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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
Let's salute "Buffy the Vampire Slayer's" greatest accomplishment: A girl who not only kicked ass, but rejected the lonely-guy way of being a superhero.
May 20, 2003 | Buffy Summers, vampire slayer, has come a long way since she was originally imagined, over a decade ago, by her creator Joss Whedon as "the blonde girl [who] strikes back," the traditional victim of the horror genre turned powerful avenger, who gives that monster lurking in the shadows much, much more than it bargained for. In the seven years that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has been on the air, Buffy has died and come back to life twice, lost a mother and gained a kid sister, taken lovers both human and not, run away from home, graduated from high school, dropped out of college, killed the man she loved, fought a treacherous rogue slayer and a best friend gone (temporarily) bad, busted out into song, gotten entangled in a self-destructive affair, lost her mentor, worked in a burger joint, and of course, slain countless vampires and other demons and averted a half dozen apocalypses. Those who have followed her adventures will watch intently Tuesday night to see how this career will be capped off.
The notoriously possessive Buffy fan base is consistent in that it invariably dislikes the current season. They hated it when Buffy's best friend Willow (Alyson Hannigan) abandoned her lifelong crush on fellow Scooby gang member Xander (Nicholas Brendon) for a relationship with Oz (Seth Green) -- though they later developed a passionate attachment to Willow's new boyfriend. They hated it when Angel (David Boreanaz) left Sunnydale for Los Angeles (and his own series). They hated it when the Scooby gang left high school, and then they hated it when Buffy left college for the tedium of the working world in order to support her sister Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg) after their mother's death. They hated it when Buffy came back from the dead after the climactic self-sacrifice that ended Season 5 and was understandably addled and depressed as a result. And since she's gotten over that, they don't like the fact that in Season 7 she's become, in the words of one devotee I know, "a total bitch."
All this is pretty ironic, when you consider that most fans will also tell you that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is about growing up. The creators of imaginary worlds know that they have to stick to their own invented rules. While J.K. Rowling has decreed that death is irreversible in her Harry Potter series, Whedon, who has made resurrection a possibility, nevertheless insists that you can never hold on to the past, or for that matter, the present. Letting go and moving on is, after all, what growing up consists of, even for people obsessed with television depictions of high school life.
One thing about "Buffy" that hasn't changed, though, is that idea of the blonde who strikes back. Her blow has generated ripples that have traveled to some unlikely and marvelous places. Fetching, absorbing and hilarious as some of the series' tangents have been, the core of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has always been the story of a girl hero (well, superhero, to be precise). It's commonplace by now to rave about the liberating effect of Buffy's heroism on girlhood, the supposedly salutary and definitely gratifying spectacle of a young woman kicking bad-guy ass. There's Buffy's independence, her formidable strength, her radiant courage. But if what Buffy's heroism has done to girlhood gets talked about all the time, what her girlishness has done for heroism is even more revolutionary, if less well sung.
An early influence on Whedon was Richard Slotkin, a novelist, historian and professor of American studies at Wesleyan University. In his 1992 book, "Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America," Slotkin surveys hundreds of westerns -- films, books, radio and TV shows -- and notes the emergence of a particular kind of American hero after the fading of the New Deal. This hero, the lone gunfighter, is cut off from the very community he defends. The eponymous character played by Alan Ladd in "Shane," for example, rides into a small town, saves it from the depredations of a wicked cattle baron, but rides out again afterward, unable to enjoy the peace and prosperity he helped secure. His special ability as a gunfighter obligates him to rescue the weak and the good, but his involvement with violence prevents him from forming real relationships with them. They need him, but he can never be with or of them. His chief traits are, in Slotkin's words, "his loneliness, his skill, his fatal celebrity."
The glamorized alienation of the gunfighter carries over into the hard-boiled detectives of noir and, of course, the superheroes of comic books who, like Buffy, are supposed to conceal their secret crime-fighting identities from those acquainted with their workaday selves. But from the very beginning, Buffy could not keep her mission to herself. In addition to her assigned Watcher, Giles (Anthony Head), she quickly acquired allies in Willow and Xander, who in turn drew others into the Scooby gang. The traditional American male hero wallows in romanticized isolation, a condition supposedly forced upon him, but one that also conveniently caters to an aversion to connection and intimacy.
