Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) (26 page)

BOOK: Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series)
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Charlaine Harris, who writes one conventional mystery series and one humorous/vampire/romance/adventure mystery series, lives in southern Arkansas with a husband, three children, a ferret, two dogs, and a duck. The duck stays outside. Charlaine won the 2002 Anthony Award for
Dead Until Dark,
the debut novel of her vampire series. Almost needless to say, she loves
Buffy.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

POWER
OF BECOMING

 

           
Is Faith hot? Is Angelus more fun than Angel? Is Dracula a master-bator? Is
Buffy
great literature? Acclaimed author Jacqueline Lichtenberg explores these questions (OK, actually just the last one) and along the way explains
Buffy
’s magical initiation, the evolution of television, and the fundamental flaws in the Willow-Tara relationship.

B
UFFY, THE
V
AMPIRE
S
LAYER
is not “just” a television show. It is part of the process whereby television as an artistic medium is finally coming into its own in the world of Great Literature.

So what is Great Literature? As we learn in our first high-school literature courses, to qualify as Great Literature the events of the story must cause the main character to change inwardly, emotionally, either to be shattered or strengthened by the events. The characters learn lessons and become different people.

Great Literature is also identified by the effect on the reader—that the reader feels the characters’ emotions and understands the impact of the lessons on the character—understands inwardly how it comes about that this kind of person becomes that kind of person because of the events in the story. Thus the work is memorable. The characters’ journeys of becoming are indelibly stamped upon the reader’s mind.

Beyond that, to be labeled “Great Literature” the piece has to contribute some distinctive evolutionary change to its field of literature and out-last its contemporaries.

Buffy
’s field of literature is the television dramatic series, and I believe I already see evidence that the show is contributing to a process whereby television is becoming a medium that can support Great Literature.
1

In the 1960s commercial television discovered that the shows that made the most money were the ones that were “anthology series”— with the episode constructed so that at the end of the episode the ongoing characters are restored to the same emotional and physical condition they were in at the beginning. This allowed the individual shows to be aired in random order in reruns and still be understood by a new viewer. Thus the stories that could be told were disqualified from being called “literature” at all—never mind “great”—because the characters must not learn, grow, change, or become.

Gene Roddenberry often explained that
Star Trek: The Original Series
would not have been aired, or survived to go into reruns, if it had not been an anthology series. Hollywood was bewildered by the effect that
Star Trek
had on the teens of the 1970s, and tried many other things to capture that enthusiastic audience again. They fumbled for twenty years, but in the 1990s they finally got it.

I suspect the Internet allowed the producers very close contact with fan opinion, and they finally began to listen to what fans were saying. And some of them had been fans!

J. Michael Straczynski hung out with his fans via the
Babylon 5
(pilot 1993, first episode January 1994) newsgroup and really listened.
Babylon 5
was not the tremendous commercial success it needed to be to complete its five-year mission, but it broke new ground. It was successful in creating intricate characters whose personal stories affected the course of history, and it broke out of the anthology-series mold and used the story-arc format (pioneered in prime time by
Dallas
) to tell an SF/F story. It treated telepathy, time travel, reincarnation, supernatural beings, and alien mysticism as pragmatic elements of reality.

The
Buffy The Vampire Slayer
feature film came out in 1992.
2
Joss Whedon has indicated he wasn’t able to materialize his vision of Buffy in that film, and is widely quoted as saying the director “ruined it.” But in 1997, when the
Buffy
TV show aired, he had more artistic control.
Of course, that’s partly due to moving from film to television. But what happened between 1992 and 1997 in television to prepare the way for
Buffy
?

Forever Knight
(pilot August 1989, first episode May 1992), with the vampire as good guy.
Quantum Leap
(1989–1993), an anthology series using the SF-premise as a vehicle to tell a personal story of change.
Highlander
(1992–98), a hero with monogamous tendencies and a sense of honor.
Lois and Clark
(pilot September 1993), again a hero with monogamous tendencies and a serious attitude toward wielding power.
X-Files
(1993), introducing not just UFOs but the supernatural to the mass audience.
Hercules: The Legendary Journeys
(1994–99) and
Sliders
(1995), introducing alternate realities, dimensional gates, alternate history.
Xena: The Warrior Princess
(1995) and
Star Trek: Voyager
(1995)—the woman as hero and authority figure.
The Stand
by Stephen King (1994), introducing the elbow room that the horror format can give to serious drama.
La Femme Nikita
(1997)—at last a young female hero, tough as nails, forced into an untenable position and doing something about it, carefully, wisely.

Each of these (except Stephen King’s of course) was marginally successful, appealing to a small but seriously dedicated audience. Each has spawned fanfic on the Internet and anguished write-in campaigns at cancellation. Each marginally successful show gets Hollywood moguls thinking about what element caused that success and what caused failure, and how to extract the successful part and combine it with something else to create a blockbuster. And they always measure themselves against a blockbuster like
The Stand.

