Meta: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer vs Buffy The Vampire Slayer

[beer_good_foamy]

I want to talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and how there's a (to quote a phrase) question hidden in plain sight in both the title and the story that the show must address. Basically yet another attempt by me to try to explain what "Chosen", for all its faults, does right as a series finale. This is in no way meant to sum up everything that happens in the last couple of seasons, and if there's anything you feel I leave out altogether, that's because I leave it out altogether to talk specifically about this:

Buffy The Vampire Slayer isn't just the title of a television show, it's the central conflict of it. The very thing that gives Buffy (and Buffy) strength is the same thing that traps her. The story itself is the biggest bad, and the central problem of season 7 is, how do you end the story without killing the story?

EVERY REDSHIRT VAMPIRE EVER IN THE ENTIRE SERIES: (fearfully) Slayer!

The Slayer is designed (as we see in s7, literally designed) to be a badass, to be the thing that nightmares have nightmares about, etc... but always for the demons' and the watchers' sakes, not for her own. The central myth of the Slayer, the central narrative of Buffy The Vampire Slayer is set up right there in the title: There's her name, a name that seems to challenge both the viewer and the titular vampires to not take her seriously ("That name is striking fear in nobody's heart"). There's the singular of it, reinforced by the opening narration in the first few seasons (always spoken by a man, of course). "In every generation, there is a chosen one... she alone will stand against the" bla bla bla. There's "Vampire slayer", which plants it squarely within a horror template with all its fixed narratives and structures (just look at Cabin In The Woods); BtVS is rarely a horror movie, but it's always a dramedy set within a horror movie. And finally, the phrase itself establishes that that is what Buffy is, that's her identity, whether she likes it or not.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is metaphor-heavy; the stated purpose of it is to show high school being literally hell, to concretize real issues and have them represented by various monsters, secret organisations etc. The myth of the Vampire Slayer gives Buffy superpowers and a solid helping of protagonist privilege to help her fight her issues (vampires), but she's still stuck within a story (the city of Sunnydale itself) where she'll never get a choice in how to use them, where she'll be controlled by strict conventions and expectations (personified by but by no means limited to Giles and the Watcher's Concil) of how she's supposed to act - as a hero, as a woman, as a teenager/young adult. She is, as Giles points out, doomed to always be fighting a war but never waging it. She will fight the demons until she dies, and then a new girl will come around. The story will always repeat: one Slayer dies, the next one is chosen.

GILES: This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning.

Also, the narrative is for her alone. The story has an ensemble cast, but for most of the series, the Scoobies struggle to find a place within the Slayer narrative, either as supporters of Buffy, as antagonists (the show doesn't change its title when Faith shows up - Buffy is still the Vampire Slayer), as counterweights (Willow), but they don't get a myth of their own to help them do what they need.

And finally, the viewers know that it all takes place within the postmodernly self-aware TV show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, which sets its formula and its limitations early on: This is a show that will play with the cliches of horror, comedy, romance, etc. And will therefore be, to a certain extent, trapped by those same cliches; they can subvert them, but they can't ignore them; Buffy the show is trapped in the same narrative that Buffy the character is. And there's another trap in how US television works: don't change the stuff that got people watching in the first place, just repeat the basic formula as long as you can until the viewers get tired of it, 22 42-minute episodes a year until you get axed, then come up with something "new." (But nothing so new that it doesn't fit the format, nothing so new that people don't recognise it, nothing so new that you can't get advertisers, nothing that wakes people up to the idea that they're living in Sunnydale.) The serial nature of the show means things will just keep piling up and Buffy will never be allowed to win, or even just stop fighting, because then there'd be no story; the Slayer narrative dooms her to an unhappy life and an early death, but without it she's powerless (in-story) and gets cancelled (in our world). If Buffy wins, she dies. One show dies, the next one is chosen.

XANDER: You gotta have something. Gotta be with movin' forward.
BUFFY: Like a shark.
XANDER: Like a shark with feet and ... much less fins.
SPIKE: And on land!

So that's how the story works. That's why it needs to keep returning to the same format, the same monsters of the week, the same 7th episode twist, the same May apocalypse, the same two chords over and over again, round and round. And for most US shows, and for most Slayers in the fictional history of Buffy, that's how they live and die.

