Buffy goes to work (text version)
Apr. 30th, 2006 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hazelkIn which slaying proves the curse of the drinking classes
Buffy goes to work
As part of his secret identity, the classic lone superhero has a day job. Clark Kent is a journalist, Peter Parker a photographer, Steve Rogers a soldier and Bruce Wayne a billionaire industrialist to name but a few. Predictably, career plays a less essential role in setting up the identity of a superheroine. Wonder Woman was briefly a nurse in the forties and became a boutique owner in the sixties but then gave up the day job altogether. Elektra never made it out of college before doing the same. And Buffy? Her employment record was patchy at best. However, she differed from other superheroes in the extent to which slaying itself was depicted as a form of employment. Unpaid, no dental and little in the way of long term career prospects but still coming with a watchful line manager and prophecised job description attached.
You talk about slaying like it's a job
Buffy’s attitude to her work is initially quite biblical:
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work (Genesis 2:3)
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground (Genesis 3:19)
If even the creator can thank himself it’s Friday and see work as a punishment for eating forbidden fruit, it’s hard not to sympathize with a teenage girl who just wants to maintain a social life (Never Kill a Boy on Your First Date), go to frat boy parties (Reptile Boy), look cute in a tiara (Homecoming), cheer up a friend by wearing something sluttier (The Initiative) or simply have some much-needed fun (Crush) .
Another creator, this time of capitalism, who describes work in terms of a necessary evil is Adam Smith. Labour equates to toil and trouble exchanged for goods or services:
What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself and which it can impose upon other people. (The Wealth of Nations)
In Anya’s terms, maybe Buffy is just being a good American when she wishes Giles’s people would leave her alone (WttH) or shows more interest in enslaving herself to a pom-pom pushing cult than going out to destroy vampires 24/7 (Witch). So often in the first three seasons she talks as if saving the world from unspeakable demons were an annoying adjunct to the more important pursuits of dating, shopping and hanging out with her friends (Faith Hope and Trick).
Presenting work as a tedious burden is usually the province of comedy. Maybe it would just be too depressing otherwise, given that The Office is probably closer to many people’s experience of work than ER or The West Wing. On the other hand, BtVS shows how metaphor can be used to make uplifting drama out of even the mundane horrors of wage-labour. When Buffy points out that she’s 16 years old and she doesn’t want to die (Prophecy Girl), or how lonely and dangerous and unending it is (Becoming II) slaying begins to stand in for all the most body and soul destroying aspects of the workplace.
It could be argued that employment, unlike slaying, is voluntary. No-one chains the David Brents of this world to their desks or uses sexually suggestive metaphors to force them into becoming less human (Get it Done). Well maybe they do, there must be Office crossover fic out there somewhere. Buffy’s Slayer powers, however, mean that her chains are her own to choose to take up. She can snap them as easily as the crucifix necklace she flings at her Watcher in Prophecy Girl and she can deny her calling and mean it in WttH and Anne. However, in all these cases she quits but then chooses to return and her reasons for doing so are exactly those implied by the Shadowman’s vision. If she gives up the demons take over and innocent people, friends, family and random strangers suffer and die. Which is also true in a sense for less mythical forms of employment, flipping burgers and cleaning tables may not generally make great TV but does keep the demons of debt and dependency at bay.
It’s not. It’s who you are.
A rather different view of work is taken by such unlikely bed-fellows as Karl Marx and muscular Christianity. Though not denying the existence of soulless labour done purely as a means to an end, both imagine a much richer form of work that would be not only self-fulfilling but species-enhancingly spiritual
The productive life is also the species life. It is life engendering life. In the art of life-activity lies the entire character of the species, its species-character, and the species-character of humanity consists of free, conscious activity. (The Alienation of Labour)
We cannot deal with industrialism or unemployment unless we lift work out of the economic, political and social spheres and consider it also in terms of the work's worth and the love of the work, as being in itself a sacrament and manifestation of man's creative energy. (The Mind of a Maker)
As Buffy grows she seems to come around more and more to this point of view, that slaying is a vocation rather than a job. Something that makes it good to be her (Halloween), with which she is proud to self-identify (Anne), that she claims as her turf (Primeaval) and that gives her and others like her a purpose, a mission in life (Potential). In The Gift when she finally figures out the work that she has to do, this vocational tendency achieves apotheosis.
