What Buffy Did

[hazelk]

According to this interview the original story Joss had in mind for movie Buffy was about “someone who was completely ditzy and self-involved becoming kind of heroic.” So I thought it might be interesting to look back at the series and assess to what extent this original premise worked out. Did Buffy ever lose her inner ditz? Would she have been nicer if she’d kept it? Did she involve others or remain absorbed in herself? Had she become a complete hero by the end?


In the series we never really see full-on ditzy Buffy. But we do see Cordelia and Buffy quite explicitly points her out as a reflection of her pre-Slayer self in 'Helpless.' Of course it could be argued that Buffy doesn’t really know Cordelia that well and at the time she’s talking to Angel and may be going on what she thinks, he thinks of ‘Spordelia’. But before it gets too circular, there is extra-textual confirmation that ‘Buffy started out as Cordelia’ in the commentary to WttH. So what’s Cordelia like? Popular, affluent, superficial, domineering, unthinkingly vicious. But not dumb, not a sheep, as she says it takes work to stay on top and nobody really listens to her. Also not without the courage of her convictions and she does have a heart as she finds to her cost with Xander. In AtS Cordelia sets out on a hero’s journey after her family’s finances go belly up. So her superpower is poverty?

Topic. OK never mind Cordelia there’s plenty of the ditzy bitch with a heart in high school Buffy. No volunteer hero, she repeatedly points out the downside of her calling and how she envies those with a ‘normal life.’ For a handy collection of statements to this effect try the Slayerhood page of the Buffyverse Dialogue Database but this speech to Joyce from ‘Becoming II’ pretty much encapsulates it.

BUFFY:
No, it doesn't stop! It *never* stops! Do-do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any idea how lonely it is, how dangerous? I would *love* to be upstairs watching TV or gossiping about boys or... God, even studying! But I have to save the world... again.

With this attitude Buffy is arguably not a hero but a martyr, a sacrifice to the greater good like Impata in ‘Inca Mummy Girl’ or the first slayer in GiD. Maybe what distinguishes a hero from ordinary good people is the ability to inspire others, but what Buffy inspires at this stage of her journey is pity. However, dotted throughout the early seasons are signs that it’s not all bad for her.

Sometimes for practical reasons:

Ohhh! I was *so* hoping you'd do that. (Ted)

Or other Slayers give her a new perspective:

I guess it's something I really can't fight. I'm a freak. (What’s My Line)

It didn't suck. (Bad Girls)

Or just because:

I’m good (What’s My Line)


By ‘Graduation Day’ the views she expresses to Joyce have radically changed

BUFFY:
I wish I could be a lot of things for you. A great student, a star athlete, remotely normal. I'm not. But there is something I do that I can do better than anybody else in the world. I'm gonna fight this thing.

This is more like it. No more whining about the loss of that pre-lapsarian ‘normal’ life centered around boys and shopping. Forgivable in a school girl but if she’s to finish the series a true TV hero the one flaw that no audience will tolerate is whining. Make us aspire to a life we don’t already have. Slay the dragon and smile dammit!


Does the end of S3 marks a permanent change in Buffy’s attitude to Slaying? S4 is possibly the most angst free year she ever has. The number of Slayer related quotes in the database sinks by a third back to 20 and a good half of these are positive, along the lines of:

XANDER:
Let me tell you something, when it's dark and I'm all alone and I'm scared or freaked out or whatever, I always think, 'What would Buffy do?' You're my hero. (The Freshman)

Or:

BUFFY:
That's okay. Danger's my birthright. (The “I” in Team)

Schooling by day, patrolling by night it’s not a zero sum game any more. Buffy Summers, college student can have it all. She’s happy enough but in the way of freshmen, still quite superficial. Boyfriend, classes, parties, monsters, what does it all mean? The next three years will cause her to reflect more deeply on both her calling and her life.


S5 raises the question of whether killing things makes her a killer. Not if you kill yourself first but she doesn’t escape that easily. S6 is a Cruciamentum in which rather than losing her physical powers she loses her mission. Dark!Willow was wrong, the Slayer thing really isn’t about the violence or the power, Faith had both and was just an assassin for hire. Being a hero is something you choose, a vocation, a duty, a fire. Take that away and what’s left. No wonder she hates herself:

BUFFY:
It was like... when I clawed my way out of that grave, I left something behind. Part of me. I just... I don't understand. Why I'm back. (Grave)

There are ancillary problems she has to work through. The deathwish, taking it out on others, forgiving her friends, but in ‘Grave’ she finally gets to ask the real question, the one that even Giles can’t answer. But then something unprecedented happens:

BUFFY:
I can't take 'em all. Dawn... (Buffy hands her a sword) Will you help me?

