what I learnt from seven seasons of Buffy 2/2

What I leart about super powers:

We all have varying degrees of super powers. What I'm talking about now is a scene that replays through a lot of sci-fi, most commonly recognised as the paradigm/quote:

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

I'm being totally serious. It's true.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer deals with issues of birth and responsibility and life choices an awful lot. Whole episodes focus on that blessing/curse of being ‘chosen’ and whole seasons explored what it means if you are either ‘special’ or not. Every step of Buffy’s life was apparently pre-decided and she complained of never being able to control her own destiny. And yet she felt superior to the others because of her birthright.

According to Faith, she and Buffy were born as a “hot chicks with super powers”, and it’s true. The Slayer is a babe who can kick serious ass. Why? Because she was born to be the Slayer and the power is handed down to her. I’m going to be honest and say that for a long time this made me resent Buffy. I don’t like the fact that this girl is a skinny can of awesomeness for no other reason than she happened to be born into it. I acknowledge that she trains, but I’m pretty sure I would too if I was just automatically super strong and had a watcher and an easily identifiable evil to constantly fight. Buffy had it easy in a lot of ways – she was born with all the tools she needed. It reminded me of royalty.

I’m vehemently opposed to the remaining presence of royal families in the 21^st century because there should be no position in society to which anyone can rise themselves up and achieve. No matter how much of an excellent person a young woman may grow to be, she can never be a real princess or queen, and that is fundamentally wrong. I felt the same way about Buffy. She was born into her abilities and potential and situation. You can’t work really hard until you turn into the slayer. You either have it or you don’t.

Anyways, it all got me thinking about what it means to be born into certain situations in the world and how people act in those situations, or improve their situation – in other words, who we are depending on what we are born into. The more horrible things I see in the vast world around me, the more I consider myself just so damn lucky to have been born into the life I was. And for so many different reasons.

If I ponder it for too long I come to feel guilty about everything I’ve been given and how little I’ve done with it. Many of the crucial elements in my life which I use to define myself as a ‘good human’ are in fact easily predictable consequences of the situation I was born into. I am at law school now not because of any brilliance on my part, but because I was born with the kind of average brain required and into a family that values education and sent me to good schools and supported me. The same goes for every single human characteristic – a combination of what we were born with (‘nature’) and what situation we are born into (‘nurture’). When I think of it in this way, I suppose there is no possible ‘good’ or ‘bad’ human. It almost seems like we each have individual fates to live out. We are, each of us, on pre-destined paths. How can any of us be doing anything different? The combination of our nature and nurture could have only ever led us to where we are right now – right?

But first – how do we judge what makes a human good? Around a year ago after a lot of brain-digging I came to realise that I had a very intricately organised hierarchy in my mind of all the people I knew. Each person had a place on what I think of as an awesomeness-scale, and my opinion of each person’s intelligence and morality and humor and attractiveness and priorities (and etc etc.) went through some kind of semi-conscious equation that translated into a place within this awesomeness-scale. I have a habit of directly comparing people to each other and others to myself and vice versa. Each person was both better and worse than another person I knew, and my own position on the scale was constantly shifting depending on my recent actions. It was a profound discovery for me, and finally allowed me to understand why I make the choices in company that I do, and why I’m so darn judgmental all the time.

In relation to the other characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy Summers herself sits kind of low on the awesomeness-scale. Why? Because as the Slayer she was born with awesomeness in her veins, and I don’t see that she ever does anything particularly special that goes beyond what you would expect from someone born with those abilities. If we sit down and add it up, her lifetime achievements don’t greatly overpower the brilliant tools that she was simply born with from the beginning. This is where I find myself. I was born into such a wonderful life in so many ways – I cannot see anything that I have done or achieved or even tried for in my life that is particularly remarkable when you consider the easy start I enjoyed.

• I genuinely believe myself to be a good friend – but how could I not be? I was raised in a loving household and always had time to be a good friend. Life was never so difficult that I had to focus on something else first. There is no excuse for me to not be a good friend.
• I pride myself on my lack of religiousness – citing it as an example of my superior logic and rational mind, but I was born into a family that let me choose ‘whatever I wanted to be’. How can I expect the same from someone born into a religious family with parents that carried them to church each Sunday since birth?
• I happen to think that I have very clear and decent priorities. Even if this is true, how could I not be well-adjusted? For the first entire 18 years of my life my parents made sure I never had to suffer through any real difficulties. I would expect any other person with such a cushy start at life to also be a relaxed but determined young individual.
• Even the simplicities of being fit and healthy – I was born with a decent body and into a home with a well-stocked pantry and access to a nice jogging track.

If I was always going to be all of these things, then how can anyone ever be truly awesome?

