doors and bars them shut. She won’t accept her mother’s death, won’t let her leave. When she slips away from the Scoobies to sneak into the morgue at the hospital, she closes and locks the door behind. Our thought is that she doesn’t want anyone getting in, but really a little bolt isn’t going to stop the slayer. The lock is a symbol that the young fourteen-year-old girl/key does not want her mother to leave her; she doesn’t want to let her go.
She can’t win against death though as we see when she fails to fight off the hungry vampire lying on the surgical table near her mother’s own deathbed. Buffy has to help her, but Buffy isn’t going to battle against the forces of nature and she won’t let anyone else either (symbolized by her smashing the locked doors off their hinges). Dawn has her closure, so she no longer needs to close her mother in. She can let her pass away.
It is dramatic; it is eerie, it is significant of an end, but most importantly, it rivets the audience’s attention. We as the viewers are glued to the screen. So used to listening to the music to clue us in to what is happening and how we are supposed to feel about it, without sound we are left searching every inch of the scene for clues. We pay attention to every detail due to the lack of the usual atmosphere...
Such as the fact that all the windows are open. In Buffy house, when she leaves the body the window by the back door is left open and we hear the fist sound that is not vocal since she found her mother’s body... wind chimes. Faint, delicate, moved by a touch of the air, this Romantic harp has often been used in poetry as a symbol of the spirit or soul.
Perhaps the idea of these little details that we, as viewers are now so focused on is the release of Joyce’s spirit. Open window let her pass out of their lives, but they don’t shut them on her as she leaves. Buffy opens all the doors she passes (the back door of her house, the front door at Giles’s entrance, the door to Dawn’s classroom) and leaves them open, almost as a sort of goodbye she doesn’t want to accept.
Dawn, in her denial and search for closure, closes all the doors and bars them shut. She won’t accept her mother’s death, won’t let her leave. When she slips away from the Scoobies to sneak into the morgue at the hospital, she closes and locks the door behind. Our thought is that she doesn’t want anyone getting in, but really a little bolt isn’t going to stop the slayer. The lock is a symbol that the young fourteen-year-old girl/key does not want her mother to leave her; she doesn’t want to let her go.
She can’t win against death though as we see when she fails to fight off the hungry vampire lying on the surgical table near her mother’s own deathbed. Buffy has to help her, but Buffy isn’t going to battle against the forces of nature and she won’t let anyone else either (symbolized by her smashing the locked doors off their hinges). Dawn has her closure, so she no longer needs to close her mother in. She can let her pass away.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Now Even the Gods are Against Them
In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, family takes the place of religion in the series. All symbols and items with common religious significance are either evil and against them or casual and irreverently used. In BtVS, the Scooby gang serves as the family image because they have more of a familial bond than any of the actual blood relatives of the gang as we saw in “Restless,” “Amends,” and “Gingerbread.”
Family and religion both take on different and, at times, unexpected roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the common roles have not been erased, merely shifted. As Reid B. Locklin wrote in his article “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Domestic Church: Re-Visioning Family and the Common Good,” “the writers and producers of the show have also used [the show] as a venue to develop an alternative vision of the North American family, a vision that clearly refuses to sever family from the common good.” This idea of family as partly responsible for and connected to the common good is a very religious teaching, at least as far as my own faith, Catholicism, is concerned.
The show Buffy the Vampire Slayer “maps the notion of family onto a mythic struggle between good and evil and thereby upholds traditional family values even as it opens them to a broader sphere of concern. To be family, our analysis suggests, is to be in a saving relation to the world--a relation realized both in the internal life of the family itself and in its concrete engagement against the forces of darkness. If this interpretation is correct, then we can see in the show a definite parallel to the Catholic theology of the domestic church.” The article goes on to say, “family is the smallest community or manifestation of church.”
In the world of the show, this is even more true as all those things that would have traditionally been associated with the church have taken on either a darker or a superficial role. Crosses and holy water, both sacred symbols of Christianity, are merely tools to keep vampires at bay when you don’t have a better weapon. We have seen several characters that seemed to take on priestly roles, but they were all either villains or dead. Churches and cemeteries, normally considered to be holy ground and therefore places of sanctuary, are turned into battle locations and hunting parks.
Now, as we see in “Checkpoint,” even the very gods have turned against the Scooby family when we discover that Glory, one of the strongest villains Buffy has come against, is actually a god, and she wants to break up the family by taking Dawn. Glory is oddly reminiscent of the Greek gods and goddesses in her self-involved disregard for humanity. This seems to lower her status a little, at least in my own eyes. (I never could understand why a people would worship such arrogance and violation.) Still, Glory is a traditionally religious figure turned evil through the television series, and she is here to lay damage to the only still sacred ideal, the family. Family has become the only religion the Scooby gang can rely on and trust.
Family and religion both take on different and, at times, unexpected roles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the common roles have not been erased, merely shifted. As Reid B. Locklin wrote in his article “Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Domestic Church: Re-Visioning Family and the Common Good,” “the writers and producers of the show have also used [the show] as a venue to develop an alternative vision of the North American family, a vision that clearly refuses to sever family from the common good.” This idea of family as partly responsible for and connected to the common good is a very religious teaching, at least as far as my own faith, Catholicism, is concerned.
The show Buffy the Vampire Slayer “maps the notion of family onto a mythic struggle between good and evil and thereby upholds traditional family values even as it opens them to a broader sphere of concern. To be family, our analysis suggests, is to be in a saving relation to the world--a relation realized both in the internal life of the family itself and in its concrete engagement against the forces of darkness. If this interpretation is correct, then we can see in the show a definite parallel to the Catholic theology of the domestic church.” The article goes on to say, “family is the smallest community or manifestation of church.”
In the world of the show, this is even more true as all those things that would have traditionally been associated with the church have taken on either a darker or a superficial role. Crosses and holy water, both sacred symbols of Christianity, are merely tools to keep vampires at bay when you don’t have a better weapon. We have seen several characters that seemed to take on priestly roles, but they were all either villains or dead. Churches and cemeteries, normally considered to be holy ground and therefore places of sanctuary, are turned into battle locations and hunting parks.
Now, as we see in “Checkpoint,” even the very gods have turned against the Scooby family when we discover that Glory, one of the strongest villains Buffy has come against, is actually a god, and she wants to break up the family by taking Dawn. Glory is oddly reminiscent of the Greek gods and goddesses in her self-involved disregard for humanity. This seems to lower her status a little, at least in my own eyes. (I never could understand why a people would worship such arrogance and violation.) Still, Glory is a traditionally religious figure turned evil through the television series, and she is here to lay damage to the only still sacred ideal, the family. Family has become the only religion the Scooby gang can rely on and trust.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Are You Ready to Know?
In my last blog I talked a little about how Buffy now finally has the ability to become a crone; she has a guide in the first slayer and in Giles’ willingness to begin the search for information, not as a watcher but as a friend. In season five that search is starting to begin; in fact, the search is almost forced on Buffy when, not once but twice, she is nearly destroyed, the second time by an ordinary vamp.
The question now remains, is she ready to know? Is Buffy ready to find out who and what she really is? Spike claims that the slayers death is her curiosity, her need to know. He thinks it is the need to know what it is like to die after having been surrounded by that death for so long. I disagree.
From what little Spike revealed about the other slayers and himself and from what we know about Buffy, I don’t think it is a need to know about death that drives their curiosity. I think it is a need to know about themselves and the line of slayers the follows before them. Those slayers are dead; the only way to discover fully what it means to be a slayer is to die yourself. There is no other way to achieve full knowledge of who and what you are, and eventually you’re going to want to know more than your watcher can provide you with, so they turn to the final source, death, the completion of their calling.