You’re just a girl
This essay began by musing on the differences between female and male superheroes. Comparison of The Gift with Not Fade Away uncovers some revealing ones. While Angel portrays the fang gang’s final stand as a means to cause his enemies pain and to show them the limits of their power, Buffy’s reasons for self-sacrifice are framed in terms of protecting her family and friends, exactly the sort of care perspective traditionally associated with the work done by women.
She is working from morning till night at house-keeping: she is bearing children, and suffering all the pangs of labour, and all the exhaustion of suckling: she is cooking, and washing, and cleaning: soothing one child, cleaning another, and feeding a third. And all this is nothing: for she gets no wages. (Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century)
Apart from the morning till night aspect slaying shows striking resemblances to this description of women’s work. Most obviously in that it too is unpaid and absolutely taken for granted that it be so by all concerned including the woman in question. In Checkpoint she even threatens a strike in order to negoiate Giles’s back pay, not her own. The matter is brought up by Anya in Flooded, but Buffy is scornful of the suggestion that she charge for saving people’s lives. Does she think of slaying like motherhood, as a privilege, or is she (it is season 6) just cynical about the possibility of getting people like the Sunnydale bank clerk she later rescues to pay up?
The argument is ultimately settled by Xander comparing her to Spiderman. However, Peter Parker could capitalize on his alter ego’s notoriety by selling photographs of himself, while yet another aspect of slaying that resembles female contributions to the workplace is that it has to go unrecognized.
One more issue about women and work is brought up in Doublemeat Palace when Xander (again) points out to Dawn that Buffy’s dual identity, her work-life conflict, prevents her from ever progressing very far in the job market. Assuming there is much of a job market for college dropouts with a history of mental illness and exclusion from school for quasi criminal behaviour.
She alone has the strength
Not all forms of work available to women are domestic drudgery. A much better paid alternative if you can get it is to become a muse, an idol, an icon, a Madonna. However, to quote an early Roman poet’s view of the Marian original:
She…had no peer
Either in our first mother or in all women
Who were to come. But alone of all her sex
She pleased the Lord
(Caelius Sedulius)
Which rather starkly points out the problem with this as a career strategy, namely that there can only be one. Truth be told, going in to the seventh season of BTVS this was also the one major problem I had with Buffy as a feminist icon. From Boudicca through to Thatcher, patriarchal institutions have never had much of a problem coping with strong female figures as long as they remain singular. On the show (possibly as a sly reference to the cult of Mary) even Caleb was quite happy for the First to be female as long as she was special. She could be sin as long as the others were just sinners (Touched). That they fixed that in Chosen made me very happy.
As part of his secret identity, the classic lone superhero has a day job. Clark Kent is a journalist, Peter Parker a photographer, Steve Rogers a soldier and Bruce Wayne a billionaire industrialist to name but a few. Predictably, career plays a less essential role in setting up the identity of a superheroine. Wonder Woman was briefly a nurse in the forties and became a boutique owner in the sixties but then gave up the day job altogether. Elektra never made it out of college before doing the same. And Buffy? Her employment record was patchy at best. However, she differed from other superheroes in the extent to which slaying itself was depicted as a form of employment. Unpaid, no dental and little in the way of long term career prospects but still coming with a watchful line manager and prophecised job description attached.
You talk about slaying like it's a job
Buffy’s attitude to her work is initially quite biblical:
And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work (Genesis 2:3)
In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground (Genesis 3:19)
If even the creator can thank himself it’s Friday and see work as a punishment for eating forbidden fruit, it’s hard not to sympathize with a teenage girl who just wants to maintain a social life (Never Kill a Boy on Your First Date), go to frat boy parties (Reptile Boy), look cute in a tiara (Homecoming), cheer up a friend by wearing something sluttier (The Initiative) or simply have some much-needed fun (Crush) .
