Buffy at 20: She saved the world a lot. Uh... Which world, exactly?

[beer_good_foamy]

Go, then. There are other worlds than these.
- Jake Chambers, Stephen King's The Gunslinger

So I wanted to post something for Buffy's 20th birthday, and why I still care so much about this little series, but I wasn't sure just what until I started a rewatch and got to this line in "The Harvest":

JOYCE: Everything's the end of the world when you're a 16-year-old girl.

Which got me to this:

She saved the world. A lot.

Which got me thinking about just what the hell (heh) the "world" and saving it means in terms of the Buffy- and Jossverses, and why that would matter.

I mean, we're talking about the guy whose most recent original work in Cabin In The Woods (spoilers ahead) ended with our heroes explicitly refusing to sacrifice anything to save the world and letting it end. What changed, Joss? Besides, Buffy doesn't seem to do a whole lot of saving outside the larger (and not very large at that) metropolitan area of Sunnydale, as much as they try to convince us that one ancient vampire taking over a small town in SoCal would somehow constitute the end of the world.

Funnily enough, right off the bat, season 1 of Buffy has lots of characters talking about "the world". And they're all defining it from a personal perspective.

GILES: Because you are the Slayer. Into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt--
BUFFY: -- the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil blah, blah, blah... I've heard it, okay?

BUFFY: You, Xander, Willow, you guys... you guys know the score, you're careful. Two days in my world and Owen really would get himself killed.

DARLA: Do you know what the saddest thing in the world is?
BUFFY: Bad hair on top of that outfit?
DARLA: To love someone who used to love you.

SNYDER: My predecessor, Mr. Flutie, may have gone in for all that touchy-feely relating nonsense, but he was eaten. You're in my world now.

WILLOW: I'm trying to think how to say it... to explain it so you understand...
BUFFY: It doesn't matter as long as you're okay.
WILLOW: I'm not okay! I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it... it wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had fun. What are we gonna do?

Thing is, "the world" is a very malleable concept. "The Earth" is a lot more unambiguous, we're talking about a planet, but the world - that can mean a lot of different things. Especially in a series as wilfully post-modern as Buffy. Within the larger Buffyverse there are many different worlds; the two separate series Buffy and Angel (and, if that's your poison, their various comicbook, novel, board game and fanfic spinoffs), hell and heaven dimensions, alternate realities (usually referred to as verses* by fans) ... Sure. But the show also runs on what Terry Pratchett called narrativium, and keeps sneaking into both the characterization and plot that each person is narrating their own story. No two characters experience the events of Buffy the exact same way, they all live their own version of it. There is not ONE world; each person lives in, and constitutes, a world of their own.

BUFFY: What I want is to be left alone.
ANGEL: Do you really think that's an option anymore?

In these days of "alternate facts", filter bubbles and whatnot, that may sound a bit creepy. Surely, that means Ford's or Warren's or Richard Wilkins' or any crush-kill-destroy demon's worldviews (to borrow a word from the current politicsverse) are no less valid than Buffy's? Is Buffy just another PC-gone-mad SJW out to force her biased version of reality on people who just want the freedom to suck the blood of the living in peace? Well, no, because the thing is, those worlds are not mutually exclusive. Just because you have your own, you can't ignore those of others, because the Buffyverse makes them tangible and frequently gives them very sharp teeth.

MASTER: A dream is a wish your heart makes. This is real life.

Much has been made of how Buffy fights demons that are metaphors for her own situation. Less is made of how often she fights other people's demons as well; pretty much every episode of season 1 has her try to protect someone at school, whether they be weirdos or cheerleaders. Buffy is an inherently empathetic story. Even the monsters get their say; Vamp!Jesse gets to explain exactly how this is an improvement for him - while putting some fairly overtly rapey moves on Cordelia - but his story must still be put to an end once he's presented his world. We get to see the horror of Marcy Ross' situation even though it's clear that she's become, in Buffy's words, a thundering loony. The Master weeps over Darla. Buffy's Slayer role was always part-counselor, long before Robin Wood rolled into town; she doesn't just use violence, she lets both victims and perpetrators explain their worlds, even if it may just be a throwaway rationalisation from one of Giles' books. Buffy actively welds other stories to her own. Buffy actively welds other stories to its own. The genre roulette isn't just a fun way to add variety to a weekly TV show, it serves to validate the people in them. Record their pain. Save their worlds.