Spike thinks Buffy will be the same; it will only take her longer because she has attachments to friends and family. He doesn’t know, though, that Buffy has another option. She has access to the first slayer; she has Giles with a watcher’s knowledge and a civilian’s freedom. Dracula almost pulled Buffy in, but at the taste of his blood, she recalled these sources of information, and she was able to break his trance. Buffy doesn’t need death to answer her questions. This slayer just might have a chance to pass into the phase of crone while still in this life, and she is going to find the knowledge to gain her wisdom.
The question now remains, is she ready to know? Is Buffy ready to find out who and what she really is? Spike claims that the slayers death is her curiosity, her need to know. He thinks it is the need to know what it is like to die after having been surrounded by that death for so long. I disagree.
From what little Spike revealed about the other slayers and himself and from what we know about Buffy, I don’t think it is a need to know about death that drives their curiosity. I think it is a need to know about themselves and the line of slayers the follows before them. Those slayers are dead; the only way to discover fully what it means to be a slayer is to die yourself. There is no other way to achieve full knowledge of who and what you are, and eventually you’re going to want to know more than your watcher can provide you with, so they turn to the final source, death, the completion of their calling.
Spike thinks Buffy will be the same; it will only take her longer because she has attachments to friends and family. He doesn’t know, though, that Buffy has another option. She has access to the first slayer; she has Giles with a watcher’s knowledge and a civilian’s freedom. Dracula almost pulled Buffy in, but at the taste of his blood, she recalled these sources of information, and she was able to break his trance. Buffy doesn’t need death to answer her questions. This slayer just might have a chance to pass into the phase of crone while still in this life, and she is going to find the knowledge to gain her wisdom.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Mommy Can Hear You...
We have reached the season four finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at last. This season, though not entirely connected and comprehensible, has lead to some important episodes and revelations. “Restless” is an attempt to sum up the characters and all the changes they have gone through up until this point; it is also a step into the next stage of the female journey for Buffy Summers, Sunnydale Slayer.
The episode opens with the focus on Willow. Her character changes are probably the most obvious and probably provided a hot topic among audiences despite some mild foreshadowing. Giles comments about how they are all hiding from and lying to the audience. We begin to understand that the dream is the interpretation of her insecurities about her changes both in her personality (less of a wallflower) and in her sexuality. Dream Tara tells her, “Everyone’s starting to wonder about you, the real you. If they find out, they’ll punish you.” Later Buffy asks her, “Why are you still in costume?” Suddenly, we see an image of the old Willow, the shy, too smart, unfashionably insecure high-school peer tutor/substitute. We leave her dream to enter reality in which Buffy calls her a “big faker” when Xander asks about her restless sleep.
Xander’s dream is next. We see him in the basement multiple times. Twice in this setting, he states to the rattling door, “That’s not the way out.” Anya asked him, “Do you know where you’re going?” Xander’s issues are with his family and his dead-end jobs. He hasn’t found a calling yet nor a place to belong. He has problems in his love life, too. Xander is pretty much unfulfilled and unsatisfied in all areas of his life. (Not that we needed a dream to tell us that.)
Giles is next with Olivia and Dream Buffy to whom he keeps saying, “I know you.” Yet the Buffy we see is sillier and childlike, not very much like the Buffy we know. At one point in his dream, Willow turns to him and accuses, “Do you know this is all your fault?” Giles is insecure about completing his duty and protecting Buffy; he is becoming more attached to her beyond the role of watcher. We have seen Giles portrayed in the role of father from Buffy’s perspective, but now we get to see this fatherly stance from Giles own eyes, yet he feels unwanted, unneeded. His slayer has grown up, and he doesn’t want her to.
Buffy’s dream is the culmination of the episode, revealing what monster is that is after them. Buffy’s fear is the loss of her friends; they are, or at least seem to be, her greatest strength. The slayer also fears what she may become. She may be super-human, but as she insists, “we are not demons.” The use of the plural is interesting; who is she talking about? We can assume she means the Scooby gang, but it is clear that they are human. Only the slayer’s origins are uncertain.
This brings us to the sandbox, the empty loneliness, the primitive violence of nature. In one of my previous blogs, I wrote about how Buffy could never pass into the crone stage because she has no one to guide her. Her mother is hardly capable of leading her, Maggie Walsh was corrupt and betrayed her trust; all the previous slayers had to die in order for Buffy to begin her journey. This was true. Now, however, the scoobies have called on the power of the first slayer. They awoke her, and she is ready to instruct.
There’s just one problem; Buffy doesn’t like the lesson. The slayer finally finds her own voices and speaks to her saying, “No friends. Just to kill. We are alone.” Buffy insists, “It’s over. We don’t do this anymore.” She believes the line of slayers have passed into a new level of understanding that is not just brute force but comprehension and now friendship. She tells the first slayer, “You’re not the source.” For Buffy, the source is her support system of friends.
One final separate note on the riddle of the random cheese man The psychoanalytical answer: she is the cheese, Buffy that is. His comment to Willow is “there’s enough room for the cheese.” Willow and Buffy have grown a little apart since Tara, and Willow is insecure about that distance. To Xander he says, “The cheese can’t protect you.” Buffy often rescues Xander from demons, but she can’t do anything about the direction of his life. Cheese man tells Giles, “I wear the cheese; the cheese does not wear me.” The comment plays on Giles loss of his role as watcher. He no longer has the ability to give the slayer order; Buffy is in charge now. So because I can’t leave a riddle without finding an answer (logical or otherwise), the cheese is Buffy, and the man’s presence shows her role in the loves of those around her and how she has affected them.
The episode opens with the focus on Willow. Her character changes are probably the most obvious and probably provided a hot topic among audiences despite some mild foreshadowing. Giles comments about how they are all hiding from and lying to the audience. We begin to understand that the dream is the interpretation of her insecurities about her changes both in her personality (less of a wallflower) and in her sexuality. Dream Tara tells her, “Everyone’s starting to wonder about you, the real you. If they find out, they’ll punish you.” Later Buffy asks her, “Why are you still in costume?” Suddenly, we see an image of the old Willow, the shy, too smart, unfashionably insecure high-school peer tutor/substitute. We leave her dream to enter reality in which Buffy calls her a “big faker” when Xander asks about her restless sleep.
Xander’s dream is next. We see him in the basement multiple times. Twice in this setting, he states to the rattling door, “That’s not the way out.” Anya asked him, “Do you know where you’re going?” Xander’s issues are with his family and his dead-end jobs. He hasn’t found a calling yet nor a place to belong. He has problems in his love life, too. Xander is pretty much unfulfilled and unsatisfied in all areas of his life. (Not that we needed a dream to tell us that.)
Giles is next with Olivia and Dream Buffy to whom he keeps saying, “I know you.” Yet the Buffy we see is sillier and childlike, not very much like the Buffy we know. At one point in his dream, Willow turns to him and accuses, “Do you know this is all your fault?” Giles is insecure about completing his duty and protecting Buffy; he is becoming more attached to her beyond the role of watcher. We have seen Giles portrayed in the role of father from Buffy’s perspective, but now we get to see this fatherly stance from Giles own eyes, yet he feels unwanted, unneeded. His slayer has grown up, and he doesn’t want her to.
Buffy’s dream is the culmination of the episode, revealing what monster is that is after them. Buffy’s fear is the loss of her friends; they are, or at least seem to be, her greatest strength. The slayer also fears what she may become. She may be super-human, but as she insists, “we are not demons.” The use of the plural is interesting; who is she talking about? We can assume she means the Scooby gang, but it is clear that they are human. Only the slayer’s origins are uncertain.
This brings us to the sandbox, the empty loneliness, the primitive violence of nature. In one of my previous blogs, I wrote about how Buffy could never pass into the crone stage because she has no one to guide her. Her mother is hardly capable of leading her, Maggie Walsh was corrupt and betrayed her trust; all the previous slayers had to die in order for Buffy to begin her journey. This was true. Now, however, the scoobies have called on the power of the first slayer. They awoke her, and she is ready to instruct.