Perhaps the only answer lies in those people with the determination and blood/sweat/tears to travel so much further than their position-at-birth would suggest. I suppose a very literal and extreme example of this would be someone born into poverty becoming a millionaire, or someone in a horrible accident who learns to walk again. In a more realistic way, I get super happy when I hear stories of people with sub-par or rough starts in life who go on to help others. Those people who take on the responsibilities of life despite not being born with any real super powers. (For the record, people who train seeing-eye dogs also just automatically go to the top of the awesomeness-scale.)

I hope I’m being clear, it’s a difficult topic to talk about and explore. Essentially, when I look around I know that I really need to remember that most of what I have now was given to me. I was born with super powers. I was born with a totally fit and able body – capable of doing any thing that humans can. I was born with into a financially comfortable family who were supportive – I could have chosen absolutely any vocation or field of expertise or life track that I wanted. I was born totally equipped with everything I need to change the world for the better.

In the world we live in, an education and a good start in life really are super powers.

Just being born into a developed and democratic and affluent country is a kind of super power! I went to a top-rate school with hundreds of other girls who all had the super-power of an incredible education! In the 21^st century a stable and unfiltered internet connection is a new kind of super power with limitless potential. We all live with the idea that we are all humans, but the truth is that we are all born with varying degrees of power. Varying degrees of super powers.

And what comes with that certain degree of power? A certain degree of responsibility.

Surely this makes sense. Those that are born with the Slayer’s super powers have the responsibility to fight evil demons. I was born with the super powers of education and freedom and health and love, I have the responsibility to do something good with that. So do you. Sit yourself down and think about the power that you were born with – are you fulfilling the responsibility side of this equation?

You may not be able to shoot spider webs out of your wrists, but as a consumer you have power over the choices you make and those choices have consequences. You can’t literally fly, but you can get on a plane in the air that takes you to a new place where people are dying and need you to help them build wells. So what if you don’t have laser vision? Fred Hollows gave people the gift of sight! Every day, all day, for years! SHAZAM, PEOPLE! SHAZAM!

The world is so full of incredible experiences for those of us born with super powers, and if you’re reading this, then chances are you have at least some very mild super powers. You know what is a super power? Literacy. You can read? Awesome – that makes you a minority on this earth, and that means you have a responsibility.

So right about now I’m going to kamikaze off this high horse of mine and admit that I don’t think I’m using my super powers the best I can right now. But I’m honestly not really sure how to. When presented with a choice, I like to think that in general I choose the ‘right’ thing to do (eg. not eating meat) and those choices sometimes get me a higher place on the awesomeness-scale, but it’s not about waiting for other people to present you with the right box to tick. I need to think about my strengths and weaknesses and think seriously about where my life is headed and what is the best way to put these super powers to use.

That’s another point – you gotta be smart about how you use your super powers – and this particularly relates to young people these days and the choices we make about our first few post-highschool years. I’m shit at science, no kidding and I’m not gonna lie, I really don’t like kids. So – I can’t be a doctor and I’m not gonna be an awesome mum. It takes a while for some of us whipper snappers to find where our passions and abilities lie. I do think that’s understandable, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling like I’m not doing enough.

I turn 20 in two days time, and only now am I beginning to actually understand myself. Both individually and as a part of the big world around me. Part of this coming-of-age/getting-to-know-myself stuff resulted in me finally realising why I have felt such a shadowy sense of guilt all my life. It is absolutely nothing I have the right to complain about, and I for sure shan’t complain about it here, but it was never something I was able to explain. I looked around at my life and just felt terrible for everything I was given. Who was I to take the love of such wonderful parents and not be able to give anything back? Who am I to study at one of the world’s best universities and ignore that others my age were never taught to read. Who am I to flaunt my numerous freedoms in life, when it was only by some kind of inconceivable cosmic luck that I was born in Australia? It just gets too much! I was born with too many super powers! And now I just have too much responsibility! I can never do enough good do equal this goddamn equation!

I am totally aware of how crazy this may sound. I’m also aware that I am, in an inadvertent way, complaining about how awesome my life is – but sometimes you cannot escape it. I think the feeling is much stronger here in China, and I certainly felt crippled by that guilt/responsibility when I was in- and recently returned from- Africa. I don’t want to be the kind of person that doesn’t think about the sadness they see, but where should any of us draw the line between helping others and enjoying our own lives?

Superman enjoys flying, you can’t tell that when he’s on another crime-fighting and life-saving mission, it’s not a perk to be able to speed through the air like that and Iron man gets to live in million-dollar mansions and sleeps with hot chicks in between his time preventing WW3! But Buffy Summers was constantly struggling with the normal girl life/slayer girl life balance, and I suppose all of us 21^st century kids should expect the same if we choose to take the responsibility that comes with our super powers.