JONATHAN: Stop saying my name like we're friends! We're not friends! You all think I'm an idiot! A short idiot!
BUFFY: I don't. I don't think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn't it. You have all this pain, and all these feelings and nobody's really paying attention.
JONATHAN: You think I just want attention?
BUFFY: No, I think you're up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not, Jonathan, I understand about the pain.
JONATHAN: Oh right. Cuz the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that's a crippler.
BUFFY: You know what? I was wrong. You are an idiot. My life happens to, on occasion, suck beyond the telling of it. Sometimes more than I can handle. And it's not just mine. Every single person down there is ignoring your pain because they're too busy with their own. The beautiful ones. The popular ones. The guys that pick on you. Everyone. If you could hear what they were feeling. The loneliness. The confusion. It looks quiet down there. It's not. It's deafening.

Buffy was never a perfect series. 20 years later, there are things about it that haven't aged well (especially in season 1) and the very fact that it tried to be on-message tends to call more attention to the ways it failed. But flaws and all, the show was still always based around that simple act of seeing others, of acknowledging them, of dealing with their situations because they are not separate from your own. Saying that we're all in this together. And, in that simple but brilliant twist at the end of the season, have Buffy thwart prophecy and be free of predestination from then on - still trapped in a hellish world, but with the right to fight for her life and others'.

XANDER: You're still weak.
BUFFY: No. No, I feel strong. I feel different.

Which brings us back to Cabin In The Woods, and our heroes' choice to not save the world. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's... complicated, but basically we learn that our heroes have been put through the standard horror-movie script and killed off one by one in order to appease the old gods who will rise and wipe out mankind if they don't get their sacrifices (hello to Buffy's HP Lovecraft-lite backstory, as explained by Giles in s1), and at the end the survivors are told to kill each other off to entertain the monsters or let humanity die. Despite the fact that at least one of them is already bleeding to death, they choose to get stoned and wait for the end of the world instead.

MARTY: Giant evil gods.
DANA: I wish I could have seen them.
MARTY: I know. That would have been a fun weekend.

Does this sound familiar? Because this is not a random monster of the week deciding to try and destroy the world. This is one world unambiguously ending. This is... well, this:

ANYANKA: You trusting fool! How do you know the other world is any better than this?
GILES: Because it has to be!

This world will not stand, Cabin In The Woods says - much like Buffy does in just about every episode. It matters how we treat each other, and realities in which it doesn't must be fought.

We live in a time when a lot of different people are pushing end-of-the-world scenarios, claiming to do it by "listening to the people" (who always seem to agree with them) and "saying what you think" (without ever specifying what that is). If we don't do X (kick out the immigrants, or build higher walls, or return to Traditional Family Values, or...) it'll be the end of the world as YOU know it, so keep your blinders on and trust us to get rid of those invisible monsters for you. Well, any eschatology worth its salt ends with a new world rising from the ashes of the one that ended. Buffy begins and ends with the notion that the world looks different for everyone, meaning that those new worlds were all there all along. Buffy isn't about the apocalypses, it's about the cases-of-the-week. Every time Buffy shows a victim or a monster, it creates a world. Every time Buffy saves a life, she saves a world. And by focusing on the ones left by the wayside of the traditional narratives, by refusing to accept that there's just ONE world, ONE narrative, she keeps doing so 20 years later. And I for one am very grateful for that.

So thank you, Joss, SMG, and all the rest of you who took part in it, actors, writers, producers, and fans. Here's to 20 more.

