Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Posts Tagged ‘quot’

For anyone living on another planet (or too busy to keep up with what’s new on the net), the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer can now be viewed at hulu.com — or wait!, they can be viewed right here! See, I’m not plugging them. I’m not even a member. I don’t even know if there are any benefits to being a member. What was I just saying about living on another planet?

Nevermind.

Anyway, I only bring this up because I may (or I may not, but I hope to and sorta intend to) try to say something semi-intelligent about The Witch (Season 1, Episode 3) sometime soon, y’know, in a week or two or three. (And by the way, this is your chance to see Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest, too, in the unlikely event you’ve landed on this site without having seen them.)

So . . . if you haven’t seen it in a while, or ever, and wanna prepare yourself for the above eventuality and watch it right here, you should be able to use the "integrated video player widget" below and scroll over to The Witch with a little patience (or, as of this writing, you can get there a lot faster by selecting "Most Popular" from the dropdown).

Or you can just go to hulu.com if you want. I’ll be hurt, but y’know, I’ll probably get over it.

Okay. That’s it.

Oh wait.

Words of wisdom from Cordelia Chase from The Witch episode:

"We have to achieve our dreams, Amy. Otherwise we wither and die."

 Really, Cordy? We can’t just wither and live?

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.

Apparently, I’m expected, by the force of mere words and personality, to jump start a community here. I gotta tell you, that’s a fairly tough assignment for a shadow guy. What I mean to say is, I fight evil, but I do it in my own way, sniping from the shadows. I’m a ghost, and I’ve mostly stayed away from the limelight, and being six foot five and built like a trash truck, that hasn’t always been easy.

Anyone who knows me knows this just ain’t my usual kind of gig. Ain’t. There’s that promised eloquence.

But a friend asked me to do it, and I owed him for getting me out of a tight spot, and so here I am.

Oh yes. And I do love Buffy.

Anyhow, our conversation went something like this:

"Hey, Eli, you like Buffy, I mean you watch Buffy, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

"How about hosting a Buffy blog on a new web site I have in mind?"

"Buffy’s beautiful, but blogging about her day in and day out’s not my sort of thing."

"But you owe me, and you can write, and you don’t have to stick with Buffy all the time, just kind of keep her a central subject from time to time, and you owe me."

Yeah. Well, in the interest of full disclosure, he didn’t actually say I owed him. I just felt that part was implicit.

So here I am. Not entirely comprehending how I got here or what is expected or what this blogging is really all about.

Maybe I’ll get a feel for it, maybe some kind souls out there will let me know what they expect, and what they don’t. Or maybe we can just get into endless mindlessness. Or whatever. Anyway, it beats bouncing, it beats shooting at strangers and being shot at, and I’d rather be blogging here in the States than dying over there.

I tell you I’m all done with war, man — or at least I wanna be.

So if you think this blog will be limited to discussions of Buffy, that’s not the intent. I’ll talk about the show and probably about the comic books, etc., maybe see what can be done to get a second movie in the works, but that’s not the sole reason I’m here, nor would it be sufficient.

Like I told you, I fight evil, and around here evil will be whatever and whenever I say it is, and as likely as not it often will be closely associated with politics and mass media and stupidity — and all the billionaires and wannabes who won’t be satisfied until they own all our souls — and if I then change my mind and contradict myself in the next post, that’s okay too. Every day above ground I’m just learning, just trying to make this life and times make some kind of sense, and I can’t claim I always do. That’s just how I roll.

Wishing you monsters. Until next time.