My Heroes

[hazelk]

Imagine two women. One’s blonde, early twenties, looking out in broad daylight at an open road with the beginning of the beginning of a smile on her face. The other is older, forty-something, still attractive, dark-haired. She’s raising her right hand, part of an impromtu inauguration ceremony set on a plane and even though it’s a still image you can see the effort it takes for her hand not to shake, her voice not to catch. She’s afraid.

The first of these is the closing image of the last episode of the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The world has been saved (again), the hellmouth (and her home town) destroyed and she’s finally taking a moment to appreciate the implications of being no longer the one girl of legend.

WILLOW: We changed the world. I can feel them, Buffy. All over. Slayers are awakening everywhere.

The second comes from midway through the 2003 miniseries that opened a revamped Battlestar Galactica. Laura Roslin, the former Secretary of Education is being sworn in as President of the twelve colonies after a geneocidal attack from a race of enemy robots (Cylons) has wiped out most of the human species and turned their home planets into radioactive wastelands.

Two very different women, two very different situations. And yet similar in that both women are going through a kind of personal singularity, an event after which nothing will be as it could possibly have been imagined to be in all the time leading up to it. In both cases, as well, there’s been a fundamental shift in their powers. Roslin held power before the Cylon attack directly, as a minor political figure, and more indirectly, as the President’s lover. Now, not only is her overt power much greater but the stakes are higher, life or death for the remaining human race rather than teachers’ wages and funding crises. Buffy, on the other hand, had no political power, the human authorities were quite unaware of her. What she had was the power of a hero to inspire and power over the demon world as an enforcer of the law (whatever that meant). The activation of hundreds of Slayers gave her a new kind of responsibility, to guide and organize all the newly empowered volunteers, while somewhat diluting her unique symbolic authority.

Buffy’s story, post –singularity, is only just starting to be told, Laura’s is three seasons in. I could wish, however, that President’s Roslin career and in particular the way power has changed her could be a model for Buffy’s. “Power corrupts” is axiomatic and like most axioms open to question. Corrupts who, corrupts how and is that all it does? I think “Power changes” would be a less didactic but more accurate and more interesting statement. Roslin has done things she would have never thought herself capable of, given the orders to abandon her own ships or even gun one down in order to escape Cylon attackers, allowed prisoners to be subjected to experimental drug treatments during interrogation, given her authority for reciprocal genocide of the Cylons (although the manoeuvre was sabotaged) and attempted to rig an election. She’s also survived internment and occupation, despite that issued a general pardon of all collaborators with the regime and is still in the later stages of her presidency prepared to listen to her (human) critics and change policy accordingly. She’s different, harder, stronger, older, wiser and while fighting the Cylons has made her more like them in some ways it hasn’t made her one of them, or certainly not into one of the kind of monsters she imagines them to be.

Joss Whedon is a sneaky writer. The new comic season began with Buffy and a troop of Slayers jumping out of a helicopter for a James Bond-style raid on some nefarious demonic goings on and continued to lay on the comic style activities, the secret base, the gianting of Dawn, the unlikely resurrections and unCGI-able magical creatures. Big lies are more believable and at first it appeared as though the change of style and setting were simple genre-appropriate. Buffy seemed herself, alternately thoughtful, loyal, resourceful and quippy but mid-way through the second four-part arc she began to feel a little off, to be flipping too abruptly between immature insouciance and existential abandonment. Schizo-Buffy is Buffy with something to hide and sure enough in two panels of the latest issue it transpires that the whole James Bond thing did have some basis in RealEconomik. She and a gang of her best Slayers robbed a bank.

There’s a great deal yet to be revealed about the circumstances of this lapse. Was it a one-off to enable a world saveage operation such as was shown in The Chain or a regular source of petty cash? Did Buffy plan and order the whole thing or was it agreed on by a larger group? Who knows about it, Xander? Giles? When Buffy said "the guys thought I might be a target," did they mean of Interpol? Who or what is giving them high tech equipment in exchange for gold bars?

Despite her refusal to take money from individuals, Buffy has always been a little cavalier about her treatment of corporate property when for Slaying purposes. She stole a rocket launcher, she blew up a school and then a whole town, she broke into restricted government institutions and had Willow hack into their mainframes. Moreover, since the fall of Sunnydale it seems she’s become aware of W&H, which is unlikely to have changed her opinion of corporations in any positive direction. She’s also been very prepared to take risks, following her instincts to let Spike go unchained, assuming her blood was equivalent to Dawn’s or ordering an immediate raid on Caleb central. Sometimes she makes mistakes (and suffers for them) whether sleeping with Angel or deciding General!Buffy was the only way to work with the Potentials. Major larceny is therefore believable but I think it’s a mistake comparable to Roslin’s attempt to rig the election and one made for similar reasons. It’s an act that may solve problems in the short term but the wider consequences are potentially disastrous. In particular the one Willow brought up about it creating new enemies and the precendent it sets to her troops when it becomes more widely known, which it inevitably will- she doesn’t fly under the radar anymore. It’s a mistake, like Roslin’s, of still thinking like a minor player whose actions will have only local effects. I hope it’s a mistake that, like Roslin, she can eventually come back from strengthened but time and much story remains still to pass.