So what happens over the course of the last couple of seasons of Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but especially in s7? I've said before that "Chosen" is the Slayer going viral, but that doesn't simply mean "suddenly there's a lot of them". Viruses aren't independent beings, they work by latching on to an existing cell and changing it to fit their purpose. Buffy spends much of the first five seasons becoming independent within the Slayer role, but the role itself doesn't change much. What Buffy needs to do in the last season isn't to get rid of the Slayer narrative or destroy it but to take control of it and decide how to wield it - the scythe, but also the most effective weapon: the myth itself, the very thing that's kept her trapped. Exactly how and when (and certainly how efficiently) she does this can be the matter of some debate, depending on how you see the show, but put it this way: the Slayer myth reached its destined end in "The Gift." One Slayer died, the next one was... well, already chosen, so they didn't even need to do that. She did what she was supposed to do: saved the world, died young, became a footnote in a very long line of similar footnotes. Except then Buffy came back, and suddenly the Slayer myth doesn't offer her any more support; it's already played out and now it's damaged, cracked and full of holes. And so after s6, where entropy reigns and everything falls apart, s7 rolls around with all its callbacks to the first couple of seasons - the high school, the inexperienced (potential) Slayers, the horror movie motifs - seemingly putting the story back the way it was, but this time with Buffy getting a say. If season 5 (starting in "Restless") is all about Buffy learning to read the Slayer myth, then season 7 is about her learning to write it.

To do this, she's supplied with a bunch of supposedly blank sheets known as Potentials... except of course, they're not blanks. They don't just do what they're told, anymore than she did seven years earlier. The word "empowerment" gets tossed around a lot about "Chosen", and not always very consistently (or even very convincingly). If it began and ended with a few thousand girls getting superstrength, it wouldn't be much of an empowerment. Strength isn't power; "power" implies a position of influence. Buffy needs to revamp (sorry) the myth itself so that they can use it.

Now... um... I haven't actually gotten to s7 in my rewatch just yet, so this is one of the things I'm going to look at: How, exactly, does Buffy redefine the Slayer role? A couple of examples off the top of my head:

BUFFY: Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law.

For most of s7, nobody denies that Buffy is in charge, but unlike in earlier seasons, there is now nobody who's even nominally above her (though the season is full of people telling her what a Slayer is, or was, or should be - from Giles and Robin to The First). She's on her own; the only thing actively controlling her now, without Watchers, without principals, without bosses (yeah yeah, but her job for Robin turns out to basically be an excuse for her to be in high school), is the raw narrative itself: One girl in all the world, destined to fight and die. And for most of s7, this is a heavier burden for her to bear than ever before - because she's too preoccupied trying to survive and save others. After years of patrolling she's become the chief of police, but not the politician making the laws. This is a recurring theme throughout: Buffy is empowered... to do everything the same way she would have if she hadn't been. Buffy spends much of the season, starting in the aptly titled "Lessons", trying to teach people. Except being the Slayer isn't something she had a choice in, remember, the show forced it upon her; that's not something that can be taught.

FIRST SLAYER: It's not enough!

But then there are the counterthemes that get introduced in the first half of the season. There's the entirety of "Help", which is essentially the episode-length retread of the morgue vamp fight in "The Body": when your entire function is to beat Death up until it inevitably defeats you, what do you do? There's a reason the First doesn't have an ass to kick: eventually, pure physical strength will always be useless. She needs a different approach. She needs to redefine what the purpose of the Slayer is.

BUFFY: Buffy The Vampire Slayer would break down this door.
XANDER: And Buffy The Counsellor?
BUFFY: Waits.

Another thought: speaking of 7th episode twists - how about the fact that episode 7.07 is the only "normal" episode of the series to break the fourth wall and give itself a title? Buffy was always self-aware, but it's in the last two seasons that it starts to flirt openly with outright metafiction in "Once More With Feeling", "Normal Again", "Conversations With Dead People", "Storyteller"... It's as if the very narrative itself shatters along with the Slayer myth; as if the limitations of the medium become a metaphor for the limitatations placed upon the characters. In "Showtime", Buffy can't kill the Turok-Han alone; she needs an audience to see that it can be done.

DOCTOR: Buffy, but that created inconsistencies, didn't it? Your sister, your friends, all those people you created, Sunnydale. They aren't as comforting as they once were, are they? They're coming apart.