Another creator, this time of capitalism, who describes work in terms of a necessary evil is Adam Smith. Labour equates to toil and trouble exchanged for goods or services:
What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself and which it can impose upon other people. (The Wealth of Nations)
In Anya’s terms, maybe Buffy is just being a good American when she wishes Giles’s people would leave her alone (WttH) or shows more interest in enslaving herself to a pom-pom pushing cult than going out to destroy vampires 24/7 (Witch). So often in the first three seasons she talks as if saving the world from unspeakable demons were an annoying adjunct to the more important pursuits of dating, shopping and hanging out with her friends (Faith Hope and Trick).
Presenting work as a tedious burden is usually the province of comedy. Maybe it would just be too depressing otherwise, given that The Office is probably closer to many people’s experience of work than ER or The West Wing. On the other hand, BtVS shows how metaphor can be used to make uplifting drama out of even the mundane horrors of wage-labour. When Buffy points out that she’s 16 years old and she doesn’t want to die (Prophecy Girl), or how lonely and dangerous and unending it is (Becoming II) slaying begins to stand in for all the most body and soul destroying aspects of the workplace.
It could be argued that employment, unlike slaying, is voluntary. No-one chains the David Brents of this world to their desks or uses sexually suggestive metaphors to force them into becoming less human (Get it Done). Well maybe they do, there must be Office crossover fic out there somewhere. Buffy’s Slayer powers, however, mean that her chains are her own to choose to take up. She can snap them as easily as the crucifix necklace she flings at her Watcher in Prophecy Girl and she can deny her calling and mean it in WttH and Anne. However, in all these cases she quits but then chooses to return and her reasons for doing so are exactly those implied by the Shadowman’s vision. If she gives up the demons take over and innocent people, friends, family and random strangers suffer and die. Which is also true in a sense for less mythical forms of employment, flipping burgers and cleaning tables may not generally make great TV but does keep the demons of debt and dependency at bay.
It’s not. It’s who you are.
A rather different view of work is taken by such unlikely bed-fellows as Karl Marx and muscular Christianity. Though not denying the existence of soulless labour done purely as a means to an end, both imagine a much richer form of work that would be not only self-fulfilling but species-enhancingly spiritual
The productive life is also the species life. It is life engendering life. In the art of life-activity lies the entire character of the species, its species-character, and the species-character of humanity consists of free, conscious activity. (The Alienation of Labour)
We cannot deal with industrialism or unemployment unless we lift work out of the economic, political and social spheres and consider it also in terms of the work's worth and the love of the work, as being in itself a sacrament and manifestation of man's creative energy. (The Mind of a Maker)
As Buffy grows she seems to come around more and more to this point of view, that slaying is a vocation rather than a job. Something that makes it good to be her (Halloween), with which she is proud to self-identify (Anne), that she claims as her turf (Primeaval) and that gives her and others like her a purpose, a mission in life (Potential). In The Gift when she finally figures out the work that she has to do, this vocational tendency achieves apotheosis.
You’re just a girl
This essay began by musing on the differences between female and male superheroes. Comparison of The Gift with Not Fade Away uncovers some revealing ones. While Angel portrays the fang gang’s final stand as a means to cause his enemies pain and to show them the limits of their power, Buffy’s reasons for self-sacrifice are framed in terms of protecting her family and friends, exactly the sort of care perspective traditionally associated with the work done by women.
She is working from morning till night at house-keeping: she is bearing children, and suffering all the pangs of labour, and all the exhaustion of suckling: she is cooking, and washing, and cleaning: soothing one child, cleaning another, and feeding a third. And all this is nothing: for she gets no wages. (Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century)
Apart from the morning till night aspect slaying shows striking resemblances to this description of women’s work. Most obviously in that it too is unpaid and absolutely taken for granted that it be so by all concerned including the woman in question. In Checkpoint she even threatens a strike in order to negoiate Giles’s back pay, not her own. The matter is brought up by Anya in Flooded, but Buffy is scornful of the suggestion that she charge for saving people’s lives. Does she think of slaying like motherhood, as a privilege, or is she (it is season 6) just cynical about the possibility of getting people like the Sunnydale bank clerk she later rescues to pay up?
