Age does not wither her

[hazelk]

They’re discussing the infamous decline in quality of aging TV dramas on Whedonesque. Again. I was going to post this but it seems the membership is closed.

I watched Buffy from the beginning but although I always found it entertaining it’s the last two seasons that transformed liking into love. I’d agree that they are different from the preceding seasons. All the seasons are different but these two more so both in tone and in the way they use metaphor.

Not that there’s no metaphor. In season six I found Buffy’s death and inability to re-connect with her old life a great overarching metaphor for the depression and loss of identity many young people go through when they finally move out from the relative safety of family/education. On top of that I would also argue that the very lack of the phlebotinin type elements that acted as metaphors in previous seasons is a metaphor for the seeming mundanity of the life most people have to settle for when forced to leave their childhood dreams behind.

Season seven happens to be my favourite and is different again. On the surface it looks like a return to the old storytelling approach but I think it’s more literary. It’s a little like the way books like 1984 and Ishirigo’s Never Let Me Go are terrible novels if you judge them in sf terms, their world-building is shambolic to put it mildly but that’s not the point, the point is the people not the world.

As for the idea of the series ending with The Gift I have to admit that although season five had some great episodes (Fool for Love and The Body) I thought the attempt to weld a big epic story onto Buffy never really worked (it was a much better fit on Angel) and I have serious misgivings about Buffy giving up her life for Dawn as a series ending. It’s a little too close to Darla’s self sacrifice in Lullaby in the way it seems to conflate motherhood and lethal self–abnegation, the idea that death is the best you can do for your children. I do like the line about the hardest thing in the world being to live in it but particularly because in season six we get to see that confirmed. Lots of times and in lots of different ways.

And now I'll get back to not marking scripts.

Comments

[elisi]

I think that's one reason I like the last two seasons so much - it has been suggested that S6 is a very good analogy of a working mother, going through the daily grind with hardly a word of thanks, because it's nothing more than what everyone expects (not that it's as depressing as what we see of course). And then at the end of S7 we see 'the children' all grown up - strong and confident and ready to start their own lives. (Not that the process was easy of course, but every mother screws up somehow...) :)

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Oh exactly. I can appreciate the self-sacrifice in the context of the later seasons. Like Joss says it's a beautiful thing. But if it had ended with that there would be some creepier resonance. Male heroes die to save the world and it's a noble thing but if a woman does the same she's just doing what's expected. In patriachal societies she's just a vessel for the child.

[ann1962]

And that is what gives Chosen so much texture I think, knowing that Buffy got through all of that intact. She births (most importantly) a healthy self in all of that too, not just the self sacrifice for others.