"Conversations" also brings back Andrew. red_satin_doll asked me a while back if Andrew served a purpose in s7, and you know, while I'm not the biggest Andrew fan, I think he does. Andrew's role isn't just to make Star Trek jokes, and it certainly isn't to have a big redemption arc. It's to narrate. It's not his story, so when he tries to take it over in "Storyteller" he promptly gets called on it. But what he does, constantly, is to point out that it is a narrative, that their entire lives are a story written by someone else (society's norms, or Joss Whedon), and that they can take control of this narrative and change it.

There's Spike's redefinition of his story, which is a whole other post I swear I'll write one of these days. But just think of this: how about the fact that Buffy The Vampire Slayer's perhaps closest confidant at the end of the series is a vampire, and one who's spent his entire existence deliberately redefining himself, and that her "second front" in "Chosen" is Angel? Buffy has gone from one supposed to fight vampires to one fighting with vampires; in a story set up to subvert the idea of monsters killing women, the woman now learns from and commands the monsters. The shadowmen infected the First Slayer with the essence of a demon, that she may be able to fight for them; Buffy Summers (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) infects her (its) demons with humanity, that they may be able to fight for her.

And there's the fact that Buffy survives. Much like Buffy can't kill Dracula, the original vampire myth, Buffy The Vampire Slayer can't kill Buffy Summers. If it did, there'd be no story.

I'm not saying s7 did everything right. In terms of internal consistency and logic, it's probably the sloppiest of all seven seasons. There are entire character arcs that barely get touched upon. There are some problematic ideas that get presented with no ambiguity at all. But I really love what it tried to do, and in its best moments succeeded in doing. Buffy The Vampire Slayer wasn't cancelled - it scythed axed itself, on its own terms, after redefining the central problem it established in the very first episode. It ends with Buffy having taken the myth that always trapped her there with her, handing the bits she can use out to others and sending the rest down into the crater. It ends outside the story, outside Sunnydale, in broad daylight.

Comments

[rebcake]

Well, that's just excellent. Aren't a couple of the quotes you use in this meta are from "Restless"? That seems interesting for some reason I can't articulate. You class that episode as the first of the later seasons, so maybe the setup for the meta deconstruction was ramped up in that ep...

I'm just starting my S7 rewatch, during which I'm going to keep all this in mind. Thanks in for all the Thoughts.

[beer_good_foamy]

Thanks! Yep, there's a bunch of "Restless" quotes in here - every time I watch the show I become more and more convinced that "Restless" (and "Fool For Love") is basically everything in the whole show and especially s4-7 boiled down to 42 minutes. It's fractal, everything contained within every part of itself. Or something. :)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I think that's the best meta-justification for S7 and especially Chosen I've ever seen. Still lots of flaws, but it makes a lot more sense than most I've seen.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Wonderful, as always -- and very much in keeping with, but going beyond, thoughts I've already had. I am sure there will be much more to stew about later, but three thoughts for now.

1. The real conflict in season six, perhaps the central one, is the Metaphor Frame vs. Real Life Frame -- real life manifests itself as life itself as hell compared to a (possibly imagined?) metaphor-death heaven, bills, failed weddings, abusive relationships, attempted rape, gun-toting maniacs. Buffy's two episodes in which she comes nearest to killing her friends and lover are Dead Things and Normal Again, and both involve rapid shifts between these two frames -- she is fighting a vampire and then she's fighting Katrina, she starts punching Spike in vampface and finishes with the guy in human face; Normal Again has a fantasy-frame poison from Andrew convince her that her real life frame story cannot be real and she nearly kills all her friends for a fantasy-frame realer-than-her-real-life hallucination (probably). The reason Willow is the proximate Big Bad is that she is the one who has accrued the most Fantasy Frame power over the last few seasons, surpassing even Buffy's in terms of raw power, but it's also abstracted power: "magic" is less well defined than Buffy's very specific metaphor-frame power. And so Willow tries to use metaphor-frame power to combat life-frame problems, and because ultimately they are separate frames, she fails repeatedly, culminating in a desperate attempt to blot out the real life frame with her fantasy frame powers. Which means many things, but ultimately the only way to break out of the constraints of the Real Life story really *is* to die, and that is ultimately not the preferred option. The real life frame has *always* been a part of the show, of course -- it is where many of the emotions lie -- but the metaphor frame was always there to provide the outlets necessary to deal with the real life frame problems, as long as the metaphor frame still existed -- which, in your construction, would be "as long as Buffy doesn't die and her story doesn't end." Buffy's reembracing life happens as a person, not as a slayer, just as Everyman RL-frame Xander convinces Willow lets herself *not* use her metaphor-powers to destroy the whole world, while Spike goes off and changes himself.

