Why I Watched BtVS
Dec. 9th, 2003 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indriAs a viewer, I really am very easy to please. Watch girl. Watch girl kick butt. Happy, happy Indri.
Let's examine the ingredients of this incredibly simple formula.
Girl All through my childhood and teenage years, I strongly believed that the gender of one's role models and heroes did not matter. The fact that almost all of the people I regarded highly (Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein [1], Carl Sagan and others) were male did not worry me. I think now that it should have but at the time I had no idea of where to find stories about women, real or fictional, that I might have found appealing. Instead, I invented female heroes, mostly in D&D games, or simply assumed, say, that Chewbacca was clearly a woman.
Then, in my twenties, I found myself obsessing over a variety of shows, films and comics. It took me a surprisingly long time to work out the common denominator. Let's see, there was Deep Space Nine (Go Dax! Go Kira!), The Avengers (Go Mrs Peel!), Terminator II (Go Sarah!), various martial arts films (Go Maggie! Go Michelle!), Alien Resurrection (Go Ripley!), Xena (Go Xena!), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Go Mina!) and even Lexx (Go Zev!). By the time I found myself watching Relic Hunter and cheering on the Borg Queen, the trend was all too clear.
I needed to watch women kicking butt, saving the day and hitting things a lot. And I was prepared to watch the most appalling rubbish sometimes to do so.
Kicks butt I used to worry a lot about the violence in these shows but I think I'm resigned to it now. Violence in stories, particularly in film and TV, seems to stand as a simplistic shorthand for other, less visible qualities, like strength of will and moral righteousness. Buffy always fights best when she's sure of herself, for example. If I accept it as a shorthand, I'm OK with it, because honestly I don't think hitting people will solve the world's problems.
Girl kicks butt Also, there is a measure of juvenile reverse sexism involved. Hah! You underestimate the small girl! Watch as she clobbers you! [cue insane hysterical laughter] I am sick, sick, sick of the woman-as-victim on screen. I feel personally lessened and diminished every time I watch another woman looking helpless and threatened on-screen. I watched the opener to Angel 5.1 hoping the woman would goddam do something other than wail. Hit the bastard! Get away! No need to wait for BatVamp!
And I seem to crave, rather desperately, images of women winning. I really do. And I am surprised and almost embarrassed by this need. Surely I should be autonomous enough not to need it? But it seems that every other negative image of women has taken its toll after all. Also, I work in an incredibly male-dominated profession. Typically, one in ten of my colleagues is a woman. I have gone for years at a time without any female peers in my immediate work group. When someone in my lab picks up the phone and says to the caller, "Yes, she's here", I know they mean me. I am Conspicuous Pronoun Person. And even though I have miraculously never encountered any overt sexism I couldn't laugh at, being the one of the few gets wearing after a while, no matter how much I love my job.
Buffy kicks butt For years I resisted friends who told me to watch Buffy precisely because I suspected I would like it too much. And when I finally gave in, I did. Watching Seasons 1-4 on video or reruns was a real joy. It was a tonic after a hard day's struggling at work, a little pick-me-up that I needed when I was far from home. Not only did Buffy kick butt, but the show had witty dialogue and surprisingly well-realised characters. (Also, Giles.) I didn't take the show very seriously or think about it too much but I loved it.
I didn't enjoy the Buffy/Angel romance though, because I found it too dull and conventional. Since joining Buffy fen on the internet, I have learnt that B/A did work for many people, so I no longer dismiss it out of hand but try to understand why it worked for some and not for others; I don't want to go into that here. But for me, B/A was the awkward bit that I had to put up with to enjoy the rest of the show---not that this prevented me weeping through the end of "Becoming II", mind you, it just seemed more Plot Device than Truth, which may reflect more on my own experiences and inclinations than anything else. Buffy/Riley was pretty blah; it was just so clear (to me) that they were unsuited that I couldn't muster any strong feeling either way.