There’s just one problem; Buffy doesn’t like the lesson. The slayer finally finds her own voices and speaks to her saying, “No friends. Just to kill. We are alone.” Buffy insists, “It’s over. We don’t do this anymore.” She believes the line of slayers have passed into a new level of understanding that is not just brute force but comprehension and now friendship. She tells the first slayer, “You’re not the source.” For Buffy, the source is her support system of friends.
One final separate note on the riddle of the random cheese man The psychoanalytical answer: she is the cheese, Buffy that is. His comment to Willow is “there’s enough room for the cheese.” Willow and Buffy have grown a little apart since Tara, and Willow is insecure about that distance. To Xander he says, “The cheese can’t protect you.” Buffy often rescues Xander from demons, but she can’t do anything about the direction of his life. Cheese man tells Giles, “I wear the cheese; the cheese does not wear me.” The comment plays on Giles loss of his role as watcher. He no longer has the ability to give the slayer order; Buffy is in charge now. So because I can’t leave a riddle without finding an answer (logical or otherwise), the cheese is Buffy, and the man’s presence shows her role in the loves of those around her and how she has affected them.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
"The Heading of Ironic"
It seems Joss Whedon has taken his feminist images a little farther down the stereotypical path. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has finally associated the idea of female strength with lesbianism. Although the message might have carried a little more strength if the slayer herself had been involved, there probably would have been audience rebellion if the hot, pathetic man aspect was eliminated from Buffy’s list of struggles.
Still, the slayer may not be lesbian, but her best friend/side kick has acknowledged a deeper feeling for another woman. In her search for power, Willow found that Wiccan strength is intensified all the more with the help of another woman, and it all began with holding hands in a moment of desperation. Even Oz is inferior to the female strength, because he cannot master his power to change. He can control it more than most, but in moments of intense feeling, he looses his strength over the forces. As he says, “it turns out... the one thing that brings it out in me is you... which falls under the heading of ironic in my book.”
For Willow and Tara, a strong female relationship on a deeper emotional level only serves to strengthen their power, allowing the two to complete complicated spells that neither would be able to master on their own. It is the female relationship that provides the support that lends itself to Buffy’s power. I have already mentioned in a previous blog that Buffy derives her real strength from those around her. Buffy is not the kind of slayer who can stand alone (perhaps that’s why she’s lived longer than most); we learned previously that her real strength is her support system. Willow and Buffy’s relationship is stronger than Buffy and Riley, and with Angel gone, Buffy’s strongest relationship is with Willow. This was emphasized at the beginning of season four when the two young women originally roomed separately; the Scooby gang began to suspect Buffy of insanity, and the slayer was left without anyone to support her theories. Now, Willow and Buffy live together, and we have seen a lot less of the random chaos and a lot more of the big picture episodes. They are stronger together.
So far, Willow and Buffy are the most powerful characters in the series. Now, Tara has joined, and things seem to be suggesting that she too will now feed through Willow on the slayer’s power. (It is important to not that the power of the slayer is restricted to females; this is ironic because power is usually thought of as masculine.) This feeding is not parasitic but symbiotic as Buffy receives just as much benefit from their strength as they do from hers.
The only question now is where will this power take the two lovebirds?
Still, the slayer may not be lesbian, but her best friend/side kick has acknowledged a deeper feeling for another woman. In her search for power, Willow found that Wiccan strength is intensified all the more with the help of another woman, and it all began with holding hands in a moment of desperation. Even Oz is inferior to the female strength, because he cannot master his power to change. He can control it more than most, but in moments of intense feeling, he looses his strength over the forces. As he says, “it turns out... the one thing that brings it out in me is you... which falls under the heading of ironic in my book.”
For Willow and Tara, a strong female relationship on a deeper emotional level only serves to strengthen their power, allowing the two to complete complicated spells that neither would be able to master on their own. It is the female relationship that provides the support that lends itself to Buffy’s power. I have already mentioned in a previous blog that Buffy derives her real strength from those around her. Buffy is not the kind of slayer who can stand alone (perhaps that’s why she’s lived longer than most); we learned previously that her real strength is her support system. Willow and Buffy’s relationship is stronger than Buffy and Riley, and with Angel gone, Buffy’s strongest relationship is with Willow. This was emphasized at the beginning of season four when the two young women originally roomed separately; the Scooby gang began to suspect Buffy of insanity, and the slayer was left without anyone to support her theories. Now, Willow and Buffy live together, and we have seen a lot less of the random chaos and a lot more of the big picture episodes. They are stronger together.
So far, Willow and Buffy are the most powerful characters in the series. Now, Tara has joined, and things seem to be suggesting that she too will now feed through Willow on the slayer’s power. (It is important to not that the power of the slayer is restricted to females; this is ironic because power is usually thought of as masculine.) This feeding is not parasitic but symbiotic as Buffy receives just as much benefit from their strength as they do from hers.
The only question now is where will this power take the two lovebirds?
Thursday, March 12, 2009
It's a Female Thing
Let’s take another look at the classic female journey as portrayed in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The journey begins with the virgin transitions through the “sacred marriage” into the mother and finally, once the wisdom of women is fully absorbed, becomes the crone. As determined in an earlier post, Buffy has passed into the mother stage of the female journey. When I wrote that post, I did not take into consideration the few examples of crone-ness that Buffy had previously displayed for brief periods.
In season 3 especially, there were several example that seemed to portray Buffy in the crone’s role. She had the experience and the discipline that Faith did not and she appeared at times to be passing it on. This would have been the role of the crone, but Buffy’s position in this role never lasted long. Buffy herself was still trying to figure everything out, and a lot of what she did know had to be learned with experience rather than passed down through words. In addition, Faith was not always receptive to her lessons preferring to take the lead as teacher, and Buffy was very willing to accept the role of student until things got to far out of hand and she was thrown into the full acceptance of the mother’s role. This brings us to where she is now, exploring and experimenting with this position as caregiver/protector.
So when will she move to become a true crone? As things stand now, it might not be possible for Buffy to ever fully finish the journey and accept the final stage. I’m not referring to the very real fact that she could die before the chance should present itself; I mean to say that the very nature of the position, passing down wisdom, seems to elude her as well as every slayer before her.
The problem is that a slayer must die before the next is called. Prior to Buffy’s drowning and resuscitation, there could only be one slayer at a time. Each slayer died before she had the opportunity to pass down her wisdom to the next heir of her birthright. This is supposedly the point of the Watcher’s Council, to pass down knowledge and maintain tradition, but there is a problem the Council has overlooked, or perhaps encouraged.
Slayers are women; theirs is a separate journey from the male hero; they pass through different stages; their epiphanies come in different forms, yet the Council is predominantly male. The few females we have heard of were either corrupt or inept and led to the disastrous consequence of a rogue slayer. Men, however, cannot take the place of crone; it is a woman’s job. Giles and the other male watcher’s can never fully understand the position of the slayer and they were not trained for that purpose.
This leaves Buffy without any female role model to look to, without any crone to gain wisdom from that she too might pass into the next stage. Yes, she may die before she has the chance, but the nature of her position dooms her to that fate of death before completion because there is no one for her to look to for guidance in the slayer/female department. Giles provides book knowledge on demons, but he is inept at offering any real training advice, and when it comes down to it, Buffy must face the darkest evils of Sunnydale without him, without anyone. The slayer’s tradition prevents the completion of her journey.
In season 3 especially, there were several example that seemed to portray Buffy in the crone’s role. She had the experience and the discipline that Faith did not and she appeared at times to be passing it on. This would have been the role of the crone, but Buffy’s position in this role never lasted long. Buffy herself was still trying to figure everything out, and a lot of what she did know had to be learned with experience rather than passed down through words. In addition, Faith was not always receptive to her lessons preferring to take the lead as teacher, and Buffy was very willing to accept the role of student until things got to far out of hand and she was thrown into the full acceptance of the mother’s role. This brings us to where she is now, exploring and experimenting with this position as caregiver/protector.