2. The fact that Willow doesn't end the world also shows the problem with narrative. We are all trapped in a narrative, which is that we will live until we die; there simply is no escape from it, and the pain that accompanies it, *except death*, which, even then, is not really an escape. Ending the story can't be the answer, because without a story there only *is* death. Which emphasizes why Buffy can't just, shouldn't just remove her slayerness from the equation entirely and why she has to take control of, and *use*, her story to make both her life and the world around her better. Simply destroying the story is *tempting*, and I am grateful for the show to present that as a possibility and finally rejecting it for humanistic reasons. But Buffy et al. have to find the good in her story (their story) to expand it outward.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

3. This also ties into Andrew's story in season seven. Because the human world of the Buffyverse is basically based on our world, the Trio treated magic in season six as, basically, human fans watching the TV series might: as a tool to spin grandiose stories about themselves within the narrative. In season seven, Andrew's "redemption" highlights the worst traits of fan engagement and the possibility of a better engagement with the text just as it's ending. "Storyteller" is the sixth-to-last episode of the series, and ends with Andrew turning the camera off (and for us, turning the TV off) and actively engaging in life. Buffy tells Andrew that he should NOT be using her story, and his imagined role in it, as an excuse to avoid dealing with his actual life. I don't want to overstate this, because I don't think Jane E is really being anti-fan here; but I do think that there is a big element here of Buffy communicating, through Andrew, the necessity of viewers letting the show go after it's over -- or, at least, of finding ways to marshal the story to make our lives and the world better. Which is also why we are left out of Buffy's thoughts at the end of the series -- she has in that moment grown beyond belonging to us, and we have grown beyond needing her. I think I'm making this sound like the season is some condescending critique of us, which I really, really don't think it is (or, maybe it is, but that's not how I interpret it), but I think that "Storyteller" deals with the negative side of fannish engagement as well as preparing fans for the upcoming bittersweet separation from the narrative.



It's interesting that the two women you explicitly identify as being stifled by the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" narrative (Faith and Willow) are also the two women who I was thinking could be argued as being "above" Buffy in season seven: Willow is more powerful than her as Kennedy points out, but is understandably reluctant to use that power; and Faith eventually inherits Buffy's protagonist status for an episode. Part of Buffy's final act is to reaffirm Willow's power and to affirm Faith, and all the other slayers', identities as being in league with hers.

[shapinglight]

Absolutely wonderful piece of meta. I feel all justified now in how much I love season 7 (and not just for the Spuffy stuff). It really is a perfect end to the show.

ETA: I wish I had something intelligent to add, but sadly not.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks!

To quote Joss himself: "I've been saying, anybody who didn't get that this is the last season after [the scene with Spike being circled by The First as all the previous big bads] was missing the point."

[slaymesoftly.livejournal.com]

Great piece of meta. Just when I think everything has been discussed into oblivion... Thanks for posting.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks for reading! I'd be surprised if I'm that original, but it felt good to get this down. :)

[boot-the-grime.livejournal.com]

Great essay - it goes to My Memories and I think I'll be quoting you whenever those periodic "BtVS should have ended with The Gift" debates start again (another one has just started a couple of days ago on IMDB).

I'm curious, how do you see the role of the comics in this context?

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I'm curious, how do you see the role of the comics in this context?

I don't. :) Whatever opinion one has of the comics (mine is, shall we say, less than positive), season 7 was explicitly written as an ending, as a way to sum up and subvert the journey Buffy had gone on, and a continuation in any form wasn't a part of the plan. That said, the point of "Chosen" isn't to shut the story down but to open it up, so I'm sure someone who's interested could look at what the comics do to this idea.

Meta Pimp

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User shapinglight referenced to your post from Meta Pimp (http://shapinglight.livejournal.com/1199458.html) saying: [...] Not something I say often (have felt all meta'ed out for long time. But this [...]

[kikimay]

I ADORE Season Seven. I think that, probably, the first part is better than the second, but I believe that Chosen is the perfect ending for BtVS and for Buffy's journey as a hero. Loved your meta.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And as you might guess from the above, I almost agree. :) I love a lot of individual episodes, but I think the season as a whole loses a lot of momentum in the middle. But yeah, the ending is perfect IMO - and that includes the bits that aren't perfect.