Buffy's butt gets kicked Then came Season 5 and two things changed. Firstly, the tone of the series began to alter. There had certainly been great drama and tense, unpleasant moments in Seasons 1-4 but you could remain confident that it would mostly work out OK, sort of, except for those occasions where you had to send your boyfriend to hell. But in Season 5, Buffy's life became unpleasant in less metaphorical ways. Her mother died, she had no help from her father or the rest of her family, she had a kid sister to support, she had to quit college and she ended up killing herself. I still hate Buffy's final speech, "Live for me!" etc because, frankly, the only person responsible for living Buffy's life is Buffy. Noble self-sacrifice and all that but it really is braver to live for a cause than to die for it.
The second thing that changed was, well, Spike. I remember discussing the end of "Out of My Mind" with my SO when we first saw it. We listed the number of useful narrative functions that Spike was serving: comic relief, plot thickener, teller of uncomfortable truths, source of demonic underworld info and so on. We thought the ploy of Spike falling in love with Buffy to be a stroke of genius. It made sense in terms of what we knew of his personality while providing both an interesting subplot and a reason for Spike's continued (and otherwise pointless) residence in Sunnydale. Also, as the SO pointed out, "Spike's ripped!" The era of Shirtless Spike was at hand.
Buffy and Spike kick butt? As girl kicks butt seemed to become a less straightforward part of the show, and the SO grumbled about it becoming All Angst All the Time Buffy, I found myself watching the show for another reason, and that was the Buffy/Spike dynamic. Ever since, I've struggled to work out what precisely I find so compelling about this plotline. I'd warble on about screen chemistry except that I know B/A fans saw screen chemistry where I didn't, so it seems that "chemistry" is often in the eye of the beholder. I'd warble on about formative real-life influences, except that would be TMI. So instead I'll say this: I wanted a butt-kicking woman in an equal relationship with another butt-kicker. Dax/Worf? Dax was way smarter. Kira/Odo? Had potential that was ultimately not fulfilled. Peel/Steed? Well, yes, but that was largely subtext on a much more flippant show.
I wanted a decent Spike/Buffy so much and so desperately that it still frightens me. For S/B I started to read Buffy webpages. For S/B I started to read fanfic. I read many pairings now, het, slash and genfic, but without S/B I would not be with you now.
I also appreciated the way that traditionally masculine and feminine attributes (both positive and negative) were present in both Buffy and Spike, if for no other reason than that's how it works in my household and I recognised it. The SO and I could manage it---why couldn't television?
So I watched Seasons 5 and 6 in a strange, fixated way. I watched, hoping against hope that ME would do the right thing (according to me at least) and provide us with a story in which our Noble Hero would be matched by another Noble Hero in glorious partnership. They would be powerful and scary together and kick much butt.
Sadly, that wasn't the story ME was telling, no matter how hard I wished for it (I'm still not really sure what we got). There were also aspects to the plotline-that-might-have-been that were hard to deal with even before Seeing Red, such as the suggestion that if Spike jumped through enough hoops he might win his lady fair, as if Buffy were some sort of a carnival prize.
I didn't mind Spike going after the soul; it seemed like a reasonable enough metaphor for Spike finally pulling himself up my his own bootstraps over the line between good and evil. I know it annoys others who interpret the metaphors differently.
After Season Six, it was really all over. Yet I persist to this day in swithering between fantasies in which Spike/Buffy miraculously works out (after a period of separation, say, during which they spend much time on the phone) and fervently hoping that the two never meet again and spend their lives in different hemispheres.
Why did I watch Season Seven? Because the girl was kicking butt again and that was all I'd originally asked of the show. And because I wanted to know what would become of Spike.
So now I'm planning to watch Angel Season 5. Angel doesn't adhere to my simple formula, so I'm less enthusiastic about it than Buffy (although Fred is sometimes cool). I just want some kind of final resolution to the plotline that made me go insane so that I---and Buffy and Spike---can get on with our lives. And by then perhaps some other plotline will have snagged me.
[1] Yes, I am a professional scientist. Yes, you should be worried. But as a mitigating factor, may I remind you of the cheekbones of the youngish Peter Cushing?
Also: pancakes are good. Even if you have to make them yourself.
Let's examine the ingredients of this incredibly simple formula.
