Buffyverse Day 2005

[alixtii]

"The ring's not about vengeance, Angelus. It's about power." -- Darla, "Reprise"

"It's about power. Who's got it. Who knows how to use it." -- Buffy Summers, "Lessons"

"It's not about hate. It's about power." -- Amy Madison, "The Killer in Me"

"It's not about right, not about wrong. It's about power." -- The First, "Lessons"
It's Bufferverse Day 2005. So. . . .

Why do I love the Buffyverse? Well, to understand that one needs to understand me. When I was young, just a few years old, I wanted to be a ship's captain "when I grew up." Why? So I could discover a new land--which would, I truly believed, be completely populated by superheroes. When I finally gave that dream up as unrealistic, I turned to wanting to be a scientist--so that, in true Jekyllian manner, I could create a potion that would turn people into superheroes. Of course, I ultimately realized that science was difficult, and gave that dream up as well. I don't remember every stop in the process of maturation, but when I finally decided I wanted to become a writer, it was under the realization that the closest I would ever come to being, finding, or creating a superhero would be the near-omnipotent control I could hold over a fictional universe.

Of course, I was at least as interested in the villains as the heroes. There was something primal, a purity of purpose, about their thirst for evil. They had power, and they wanted more. As an often powerless child in a world I was only beginning to understand, I could respect that. So when my extended family acted out Disney's Aladdin, I was always Jafar. Disney villains are particularly wonderful because they're not distracted by being three-dimensional. And what songs can really compare with "Poor Unfortunate Souls," "Be Prepared," "Hellfire," or Jafar's "Prince Ali" reprise? Or--to change the subject pretty much completely--the penetrating tones of Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra"?

Given this, its not surprising that as a child I watched cartoons like Voltron, and as a pre-teen watched shows like Power Rangers (which left me scratching my head and asking how it wasn't just a dumbed-down live action version of Voltron). The stories I composed for myself in elementary school, while walking around a tree during recess (yeah, I got picked on) were all about our class being kidnapped and replaced by aliens who were commanded to take over the world (but who then turned against the evil scientist who commanded). Most of the original fiction I'm working on now is based on ideas I had in high school or even middle school, and so revolves around teenaged supergenius girls who save the world, or take over the world, or whatnot.

I might use different, more sophisticated, words now, like Zarathustra and the Nietzschea overman, I might talk about individualist vs. collectivist ethics, but Buffy takes up where all that left off: it's about teenagers with power. Some of them don't want it, some of them can't deal with, but all of them walk in a world with access to mechanisms of power I will only ever have through fiction. (Or so I believe.) Buffy allows me to vicariously live out the adolescent fantasy without ever treating me like a child: it assumes that I'm culturally literate and can get a joke about Sartre or Arthur Miller, that I can follow a complex plotline drawn out over several years, that I'm interested in the depths of human emotion, and that I care about the characters as more than just fighters of evil. That I am prepared to face some of the darker sides of human nature. That I will notice the gender and racial politics at work within the show. That my desire for knowledge, my desire for power, and my sexual desire are all intertwined and that it is possible to engage them all at once.

Buffy is intelligent television.

The show isn't afraid to blur the line between hero and villain. Angel, Spike, Darla, Drusilla, Amy, Willow, Faith, Wesley, Giles, Anya, Lilah, Lindsey, Eve, Quentin, Roger, Illyria, and even Buffy herself challenge the clear and easy distinction between hero and villain and make it extremely clear that "normative" is not always the same as "good." In doing so, the show flirts with the fascination I and others feel for the villain, recognizing it as not essentially something belonging to the Other (the monstrous, the vampiric), but something which is essentially human. We empathize and identify with Faith and Willow as they go evil--and as we confront them on the screen, we confront ourselves.

There's so much more I could say--about the fandom, about the intelligent meta found on lj and at Slayage: The Online Internatural Journal of Buffy Studies, about the fanfiction, about the minor characters whom I love so much (especially Drusilla!), about the continuity, about all the things that make Buffy and Angel a great show. But in the end, a series could be a great show and still not appeal to me the way Buffy does. (For example, The West Wing is a great show. But it doesn't have even close to the hold on my heart that Buffy does. Why not? Because it's not speculative fiction.)

It's about power.

Comments

[southernbangel.livejournal.com]

Oh, great look at the power of Buffy. Very intresting!!

[spikendru.livejournal.com]

Heae, hear! I believe you have hit the nail on the head as to why the characters resonate with so many; all of the characters are complex. There are no cardboard "fillers" in the Buffyverse, and the blurred lines between hero and villain are what make the characters memorable. I have come to think that the character that best exemplifies the complexity of the 'verse is Wesley. Who would have thought upon viewing his character as comic relief in S3 Buffy that his character would go through so many permutations? Lesser shows could very well have had him playing the "comic relief" for six seasons, and he may have still been 'funny', but he certainly would not have been interesting.

BTW, hope you don't mind that I recced your discussion to the su_herald?