[gillo]

Buffy has gone from one supposed to fight vampires to one fighting with vampires; in a story set up to subvert the idea of monsters killing women, the woman now learns from and commands the monsters. The shadowmen infected the First Slayer with the essence of a demon, that she may be able to fight for them; Buffy Summers (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) infects her (its) demons with humanity, that they may be able to fight for her.

Excellent insight. Especially as she is instrumental in both vampires regaining their souls.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yeah, absolutely.

[quinara]

I always love S7 meta and this is really cool. I'm not sure I can get enough distance on Chosen to see it this way, just because of that whole issue where Buffy exerting control over herself and her myth is shown by her exerting change on others (who, outside of a few, haven't had a say in it at all), but I do like what you're saying.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Which is completely understandable. I do think there's something to be said for the idea that what she foists upon them isn't the same yoke that was forced on her, and that it's not like they would have been out of trouble without it - but yeah, there's all sorts of issues with the Chosen spell. That said, while I do see it as a perfect ending to the series, I'm increasingly unsure of whether I see it as a solution; it's a change, one which carries both positive and negative aspects, and hopefully is less negative than the status quo that was before. Revolution is one thing, restoration another. But that's my take.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

If season 5 (starting in "Restless") is all about Buffy learning to read the Slayer myth, then season 7 is about her learning to write it.

YES GOOD. (Which intersects with the idea of ~writing~ Slayerhood on the body in "Chosen" for the potentials who weren't offering themselves up as sheets of paper to be developed and published for all the world. Overwriting someone else's life narrative, overwriting their body. An unintended consequence of Buffy's [and Willow's] action. In trying to rewrite the myth, she oversteps.)

BUFFY: Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law.

And ooooh how she does NOT want to be supreme ruler. Instead of going all Macchiavellian and murdering allcomers who could take her crown of The One and She Alone, she shares the power -- a singular power that she does enjoy for its feelings of superiority but that she recognizes as unjust in its limitations both on her own life and the lives of others. I suspect if Buffy could still She Alone and save all the Potentials too, she would continue shouldering that burden on her own. It's only when it becomes clear that She Alone isn't enough that the injustice becomes impossible for her to ignore, becomes a necessary obstacle to overcome.

And Buffy The Counsellor?

Just now picking up on that connection (thanks to your meta) about how Buffy's trying to robe herself in a more formal political identity through her job as Counselor (her own Council).

It's interesting to think about the necessity of removing the Watcher's Council from the picture, yet it's not Buffy who plays the role of radical revolutionary -- it's the First and Caleb as the First's emissary. So Super EVIL takes out the Patriarchy (tho the target was the intellectual resources, education, and strategy that the Council could provide if they weren't intent on withholding).

In "Showtime", Buffy can't kill the Turok-Han alone; she needs an audience to see that it can be done.

If a Turokhan falls in the woods, and there's no one there to hear it...

they can take control of this narrative and change it.

YES GOOD. It's the natural culmination of Buffy's resistance through sartorial choices and witty quips. She begins as a performer and advances to director/writer/author. Joss is Buffy, etc etc (where Joss begins as a performer in his imagination living out his favorite comics and movies).

But I really love what it tried to do, and in its best moments succeeded in doing. Buffy The Vampire Slayer wasn't cancelled - it scythed axed itself, on its own terms, after redefining the central problem it established in the very first episode. It ends with Buffy having taken the myth that always trapped her there with her, handing the bits she can use out to others and sending the rest down into the crater. It ends outside the story, outside Sunnydale, in broad daylight.

Beautiful ♥

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

:)

Which intersects with the idea of ~writing~ Slayerhood on the body in "Chosen" for the potentials who weren't offering themselves up as sheets of paper to be developed and published for all the world. Overwriting someone else's life narrative, overwriting their body. An unintended consequence of Buffy's [and Willow's] action. In trying to rewrite the myth, she oversteps.

Definitely - though in a way, they were already in the myth, just not the protagonists of it. The Potentials are introduced as cannon fodder by right of birth; rather anviliciously so, even. There's something really skeevy in the way s7 almost revels in helpless girls getting cut down because they might be Slayers someday.

Just now picking up on that connection (thanks to your meta) about how Buffy's trying to robe herself in a more formal political identity through her job as Counselor (her own Council).

Political - absolutely! Buffy does everything to build a mandate throughout s7, to get a legitimate power base, especially after the potentials show up. That's what the entire row in "Empty Places" is about: if they don't trust her, she has no power over them, and then there's no power to share.