So when will she move to become a true crone? As things stand now, it might not be possible for Buffy to ever fully finish the journey and accept the final stage. I’m not referring to the very real fact that she could die before the chance should present itself; I mean to say that the very nature of the position, passing down wisdom, seems to elude her as well as every slayer before her.
The problem is that a slayer must die before the next is called. Prior to Buffy’s drowning and resuscitation, there could only be one slayer at a time. Each slayer died before she had the opportunity to pass down her wisdom to the next heir of her birthright. This is supposedly the point of the Watcher’s Council, to pass down knowledge and maintain tradition, but there is a problem the Council has overlooked, or perhaps encouraged.
Slayers are women; theirs is a separate journey from the male hero; they pass through different stages; their epiphanies come in different forms, yet the Council is predominantly male. The few females we have heard of were either corrupt or inept and led to the disastrous consequence of a rogue slayer. Men, however, cannot take the place of crone; it is a woman’s job. Giles and the other male watcher’s can never fully understand the position of the slayer and they were not trained for that purpose.
This leaves Buffy without any female role model to look to, without any crone to gain wisdom from that she too might pass into the next stage. Yes, she may die before she has the chance, but the nature of her position dooms her to that fate of death before completion because there is no one for her to look to for guidance in the slayer/female department. Giles provides book knowledge on demons, but he is inept at offering any real training advice, and when it comes down to it, Buffy must face the darkest evils of Sunnydale without him, without anyone. The slayer’s tradition prevents the completion of her journey.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Phallic Fallacies OR Size Does Matter in the Slaying World
As season 3 ends and season 4 starts off, there is no shortage of sexual encounters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. At least not for those around our super woman; Buffy herself seems to be continually stuck with the short of the umm... well, she never makes it past that first night in bed. All her men just seem to change after their first sexual encounter with her. "Is this the way it's always going to be?” Buffy gloomily asks Willow in “The Harsh Light of Day,” “I sleep with a man; he turns evil?" So what is it about Buffy that makes all her men go running the other way?
Is it the fact that she carries a “security” stake named “Mr. Pointy” with her everywhere she goes so she can slay the random vamp wandering around the town? Could it possibly be her inhuman strength that drives away all masculinity, or is it maybe her take-charge attitude? The point is that Buffy is intimidating, and her girly wants and clothes do nothing to lessen the bruising blow. I mean really, she stomped the terrible demon of fear into the dust, crushed him with her shoe. The demon barely came up to her ankle; what man can stand before that kind of woman and survive? They’d always be behind her, defended by her. It’s not exactly a traditional man’s role.
In truth, Buffy’s invincibility actually causes her to be more vulnerable. She’s raw from the fight. She doesn’t know who she can trust, if any man, and her position as slayer prevents her from really becoming close to anyone. Angel was pretty much her one shot at maintaining an intimate relationship with at least somewhat traditional gender roles, but eventually it would have grown old (or rather she would have). Face it, Buffy needs a man with superhuman strength, knowledge of the “other world,” plus the ability to age. Where’s she going to find all that in one person?
Cue next episode...
Is it the fact that she carries a “security” stake named “Mr. Pointy” with her everywhere she goes so she can slay the random vamp wandering around the town? Could it possibly be her inhuman strength that drives away all masculinity, or is it maybe her take-charge attitude? The point is that Buffy is intimidating, and her girly wants and clothes do nothing to lessen the bruising blow. I mean really, she stomped the terrible demon of fear into the dust, crushed him with her shoe. The demon barely came up to her ankle; what man can stand before that kind of woman and survive? They’d always be behind her, defended by her. It’s not exactly a traditional man’s role.
In truth, Buffy’s invincibility actually causes her to be more vulnerable. She’s raw from the fight. She doesn’t know who she can trust, if any man, and her position as slayer prevents her from really becoming close to anyone. Angel was pretty much her one shot at maintaining an intimate relationship with at least somewhat traditional gender roles, but eventually it would have grown old (or rather she would have). Face it, Buffy needs a man with superhuman strength, knowledge of the “other world,” plus the ability to age. Where’s she going to find all that in one person?
Cue next episode...
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Silly Buffy, Tricks are for Kids
Season four marks the beginning of a new stage for Buffy, or at least that’s what we’re supposed to think. Personally, the whole “I don’t know who I am or where I fit” act is getting just a tad redundant. Still, we can say that Buffy has finally passed out of the deluded virgin stage, literally and figuratively. She tried the whole sacred marriage deal with Angel, and we all know how that turned out... with the man of the house turning his back and walking away, leaving (yes, that’s right) the mother to take care of what’s left.
That mother is Buffy, or at least she is becoming the mother. Her first attempt on her own didn’t start out so great; she spent most of her time moping around about the fact that she was alone or, at least, felt like it. The girl deserves a little trial and error, though; it’s not as if her own mother was all that great at being a role model, spending her time either hiding from the truth or trying to change it.
Let’s get serious, though. Buffy is beginning a new phase of life. She left home to go to college, and while the school is only about five minutes down the road, she has shed herself of her authority figures, no parents and no watchers. Her friends have lives of their own too, so she can’t expect them to be there at all hours of the night to take battle orders from her anymore.
She still has that sense of duty and responsibility that has slowly been developing as she watched what happens when a slayer (i.e. Faith) rejects that aspect of her calling. Buffy helps people (flashback to “Anne” episode one of season three), that’s who she is. When it seems like someone might be in trouble, Buffy steps in.
That’s what happened in “Freshmen.” Disappearances on campus alerted that mother-instinct in Buffy and she hit the ground fighting. Okay, so it was more like she fell, whining about a sore arm (since when does an average vamp leave a mark on the slayer?), but the point is that she stepped up. She took responsibility for all the other students on campus and dusted the bullies. Buffy is no longer the self-involved little girl we saw in the beginning of the series.
That mother is Buffy, or at least she is becoming the mother. Her first attempt on her own didn’t start out so great; she spent most of her time moping around about the fact that she was alone or, at least, felt like it. The girl deserves a little trial and error, though; it’s not as if her own mother was all that great at being a role model, spending her time either hiding from the truth or trying to change it.
Let’s get serious, though. Buffy is beginning a new phase of life. She left home to go to college, and while the school is only about five minutes down the road, she has shed herself of her authority figures, no parents and no watchers. Her friends have lives of their own too, so she can’t expect them to be there at all hours of the night to take battle orders from her anymore.
She still has that sense of duty and responsibility that has slowly been developing as she watched what happens when a slayer (i.e. Faith) rejects that aspect of her calling. Buffy helps people (flashback to “Anne” episode one of season three), that’s who she is. When it seems like someone might be in trouble, Buffy steps in.
That’s what happened in “Freshmen.” Disappearances on campus alerted that mother-instinct in Buffy and she hit the ground fighting. Okay, so it was more like she fell, whining about a sore arm (since when does an average vamp leave a mark on the slayer?), but the point is that she stepped up. She took responsibility for all the other students on campus and dusted the bullies. Buffy is no longer the self-involved little girl we saw in the beginning of the series.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Blurry Grays
It’s getting harder and harder to tell good from evil these days. The line is becoming blurred, and Buffy might not be able to tell if she’s crossed it anymore. Today's episodes seem written specifically to show just how blurry the line has gotten.
In “Doppelgangland,” Willow is mistaken for a much more evil, Vampire version of herself. Even though the dual persona is clearly a danger, Willow refuses to allow Buffy to kill claiming that she “deserves a chance” just like everyone else. While Willow attachment to a mirror image of herself is understandable, the others are perfectly agreeable to going along with releases the demon back to her home. Willow has developed an affinity with her darker self, and the others respect that without question.