I’ve done a lot in these last few years to enjoy my life, and I am so genuinely grateful for everything I have – the experiences and the family and friends and the opportunities. All of it is just so awesome it makes me smile to think of how lucky and blessed I am. I just hope to one day be able to feel like I deserved the awesomeness that I seem to have been born into.

what I learnt from seven seasons of Buffy 1/2

I began watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer when I had first arrived in Jinan (early August), and I did it properly. I began with the first episode of season one, and travelled through the saga in perfect chronology until the final episode of season 7. I like to think it’s a little sign of respect to the show. You know, because I’m an intense geek like that.

Anyways, I finished the whole thing in November and looking back now I realise that that is a heck of a lot of Buffy to watch in a relatively short period of time. I felt the usual amount of guilt that you get when you watch too much television, and I began to think about what I was gaining from all those hours of passive watching. So, duh, I decided to write about it to figure it out. So in case you’re interested, here’s what I learnt from Buffy:

I thought I should say ‘SPOILER ALERT’, but considering season 7 aired in 2003 it might be a little moot.

About girls: 

They rule. Girls rule. Girls are awesome in every way and totally rock so hardcore that I am so glad I am a girl and I’m not a lesbian but I love girls. Seriously though, what I actually loved about Buffy was that she was genuinely feminine. A lot of ‘strong girl’ roles represent the female lead in a very masculine way, associating their power and strength with inherently masculine personality traits. But Buffy celebrated the girl-ness. She was a girl growing into a woman in every single episode, and when you watch all seven seasons in a row like I did the transformation is clear and remarkable. I think one of my favourite parts was when she announced to an entire room full of male secret agents (when it was suggested that she change into a more practical outfit) that she had “patrolled in this halter top tons of times.” I laughed so hard because of the simple genuineness in her voice. Buffy’s physical appearance was a big part of who she was – not in a materialistic or shallow way, but in the very real way that every young woman’s image is an intrinsic part of who she is. Buffy complained about typical girl problems like boys and school and clothes whilst patrolling and staking vampires. If that isn’t a true representation of female empowerment then I don’t know what is.

Also, the fact that the ‘chosen one’ is always female – very cool. It’s like, well yeah, when an old shaman is deciding the fate of the world there is actually a 50/50 chance that the chosen warrior will be a chick or a dude. Why should you be surprised that it’s a chick? YOU SHOULDN’T BE SURPRISED. Shazam. Thanks Joss Whedon.

About boys: 

Needless to say, I totally fell for Angel and then Riley and then Spike. I think we’re supposed to. I guess I’m a little comforted to know that I responded in the predictable girl way. It helps that all three of them were ridiculously good-looking. I also love Xander in that totally platonic funny-guy/brother way. 

Angel:  I did think that Angel was too good to be true, to the point that he was almost boring for being so perfect. The biggest drawback is that he spends a lot of time just being silent and deep and reflective. I mean, he’s like one of the first ever emo representations in popular culture. He just sat around all day and moped about how guilty he felt. That high level of brooding is almost reminiscent of Mr. Darcy – you think it’s going to be deep and sexy but I bet it just gets boring.  Excellent body though. Excellent, excellent shoulder blades. Just saying. Oh yeah, I guess there’s also that thing about how YOU CAN’T HAVE SEX WITH HIM. Way to go there. What a waste of that perfect million-pack of abs. Like a celiac working in a bakery. I just couldn’t do it.

Riley: Alright, to begin with, Buffy Summers sure knows how to pick the fit guys. His guns were intense and I swear I saw a frame where his neck was almost bigger than his head. Riley also gets massive brownie points for being a secret agent – that is super cool, and a professor’s associate – even cooler! He was a little too whitebread for my liking – you know – with the blue jeans and the basketball and the generally high levels of predictability. I also felt like Riley was just too whipped. He was all the time going on those ‘I love strong women’ rants, and totally loved chicks-in-control and it was just too far. I felt like his character was forced, and when he came back with the new special-ops wife I ended up liking her way more than I ever liked him. He was never funny! I felt like he wasn’t too switched on, almost as if there was something missing there. He didn’t have any awesomeness. Although I suppose I’m supposed to thin that because that’s what Buffy thought… Fine. Whatever. There was also that time when he paid vampire skanks to suck his blood – I’m not setting any hard and fast rules here, but I think that kind of thing in general is a bit of a turn-off. 