It's interesting to think about the necessity of removing the Watcher's Council from the picture, yet it's not Buffy who plays the role of radical revolutionary -- it's the First and Caleb as the First's emissary. So Super EVIL takes out the Patriarchy (tho the target was the intellectual resources, education, and strategy that the Council could provide if they weren't intent on withholding).

Two thoughts about that:
1) Buffy rejected the Council in s5. Understandable? Hell yes. Admirable? Yes. Correct? Absolutely. But knowledge, whatever the source, is vital and there's only so much you can do with raw revolutionary enthusiasm - wiping the slate clean and starting over is rarely a good idea. Giles rescues a few key books from the Council's library, much like Buffy rescues a few key aspects of Slayerdom while she burns the old structures to the ground.
2) The First is inherently kyriarchic - viz its use of Caleb as a footsoldier. It's What Was And Will Always Be personified (well, not really personified, but y'know.) And by yourself you know others: to the First, the Council is a threat that must be neutralised, because they're old and male and well-informed and powerful and Have Always Been - nevermind that if they'd actually ever joined the fight, they're more likely to have got in Buffy's way and caused internal conflicts. Buffy doesn't defeat The First by becoming more powerful, but by not relying on a story that The First is familiar with. The First thinks it burns Buffy's bridges, when all it does is cut her bonds.

meta is good

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User angearia referenced to your post from meta is good (http://angearia.livejournal.com/252801.html) saying: [...]  has a brilliant meta [...]

[elisi]

As someone who's been a S7 since forever, I love this to pieces, obviously. Esp the way you show how storytelling is both external and internal and how the characters have to tell their own story in order to own it, and also how S5 was not the best ending, but just the one that fit into the existing narrative, but didn't break out.

♥ ♥ ♥

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

how S5 was not the best ending, but just the one that fit into the existing narrative, but didn't break out

Yeah. I do think that "The Gift" is the better ending in terms of quality, but "Chosen" is the far better ending. As I've said before, Buffy's death in "The Gift" would have made Quentin Travers breathe a sigh of relief and go "Well, that took her long enough." "Chosen" makes him... well, nothing, since he's dead, but check out the grin on Giles' face when he says it's bloody brilliant.

[hello-spikey.livejournal.com]

Cool thoughts, dude.

(Sorry, that's all I got.)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

It's very much appreciated. :)

[eilowyn.livejournal.com]

I've been mulling this over since I read it last night, trying to come up with something intelligent to add, probably something about autonomy and agency and constructing your own narrative, but I've got nothing. Wonderful meta, my friend.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thank you! ♥

[lynnenne]

Excellent analysis. Makes me remember why I love S7.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm just about to get started on s7 for the first time in a couple of years, and writing this (and reading everyone's replies) really made me look forward to it.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

Ooh, really good analysis! Does make S7 fit together a lot better - not in terms of the logic of the plot, which is beyond redemption, but in terms of the sense of the story.

Chosen was also, of course, the best parting gift to fandom that Joss could have possibly left, as you can go anywhere from there...

Hah, so as Buffy was making the Slayer power viral, Joss was doing the same with the storytelling power!

Too much meta. Head go boom.

[rpowell.livejournal.com]

Honestly? I feel that each season seemed to have its own set of flaws. But despite these flaws, I have remained a steadfast fan of the series. Several years ago, I wrote an essay on my own interpretation of Season 7.

I never thought that Season 7 was more flawed than the other seasons. It's one of my favorites of the series. I think . . . as an adult, I had an easier time relating to Buffy learning to be an adult more than the "high school is hell" metaphor of the earlier seasons . . . which is probably why I enjoyed the season a lot more than most fans.

I also have my own ideas about Buffy being a vampire slayer . . . and it's not pretty. I really do not like the idea of her being a vampire slayer because she was "duty bound" to be one. There is something about her lack of choice that really irks me.

[molly_may]

I have nothing useful to say, but this was fascinating. I've always been a big fan of S7, and this just strengthens my belief that despite some sloppy plotting, it's a highly underrated season.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I hope I still agree when I get through my rewatch; I'll probably do a follow-up post to this.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Really superb analysis here. I've been thinking about that comment you made to me, but this expands on it in a way that has me thinking "oh, yes, ah hah"; when I first watched S7 I thought "well I don't need to see that again" but of course I find myself dipping back into it, and this helps me understand the "why" of that. I also notice I've been dipping back slowly, cautiously into the earlier seasons (2 & 3) and appreciating them on a more "meta" level, seeing how the thematic threads and character arcs are built, changed, and twisted over time - the SCOPE of the thing.