In “Enemies,” this juxtapose of an unidentifiable good and a hidden bad is taken even father in the opening scenes with the demon who tries to sell the slayers the Books of Ascension. As Faith says, “A demon’s a demon;” demons are supposed to be evil. However, this demon is a harmless person just trying to survive in dangerous times. In reality, he is probably more “human” than the hardly innocent Faith who condemns him. The audience is very much aware of the irony of the situation. The human is the evil; the demon just an innocent bystander.
In “Earshot,” everyone is sure they who the killer is. It has to be the angsty newspaper writer. He is obsessed with negatives. He’s depressed, and he hates everyone so it must be him, but it’s not. The next turn is to the shy awkward guy everyone picks on. No one ever pays attention to Jonathan; a massacre would be the perfect way for him to get attention. It isn’t Jonathan either. The real culprit is one no one ever suspected, the lunch lady. It is getting harder and harder to figure out who the big bads are now.
Angel blurs the line even further when we are unable to tell if he was turned or not. The question everyone is asking during the entire “Enemies” episode is did the spell work? Is Angel now Angelus? We don’t know, because the truth is he could be either. They are the same person on the outside. No one is able to tell when Angel is good or evil; they all rely on his actions to try to discern the situation of his soul. Actions can be tricky, and we find out that “it was just an act,” as Buffy says in an attempt to reassure both Xander and herself. The fact of the matter is, though, it’s getting harder and harder to discern the good guys from the bad guys now, and even when we know the difference we can’t be sure that that character really is all good or all bad. Things just aren’t black and white anymore.
In “Doppelgangland,” Willow is mistaken for a much more evil, Vampire version of herself. Even though the dual persona is clearly a danger, Willow refuses to allow Buffy to kill claiming that she “deserves a chance” just like everyone else. While Willow attachment to a mirror image of herself is understandable, the others are perfectly agreeable to going along with releases the demon back to her home. Willow has developed an affinity with her darker self, and the others respect that without question.
In “Enemies,” this juxtapose of an unidentifiable good and a hidden bad is taken even father in the opening scenes with the demon who tries to sell the slayers the Books of Ascension. As Faith says, “A demon’s a demon;” demons are supposed to be evil. However, this demon is a harmless person just trying to survive in dangerous times. In reality, he is probably more “human” than the hardly innocent Faith who condemns him. The audience is very much aware of the irony of the situation. The human is the evil; the demon just an innocent bystander.
In “Earshot,” everyone is sure they who the killer is. It has to be the angsty newspaper writer. He is obsessed with negatives. He’s depressed, and he hates everyone so it must be him, but it’s not. The next turn is to the shy awkward guy everyone picks on. No one ever pays attention to Jonathan; a massacre would be the perfect way for him to get attention. It isn’t Jonathan either. The real culprit is one no one ever suspected, the lunch lady. It is getting harder and harder to figure out who the big bads are now.
Angel blurs the line even further when we are unable to tell if he was turned or not. The question everyone is asking during the entire “Enemies” episode is did the spell work? Is Angel now Angelus? We don’t know, because the truth is he could be either. They are the same person on the outside. No one is able to tell when Angel is good or evil; they all rely on his actions to try to discern the situation of his soul. Actions can be tricky, and we find out that “it was just an act,” as Buffy says in an attempt to reassure both Xander and herself. The fact of the matter is, though, it’s getting harder and harder to discern the good guys from the bad guys now, and even when we know the difference we can’t be sure that that character really is all good or all bad. Things just aren’t black and white anymore.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Buffy-buff = Y?
We all know that Buffy was granted inhuman strength at the time of her calling, but physical strength alone is not what makes Buffy so successful in her slaying. The Watcher’s Council puts Buffy’s skills to the test in “Helpless;” they claim “A slayer is not just physical prowess. She must have cunning, imagination, a confidence derived from self-reliance.” Buffy passes the test, proving that she is in possession of all these skills and more.
Beyond these requisite skills that can easily be discerned from watching her battles, Buffy also gains strength from her personality and perspective. She is clear-headed and quick thinking as you can see when she is fighting the crazed vampire in “Helpless.” She is strong-willed and knows how to use her emotions. The support system of her friends and the love she has for her family serve to make her even stronger, driving her past what she might have been able to achieve alone. All this is clear in “What’s My Line Part 2” when she is talking with Kendra.
“The things you do and have I was taught distract from my calling. Friends, school, even family... Emotions are weakness, Buffy. You shouldn’t entertain them.”
“Kendra my emotions give me power. They’re total assets.”
“Maybe. For you. But I prefer to keep an even mind.”
“I guess that explains it... When we were fighting, you’re amazing. You’re technique, it’s flawless. It’s better than mine... Still, I would have kicked your butt in the end, and you know why? No imagination... You’re good but power alone isn’t enough...”
“...I could wipe the floor with you right now!”
“That would be anger you’re feeling... The anger gives you fire. A slayer needs that.”
Buffy’s emotions provide her with the drive she needs to get things done. These emotions come from love for her family and friends, from her care for total strangers (Alan in “Consequences”), from her sense of morality (most evident in her struggle during “Bad Girls”), and from her need to see justice done. Buffy’s strengths go far beyond any normal slayer’s because she has far more than they do; she has friends who help her fulfill her duty, and she has a personal attachment to seeing that duty fulfilled.
Beyond these requisite skills that can easily be discerned from watching her battles, Buffy also gains strength from her personality and perspective. She is clear-headed and quick thinking as you can see when she is fighting the crazed vampire in “Helpless.” She is strong-willed and knows how to use her emotions. The support system of her friends and the love she has for her family serve to make her even stronger, driving her past what she might have been able to achieve alone. All this is clear in “What’s My Line Part 2” when she is talking with Kendra.
“The things you do and have I was taught distract from my calling. Friends, school, even family... Emotions are weakness, Buffy. You shouldn’t entertain them.”
“Kendra my emotions give me power. They’re total assets.”
“Maybe. For you. But I prefer to keep an even mind.”
“I guess that explains it... When we were fighting, you’re amazing. You’re technique, it’s flawless. It’s better than mine... Still, I would have kicked your butt in the end, and you know why? No imagination... You’re good but power alone isn’t enough...”
“...I could wipe the floor with you right now!”
“That would be anger you’re feeling... The anger gives you fire. A slayer needs that.”
Buffy’s emotions provide her with the drive she needs to get things done. These emotions come from love for her family and friends, from her care for total strangers (Alan in “Consequences”), from her sense of morality (most evident in her struggle during “Bad Girls”), and from her need to see justice done. Buffy’s strengths go far beyond any normal slayer’s because she has far more than they do; she has friends who help her fulfill her duty, and she has a personal attachment to seeing that duty fulfilled.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Never Trust Authority
The show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, offers a reversed perspective on the role of parents and youth. In “Generation Lapse: The Problematic Parenting of Joyce Summers and Rupert Giles,” Cynthia Bowers claims that the authority figures fulfill the stereotypical “teen role” of irresponsibility sprinkled with drug and alcohol abuse which is probably most poignantly depicted in “Becoming Part 2” when Buffy orders her panicking parent to “Have another drink, Mom.” While Joyce is selfishly thinking about the life she wants for her daughter regardless of the atrocities that would be committed because of her wish’s fulfillment, Buffy is out doing her duty and picking up the slack of the ignorant adults to the great lose of all she loves.