Girl All through my childhood and teenage years, I strongly believed that the gender of one's role models and heroes did not matter. The fact that almost all of the people I regarded highly (Sherlock Holmes, Frankenstein [1], Carl Sagan and others) were male did not worry me. I think now that it should have but at the time I had no idea of where to find stories about women, real or fictional, that I might have found appealing. Instead, I invented female heroes, mostly in D&D games, or simply assumed, say, that Chewbacca was clearly a woman.
Then, in my twenties, I found myself obsessing over a variety of shows, films and comics. It took me a surprisingly long time to work out the common denominator. Let's see, there was Deep Space Nine (Go Dax! Go Kira!), The Avengers (Go Mrs Peel!), Terminator II (Go Sarah!), various martial arts films (Go Maggie! Go Michelle!), Alien Resurrection (Go Ripley!), Xena (Go Xena!), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Go Mina!) and even Lexx (Go Zev!). By the time I found myself watching Relic Hunter and cheering on the Borg Queen, the trend was all too clear.
I needed to watch women kicking butt, saving the day and hitting things a lot. And I was prepared to watch the most appalling rubbish sometimes to do so.
Kicks butt I used to worry a lot about the violence in these shows but I think I'm resigned to it now. Violence in stories, particularly in film and TV, seems to stand as a simplistic shorthand for other, less visible qualities, like strength of will and moral righteousness. Buffy always fights best when she's sure of herself, for example. If I accept it as a shorthand, I'm OK with it, because honestly I don't think hitting people will solve the world's problems.
Girl kicks butt Also, there is a measure of juvenile reverse sexism involved. Hah! You underestimate the small girl! Watch as she clobbers you! [cue insane hysterical laughter] I am sick, sick, sick of the woman-as-victim on screen. I feel personally lessened and diminished every time I watch another woman looking helpless and threatened on-screen. I watched the opener to Angel 5.1 hoping the woman would goddam do something other than wail. Hit the bastard! Get away! No need to wait for BatVamp!
And I seem to crave, rather desperately, images of women winning. I really do. And I am surprised and almost embarrassed by this need. Surely I should be autonomous enough not to need it? But it seems that every other negative image of women has taken its toll after all. Also, I work in an incredibly male-dominated profession. Typically, one in ten of my colleagues is a woman. I have gone for years at a time without any female peers in my immediate work group. When someone in my lab picks up the phone and says to the caller, "Yes, she's here", I know they mean me. I am Conspicuous Pronoun Person. And even though I have miraculously never encountered any overt sexism I couldn't laugh at, being the one of the few gets wearing after a while, no matter how much I love my job.
Buffy kicks butt For years I resisted friends who told me to watch Buffy precisely because I suspected I would like it too much. And when I finally gave in, I did. Watching Seasons 1-4 on video or reruns was a real joy. It was a tonic after a hard day's struggling at work, a little pick-me-up that I needed when I was far from home. Not only did Buffy kick butt, but the show had witty dialogue and surprisingly well-realised characters. (Also, Giles.) I didn't take the show very seriously or think about it too much but I loved it.
I didn't enjoy the Buffy/Angel romance though, because I found it too dull and conventional. Since joining Buffy fen on the internet, I have learnt that B/A did work for many people, so I no longer dismiss it out of hand but try to understand why it worked for some and not for others; I don't want to go into that here. But for me, B/A was the awkward bit that I had to put up with to enjoy the rest of the show---not that this prevented me weeping through the end of "Becoming II", mind you, it just seemed more Plot Device than Truth, which may reflect more on my own experiences and inclinations than anything else. Buffy/Riley was pretty blah; it was just so clear (to me) that they were unsuited that I couldn't muster any strong feeling either way.
Buffy's butt gets kicked Then came Season 5 and two things changed. Firstly, the tone of the series began to alter. There had certainly been great drama and tense, unpleasant moments in Seasons 1-4 but you could remain confident that it would mostly work out OK, sort of, except for those occasions where you had to send your boyfriend to hell. But in Season 5, Buffy's life became unpleasant in less metaphorical ways. Her mother died, she had no help from her father or the rest of her family, she had a kid sister to support, she had to quit college and she ended up killing herself. I still hate Buffy's final speech, "Live for me!" etc because, frankly, the only person responsible for living Buffy's life is Buffy. Noble self-sacrifice and all that but it really is braver to live for a cause than to die for it.