I can see her trying to change the story from the first episode - but her initial solution in WTTH or PG is not to rewrite the story but to attempt to withdraw from it, then through the early seasons try to add her own style (the quips, etc) but it's all just surface. As someone else said, revision not revolution. Which is what has to happen to the entire series as well - it can't stay at the level of S1's "high school is hell" mock comedy-horror; subverting the tropes still acknowleges the tropes. It has to go deeper than that to overturn it completely. It contains the seeds of its own destruction.

I was saying to someone the other day that to me "life is the big bad" is in many ways the overarching theme of all seven seasons - although reading this, I guess it can be refined to "the myth/narrative is the big bad". I'm really seeing the series as a long arc over seven seasons. (Meta like these are most helpful in that regard.)

Wish I had more to add - I'm going to need to read this one at least a couple more times, I think. Also - thank you for expanding on the role of Andrew in S7! He annoyed me that season but the scene in Storyteller where he turns off the camera is one of my favorite scenes in the entire series (thanks mostly to Tom Lenk's acting there); so I can perhaps better appreciate him a bit more when I rewatch (whether he was overused or not to the detriment of other characters is another issue entirely.)

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I can see her trying to change the story from the first episode - but her initial solution in WTTH or PG is not to rewrite the story but to attempt to withdraw from it, then through the early seasons try to add her own style (the quips, etc) but it's all just surface. As someone else said, revision not revolution.

Yep. Which is just one reason why Marxist readings of BtVS are so much fun. :)

I'm really seeing the series as a long arc over seven seasons.

I know, right? Which is not to say that they necessarily planned it all out in advance - in fact, it's pretty obvious that they didn't - but they had a few basic ideas that either stuck, or were malleable enough that they could be made to fit the larger story as it developed.

Also - thank you for expanding on the role of Andrew in S7!

Thank you for reminding me! It honestly hadn't struck me before I started writing this just how much time he spends lampshading everything about the sf/fantasy genre that he's a part of; he basically spends the whole season daring people to tell him there are other stories to tell. And I agree, the last scene in "Storyteller" is incredible.

[ceciliaj.livejournal.com]

Lots of great stuff in this post, and I apologize for being late to the party. But I love love love the idea of S5 being about reading and S7 being about writing, the key scenes for me being the "Summers blood" revelation in the former, and the group bloodletting in Chosen.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

It's never too late. :) And yeah, that's a great parallel; especially if you consider the way "Summers blood" is set up as something special in s5 - she alone, bla bla bla - and then in "Chosen", they all open the seal together.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I like this quite a bit. Rec'd it to someone else tonight in regards to a discussion regarding BTVS meta or analysis. And as an example of how non-emotionally charged analysis sees the story and the writer's intent far clearer than emotionally charged, also provides fodder for discussion. The problem with many emotionally charged meta is too often the reviewer falls into the trap of righteous indignation...and the only people who can discuss it are those that agree with the reviewer or you end up with a free-for-all. Also, you miss 90% of the tale - and what you just related above. I certainly missed some of it in Cabin in the Woods - too busy reacting emotionally to the tale's content, to see the framework behind it.

I think you are correct, Cabin in the Woods and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are working as post-modernist critiques of the horror genre, subverting and redefining its narrative tropes. By the same token they are playing with the film and television formulas that they reside within. Cabin subverts the film narrative formula - the reveal is made in the first ten minutes of the film, there's no wait. The wait is for the story. It's a reverse narrative format.

With Buffy...ah, where to start? Whedon plays with television rules. He introduces the bratty kid sister who literally pops in from nowhere. He does the very special Blossum episode about Drug Addiction (except it's a deliberate mislead). He uses songs to propel plot and not just as background music. (See Conversations with Dead People, Sleeper, Lies My Parents Told Me, amongst others.) In Buffy - music was more than just music videos, it was crucial to story. Something TV didn't do. (This was before Glee.)

He deliberately went for campy comic book - then had the characters admit to it and comment on it.

And...on TV, most TV series only last 5 seasons. When Buffy got extended and jumped networks...Whedon wrote that into the story, chaos reigned. The narrative splintered. And the rules were broken yet adhered to.

It does remind me a great deal of Cabin. He's critiquing the genre, but in a playful way. It's not satire - wickedly mean like Ryan Murphy's American Horror Story, nor is it Parody like Community...it's more like a homage or metafiction. And in that way unique.