As Ken describes, “You got the look, though... Like you had to grow up way too fast”. Buffy quickly takes on the role and responsibility of parent in “Becoming Part 2” and “Anne”. She is the one who must take care not only of her family but also of the rest of the world. In the former episode, Buffy must sacrifice, Angel, her most precious object for the sake of the greater good; the situation is oddly comparable to a mother who has discovered her lover is abusing her children and must remove him from society for the sake of her “children.” In “Anne,” Buffy is on her own taking care of herself as well as the helpless Lily. Even Giles recognizes Buffy’s role when he soothes Joyce with the words “Buffy is the most capable child I’ve ever known... I honestly believe she’s in no danger.” Joyce does nothing; Buffy is the real mother figure in the series.
Beyond just a reversal of roles, the adults are not only portrayed as childish but also as evil. Almost all the monsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are of the adult generation with the exception of the pathetic “Anointed One.” In fact, Family Home, where Ken claims the children will be safe and cared for, is actually a trap to deceive youth into being led into the demonic slave trade. All the authority figures in Buffy, Joyce Summers, Principal Snyder, Ken, even at times Giles (episode 2.6 “Halloween”), fail Buffy causes more harm and hindrance than help. Authority figures are never portrayed as supportive, encouraging, or even safe.
As Ken describes, “You got the look, though... Like you had to grow up way too fast”. Buffy quickly takes on the role and responsibility of parent in “Becoming Part 2” and “Anne”. She is the one who must take care not only of her family but also of the rest of the world. In the former episode, Buffy must sacrifice, Angel, her most precious object for the sake of the greater good; the situation is oddly comparable to a mother who has discovered her lover is abusing her children and must remove him from society for the sake of her “children.” In “Anne,” Buffy is on her own taking care of herself as well as the helpless Lily. Even Giles recognizes Buffy’s role when he soothes Joyce with the words “Buffy is the most capable child I’ve ever known... I honestly believe she’s in no danger.” Joyce does nothing; Buffy is the real mother figure in the series.
Beyond just a reversal of roles, the adults are not only portrayed as childish but also as evil. Almost all the monsters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer are of the adult generation with the exception of the pathetic “Anointed One.” In fact, Family Home, where Ken claims the children will be safe and cared for, is actually a trap to deceive youth into being led into the demonic slave trade. All the authority figures in Buffy, Joyce Summers, Principal Snyder, Ken, even at times Giles (episode 2.6 “Halloween”), fail Buffy causes more harm and hindrance than help. Authority figures are never portrayed as supportive, encouraging, or even safe.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Humanity: Monster or Man
The appearance of the Judge (from “Surprise” and “Innocence”) in Buffy puts forth an interesting question; What is it that makes us human? According to legend, the Judge is “brought forth to rid the Earth of the plague of humanity, to separate the righteous from the wicked, and to burn the righteous down.” Giles claims that no human has ever survived the Judge’s purging, yet it is not humans alone who are burned for their humanity. This brings us back to the question, what defines humanity?
The audience’s first thought is that it might have something to do with love. After all, the judge first fixes on Spike and Drusilla. The Judge condemns them, “You two stink of humanity. You share affection and jealousy.” For the two emotions to exist, there has to be some form of mutual caring between the vamps. The Judge’s first actual victim though is the scholar vampire. He “is full of feeling. He reads.” The scholar falls victim to the apocalyptic monster due to his passion for books and learning. Love would be the obvious conclusion to the Judge’s determining factor.
However if you look more closely, love can’t apply. Drusilla doesn’t love Spike. He is merely an amusement to her, the one who took care of her and filled the long years. As soon as Angel is turned back into Angelus, Spike looses his appeal to Drusilla. Love doesn’t fade that quickly.
Angel provides a better reference to discovering the factor used to determine humanity. With a soul, he is vulnerable to the Judge; without, he is “clean.” The soul is not the answer though, because other soulless vampires can still have aspects of humanity (i.e. Spike and Dru). So what else has changed? In “Innocence,” Ms. Calender’s uncle explains that “Angel was meant to suffer, not live as human.” Angel’s gentleness and contentment have disappeared. His guilt is gone and with it his good intentions. Which of these made him human?
His soul provided a conscience that made him care about things beyond himself. This is where the answer lies. Spike and Drusilla care about each other even if it might be for different reasons. The scholar cared about his books and knowledge. Angel cared about Buffy. It is our care for things outside of ourselves that gives us our humanity; without it, we would be no more than self-indulgent hedonists with a drive for pleasure and satisfaction even at the destruction of all else.
The audience’s first thought is that it might have something to do with love. After all, the judge first fixes on Spike and Drusilla. The Judge condemns them, “You two stink of humanity. You share affection and jealousy.” For the two emotions to exist, there has to be some form of mutual caring between the vamps. The Judge’s first actual victim though is the scholar vampire. He “is full of feeling. He reads.” The scholar falls victim to the apocalyptic monster due to his passion for books and learning. Love would be the obvious conclusion to the Judge’s determining factor.
However if you look more closely, love can’t apply. Drusilla doesn’t love Spike. He is merely an amusement to her, the one who took care of her and filled the long years. As soon as Angel is turned back into Angelus, Spike looses his appeal to Drusilla. Love doesn’t fade that quickly.
Angel provides a better reference to discovering the factor used to determine humanity. With a soul, he is vulnerable to the Judge; without, he is “clean.” The soul is not the answer though, because other soulless vampires can still have aspects of humanity (i.e. Spike and Dru). So what else has changed? In “Innocence,” Ms. Calender’s uncle explains that “Angel was meant to suffer, not live as human.” Angel’s gentleness and contentment have disappeared. His guilt is gone and with it his good intentions. Which of these made him human?
His soul provided a conscience that made him care about things beyond himself. This is where the answer lies. Spike and Drusilla care about each other even if it might be for different reasons. The scholar cared about his books and knowledge. Angel cared about Buffy. It is our care for things outside of ourselves that gives us our humanity; without it, we would be no more than self-indulgent hedonists with a drive for pleasure and satisfaction even at the destruction of all else.
Monday, February 16, 2009
Relationships: What a Girl Will Do OR A Reversal of Roles
We all know that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is all about having a female hero save the world while the male characters provide the sex appeal and comic relief, but so far that heroic role has been reserved for only one girl, Buffy. The other girls, Cordelia and Willow, in the show still fulfill the usual female roles sideliners who can help but still require a hero to come to their rescue. “Halloween” turns this whole act around. According to Buffy, “the whole point of Halloween... [is that] it’s come-as-you-aren’t night.” This is certainly the case for the Slayer gang as Willow and Xander take the lead with Buffy as the damsel in distress hoping “some men will protect us [women].”
This episode is “the very embodiment of be careful what you wish for” as Ethan summarizes in his explanation to Giles. At the beginning of the show, Buffy is desperate for a love life, specifically one with Angel, but as she states it, “Ambush tactics [and] beheadings [are] not exactly what dreams are made of.” As Cordelia starts to try her own moves on Angel, Buffy becomes driven, almost to the point of obsession, to find out exactly what kind of girl would please Angel. It is a personality quirk more characteristic of the stereotypical teenage girl than a confident savior of the world (but as she points out “I’m a teen. I act immature!” (from “What’s My Line Part I”)), yet the jealousy mounts as Buffy learns more about Angels past loves as a human and the carefree life she imagines those women had. In an impulsive effort to attract Angels attentions, she chooses the costume of a noble woman from Angel’s era as her Halloween outfit, wanting “to be a real girl for once.” She is left in the role of a courtly lady who “wasn’t bred to think” and refuses to do anything but lie there and cry when she is attacked because “it’s not [her] place to fight.”
With Buffy spelled into the role of the “simpering moron” from Angel’s past, it is left to Willow and Xander to pick up the slack on the slaying front. As the only one of the trio who retains her memories during the curse, Willow is forced to take charge as the leader of the group and wear the sexy clothes that go with it. She gainfully instructs the others on how to fight and gains some much needed confidence in the process. Xander provides the brawn and combat tactics having finally gained the ability to fight his own battles and win; his Halloween wish, unlike Buffy’s, happens to be very advantageous to himself and the rest of the group. He gets a second chance to confront his bully, Larry the pirate, and ends up finally rescuing Buffy in the process. Xander is given the opportunity to prove his masculinity.
