Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Posts Tagged ‘ordinary life’

In a recent post, I called Welcome to the Hellmouth "in most respects a typical introductory episode" and said it did not "make a particularly great impression."

Well, that was a rather perfunctory dismissal, don’t you think?

And as I hadn’t seen it in a little while, I watched Hellmouth again yesterday, and it got me to thinking . . . if establishing the premise and the main characters was just a "typical introductory episode," what would that have to say about the entire series? And if either was typical, then why has Buffy become such a phenomenon?

Okay, now here’s a posit:  from the moment Darla (Julie Benz) and her next meal break into the highschool, Welcome to the Hellmouth begins to set up a few new rules that will permeate the entire Buffy series, and by "new rules" I mean in terms of what we previously had come to expect — pre-Buffy — from television and film entertainment.

Example — it is the seemingly young and vulnerable Darla who turns out to be the ruthless monster just as it is the five-foot-three, sixteen-year-old Buffy, not Giles, nor even Angel, who is to be our action hero. Forgetting the 1992 Buffy movie for a moment (or altogether?), wasn’t at least one of those items a little bit new?

And while there had been other bona fide female action heroes in television and film (Ripley, Sarah Connor), how many were this young, this petite, and this tough? And how many were just as engaged with the stresses and struggles of ordinary life as with kicking the bad guys’ butts?

Okay, so I think maybe that also was a couple of new rules or so — the petite and helpless, reality-based young woman who isn’t.

And the character of Buffy is, for the purpose of this discussion, what I will choose to term "a paradox in stereo-arche-types." It seems to me that Buffy is what most would identify as a typical American teenage girl, concerned with popularity, fashion, dating and the favorable opinions of her peers, and yet, simultaneously, she is the mythic Goddess, or epic hero, or fabled . . .

Okay, well, pick your preferred term, I think my point is — another new rule — the superficial, air-headed highschool girl who isn’t.

Further, Sarah Michelle Gellar (and of course Joss, et al) brings to the screen an emotional immediacy and empathic vulnerability rarely seen in her male counterparts, i.e., in male action heroes, much less male superheroes. For example, when Cordelia (the self-proclaimed most popular girl in school) — unaware that she will eventually rue the day Buffy arrived in Sunnydale –  instantly pronounces Buffy to be cool after an oral test and then cruelly taunts Willow’s attire while advising Buffy it pays to "know your losers," Buffy immediately empathizes with nerdy, bookish Willow.

As the storyline moves on to The Harvest, we see also a communicative directness and comfort with intimacy somewhat rare in the male action hero — case in point, when she asks Angel, "Do you know what it’s like to have a friend?," and after seeing Angel’s befuddled expression, adding, "That wasn’t supposed to be a stumper."

So perhaps another new rule — our superhero can be intuitive and emotionally accessible.

In fact, now that I think about it, we’ll see all of these traits throughout the series, and more, and not always just in Buffy, but often in her friends as well.

Hmm, okay then. So just as a point of fact, Welcome to the Hellmouth wasn’t so typical. Seems like a few rules were introduced in Hellmouth that were rather new at the time. I think it only seemed typical to me in the now, after the fact of Buffy — but not so much from the perspective of when it first aired (Mar 10, 1997).

And just so you know, I have a few pressing business and family interests to take care of, so it may be a little while before my next post.

Meanwhile, I stand corrected by — er, myself.