The WB network launched in 1995, countering the earlier launch of the UPN network. The WB deliberately targeted the lucrative demographic teen group and gathered more affiliate stations than UPN.

Joss Whedon brought The WB an idea that combined the vampires which had dominated children’s books in the 1980s, a successful film, and a universe in which magic is blatantly real rather than disguised as science.
Buffy
might have been pitched as
Forever Knight
meets
La Femme Nikita
in a Lovecraftian world that would leave King in the dust.

He gave The WB the strong female lead that had made
Xena
popular and that
Star Trek: Voyager
had chosen to emphasize with Captain Janeway, the first woman to captain the
Enterprise.
And don’t think The WB didn’t know in 1996 that USA Network was incubating
La Femme Nikita.
But Whedon gave The WB a young hero, young enough to grab the huge audience that had grown up on children’s vampire
books and a strong female lead character who could kick ass as neatly as Hercules.

He started with a very clear cut, uncomplicated, emotionally pristine conflict—Buffy vs. the Undead. She can smash and destroy with all her might and she is not committing murder. Walking horrors attack her and she doesn’t have to stop and worry about ethics, she just stakes them. You don’t have to be a teen to appreciate the clarity of these moments.

But then Whedon adds Angel—and suddenly things aren’t clear anymore. Suddenly our powerful hero, Buffy, has an internal conflict. Suddenly this show is elevated to the level of adult drama and we have family entertainment, not a kiddie-show. Here is a teen confronted with an adult’s problem, and nobody can help her with it. She is on her own—as any hero must be.

All great literature explores the depths of human nature, the source of our evil impulses, the source of our noblest aspirations, and the synthesis of Good and Evil that is the dynamic balancing act called Personality, the fuel for all relationships.

But until the commercial-driven business of television found that their most lucrative audience is 14–30-year-olds, we’ve never had Great Literature in the performing arts developed specifically to depict the process of “Becoming” as teens experience it. Well—maybe
Romeo and Juliet
but they didn’t make it to adulthood.

And overall, through all its seasons, that is what
Buffy
is about—“Becoming.” It wasn’t just the title of a magnificent two-part cliff-hanger episode—it is the theme of the entire show. The characters change character, change personality, change relationships year after year as they “become.” And it’s that process of change, of becoming, that is the key identifying characteristic of Great Literature—but who would think that you could have Great Literature about teens?

One of many illustrations of
Buffy
as Great Literature can be found by comparing Buffy and Willow.

Buffy herself was barely a teenager when she acquired enormous Power—magical Power, physical Power, and the Power that comes from being Unique. She isn’t “a slayer”—she is “the Slayer.” We’ve watched her become a woman, surviving a series of classically textbook-perfect magical initiations.
3

She’s had to learn to use her power without it using her. She has sent
her vampire lover to Hell to save the world (“Becoming, Part 2,” 2-22).

She went into a symbolic Hell in “Anne” (3-1)—the symbolism of the tar-black rectangle she had to dive into to rescue the slaves from that Hell dimension is perfect for a ceremonial magical initiation. When she returns, she’s become Buffy again because she confronted her worst fears. This shows that the initiation took root deep within her psyche where it will grow. In the seventh season we have seen the results as Buffy accepts her identity as the Slayer and nurtures her possible successors. The traditional Initiate must train a successor, and Buffy has tried.
4

The magical power of her love is focused through the silver love-token
5
she divests herself of while mourning Angel, separating from him—letting go, coming to terms with the consequences of her decisions and actions (“Faith, Hope, and Trick,” 3-3). That magical focus allows Angel to breach the dimensional gate and return from Hell. Remember the magical power of silver.

Angel later revealed that the power had let him go. The being wanted Buffy and the world to suffer and the being thought more suffering could be created by sending Angel back to Sunnydale (“Amends,” 3-10).

Buffy, as most young people, has to leave home to confront her identity and returns having become someone else, forever changed. She met the First Slayer and came into possession of her full power, again forever changed (“Restless,” 4-22).

She has buried her mother (“Forever,” 5-17), torn by regrets that can never be mended—learning the meaning of regret. She has sacrificed her life to save Dawn (“The Gift,” 5-22) and the universe, a decision made out of all these changes she has undergone. She was dragged back from Heaven by her best friends (“Bargaining,” 6-1, 6-2)—completing the death initiation, one of the highest degrees in ceremonial magic.
6
And she sacrificed her uniqueness to give all potentials the power that she has—and did not regret it.

In any other TV series (except possibly a soap opera) each of these events would have been the whole of a five-year series run.

But through the high-pressure rapidity of these events, we have watched Buffy evolve. She has matured faster than the mere years could account for. She has become harder, more self-reliant, more accustomed to wielding power—and more daring. The power she carries does not make her happy, or even relieve her of pain. It doesn’t create joy, either.

BOOK: Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series)
3.76Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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