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.
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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}