DAWN:
I got your back.

Now she’s starting to see something new:

BUFFY:
I don't want to protect you from the world - I want to show it to you.


It’s a beginning and S7 is all about going back to the beginning. Time to re-visit original premise!Buffy and check on her progress. Ditzy? Not so much but when the chips aren’t down she can still find time for “fun and games and quips about orientation”. Kinda heroic? Hell yes. Self-involved? Oops. It’s a Catch-22 but being less superficial is bound to make you more reflective:

BUFFY:
I feel like I'm worse than anyone. Honestly, I'm beneath them. My friends, my boyfriends. I feel like I'm not worthy of their love. 'Cause even though they love me, it doesn't mean anything 'cause their opinions don't matter. They don't know. They haven't been through what I've been through. They're not the slayer. I am. Sometimes I feel. This is awful? I feel like I'm better than them. Superior. (CWDP)

And there we have it. The fundamental problem with being the Slayer isn’t that it makes her a killer, she’s quite firm on that point with Willow in ‘Two to Go’:

BUFFY:
A killer isn't a Slayer.

And she’s got her mission groove thang going again, as she shows Cassie in ‘Help’:

BUFFY:
See? You can make a difference.

And she’s so far over trying to be ‘normal’ it sometimes veers into contempt:

BUFFY:
Whistle while you work. So hard. All day. To be like other girls. To fit in, in this glittering world. Don't give me songs. (OMWF)

Taste my bitter irony. Although, for other people, sisters, friends, boyfriends normal is still the best, the safest thing for all concerned.

BUFFY:
The next vampire you meet, you run away. (Lessons)

BUFFY:
He's good-looking, and he's solid, he's smart, he's normal. So, not the wicked energy, which is nice 'cause I don't want to only be attracted to wicked energy. (First Date)

This ‘sauce for the goose but not the goslings or the ganders’ attitude is symptomatic of her fundamental problem, her singularity:

BUFFY:
At some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law. (Selfless)

The buck stops with the Slayer. She’s the one the demon world respects, she’s the one they warn their little spawn about. Accept no substitutes, none can walk a mile in her shoes. Until she dies and the next girl is called but by then it’s too late to talk. Being the Slayer makes you different. Being responsible means it’s hard to connect. What if you let them all down? Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown.

S7 is a long journey for Buffy. Leadership is hard, but she tries. Much of what she tries is just successful enough for her to convince herself that she’s doing the right thing. But because she thinks she can’t get too close, she isn’t aware of the differences in how people respond and from the beginning adopts a one speech fits all approach. By GiD this devolves into an almost text book example of how not to do it. Sure, making people mad can distract them from their fears. It worked with Cordelia in ‘Homecoming’ and it pretty much works with Spike and Willow. With Anya and the potentials, however, it simply alienates them so that they won’t tolerate later tactical errors like the raid in ‘Dirty Girls.’ Everything falls apart and she knows it and she knows why:

BUFFY:
These are girls. That I got killed. (beat) I cut myself off from them, all of them. I knew I was going to lose some of them and I… You know what? I’m still making excuses. I’ve always cut myself off, I’ve always? Being the Slayer made me different. My fault I stayed that way. People are always trying to connect to me but I just slip away. (Touched)

She’s talking to Spike and Spike for once in his unlife says the right thing. He doesn’t say it very elegantly but he does remind her not just of her strength, everybody does that, but her kindness as well. So she takes a chance on a connection and it works out for her. She does it again with Xander and Faith and it starts to get repetitive. She still attempts to give her baby sister a chance to get away as she once did Joyce, but seems almost relieved when Dawn rebels. Finally understanding that singularity isn’t a given, she has the revelation that other people aren’t just there to back her up. There’s a lot of them out there who could do her job as well as she does if she’d just give them the chance. And it’s a job worth doing, a job worth sharing, a job well done.