And you're right the title is a play on words, but also reflects the central thematic core of the series...in the slasher films/gothic horror genre (which has reverted back to this actually) - the hero is male (see Grimm), and the heroine is usually his wife, girlfriend or sidekick and often killed in the alley or lying in a coma at the end of season one due to a monster bite.
Whedon flipped it. And yet, states the narrative and narrator are male. Buffy is living in a male narrative, with male storyteller behind her - a storyteller who has a great deal in common with Andrew. And she's fighting his narrative, subverting it, trying to change it and make into her own. Which in a way is the writer's own commentary on the art of storytelling. Stories, Whedon stated recently, aren't pets, they are like children, they grow up, move away and talk back to you.

Regarding Spike? You need go no further than the song in Sleeper - "trading coats and ringing pavlov's bell" - a character who is constantly redefining himself, constantly trying to fight the hold the writer or storyteller had over him, yet is held by the confines of the story. Note his relationship with Andrew - who annoys him - it's a good metaphor for his relationship with the writer. He want's to please (Pavlov's Dog) but resists at the same time.
Buffy's in the same boat - she resists being the slayer, fights Giles the whole way, but caves as well - unable to be anything but what she is. The fight against one's destiny - one's story.

It's that old question? Are we doomed to follow the destiny pre-written in our DNA, what we were born to do? Or can we rewrite our story? Subvert it? Rewrite the myth? Or do we continue to blindly follow the one set before us?

Anyhow...thanks for this, most innovative post I've seen on BTVS in a while. And here I was thinking nothing new could be said about the series.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

The problem with many emotionally charged meta is too often the reviewer falls into the trap of righteous indignation...and the only people who can discuss it are those that agree with the reviewer or you end up with a free-for-all. Also, you miss 90% of the tale - and what you just related above. I certainly missed some of it in Cabin in the Woods - too busy reacting emotionally to the tale's content, to see the framework behind it.

Yeah, though I'd like to think there's room for both. IMO, if a story doesn't get you emotionally involved, it's rarely worth looking at the framework behind it.

Don't have time to respond to everything here, I pretty much agree, but you make me really want to write that long post on Cabin that I started outlining a while back. :) And finish the Spike post. But briefly...

You need go no further than the song in Sleeper - "trading coats and ringing pavlov's bell" - a character who is constantly redefining himself, constantly trying to fight the hold the writer or storyteller had over him, yet is held by the confines of the story.

...one important thing about Spike is that he's not as aware of the story as Buffy is. He's probably more aware that there is a story, but not which one. As I said somewhere above, Spike is a romantic-age character who grew up in modernism; postmodernism leaves him always trying to catch up, getting his tropes wrong. He's fighting his destiny, but he's not always fighting the right one.

It's that old question? Are we doomed to follow the destiny pre-written in our DNA, what we were born to do? Or can we rewrite our story? Subvert it? Rewrite the myth? Or do we continue to blindly follow the one set before us?

Exactly. And that's where Buffy pretty much leaves fantasyland and becomes commentary on society at large.

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

It ends outside the story, outside Sunnydale, in broad daylight.

And it ends with Buffy unarmed, listening to others speculate about their future...and smiling. Not grimly gearing up for yet another battle. Not looking around for possible enemies. Smiling. Hopeful. And free.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I love that it's not a scene played only as a happy ending - you get the sense that things aren't over, that things are just starting, that there are still problems ahead... but for the first time, the future's not certain death but uncertain life. And that's worth smiling about.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Great meta! I agree, Chosen was the best ending for the series; it left me with a sense of completion, and hope, and a feeling that the characters I'd grown to love over the years would somehow go on (if only in fanfic). I think the best of it was that look on Buffy's face as she stood at the edge of the crater that was her past, and looked towards her future.
I really must do a rewatch of the show. I miss it.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks, glad you liked!

And yeah, that is a really powerful image. I'm really looking forward to getting there again.

[timeofchange.livejournal.com]

Great commentary, and it generated a fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for thinking and posting.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thank you for reading, glad you liked it!

[mcjulie.livejournal.com]

This is a great analysis of Season 7 -- flawed, but I did mostly like where it ended up.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And I agree. And in some ways, I think flawed stories can be more interesting than successful ones - the ones that reach for more than they quite manage to say, and so end up saying more than they could have if they'd just worked within their comfort zone.