BUFFY: We saved the world. I say we party.


* Sidebar: Yuri Herrera's very highly recommended novel Signs Preceding The End Of The World uses the verb "to verse" (the equally neologous "jarchar" in Spanish) as a catch-all term to mean to leave, to enter, to pass, to cross, to transgress, as his heroine crosses the Mexican border into the US, moving from one world while giving birth to another. Metaphorically. Maybe. Great novel at any rate, read it.

Comments

[maia]

This is fascinating and thought-provoking. I want to write a thoughtful reply but need to ponder first...

Thank you for posting this.

Wow!

[nothorse]

This is one of the most thoughtful and insightful metas I've read.

Thank you!

[shapinglight]

That was a terrific piece of meta. I think you really have got to the root of why we're still talking about BtVS twenty years later.

I wish I had something even a quarter as intelligent as this to say myself. ;)

[sandy-s.livejournal.com]

Makes me think about the song by the Fray...How to Save a Life... it doesn't matter if it's just one person, one moment, what matters is how you impact that person's life...that person's world (from your essay).

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

That was a very interesting read.

[elisi]

Oh very very good. Thank you!

[rebcake.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering why I feel that Buffy is more relevant to me now than ever, and I think you've managed to articulate it for me:

We make the world we want. A lot.

Buffy reminds us that we are the ones with the power to shape our reality. Not that reality is going to bend to our will, but we can make a difference if we work at it — even against terrible odds.

So, thanks for leaving me with hopeful-ish thoughts today. It doesn't happen every day, alas. Just have to remember to put on my slayer boots and start walking.

Today I approached a girl who'd just been pickpocketed and was freaking out. She quickly calmed and didn't feel so alone, I think. I stayed with her through the police report and all that. Just be a human to other humans, and you'll can be Buffy, too!

[trepkos.livejournal.com]

Excellent piece - thank you!

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I was trying to remember if Whedon wrote anything after Cabin in the Woods, which he did with Drew Goddard. I think you're right, Marvel Agents of Sheild, the Avengers, and assorted comics may not count. Doctor Horrible was prior to it. And Much Ado About Nothing was well, Shakespeare....although his interpretations/adaptations of each sort of skew existentialist in a way. The people don't totally get along, but how they help each other...and what they do...matters in small little ways.

Also Cabin in the Woods works as a good analogy with Buffy since both are in their own ways meta-narrative commentaries on the horror genre. Cabin is about the last girl standing motif and Buffy is about the blond girl dying in the alley. He subverts both tropes in his own way. And pulls out of the trope the one thing most people like it for -- which is a group of people coming together to solve a problem, despite their differences, combining resources...and hoping for the best. Often sacrificing themselves in the process. It might not make a difference -- but hey at least they went down fighting or tried.

It's sort of that statement in the Angel episode "Epithany" that was written by somebody else... "If nothing we do matters, then everything we do matters.."

I was on a fanboard that emphasized philosophy over other issues regarding Buffy...and they analyzed it from every philosophical angle imaginable, but I always felt the Existentialist perspective worked best.

Just finished reading Vonnegut's Slaughter-House Five...which seems to move along the same territory..."so it goes", Vonnegut repeats almost like a mantra throughout.
Wondering if the world is even worth saving or if we can...but the moments revisited perhaps make it worth it. Existentialism by way of Buddhism perhaps? Scalzi's RedShirts with Three Codas...also plays on that theme. I prefer Whedon's take, but mainly because he writes better female characters than the others.

At any rate, thanks for the meta. It resonated for me. ;-)

[lynnenne]

Great essay!

Buffy's Slayer role was always part-counselor, long before Robin Wood rolled into town; she doesn't just use violence, she lets both victims and perpetrators explain their worlds

You know, I never really thought about this before, but you're absolutely right. She was always counselling, right from the very beginning.