Xander: There is nothing to say here aside from re-mentioning the fact that Xander is probably the best character in the entire show. He is super funny, and so loyal (always one of my favourite characteristics in any several-series show) to his friends. His pathological ability to attract wack women never ceased to amuse me, and he was essential the rock of the trio. I must admit, my love and appreciation for Xander slowly died towards the end of the story and when he finally left Anya at the altar there was no going back. Even when he saved Willow and averted the end of the world, I just didn’t feel it (read: love for Xander) like I should have. As he grew older some of the loveability just wore off. I think the harsh realities of a Slayer-centered world were just too much for him. I do sympathise with him for having to just watch all the time without any super powers, and the little speech he gives to Dawn about it is really beautiful. It goes without saying that Xander is, after all, the main source of humor in the show and that is a tough gig in sci-fi. Nobody does the one-liner as well as Xander can, and the eyepatch is totally excellent.

 

Spike: Where to begin on Spike… I guess I’m going to start by saying that I don’t really know how I feel about him. The flashbacks to his Victorian-era poetry were just heartbreaking (and inadvertently hilarious) but he did a lot of really fucked up stuff through the centuries right into the twenty-first. I’m not sure how Buffy can still have feelings for him even after the attempted rape scene, and I think it’s very unrealistic that she could ever actually trust him again. Soul or no soul. In fact, I find it hard to believe that he ever really loved Buffy because then why didn’t he try to get his soul back earlier? 

He takes pride in killing two previous Slayers. When he thought his chip was broken, he went straight away to try and kill and drink a person. For christ’s sake – he plays poker with kittens as chips! So the question remains, why do we all still love Spike so much? Is it because he represents that eternal potential for redemption? Is it because of his scathing wit and achingly dry sense of spot-on humor? (Oh man he is SO funny.) Is it because he dies as a martyr/champion to save them all? I don’t really dig guys who paint their nails and I’m not generally a fan of bleached hair, but I’m the first to admit that he rocks the look. I suppose it must be that horrible and inherent thing inside us girls that just loves being able to help a sick puppy. There is also a big part of Spike that promises a Heathcliff-level of gothic and all-encompassing (but frightening) love. If Spike loves you he’s going to burn the world down for you. It’s classic and its honestly a little weird. Definitely not the kind of guy you want your daughter to bring home, although I dig the fact that he got along with Joyce. That was a nice touch.

About siblings:

HOLY CRAP I HATE DAWN SO SO MUCH. I am just SO relieved that I don’t have any younger siblings. If Dawn is anything to go by at all, I wouldn’t wish a younger sibling on my worst enemy. I’m so sure I would have let her die every single one of the times she went out and nearly got herself killed. She’s selfish and whiney and doesn’t appear to have any discernable distinctively good characteristics at all. She also seems to be really dumb. I just, well, it panics me to think about what I would do if I had a sibling like that. Maybe strangle her. I cannot be the only one who hates her this much? I just wish she wasn’t even in the series at all. Yeah I just said that.

About body shapes:

What the hell is it with the nineties!? Every girl in that show was seriously thin – I think it’s the only aspect of the whole thing I really don’t like. I understand that the Slayer would be fit, and Faith had an (almost) normal-sized albeit intensely fit body, but Anya and Willow and Dawn and Cordelia were all total waifs. Thank god for Tara. I fucking love that girl! But not in a lesbian way. Not that there is anything wrong with that. You know. Whatever.

About the 1990's:

Every thing that every single one of us wore was completely disgusting and should have been burned. Especially the platform thongs. Excellent music. Terrible hairstyles. Their lack of constant internet and mobile phone use should not have been a suprise to me, but still was.

About highschool:

Highschool is so super duper shit that even mass demon attacks don’t even make it into the year book. Yes, that homophobic jock is actually gay. Yes, that bitch cheerleader is actually troubled and poor. Yes, the geeks end up ruling the world and kicking ass. Yes, librarians are always awesome. No guy you went out with in highschool would ever be ‘forever’ and chances are that  teacher you had the hots for was actually a mantis. I’m officially glad Australian schools have a uniform (so that I didn’t need an excuse to wear sack-like clothes instead of mini-skirts and halter tops every day) and I’m happy that we brought our own lunches because yes - the cafeteria lady does actual try to kill everyone with rat poison. All in all, watching those first few seasons of Buffy just made me think that maybe everyone hated highschool as much as I did. Or at least almost as much as I did.

About God:

On earth he goes by the name of Joss Whedon.

About super powers:

So if you’re still reading this, then cool. Either you’re really interested in my opinions (unlikely) or you’re really interested in Buffy (very likely). This last point (about super powers) is what I wanted to speak about most of all, and it’s a silly theory that’s been floating around in my head for a while now… It’s about young people these days and what we’re born into and the choices we make. I’ll start writing it up first thing in the morning, so only read it if you're curious about the things that go on in my brain. It's not really a lot about Buffy as such.

To be continued. Duh.