The argument is ultimately settled by Xander comparing her to Spiderman. However, Peter Parker could capitalize on his alter ego’s notoriety by selling photographs of himself, while yet another aspect of slaying that resembles female contributions to the workplace is that it has to go unrecognized.
One more issue about women and work is brought up in Doublemeat Palace when Xander (again) points out to Dawn that Buffy’s dual identity, her work-life conflict, prevents her from ever progressing very far in the job market. Assuming there is much of a job market for college dropouts with a history of mental illness and exclusion from school for quasi criminal behaviour.
She alone has the strength
Not all forms of work available to women are domestic drudgery. A much better paid alternative if you can get it is to become a muse, an idol, an icon, a Madonna. However, to quote an early Roman poet’s view of the Marian original:
She…had no peer
Either in our first mother or in all women
Who were to come. But alone of all her sex
She pleased the Lord
(Caelius Sedulius)
Which rather starkly points out the problem with this as a career strategy, namely that there can only be one. Truth be told, going in to the seventh season of BTVS this was also the one major problem I had with Buffy as a feminist icon. From Boudicca through to Thatcher, patriarchal institutions have never had much of a problem coping with strong female figures as long as they remain singular. On the show (possibly as a sly reference to the cult of Mary) even Caleb was quite happy for the First to be female as long as she was special. She could be sin as long as the others were just sinners (Touched). That they fixed that in Chosen made me very happy.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 02:16 am (UTC)The matter is brought up by Anya in Flooded, but Buffy is scornful of the suggestion that she charge for saving people’s lives.
While Angel charges people from pretty much the beginning of his series. To be fair, he's very uncomfortable with the idea at first too, but hey, he and Cordelia and Wesley have bills to pay! As a viewer, I wouldn't have wanted Buffy to charge for life-saving, as it would seem a very unBuffylike (for lack of a better word) thing for her to do. But the way it was presented as an obvious choice for Angel and an unthinkable one for Buffy always confounded me a bit.
patriarchal institutions have never had much of a problem coping with strong female figures as long as they remain singular...That they fixed that in Chosen made me very happy
Oh, I love the way you point this out! As if I needed another reason to love Chosen...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 07:26 am (UTC)But the way it was presented as an obvious choice for Angel and an unthinkable one for Buffy always confounded me a bit.
Yes and confusing because neither feels out of character. I was thinking it could be the noir thing that Angel started out with but does Veronica Mars charge for her sleuthing? So maybe its a high school thing, Clark Kent on Smallville doesn't get money for saving people but then neither does Superman. Maybe the difference is that male superhero powers seem to work as transferrable skills. Clark gets to help out around the farm and most of his ace reporter status comes from the X-ray vision etc. While Buffy's abilities are either irrelevant in the workplace or a positive hindrance as when she gets a job at Xander's building site. Something in there maybe about it being socially less acceptable for women to be exceptional which is still more true than I'd like it to be.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 04:13 pm (UTC)Yes, Veronica does charge. Or rather, she charges some people and not others.
The interesting thing, is why Angel agrees to charge people. It isn't because he can, and it isn't because they have bills to pay. That's Cordelia's argument, and he rejects it. What convinces him to do so, is Doyle's argument that charging people is for their own good.
Doyle: No, it's about doing what's best for the people you've helped. People get attached to a mysterious savior, and can you blame them? But as long as you're just a man who's doing a job, and getting paid, they can feel like they've paid their debt to you and they can move on - independent like.
There's a very ironic thing going here... Angel's fight tends to devolve into destroying enemies while Buffy's is protecting people. And yet, their mission is the reverse. Buffy's mission is to kill threats and usually that's why people encounter her. Whereas Angel's mission is 'helping the hopeless' and people tend to encounter him because he's trying to help them improve their lives. (Granted, this is a focus that diminished over the course of the series.)
Although - both characters do a lot of both roles and the 'Anne' character is shown in NFA to bring that back around...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 05:14 pm (UTC)That's good. I know very little about VM and most of that from vids which tend not to focus on the financial details:-)
I too always liked Doyle's explanation of the charging, a little pasted in perhaps, but smart and convincing and I like smart in a show. There's still the question of why the same reasoning doesn't apply to Buffy but that would fit with her role initially being conceived more in terms of the 'masculine' threat-disposal function.
You could argue that the way she moved towards being a protector and Angel became a destroyer illustrates a failure of both shows' original gender bending philosophies, a sort of cultural entropy. But I think you're right and both their journeys are more circular than that pesky second law would allow for. Buffy ends choosing to allow the potentials the means to protect themselves and perpetuate the process she began in S3. And one might hope that Anne's presence in NFA foreshadowed a similar ending to the seasons of Angel that will now never be made.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 05:27 pm (UTC)Particularly since BtVS rejects the idea that she could be paid, years after AtS explains why it's okay for Angel to be paid. What's interesting to me, on a meta-level, is what it says about attitudes toward the people they're helping. Which is to say - on BtVS come S6 and S7 - they aren't thinking about them. Concern is very narrowly limited to people in your clan and the enemies to be killed. (Just as the show's set is increasingly limited to the Summers' living room) During the formative years of Angel Investigations, 'the people' were supposed to be the point.
It's ironic that the conclusion of both AtS hints at the possible destruction of Angel's city. The show closes at night, and the undertones are that this fight might not work out so great for the rest of the people who live in that world even if Angel's team wins - which they may not. BtVS ends on a sunny day and a triumphant note, even though the town is an abandoned crater. Which may or may not be an intentional undercut.
The end results being ones that I think defy a lot of categorization but make for very fun discussion.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 09:23 pm (UTC)I take your point, however, an alternative interpretation is that they are thinking about them but in a more cynical way than on AtS. Doyle’s advice presupposes that the hopeless person being helped is an innocent victim and therefore naturally prone to idealise their savior. However, the bank clerk Buffy protects in Flooded seemed to have no such problem.
In LA the evil powers are ultimately shown to reside in a single demonic cabal, I think we’re meant to assume that people on the streets are innocent unless shown to be guilty (involved). The plain people of Sunnydale, by contrast, are portrayed as all somewhere on a spectrum of complicit in the demonic goings on around them. They voted in the mayor, the adult population lifted not a finger to help out in Graduation Day and chose to stay until they all left town in Empty Places. Buffy’s classmates awarded her the protector symbol in the Prom so they knew what she was doing but never offered to help her until the end.
Buffy is also shown as more vulnerable to social censure and exposure than Angel, the community can and has put her away in a mental ward and several times threatened to take Dawn away from her, threats she takes very seriously. She can't afford to go to the people because she doesn't know which of them to trust and if she gets it wrong the results could incapacitate her. So I would say that while LA is treated as a real town, Sunnydale is more of a metaphor for a corrupt social institution, subtler but on a par with Wolfram and Hart.
The end results being ones that I think defy a lot of categorization but make for very fun discussion.
Yes {g}
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 05:13 am (UTC)Very interesting comparisons here. I too loved that they fixed this in Chosen. Yet another reason I love Chosen.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 07:42 am (UTC)I love your icon.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 07:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-01 04:54 pm (UTC)::passes out::
Will be back later with something more constructive, right now I'm overcome with joy!
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-03 07:06 pm (UTC)Oh and you might want to friend
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 03:30 pm (UTC)If you look at DMP in isolation the ending suggests that her going back to work at the end is the right thing to do. Maybe Spike talketh out of his Victorian trade-deploring arse, or at least not as the voice of the show. But there's still the implied horror at the lifer badge so maybe Spike's arse is the voice of the show. They had to drop the DMP plotline because of pressure from the advertisers didn't they, so it's never made clear when or why she leaves, she's still working there in Normal Again. When Faith goes bad one of the first things she does is to get a job (as an assassin). Hmm...
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 05:12 pm (UTC)LOL! Well it certainly seems to be the voice of a lot of fanfic!
To the other points though, I think the class issue is a good one to raise. I've always thought that in general the Spike/Buffy relationship was fraught with class markers and is largely a metaphor for the cross-class relationship. (Incidentally there is a presentation on class in the Buffyverse at the upcoming Slayage conference that I'm really looking forward to hearing). It always struck me as interesting that in his off hours for example we see Angel reading, yet Spike is watching TV. Angel has knowledge of art and enjoys the ballet, Spike likes dog racing and poker. Even though Angel has every reason to feel the same, he never seems to feel as unworthy of Buffy as Spike acknowledges he is. Which kind of connects to the Xander issue too.
Ampata: Because... I do not deserve you.
XANDER: What, you think that you don't deserve me? (laughs) Man, I love you! Are those tears of joy? Pain? Revulsion?
There's also, I think, little doubt that Xander is considered to be of a lower class than any of the other main characters. But it also seems to have to do with gender, which is why I raised the Madonna/whore dichotomy. I was always struck by the phrase in "Some Assembly Required" when Xander suggests Buffy and Willow do some digging too. Buffy gives him a flip aside about gender roles, which clearly she doesn't believe. Yet it seemed to me that it did rather relate to her later admission to Holden that she believed in her own superiority. I think that in many ways she (and the others) may have seen her as a righteous hand of God, so to speak, in her mission, and thus in some ways morally superior to the rest of them. Which might explain why discovering that her power comes not from light but dark was a serious blow and gave her a different perspective on what her purpose is.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 08:16 pm (UTC)Ooh, do you know where I might find a screenshot of JM’s ass? (You’ve given me an icon idea).
Incidentally there is a presentation on class in the Buffyverse at the upcoming Slayage conference that I'm really looking forward to hearing
Me to (well reading in my case). Are you going?
Class is always so complicated. My impression is that both Spike and Angel are nice middle class boys in origin but Angel has decided to play the aristocrat (possibly following Darla’s lead), while Spike has gone the opposite way (possibly in reaction to Angelus) and re-invents himself as well’ard as they come. Spike-Buffy may play as cross-class from Spike’s point of view (echoing his rejection by Cecily) but from her perspective it’s more a clash of ideologies and neither can understand accept the other’s. Hence conflict and drama.
I think that in many ways she (and the others) may have seen her as a righteous hand of God, so to speak, in her mission, and thus in some ways morally superior to the rest of them.
In the conversation with Holden Buffy’s admission of superiority comes after her explaining how she feels inferior and not deserving of her power and follows not from being the Slayer per se but from having experiences that others don’t because she is. She’s a Madonna in the sense of bearing all the suffering of the world and a whore for not deserving that dubious honour or having any pride in it.
Which might explain why discovering that her power comes not from light but dark was a serious blow and gave her a different perspective on what her purpose is.
The fear that her powers are rooted in darkness was first suggested by Dracula but every subsequent season deconstructs that rather Jungian hypothesis in a different way In S5 death is her gift in the sense of putting her own on the line not in making an art of it, in S6 she isn’t the demon she fears just acting like one and in S7 the dark side of slaying lies in its being forced on one girl alone, shared freely it becomes a thing of light. Just rambling a bit –Dr. Jung I defy him and all his works.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-02 10:03 pm (UTC)Yes, I'll be going though the timing is terrible for me. *sigh* Hopefully that one will get posted because not all of the last conference's presentations were.
Yes, from their perspectives that's quite the case, but I just meant on the larger level it seemed to have a lot of those elements. I remember that it struck me that way on first viewing and yet it rarely seems to be discussed that way. If anything a lot of fic seems to turn it on its head and make Spike a vampire aristocrat, secretly wealthy, etc. For example this same dichotomy seems to be played between Buffy and Faith.
Well actually I meant that she was seen as a Madonna comapared to other women who did in fact traffic in things of this world. But I do think there was a definite view of her as morally superior, so that it is Giles who kills Ben and says:
"Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take a human life. She's a hero, you see. She's not like us."
It always struck me as a strange take on things, since I think of the hero more in the ancient sacrificial sense, where they take on the burdens and responsibilities of their communities. Which would mean it's exactly because Buffy is a hero that she should do this and do what needs to be done to protect others. Of course perhaps this is why Angel is called a "champion" and not a "hero"?
Dr. Jung I defy him and all his works.
*g* See and my take on that scene with the demon essence in "Get It Done" was that it was a metaphorical rape of original purity, where it was because a woman had been defiled that she could traffic with the demons whose deaths were her calling. Slayers thus had to be young girls because men were inherently impure. At least within the show's mythos I'm not aware it was ever explained why the Slayers had to be women. At least on AtS, Faith shrugged it off saying she just supposed women were better at it.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-03 01:45 pm (UTC)Fic is weird, I suppose it could be the all-British-people-are-aristocrats stereotype. I can see the class thing between Buffy and Faith but Spike always reminded me of the grammar school boys I knew at Cambridge who started going round in DMs and faking regional accents. Suffered from a sort of double inferiority complex, never went to public school but also lacked the working class cool of the comprehensive. Like Spike kind of stuck in the middle neither man nor monster, worthy of nobody. Except for Harmony I suppose.
But I do think there was a definite view of her as morally superior, so that it is Giles who kills Ben and says:
"Buffy even knows that, and still she couldn't take a human life. She's a hero, you see. She's not like us."
Good point. I suppose he’s thinking of ‘hero’ as in the way Xander called her my hero, someone to look up to, to put on a pedestal.
Slayers thus had to be young girls because men were inherently impure. At least within the show's mythos I'm not aware it was ever explained why the Slayers had to be women. At least on AtS, Faith shrugged it off saying she just supposed women were better at it.
I do think the Watcher’s Council and the original Shadowmen had a Madonna/Whore thing going on in spades. Have you read Marina Warner’s books on female iconography? She wrote one on the virgin Mary “Alone of all her sex” (which is where I got that poem from) but more relevant to the Slayers-are-girls issue might be “Monuments and Maidens,” which has some intereting thoughts on why allegorical figures like “Justice” are so often portrayed as female.
You know I think one of the great things about Joss’s work is the flexibility of the metaphors. GiD can be seen so many ways and they can all be true. My first impression of the chaining and violating was that it recapitulated Buffy’s, and probably every Slayer’s, instinctive reaction to finding out about their calling (well not Kendra because she had it trained out of her but that was cheating). So when she asked the last Shadowman to show her the vision that was like finding out that the vampires had taken Willow in WttH or killed Kevin and all his friends in Prophecy Girl.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-04 06:22 pm (UTC)Who to him really was nobody. He definitely treated her as a non-entity. That's a really interesting insight though, the permanent state of not fitting in, being neither one thing nor the other.
someone to look up to, to put on a pedestal
Yes it was always this issue that made me wonder how much of her self-hatred in S6 came because she herself was so apalled at her own behavior or because she feared disappointing others. Rather in the same way that she didn't want to harm them by telling them what had actually happened to her (which she didn't mind doing to Spike), I wondered if her behavior was a matter of acting out against them since she no longer had any other authority (by Watcher or Parent) against whom to rebel. Of course by the end of S6 neither Willow nor Xander nor Dawn for that matter were holding up standards very well so it hardly mattered.
Have you read Marina Warner’s books on female iconography?
I haven't though what you said there sounds like it fits well.
Yes, I think you're right about the purpose of that reveal, especially within the seasonal arc. A kind of "Why We Fight" moment, which has a very different ending on AtS.