Sometimes, end of term smacks me around a bit.
Sometimes, it lays me flat. It lays me on my couch, with droopy eyes, and pale skin, and aches and pains in all the wrong places.
Tonsilitis is a real pain in my neck, and my special variety of Holiday Tonsilitis is a special variety of pain.
Solution? A well viewed DVD, or several; end on end. Really get that flatscreen cranking.
Over the course of this term, culminating in a panadol-infused binge, I have rewatched the entire 7 series of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
Yep, this show is old. Fifteen years old. And I am STILL in love with it.
For seven years, for 152 episodes, for 6,384 minutes, Joss Whedon created a show about a young woman and her friends finding a place for themselves in the world, through high school, college and beyond. And along the way they fight demons and avert multiple apocalypses. Sure it has dated a bit (did I mention it is FIFTEEN years old??) but it is still rivetting, relevant television.
I was initally skeptical. I mean, who wouldn't be? Could they have chosen a more vacuous sounding name than "Buffy"? Could they have created a more naff sounding title? But that is entirely the point. The expectation is that Buffy is going to be some incapable blonde bint more concerned with nail integrity than saving the world. And the irony is created when that expectation is utterly confounded. She does care about nail integrity AND saving the world. (Side note: I managed to actually teach my year 9 boys what Irony is. And at least 5 of them got it. I'm calling it an Educational Victory!) I remember scoffing about it to my flatmate at the time, and he persuaded me to give it a shot. I fell way more in love with it than he did.
The central metaphor is not difficult to grasp; the demons and monsters she fights represent the challenges and battles faced by us all in our lives - making friends, keeping a boyfriend, dealing with parents... just magnified into big rubber suits, prosthetic make up and mucusy slime. A friend of mine from uni wrote her thesis on it (and I would STILL love to read it...)
In season 2 (not seen it yet? a. you're an idiot, b. there will be spoilers in this paragraph) Buffy and her vampire-with-a-soul brooding boyfriend Angel (what kind of a tough guy name is that??!?) consumate their relationship for the first time, in a very tender, fleshy montage with lots of close ups of hands and closed eyes. The act of lurve, the moment of perfect happiness breaks the curse on Angel, and frees him of his soul, returning him to the nasty, manipulative, violent vampire he was before. A little bit like that older guy who convinces that teenage girl to give up her V-Plates and then immediately after the act turns into King Jerk of Jerk town. Except with more blood lust and desire to torture. See? The analogy is not really that much of a stretch.
As the series progressed, each season dealt with increasingly more complex issues. Politics. Science. Theology. Grief. Community. Communication. Power. Leadership. Humanity. Not all just broken nails and boy troubles.
Back in the dark ages of the late 90s, there wasn't much in the way of kick-arse chicks on television. Sure, we had Xena. But she was so overly stylised and camp, that she couldn't really be applied to real life. Buffy was (and evidently still is) a pretty kick arse hero of the show. She isn't a heroine. She is not the tacked on, token female character. She isn't the love interest. But she also isn't masculine either. She fights bad guys using mad kung-fu moves in rediculous high heels. She chases down other bad guys in floaty fabric blouses. Her hair is pretty hot, almost all the time (not as hot as Connie Britton from FNL, she still wins the hottest hair award.) The show only ever really makes a big deal about Buffy being a girl when it is ridiculing people who make a big deal out of her being a girl. Those enemies or bystanders who refer to Buffy as "just a girl" or "a little girl"usually come to a sticky end. Or at least quickly change their mind. But that is it. They don't harp on about it. To harp on about how empowered would completly undermine the empowerment in the first place.
The legacy of her kickarse status as a female hero is not difficult to see. Sydney Bristow Alias followed not long after her. Sarah in Chuck isn't the hero, but she is a damn site more kickarse than the central character. Recently we've seen Emily/Amanda in Revenge. None of these would have been the same without the pioneering work of Joss and Sarah Michelle Double-Barrel Gellar and pals.
In his own creations, Joss continues to create girls with guts: Zoe in Firefly and Echo in Dollhouse, and while she is kind of on the perifery, Scarlett Johannsson's Black Widow does some pretty awesome arse kicking in The Avengers. He's even done a modern reworking of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the Bard's most arsekicking feminist play of all.
I've spoken before about my love for Joss and all he does, but my inspiration for the Buffy rewatch was a meme I saw on facebook. And I love it.
(I decided to end the rant of love there. I don't think there is room for me to discuss the nuances of the other characters, the hero's journey and redemption, the understated representation of a gay couple, the delightful intertextual geekiness, the postmodern thinking that runs through every scene, and every line of dialogue... My love for this show runs way too deep)
Just one final thought:
