Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Posts Tagged ‘buffy’

To begin this ending, I’ve recently come across a quote that leads me to believe it was Carl Jung, rather than Friedrich Nietzsche, who said the bit about the artists giving back to their age what it is most lacking.

And so here we go again, and before I forget, let’s briefly skim over what I’ve said elsewhere about the values of friendship, fighting for, and not giving up on, one’s friends — even when they are misbehaving, and let me add to that, Angel’s comment to Buffy about not fighting to win but because some things are worth fighting for. Those are all values and they are certainly part of what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about.

But if you’re anything like me, you watch Buffy primarily for the fun of it, and rarely, if ever, give much thought to what it all means, or could mean, or how Buffy the Vampire Slayer may fit into your value system. Moreover, I doubt very many of us give a lot of thought to how the show may or may not fit into the Western storytelling tradition. Well I don’t blame you, but I’m gonna, that is, I’m about to, and there’s a lot to say, and I don’t know for sure how to say it all, and I’ll probably be jumping and swerving around considerably, so buckle down for a ride or get gone now, and either way, don’t say you weren’t warned.

So, still here? Ready?

Okay.

At least since the early Middle Ages, if not going all the way back to Socrates, Western literature has been fraught with metaphor, and often interpreted as allegory, whether that was the author’s original intent or not. So it is not too surprising that BtVS, with its rich use of language, subtext and symbolism, has inspired more than its share of interpreters, academic and otherwise.

But before I try to add anything to the growing archives of Buffyology, let’s review just a bit.

We are, as I said at the outset, examining the work of a community of creators, and it is impossible to say with any certainty what the creators’ control or conscious intentions were, but that doesn’t mean that something that resembles a work of art as much as, in my opinion, BtVS does cannot say much that is significant about its times.

And even if it is not the work of artists as I claim, the show’s wide appeal surely says something, again, about our times.

Additionally, as I’ve already mentioned the moral ambiguity sometimes evident in the show and suggested it could be argued that it is Nietzsche-ian in some sense, those familiar with Nietzsche have probably already concluded, or at least suspected, that there was, after all, a reason I chose for this series of posts the title "Buffy Summers & Beyond Good and Evil" — and I believe that that too — the moral ambiguity, along with the intensity with which the good-versus-evil dualism is punctuated — may have contributed to the show’s appeal over the last several years.

So with that brief recap in mind, let’s proceed as to the how and the why.

What does it all mean? What are the values being communicated? Why — beyond the visceral action, wit, and the beauty of the cast — the show’s popular appeal?

While I mentioned that various hierarchies are frequently ignored or quickly dismissed in the world of Buffy Summers, I assume everyone familiar with the series has noticed that it is not nearly as true in the world of Demonic Forces. In truth, it is pointedly not the case at all. The Master has his disciples (nearly worshipers) in season one. Spike and Drusilla have their minions in season two. Mayor Wilkins has his political subordinates as well as his tributes to higher demons in the next season. Maggie Walsh and her creation, Adam, have their obedient ‘soldiers’ — human and otherwise. Glorificus, her lackeys, or, again, worshipers; Warren, his feckless sidekicks; and the First, the abject devotion of its Bringers and Caleb.

Not only does respect for some given hierarchy often play a key role in the world of Demonic Forces, the primary hierarchy in effect is frequently religious, or quasi-religious, in nature. Abject devotion, unquestioning obedience, an unwitting and all consuming desire to please, or simply a fear of the consequences of disobedience are all prevalent and characteristic of the relationships between the show’s primary villains and their followers, or servants, or (if I haven’t said it too often already) worshipers.

(And of course the storyline with Caleb in season seven in particular reads like a devastating treatise against the fundamentalist, patriarchal and woman-blaming/hating tendencies of at least some Western religious tradition.)

In addition to the frequently in-your-face religiosity that seems to infuse the world of Demonic Forces, it is also emphasized in various episodes throughout the entirety of the series — all seasons — that the feeling that being on the side of evil grants (after becoming a vampire for example), is the feeling of having become "one with everything," or at least one with some great purpose or power.

What does that remind us of if not religion?

Being one with everything, being one with God, having an overriding sense of purpose, sacrificing the ego or one’s individuality for some greater whole — all of these are notions common in many (or perhaps all?) of the world’s religions. And maybe I’m being influenced here by the knowledge of Joss’s atheism, but I believe part of what is being communicated, consciously or not, is that that kind of experience, that kind of feeling of, for lack of a better term, oneness, is dangerous, dangerous in the sense of being, if not evil, then at least potentially evil.

Evil? Whatever are you getting at, Elijah? In what sense?

Well, you may recall Buffy’s comment in The Initiative to Professor Walsh, when after the professor’s callousness toward Willow’s misery (after Oz has left her and Sunnydale behind), Buffy says, "You’re right. A human being in pain is not part of your job."

What is Buffy really saying there? Isn’t it that Professor Walsh is letting her sense of her professional priorities and obligations overwhelm her humanity? Isn’t this the danger the late mythologist Joseph Campbell was talking about when he discussed the danger of "becoming the uniform?" As I recall, Campbell suggested that most, or at least much, of the evil in the world has been in the name of duty, or in the name of simply following orders or the rules, of becoming the uniform. Or, another way of saying that is being a mindless automaton (and "one with" a greater whole) rather than being an individual with an individual conscience.

That is, after all, one of the great complaints of the skeptic — that religion, which claims to establish a basis for morality, often leads to a mindless authoritarian, follow-the-leader sort of mentality that sometimes (some would say ‘often’) leads to some of the most immoral acts imaginable.

So if that is being communicated, i.e., that being or becoming somewhat less than an individual moral agent is innately evil in some sense, how does the story universe of Buffy, with its emphasis on duality and moral ambiguity, relate to the spirit of our times? — or, I suppose I might say, accurately or not, to the Zeitgeist?

One way to think about it is that it may mirror a psychological tension in the viewer that is nearly absent from much of modern storytelling. I’m not sure about this, but I am thinking that, if some of the world’s predominate religions (which tend in various respects to be story-based) are any indication, most human beings like to have things kept as simple as possible, e.g., folks like us are the good guys, so folks who are too unlike us must necessarily be the bad guys.

And of course such evaluations generally lead to some generalizations as to who is deserving of what.

I seem to recall that some have argued that there may even be some survival or evolutionary advantage to keeping such matters simple. Or another way of putting it might be to say that a simplistic world view makes for a simpler people who are more simply motivated, led, or (dare I say it?) manipulated.

But of course throughout our histories there have always been some who recognized that matters are never so simple, and in modern times especially, many more of us have been confronted by that understanding, i.e., a cognitive dissonance between much of traditional Western religious mythology and our modern experience due to there being so much contact between cultures and individuals that it is no longer reasonable for many of us to view the world in simple black and white (i.e., we’re good, they’re bad) terms.

So the Buffyverse (through its contrast between the emphasized dual nature of its story reality and the sense of moral ambiguity evident in some characters and situations) plays with the psychological tension between the dualism many of us are taught as kids and may still believe in on an emotional level — and still experience, or are frequently asked to experience, in our storytelling traditions — and the more complicated modern reality we now find ourselves in as adults.

Did Joss and his fellow creators intend this? I have no idea. But the recognition of our own dilemma, conscious or not, implicit in the Buffyverse may very well contribute to the show’s popularity. These are situations and moral judgments — as far removed from our reality as they may seem on the surface — that we all, or nearly all, understand from our own experience.

So you see it’s not fantasy after all, is it? It’s metaphor, it’s allegory, it’s myth.

Or is it?

So, just maybe that’s what Buffy the Vampire Slayer has to say about us, and about our times, but now swerving suddenly on, how does Buffy fit into Western literature, or into the Western storytelling tradition? And is it metaphor, or allegory, or myth? Or?

Well, Joss, et al, are in a sense creating a kind of mythic history, a kind of world myth where there was nothing before, a far less patriarchal — and far more feminist — myth of origin than what we in the West have grown accustomed to. Others have done something similar. It is arguable that Homer may have done it in the Odyssey for the Greeks (you knew there was some reason I brought up that sailing metaphor a while back, didn’t you? — even if I did not do a very decent job of extending it); and Virgil certainly did it in the Aeneid for the Romans; and Goethe took a stab at it for the Germans. Even Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings can be seen as an attempt to mythically bridge the gap between established English literature and England’s lost, prehistoric past.

And in all previous cases we are speaking of a mythic history, a history based on psychology, the psychological need to define a new paradigm of identity, rather than, or in addition to, actual events — and I would argue may be even more true of what Joss Whedon has done.

So that begs the question. Is Joss attempting to establish a national identity, or a new way of thinking about the American empire? No. Nothing so simple as that. BtVS is not an attempt at a nationalistic myth, nor an attempt to fulfill the desire an empire may have to justify its dominance, but rather, it is an attempt to create a world myth, a new kind of world myth that is simultaneously Western and non-Western in its sensibility.

But is BtVS truly a world myth? Did Joss, et al, succeed?

I would say no, at least not without more work, for Joss and his co-creators have not yet addressed all aspects of female empowerment, i.e., all aspects of what it means to be a woman.

Buffy is not complete as a world myth because it does not empower women in all aspects of womanhood. If it did, there would be more than one Slayer known to have had children, and many of those children would have been raised to successful adulthood. In fact, Robin Wood’s battle with his emotions over the loss of his mother is a (probably) unintended argument against Slayerhood, i.e., against the warrior woman, as the implication is, it can so easily lead to either no children, or ever more dysfunctional, and abandoned, children.

Nevertheless, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is most definitely in the Western storytelling, myth-making, identity-defining tradition, and however the continuing story, in comic book form or otherwise, may yet develop, at the end of the TV series, like in much of Western myth, our hero comes home again, not literally of course, but psychically home.

Whereas Odysseus traveled broadly to come home again to his wife, Buffy stayed home, or nearly home, throughout, and perhaps the notion of our hero staying home is just another reflection of some of what our society may be missing, as discussed previously, or perhaps it could be argued that the concept of home may be even more characteristic of the feminine journey. But as paradoxical as it may seem on the surface, being home — even after everything she could ever call home has been utterly destroyed — doesn’t prevent Buffy from longing to return home, just as Odysseus did. But it is a psychological home Buffy pines for, an emotional perspective that she finally comes back to, full circle, and that is to not feel so alone or be so special in the world, but simply to be an ordinary girl — or perhaps more accurately, an ordinary person.

While this next statement probably qualifies me as a little bit spacey, personally, I suspect part of the appeal of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — mostly unconscious and aside from all the obvious — is a kind of cosmic longing on the part of Western civilization to go home to the feminine, even while, perhaps, recognizing — albeit sometimes reluctantly — the necessity of the masculine.

There are other, far more sophisticated ways of saying it, but that seems like a kind of conclusion, so I will leave it at that — at least for now.

And so our sailing vessel docks at last! I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Yeah, it’s hokey. Wanna make something of it? What can I say? I have no shame.

(By the way, keep an eye peeled for part 2 of my conclusion of Buffy Summers & Beyond Good and Evil — coming soon! — no, really.)

As anyone who has visited the site recently knows, we added a store in addition to the ‘All things Buffy!’ page; however, we’ve now taken it down. We are considering alternatives, so there may again be a store some time in the future, but the software being used for it, this time around, proved inadequate to our needs, and most likely, those of any shoppers. Thanks for your patience as we stumble around with this and that and the other idea.

Here’s a vid that’s, essentially, just a little walk down the ol’ Buffy memory lane. Nothing special. Just y’know kinda nostalgic.

As most Buffy fans know, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a whole lot more than a television series now in syndication. It is also t-shirts, statues, comics, books, scholarly treatises, and even a game. So in the interests of, well, your edifibuffycation perhaps, here’s a brief review:

The Chosen One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, needs help against the evil minions of Sunnydale! Wanna help? Roll the dice to battle the monsters directly, or cast some mighty magic spells against Buffy’s foes. The game is designed to showcase Buffy’s toughest challenges and her greatest strengths, which are all controlled by a roll of the die. The game board features familiar characters, of course (like Willow, Buffy, Oz, Xander) and locations from the hit TV show (like the Sunnydale High School and the Sunnydale cemetery).

There are four villains and scenarios to the game: the Master from Season One, the Judge from Season Two, the Mayor from Season Three, and Adam from Season Four. Though the other seasons are not represented, the various scenarios do effectively make this four games in one, albeit very related. And of course with a little imagination, you can make up variations on the different scenarios, i.e., changing the villains, or making one of the good guys into a bad guy or vice versa.

That’s the good.

Now here’s the bad:

This game takes a little while to set up and learn the rules. Even so, in my opinion, kids will get a lot more out of it than adults will — unless you are very much the kid at heart (like I can be from time to time), in which case you may love it as much as the best show ever made for television. (Er, I’m speaking of BtVS of course.) And if you expect it to be educational, well, not bloody likely as Spike might say. It does generate discussions of the Buffy mythos, and that can never be a bad thing. But it takes several players to play it right. Either that, or some will have to play more than one character. There are resources, weapons, and help cards (the help cards are all other characters from the show) for the good characters, and evil cards for the evil team.

A couple of other minor complaints: most of the weapons are, well, different kinds of stakes. Also, the villains rarely win. That’s the way we like it in the show, but it negates some of the motivation to play on the evil team. Also, the game won’t take a lot of abuse. It might be best to play it infrequently, or simply put it aside as a conversation piece or collector’s item.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer The Game