This episode is “the very embodiment of be careful what you wish for” as Ethan summarizes in his explanation to Giles. At the beginning of the show, Buffy is desperate for a love life, specifically one with Angel, but as she states it, “Ambush tactics [and] beheadings [are] not exactly what dreams are made of.” As Cordelia starts to try her own moves on Angel, Buffy becomes driven, almost to the point of obsession, to find out exactly what kind of girl would please Angel. It is a personality quirk more characteristic of the stereotypical teenage girl than a confident savior of the world (but as she points out “I’m a teen. I act immature!” (from “What’s My Line Part I”)), yet the jealousy mounts as Buffy learns more about Angels past loves as a human and the carefree life she imagines those women had. In an impulsive effort to attract Angels attentions, she chooses the costume of a noble woman from Angel’s era as her Halloween outfit, wanting “to be a real girl for once.” She is left in the role of a courtly lady who “wasn’t bred to think” and refuses to do anything but lie there and cry when she is attacked because “it’s not [her] place to fight.”
With Buffy spelled into the role of the “simpering moron” from Angel’s past, it is left to Willow and Xander to pick up the slack on the slaying front. As the only one of the trio who retains her memories during the curse, Willow is forced to take charge as the leader of the group and wear the sexy clothes that go with it. She gainfully instructs the others on how to fight and gains some much needed confidence in the process. Xander provides the brawn and combat tactics having finally gained the ability to fight his own battles and win; his Halloween wish, unlike Buffy’s, happens to be very advantageous to himself and the rest of the group. He gets a second chance to confront his bully, Larry the pirate, and ends up finally rescuing Buffy in the process. Xander is given the opportunity to prove his masculinity.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Vampires: What are they? Who are they?
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series grounded in myth. With myth comes metaphor; it is an expected aspect of any mythical analysis. What do these imagined creatures mean? What depths of our psyche do they represent?
Consider the vampire. A regular aspect of many mythical fictions, the vampire is the center demon in this television series. Buffy is hardly the first story to bring these creatures into popular culture, however. Vampires have been around for ages, embodying a wide range of metaphoric representations from sociopaths to seductive perfection. Still a general conclusion can be made; vampires are chocolates. They provide a sort of ecstatic, even sensual, pleasure (the vampire’s bite is said to provide a high similar to that of narcotics), yet they are sinful, soulless. Of course their lack of a soul grants the vampires a sort of conscience-free action that we have all desired at one point or another. With their heightened sense and strength, immortality, and their perfect physique, Vampires represent the ideal human at an inhuman cost. As their aversion to sun might suggest, vampires represent our darkest fantasies; unable to accept them as our own we push them off onto this romanticized myth.
Darla stands as a perfect example. The sweet goodness you know you shouldn’t have. Her dress adds to this fact. As Angel points out, “What’s with the Catholic schoolgirl look?” The name, Darla derives from the world darling. Darla, herself, embodies raw sexuality; she is lust with a touch of sadomasochism.
Darla, and all she represents, is the favorite of the Master. The Master spends nearly the entirety of his existence on the series trapped underground, buried in a sense. He is suppressed, and he represents all that Buffy has suppressed, all of her emotions or potential aspects she is unwilling to accept or embrace. “With power comes responsibility,” the Master recites. Until she is ready to face him, Buffy is unwilling to think of slaying as anything more than a side job; very often she forgets the responsibilities associated with her role as Slayer as when she chose to go on a date with Owen rather than accompany Giles to the funeral home. Buffy nearly got both Giles and Owen killed because she wouldn’t see the responsibility that came with her role. Also, one of Buffy’s greatest fears is for killing to become easy, for her to become cold and lose her ability for empathy. Once the master is freed (and duly killed), Buffy can no longer suppress the “big bad” within her; it too is freed as her attitude shows upon her return in season two episode one, “When She was Bad.” It isn’t until she has fully confronted the Master a second time and ground him “into talcum powder,” as Xander says, that she vanquished the demons within.
Colin, too, stands as a very metaphoric symbol in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a child we expect him to represent pure innocence, and so he does when we first see him on the bus in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” but once the vampires turn him into one of their own Colin becomes the representation of pure evil. Even as we watch Colin lead Buffy into Hell, we can’t help but think of him as helpless; we want to reach out and “help,” as he begged of Buffy. His mere form as a child makes him the stuff of nightmares and horror shows. Mix that in with a couple biblical references and allusions, and our sense of what should be is twisted, shattered.
Another vampire, or in this case set of vampires, who’s name alluded to biblical stories was The Three from the episode “Angel.” The Three are the embodiment of masculinity. They are strong, tough, and practically overdosing on testosterone. Their name comes from a reference in the bible to King David’s Warriors, sometimes referred to as The Three, perhaps as a bit of foreshadowing for the trinity that is introduced in the New Testament. The fact that The Three in Buffy the Vampire Slayer nearly destroy her is yet another way evil has chosen to twist and mock religion. Buffy has to be rescued by Angel when she is fighting them, but in the end a woman, Darla, defeats them.
Angel, himself, is surely one of the greatest metaphors of the show so far (through episode one of season two). Angel represented the battle of self; he is unsated desire. He is a vampire; he craves human blood, but he also has a soul and the guilt that comes with it. As Darla says in reference to the humans, “Guess what precious; you’re not one of them.” Angels response is similar, “I’m not exactly one of you either.” There is a battle raging within him between the human and the demon, because Angel is cursed to be both. Even more than a representation of this battle, though, Angel is unsated desire. All that he craves, Buffy, warm blood, forgiveness, an end to the pain, is lost to him. Buffy is a slayer not to mention a child. Blood though he craves it has become despicable to him. It is too late for forgiveness, and the end is lost forever for immortals.
Consider the vampire. A regular aspect of many mythical fictions, the vampire is the center demon in this television series. Buffy is hardly the first story to bring these creatures into popular culture, however. Vampires have been around for ages, embodying a wide range of metaphoric representations from sociopaths to seductive perfection. Still a general conclusion can be made; vampires are chocolates. They provide a sort of ecstatic, even sensual, pleasure (the vampire’s bite is said to provide a high similar to that of narcotics), yet they are sinful, soulless. Of course their lack of a soul grants the vampires a sort of conscience-free action that we have all desired at one point or another. With their heightened sense and strength, immortality, and their perfect physique, Vampires represent the ideal human at an inhuman cost. As their aversion to sun might suggest, vampires represent our darkest fantasies; unable to accept them as our own we push them off onto this romanticized myth.
Darla stands as a perfect example. The sweet goodness you know you shouldn’t have. Her dress adds to this fact. As Angel points out, “What’s with the Catholic schoolgirl look?” The name, Darla derives from the world darling. Darla, herself, embodies raw sexuality; she is lust with a touch of sadomasochism.
Darla, and all she represents, is the favorite of the Master. The Master spends nearly the entirety of his existence on the series trapped underground, buried in a sense. He is suppressed, and he represents all that Buffy has suppressed, all of her emotions or potential aspects she is unwilling to accept or embrace. “With power comes responsibility,” the Master recites. Until she is ready to face him, Buffy is unwilling to think of slaying as anything more than a side job; very often she forgets the responsibilities associated with her role as Slayer as when she chose to go on a date with Owen rather than accompany Giles to the funeral home. Buffy nearly got both Giles and Owen killed because she wouldn’t see the responsibility that came with her role. Also, one of Buffy’s greatest fears is for killing to become easy, for her to become cold and lose her ability for empathy. Once the master is freed (and duly killed), Buffy can no longer suppress the “big bad” within her; it too is freed as her attitude shows upon her return in season two episode one, “When She was Bad.” It isn’t until she has fully confronted the Master a second time and ground him “into talcum powder,” as Xander says, that she vanquished the demons within.