The second thing that changed was, well, Spike. I remember discussing the end of "Out of My Mind" with my SO when we first saw it. We listed the number of useful narrative functions that Spike was serving: comic relief, plot thickener, teller of uncomfortable truths, source of demonic underworld info and so on. We thought the ploy of Spike falling in love with Buffy to be a stroke of genius. It made sense in terms of what we knew of his personality while providing both an interesting subplot and a reason for Spike's continued (and otherwise pointless) residence in Sunnydale. Also, as the SO pointed out, "Spike's ripped!" The era of Shirtless Spike was at hand.
Buffy and Spike kick butt? As girl kicks butt seemed to become a less straightforward part of the show, and the SO grumbled about it becoming All Angst All the Time Buffy, I found myself watching the show for another reason, and that was the Buffy/Spike dynamic. Ever since, I've struggled to work out what precisely I find so compelling about this plotline. I'd warble on about screen chemistry except that I know B/A fans saw screen chemistry where I didn't, so it seems that "chemistry" is often in the eye of the beholder. I'd warble on about formative real-life influences, except that would be TMI. So instead I'll say this: I wanted a butt-kicking woman in an equal relationship with another butt-kicker. Dax/Worf? Dax was way smarter. Kira/Odo? Had potential that was ultimately not fulfilled. Peel/Steed? Well, yes, but that was largely subtext on a much more flippant show.
I wanted a decent Spike/Buffy so much and so desperately that it still frightens me. For S/B I started to read Buffy webpages. For S/B I started to read fanfic. I read many pairings now, het, slash and genfic, but without S/B I would not be with you now.
I also appreciated the way that traditionally masculine and feminine attributes (both positive and negative) were present in both Buffy and Spike, if for no other reason than that's how it works in my household and I recognised it. The SO and I could manage it---why couldn't television?
So I watched Seasons 5 and 6 in a strange, fixated way. I watched, hoping against hope that ME would do the right thing (according to me at least) and provide us with a story in which our Noble Hero would be matched by another Noble Hero in glorious partnership. They would be powerful and scary together and kick much butt.
Sadly, that wasn't the story ME was telling, no matter how hard I wished for it (I'm still not really sure what we got). There were also aspects to the plotline-that-might-have-been that were hard to deal with even before Seeing Red, such as the suggestion that if Spike jumped through enough hoops he might win his lady fair, as if Buffy were some sort of a carnival prize.
I didn't mind Spike going after the soul; it seemed like a reasonable enough metaphor for Spike finally pulling himself up my his own bootstraps over the line between good and evil. I know it annoys others who interpret the metaphors differently.
After Season Six, it was really all over. Yet I persist to this day in swithering between fantasies in which Spike/Buffy miraculously works out (after a period of separation, say, during which they spend much time on the phone) and fervently hoping that the two never meet again and spend their lives in different hemispheres.
Why did I watch Season Seven? Because the girl was kicking butt again and that was all I'd originally asked of the show. And because I wanted to know what would become of Spike.
So now I'm planning to watch Angel Season 5. Angel doesn't adhere to my simple formula, so I'm less enthusiastic about it than Buffy (although Fred is sometimes cool). I just want some kind of final resolution to the plotline that made me go insane so that I---and Buffy and Spike---can get on with our lives. And by then perhaps some other plotline will have snagged me.
[1] Yes, I am a professional scientist. Yes, you should be worried. But as a mitigating factor, may I remind you of the cheekbones of the youngish Peter Cushing?
Also: pancakes are good. Even if you have to make them yourself.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 06:23 pm (UTC)Whimper. This is me.
I talk all cynical about S/B now, but honestly, if Joss tossed me a crumb, I'd kiss his damn toes. It's pathetic.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-11 01:27 pm (UTC)