Comments

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Well-argued and very interesting, though knowing absolutely nothing about BSG apart from what you've written here (plus that apparently, it has something to do with toasters) I cannot really agree/disagree with any specific point. Though one question, and please correct me if I'm wrong: as I understand it from this post, Cylons are (from a human perspective) unquestionably evil, correct? They are The Other, The Enemy - the Demon, to speak Buffyesque? Roslin was never appointed/elected/chosen to protect them as well as the humans? It's us or them, they are trying to eradicate mankind, and anything is better than that?

But like you say, the situations are completely different. Buffy's problem here is that she's had everything turn on her; from protecting humanity against the supernatural, she now sees herself forced to protect the supernatural against humanity. Buffy doesn't know who her enemy really is, whom they represent and what they stand for - and against whom she is supposed/allowed to fight. For all we know, by "doing whatever it takes to protect", acting as if it's us or them, she may well be making matters worse. Though I definitely agree that it would be nice if she were prepared to listen to her (human and demonic) critics and change policy accordingly, this issue showed her being dead set against exactly that. Roslin cannot (as far as I understand) possibly prove worse than her enemies; they are the monsters. Buffy, by acting the same way you say Roslin did, might just still become her enemies' best soldier. The kind of monster they imagine her to be.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The Cylon question is complicated. They were created by the humans became conscious and rebelled, fought a war agreed an armstice and disappeared for 40 years before suddenly unleashing a massive apparently unprovoked nuclear assault that killed most of the humans and sent the rest on the run. They were able to be so successful in their attack because they’d evolved to take human form 12 models with many copies of each. In its later stages the series although the Cylons are still the enemy they are less united, some seem to be developing an individuality and the origins of their initial strike have been questioned, whether it was blindly malevolent demon-style, pre-emptive or ordained by God. Roslin may be becoming more like the Cylons particularly on the genocide issue (and she orders that knowing how human they can be) but the Cylons are also becoming more like us. It’s interesting that S8 has already given us two different answers about which side of the magic fence Slayers belong to, human or demon and there have already been several magical creatures that weren’t clearly good or evil (take Kenny for instance) but I don’t think that’s a major issue at present

I think we’re both operating under the assumption that the bank job pre-dated the talk with General Voll so there’s no reason to think it was done to fund a war against humanity rather than in defense of it. Or to believe that Buffy decided on that course of action alone and not in consultation with at least the other Slayers, probably Xander and possibly even Giles (although he may now regret such a course of action for the same Realpolitik reasons Willow advanced). I think our basic difference is that I don’t take Voll at face value and I don’t think Buffy does either. He is human but that doesn’t mean he represents us (I certainly never voted for him) or that he’s correct in his somewhat misogynist fears about women being at the mercy of their demonic natures. Twilight doesn’t come across as having humanity’s best interests at heart either, as long as they help him end the magic he shows no sign of caring.

I read Buffy’s last line rather differently from you as I don’t see this issue as showing Buffy to be dead set against listening to other people. She’s not dismissing Sephrillian’s revelations - he *was* using them to play Willow and her off against each other but that doesn’t make them illusions. She’s worked with demons long enough to know they can use the truth as a weapon and she surely knows the truth of his revelation about her activities. Basically, Joss could be building up for a ‘Slayers against humanity story’ but the set up so far doesn’t leave that as the only option and I don’t believe it’s the most interesting one either. My main point with the Roslin comparison was that’s it’s perfectly possible to tell a well-rounded, complex and compelling story about a powerful woman responding to extreme circumstances without making her all saint or all sinner.

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

I think our basic difference is that I don’t take Voll at face value and I don’t think Buffy does either.

Oh, neither do I - that's why I said that Buffy doesn't know who her enemy really is. She's fighting humans, she's ((convinced that she's) going to be) fighting those who typically represent humanity in times of conflict, but we don't yet know whom they represent or exactly how they intend to meet their goal, and Buffy knows even less (as far as we know).

his somewhat misogynist fears about women being at the mercy of their demonic natures

He specifically denied this, didn't he?

I don’t see this issue as showing Buffy to be dead set against listening to other people.

She quips about killing humans and jokes it off. She refuses to listen to any explanations about Faith. She - as you pointed out - vents her own issues with what she's doing on Gigi and then Faith. She refuses to talk to Giles when he doesn't trust her. She lies right in Willow's face, then tries to argue that it's no big. When asked what happened, she waves it off with "demons playing games." She and Willow got there together, Willow tells her she's just playing into Voll's hands, and they leave as far apart as possible.

I'm sure Buffy knows that they have a point or she wouldn't react so strongly, but... it wouldn't be the first time Buffy heard what others said and then did what she thought was best anyway. And so far, I have to say I see more signs of her pulling isolationist slayer crap than taking in opposing viewpoints.

My main point with the Roslin comparison was that’s it’s perfectly possible to tell a well-rounded, complex and compelling story about a powerful woman responding to extreme circumstances without making her all saint or all sinner.

Agreed, and it's a good point. Though that's hardly new to the Buffyverse either.