Colin, too, stands as a very metaphoric symbol in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a child we expect him to represent pure innocence, and so he does when we first see him on the bus in “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date,” but once the vampires turn him into one of their own Colin becomes the representation of pure evil. Even as we watch Colin lead Buffy into Hell, we can’t help but think of him as helpless; we want to reach out and “help,” as he begged of Buffy. His mere form as a child makes him the stuff of nightmares and horror shows. Mix that in with a couple biblical references and allusions, and our sense of what should be is twisted, shattered.
Another vampire, or in this case set of vampires, who’s name alluded to biblical stories was The Three from the episode “Angel.” The Three are the embodiment of masculinity. They are strong, tough, and practically overdosing on testosterone. Their name comes from a reference in the bible to King David’s Warriors, sometimes referred to as The Three, perhaps as a bit of foreshadowing for the trinity that is introduced in the New Testament. The fact that The Three in Buffy the Vampire Slayer nearly destroy her is yet another way evil has chosen to twist and mock religion. Buffy has to be rescued by Angel when she is fighting them, but in the end a woman, Darla, defeats them.
Angel, himself, is surely one of the greatest metaphors of the show so far (through episode one of season two). Angel represented the battle of self; he is unsated desire. He is a vampire; he craves human blood, but he also has a soul and the guilt that comes with it. As Darla says in reference to the humans, “Guess what precious; you’re not one of them.” Angels response is similar, “I’m not exactly one of you either.” There is a battle raging within him between the human and the demon, because Angel is cursed to be both. Even more than a representation of this battle, though, Angel is unsated desire. All that he craves, Buffy, warm blood, forgiveness, an end to the pain, is lost to him. Buffy is a slayer not to mention a child. Blood though he craves it has become despicable to him. It is too late for forgiveness, and the end is lost forever for immortals.
Monday, February 9, 2009
The First Stage of the Female Hero's Journey
The television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though written by a male screenwriter, stands as an ideal representation of a modern feminist myth. Buffy Summers is one of the first examples of popular culture that starred a feminine hero. She can be strong and confident while remaining a stylish, teenage girl who talks like a valley girl and walks around in heels as she battles a world of magic and demons. The main male characters in the first three episodes, Xander and Giles, are assistants to Buffy, dependent on her. A girl is the one saving the world.
According to “Prologue: Woman as Hero in Twentieth Century Literature,” the female hero’s journey consists of three distinct stages of physical and mental development: virgin, mother, and crone. In episode one of season one, “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” Buffy is just beginning her journey as Sunnydale’s hero. She is the virgin, absorbed with her own schoolgirl interests. Buffy wants only to have a normal life surrounded by friends rather than fiends. She tries to resist her duty and the accompanied responsibility until it becomes her own “potential friend[s]” that are in danger. As she explains to Angel when he tries to warn her against rescuing Jesse, “I’ve got a friend down there. Or, at least, a potential friend.” Once her would-be normal life is threatened, Buffy is willing to fulfill her duty. Not until she accepts this destiny (to a point) does she actually find a social niche among her classmates, Willow and Xander, and even the librarian/watcher Giles. Still, Buffy is insistent on distancing herself from her fate. She tries to explain this to Giles when he attempts to forbid her from becoming a cheerleader in “The Witch.” “I just, wanna have a life,” she protests. Buffy is trying to find a balance between her responsibility to others and her individual wants.
In the first three episodes of this series, Buffy undergoes a form of symbolic separation from her mother, a necessary step in the virgin hero’s journey as maintained by the afore mentioned article. She is forced to keep her calling as Slayer a secret; her mother does not know or even suspect this aspect of her daughter. In “The Harvest,” Joyce bans her daughter from leaving the house after she gets a call from the principal informing her that Buffy has missed classes. Buffy is in a hurry to get to the Bronze in order to save the youth clubbing there from the slaughter of the Harvest She attempts to explain the importance of the situation but is unable to tell her mother the full truth. Joyce just thinks she is being a frivolous, petulant teenager and grounds her. Joyce can’t understand what her daughter is dealing with because she does not know. The mother and daughter are growing distant as a result of Buffy’s secret life. This distance is highlighted in episode four, “The Witch.” Buffy is excited about trying out for cheerleading, yet her mother is completely preoccupied with work. In the middle of a discussion with Joyce, Buffy asks her mother “What am I trying out for?” Joyce had been participating in the conversation yet she has no idea what they were talking about and wasn’t aware that Buffy wants to be a cheerleader again. After Buffy talks to Amy and discovers she trains with her mother every day, Buffy speaks to her own mom about all the time Amy’s mother spends helping her daughter; all Joyce has to say is that she is needs to work. Then later after Buffy finds out she didn’t make the squad, Joyce tries to convince her daughter to join the yearbook team like she did when she was in high school, Buffy has never expressed interest in such an activity and refuses. The conversation ends in hateful remarks on both ends. Buffy may still live with her mother, but they have grown apart. Buffy is searching for her own, separate identity.
According to “Prologue: Woman as Hero in Twentieth Century Literature,” the female hero’s journey consists of three distinct stages of physical and mental development: virgin, mother, and crone. In episode one of season one, “Welcome to the Hellmouth,” Buffy is just beginning her journey as Sunnydale’s hero. She is the virgin, absorbed with her own schoolgirl interests. Buffy wants only to have a normal life surrounded by friends rather than fiends. She tries to resist her duty and the accompanied responsibility until it becomes her own “potential friend[s]” that are in danger. As she explains to Angel when he tries to warn her against rescuing Jesse, “I’ve got a friend down there. Or, at least, a potential friend.” Once her would-be normal life is threatened, Buffy is willing to fulfill her duty. Not until she accepts this destiny (to a point) does she actually find a social niche among her classmates, Willow and Xander, and even the librarian/watcher Giles. Still, Buffy is insistent on distancing herself from her fate. She tries to explain this to Giles when he attempts to forbid her from becoming a cheerleader in “The Witch.” “I just, wanna have a life,” she protests. Buffy is trying to find a balance between her responsibility to others and her individual wants.
In the first three episodes of this series, Buffy undergoes a form of symbolic separation from her mother, a necessary step in the virgin hero’s journey as maintained by the afore mentioned article. She is forced to keep her calling as Slayer a secret; her mother does not know or even suspect this aspect of her daughter. In “The Harvest,” Joyce bans her daughter from leaving the house after she gets a call from the principal informing her that Buffy has missed classes. Buffy is in a hurry to get to the Bronze in order to save the youth clubbing there from the slaughter of the Harvest She attempts to explain the importance of the situation but is unable to tell her mother the full truth. Joyce just thinks she is being a frivolous, petulant teenager and grounds her. Joyce can’t understand what her daughter is dealing with because she does not know. The mother and daughter are growing distant as a result of Buffy’s secret life. This distance is highlighted in episode four, “The Witch.” Buffy is excited about trying out for cheerleading, yet her mother is completely preoccupied with work. In the middle of a discussion with Joyce, Buffy asks her mother “What am I trying out for?” Joyce had been participating in the conversation yet she has no idea what they were talking about and wasn’t aware that Buffy wants to be a cheerleader again. After Buffy talks to Amy and discovers she trains with her mother every day, Buffy speaks to her own mom about all the time Amy’s mother spends helping her daughter; all Joyce has to say is that she is needs to work. Then later after Buffy finds out she didn’t make the squad, Joyce tries to convince her daughter to join the yearbook team like she did when she was in high school, Buffy has never expressed interest in such an activity and refuses. The conversation ends in hateful remarks on both ends. Buffy may still live with her mother, but they have grown apart. Buffy is searching for her own, separate identity.
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