How does it end? Does she love him? I think she does. Right then, right there and can we really ever say more. Forever never comes, she’s figured that out. And afterwards, off camera? From what we hear she’s having it all again. Council decision-maker by day, disco-dancer by night. I say she’s earned it.

Comments

[elisi]

Damn this is a good post! Excellent! I have nothing to add, so I think I'll just rec it instead!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[fishsanwitt]

I came here by way of elisi

I really enjoyed this post!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you liked it, thanks for commenting.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Great post! I'm also going to link it if that's okay? :)

I think the closest we get to full on ditzy Buffy is in seasons 1-4. E.g in Homecoming when battling for the crown, "the yearbook was like a story of me". Or in Earshot when she has the mature speech bringing Jonathon back from the brink, but it ends with her cracking a joke about not being his date for prom because "he's like three feet tall".

But at the same time she is the mature selfless Buffy that we all know and love right from the first episode really, when she sets out to fulfill her duty and rescue her friends. She always had to be more mature than her peer group. So her ditziness never seems much of a character trait of hers to me. More it's something that occasionally emerges in the early years from nostalgia of when she was a carefree kid. That's how it comes across to me.

Once season 5 hits the writers pile on the misery and we see her grow up with a vengeance.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Oh link away. Thank you.

I think I was a little harsh on early Buffy here, I don't she was ditzy in a particularly pejorative way (in which case I probably shouldn't have followed the word ditzy with the word bitch) more quirky and fun and well youthful. And yes the good stuff is there right from the beginning, as it was in Cordelia. One reason I really love that speech to Joyce in Becoming is that out of context it can read as whiny but in context and hearing it acted it's tragic and honest and brave.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Oh I like when Buffy was ditzy. It was part of her charm *g* Those examples from Homecoming and Earshot are definitely part of what I love about early season Buffy. We see in Helpless she recognises that she wants to be more than the shallow girl she was back in LA. But occasionally she's nostalgic for that girlish innocence.

You've gotta love a girl who worries about fashion and knows how to dress :D "I broke a nail okay, I'm wearing a press-on" *giggles*

And yeah I love that Becoming speech. The way SMG delivers it, "I have to save the world. Again!" *sniff*

[yourlibrarian]

I wonder if this issue, the shallowness, the heroism, and the confusion are what makes Buffy a difficult character to write? I find that it's often difficult to hear her voice clearly in many stories.

[mediumdave.livejournal.com]

I haven't read a great many BtVS fics, but that's been my experience too. Almost all of the ones I've read either get her voice wrong, or avoid the issue by moving her "offstage". I'm in the middle of reading one that rings true for me, though: ginmar's "Ever After" (which can be found at AllAboutSpike).

There was another one by a UK writer (I forget the title now) who apologized in advance for not being able to write Buffy well... and ironically, I thought the story pegged the character very well despite a few misplaced British colloquialisms. The attitude was there, if not the exact words.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Buffy’s a complicated character and doesn’t verbalise how she’s feeling too often on the show. Actually this thing about character voice reminds me of a thought I had about the difference between creative and analytical responses. A little while back I read a comment by a fic writer that she’d imprinted on a character at a particular stage in the series and that coloured her view of him. And I wondered if to make a character your own, to write him you have to do this to some extent, take a snapshot and use it as a set starting point. Whereas if you’re just watching the show it’s more like science where you can’t afford to get too attached to any particular interpretation but have to always be prepared to change your ideas in response to new data.

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Jane Espenson has said Buffy has the hardest voice to get right.

[elisi]

It's nearly impossible. I'm trying to write her at the moment and just crossing my fingers that she comes out ok... she's probably the most complicated character on either show!

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

Great post. You manage to put in front of us all the reasons I love Buffy so much: she's not perfect, she struggles to do what her calling requires her to do, and somehow manages to do the hard things that entails, even if she does break nails in the process!
I'm not a writer, but I think hers is probably one of the harder voices to find, because she is not someone who expresses herself easily in words. One of the great thing about SMG's portrayal was her wonderful facial expressions. She could say so much without saying a word. The look on her face as she watches Angel being sucked into Hell says volumes..and the smile at the end of Chosen volumes more.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree with that. She also tended to express herself through her actions and a lot of fanfic is very interior and not so much about the action. It must be harder to write than to show.

[sweet-ali.livejournal.com]

Beautifully, beautifully said. I wish i could add something, but this stands so perfectly on its own.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thank you.