[infinitewhale.livejournal.com]

Cabin was actually most probably written prior to Dollhouse and possibly even before the comics. It was filmed in 2009 and Whedon mentions in the commentary that he was too busy to direct it (probably with DH), but was free when they were writing it. They also mention it sat it production hell for some time. I remember Eliza mentioning he called her about DH and mentioned horror films she was in during the runup for the show, so maybe the state of horror films was on his mind then. I'm guessing 06-07 for the writing dates.

Not that it matters to the rest of your post.

Good read, thanks.

[smhwpf.livejournal.com]

That is a very interesting and thought-provoking essay. Yes, encapsulates a lot of why Buffy is still such a big thing for me 20 years on. (Well, OK, 17 years since I started watching, and just under 14 since it finished).

I have started my rewatch, first in a few years.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Really interesting essay :)

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Whew.

What's interesting is also to compare Giles' smashing of the amulet, and the CitW ending, to Normal Again and Grave, where Buffy and Willow come very close to "destroying the world" -- in NA, there's a real threat not just that her friends will die, but that the entire world will stop existing and the "real" one will return, if she goes through with the killing, because, you know, this is her story, and without her there to interpret it, what happens?

WILLOW: Because social phenomena don't have unproblematic objective existences. They have to be interpreted and given meanings by those who encounter them. (Buffy stares at Willow)
MIKE: Nicely put. So, Ruby, does that mean there are countless realities?

(And what is Life Serial but Buffy universe-hopping, and seeing the monsters lurking behind jargon-filled, sped-up academia, back-breaking parochial blue collar construction, soul-destroying repetitive-motion late-capitalism, and even go-nowhere faux-rebellion slackerdom, which are invisible to those universe's own inhabitants? And hey, maybe hyperfast abstraction denying objective reality, ordinariness combined with backbreaking labour, repeating the same activity for generations and continuing to be disappointed when it doesn't work, and exhausting the concept of perpetual rebellion until you're a loser cheating at kitten poker are universes that Buffy was right to leave, and Willow, Xander, Anya/Giles, and Spike are going to have to eventually universe-hop out of those too, huh, if only after a lot of damage has already been done?)

But it's also that it's a matter of something personal. Let's say that the demon-poison is all that was -- Buffy's just hallucinating the hospital. Her friends might die, but "the world" will live on. Maybe it will die next time Buffy fails to save it because she's permanently trapped in her own head. Or maybe what we are looking at is a personal journey: do you kill off whatever part of you believes that you have power to do something -- and if you do that, does that mean you've destroyed the world? Maybe it does, insofar as you can do anything about "the world" at all -- it all comes down to whether or not you are willing to participate. You save the world every time you save a life; you end the world every time you end one. Because, let's face it, most of us are not going to be the ones to save or destroy the human race. We can only decide on an individual level whether any of this means anything for us. Willow doesn't end the world, in the end, though she could, given power by her own despair, augmented by "the world's", and we have a conscious choice not to destroy the world every day we continue believing in it. And sometimes what it takes is a heroic battle, and sometimes it takes a few words. Heroism is about knowing when to talk the guy with the rifle down by showing him that you are willing to see his world, and that there are other worlds out there he doesn't know about, and when to listen to a few words about vermin eating filth and decide that this isn't going to be settled with logic.

ETA: "Whew" means, wow, I really liked this. (Sorry, I should have been clearer.) To continue the ETA, I think that the universalism, the idea that everyone has their own internal world, is probably THE thing that makes me so attached to the Buffyverse, and to Whedon's (good) works generally (and some of his less-good ones). Of course the very first scene of the show depends on us assuming that we're in one story, and it turning out to be another, and everything follows from there. I'm picturing Buffy standing before the desert in "Restless," as an image encapsulating the infinitude of interior space -- one's own world can go on forever, and/but as you emphasize, so does everyone else's. At its best (and even at its middle and sometimes worst) the show depicts how people go all the way down, and also have the room inside themselves to incorporate others' worlds too.