Thoughts on Joss and why Buffy is special.

[elisi]

One reason I love BtVS so much is that Buffy gets a happy ending. She wins. I've not seen Dollhouse, but on his other shows winning doesn't enter into it. Angel will be forever fighting. Mal only wishes to keep flying.

But Buffy wins. And there's something else I've realised too. Putting it under a cut, so as not to take up all your flist.

shadowkat67 posted some Joss quotes re. Dollhouse that crystallised some things for me:

I never concieved of a more pure journey from helplessness to power, which is what I always write about, and in that sense, I feel we accomplished a lot of it. I do feel that part of what we tried to get at kind of got taken out at the beginning and it really was more important to how the show would work than I even realized when they took it out- which was sex. The show was supposed to be, on some level, a celebration of perversion, as something that makes us unique. Sort of our hidden selves. You can talk about your hidden selves and identity, but when you have to shoot each other every week, you get a bit limited. The show was supposed to flop genres every episode, and the moment we did that, they shut us down and said, 'Quickly, have someone shoot at someone.' I feel when we had to take sex out of the equation, it became kind of a joke or almost unsettling. Because we couldn't hit it head on - and so much of our identity is wrapped up in our sexuality, and this is something Eliza (Dusku) was talking to me about, as something she wanted to examine before I even came up with the idea, and to have that sort of excised and marginalized and santised and not to be able to hit on the head what they were doing made the show a little bit limited and a little bit creepy at times, I think we still did some fairly out-there stuff, and I'm proud of what we did, given the circumstances, but with those circumstances, it was never really going to happen the way it should have.

People say that rape is one of Joss' staples, and that's true, but that's probably because rape encompasses what makes him tick: power and powerlessness and sex. These are his leitmotifs throughout.

And what I love about Buffy is that she is most of the time above it. Sure, we find out that the original Slayer-power came from a very rape-like empowering of a helpless girl, but Buffy never experiences her power as anything other than innate and hers. The burden of it is to do with her loneliness, not with the power itself. (Which is why I love Chosen so much, because by sharing her power, she removes the last obstacle in her way to freedom.)

See River for a different take - River is very powerful, but the cost is immense, and she is very fragile mentally because of it, and needs a lot of care and looking after. Buffy on the other hand is always the one in control, the one who looks after others. Even in 'Helpless', bereft of her powers, Buffy does not go seek help - not from Giles, nor from Angel. She goes by herself, with nothing but her wits and her self belief, and she saves the day.

So yes, I love Chosen. I love that she triumphs and that her life is her own, without any compromises.

But what about the comics? Ah now. This is where it gets interesting, because suddenly they make sense! We have the extreme powerlessness, followed by the extreme powerfullness, followed by sex... You can see all the key ingredients of any Joss work, but bluntly wielded and rammed in sideways, the characters grotesquely bent out of shape to fit the paradigms in question. (Much like the way the giant bug fits inside the human farmer in Men in Black.) This story was never Buffy's - she was the one that got away, the one who was her power, and owned it.

From the shooting script for Chosen:

BUFFY
I want you... to get out of my face.
The First looks suddenly worried.

SLO MO: Buffy rises. Sweaty, bloodied, hair in her face, but nothing but resolve in her eyes. The First is nowhere in sight as she takes a step forward, two, stumbling, hunched steps...

Rona sees her and throws her the scythe. Buffy catches it. Stands a little straighter.

And SCREAMS, and swings the back of the axe like it's a bat, knocking five vamps back and over the edge in one blow. Sauron himself would be, like, "dude..."




As always, vids influenced my thinking and illustrate what I want to say:

Bachelorette by obsessive24 is Buffy, ultimately winning. (In the shape of a girl.)

And My Medea by yunitsa shows the flipside. (Mostly Dollhouse/Firefly.) I can't remember if I've rec'd it before, but if not - make sure you watch! (So come to me my love/I'll tap into your strength and drain it dry)

ETA: I think my point is - Buffy is never the victim. This is one reason the AR is so uncomfortable - it tries to jam her into that box, and she doesn't fit. Even her death at The Master's hand comes about through her own choice and bravery.

One problem with s8 (possibly the biggest one) is that she accepts the victim role (letting go of her powers, becoming passive rather than fighting, no matter how hopeless), and when she regains her strength (with added superpowers) it is not through her own agency (or the love of friends/family), but as a consequence of Twilight-related-nonsense. She becomes just another woman willing to bend whichever way she needs because of male power, and then altered without consent.

Comments

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Example - River in Firefly. A powerful character. But her power is the result of torture and manipulation at male hands. She's been mentally raped and enhanced. It is "her brother" that saves her, not herself.

Her brother rescues her from the compound, but it's River who saves herself. She leads Mal et al to the planet where she confronts and reveals the Alliance secret. By doing so, she regains a sense of control over her own mental anguish. Then she goes on to save everyone by controlling her abilities--agency restored--to fight the Reavers.

River saves herself, then she saves everyone.

I do agree that Echo taking Paul inside her head is creepy as hell. But I don't think Echo qualifies again as someone who doesn't save herself. It's her innate physical ability that allows her to keep hold of the imprints, said ability that brings her to the attention of the Mysterious Benefactor (avoiding spoilers here) who sends her into the Dollhouse to have her test the system. And like you said, she in turn destroys the father who thought to use her. And she saves everyone through leading them.

I disagree with the dichotomy implied in--Echo becomes even more special, even more powerful than Caroline ever was--because the show doesn't treat them as completely separate. Echo's strength comes from Caroline. Adelle attests to this when Echo leads all the dolls out of the Dollhouse--Adelle identifies the act as pure Caroline. The power Echo attains is only possible based upon who Caroline was physically, and the power Echo builds upon in mastering her imprints is only possible based upon Caroline's own strength of will, her defiance, her determination to help others (her savior complex, too).

Both River and Echo triumph because of their own agency, by taking the powers and skills dumped into them and mastering them, forging them into a weapon they will wield as they choose. And they choose to help their friends. They end their stories in perfect control of themselves, their bodies, their spirit. This is perhaps best shown by how River flies the ship, taking her into the sky before Mal can even give her instructions on how. River is in control of Serenity now. When Mal talks about loving her, listening to her keen, River tells him she already knows but she likes to hear him say it. River is humoring Mal. As Spike once said to Giles, "she's surpassed [him]."

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Both River and Echo triumph because of their own agency, by taking the powers and skills dumped into them and mastering them, forging them into a weapon they will wield as they choose.
This. Also it's significant that River was already a polymath genious before the Initiative did anything to her and Caroline's imprint-assimilating specialness was innate to her. Joss has this weird sort-of Freudian theory that misogyny comes from a pathology he calls "womb envy." Which is kind of gross at one level but when it's about what women can do not what they are isn't so regressive. Misogynists not only hate women they envy them, they find it unbearable that River and Echo, mere girls, can do what they can't.

[angearia.livejournal.com]

Right. I'd amend my statement to say the powers and skills weren't dumped into them, but manipulated and magnified--the misogynists were trying to harness their power, make a more perfect "soldier", and the women rebelled and remastered their power. It is for her alone to wield.

Haha, womb envy.

Which is kind of gross at one level but when it's about what women can do not what they are isn't so regressive.

Yep.