Ranting again about the politics of S7 for Ludditerobot

[dlgood]

I've not forgotten about the Rant Meme...

As requested by ludditerobot the final seasons/episodes of Buffy and Angel. In this case, BtVS-7, and why the Politics of Chosen drive me nuts. Mosly, because I view S7 as very Leninist in scope, projecting pretensions toward values of Democratization/Empowerment but actually supplying a rather Top Down model in which the good of the people are sacrificed in their name, without their input. It's the irony of someone trying to write a humanist story despite a rather low regard for humanity. It's a fine empowering/feminist story, just as Leninism was. That is, as long as you happen to be a member of the Revolutionary Vanguard.


One of my major problem with the season is the absence of a Buffy:Scoobies::Scoobies:Community metaphor. At the end of the series, the community of Sunnydale Buffy came to protect is left a smoking hole in the ground with its inhabitants refugees. People Buffy et al did not reach out to. I've always found this to run counter to Collective Heroism. After all, many in the town are innocent, average people, and yet they are ignored until they go away.

I keep in mind that the show's not about "innocent, average people"; it never really was. It's about the people who try to ensure that others can go on living innocent, average lives. Or at least – I think it was intended to give that sense. But somewhere along the line, I think the show "forgot" that there were people who didn't live in the magic box, or Casa Summers.

And therefore, to me S7 isn’t really about people who try to ensure others live innocent lives. It can’t be, because the awareness of those lives is missing. It’s revealed again and again, when in a season where “Everything’s Connected”, we are shown just dis-connected the scoobies are form those around them. Just as Buffy is disconnected from the people in her house. But it breaks for me as the show makes the point that Buffy’s disconnect can be a problem without considering that the analogous disconnect might be a problem as well.

Perhaps the Potentials are meant to represent innocent/average/ordinary people. I don’t think this is actually the case. The show goes out to point out that even before being Chosen, the Potentials are already Special.. They have Potential, elevated above those who do not. And Buffy, when shown relating to these girls, relates to them through the prism of Slayerness – not humanity. There is no – “once upon a time I was just a girl” anecdote. They are made explicitly a caste of Elite women who matter because they have potential, in a town full of women who are ignored because they (1) do not have Potential and (2) are not intimately associated or connected to the people who do.

Now, it can be asserted that Buffy isn’t ignoring her neighbors because they’ve ignored her (and the supernatural) for a long time. Something the show keeps pushing home every season - the residents of Sunnydale see what they want to see.

But IMHO that’s an easy crutch. If these are just "regular" people, they're just trying to make a living and get by, so it behooves the Powers That Be (and Buffy & crew are a huge power) to help these people see... to empower them. It's easy to just write everyone else off and say "they'll" never see" - but human interaction is a two way street, and lack of effort on one part does not preclude effort on the other. They didn't listen - but did you try to make them hear you? Did you listen to them?

And come S7, Buffy and the Scoobies were not listening. Or rather, not listening well. Not listening hard. Not really putting in due diligence, a good faith effort, what have you… Is that because the staff didn’t want to bring in extras, couldn’t think of how to do it, thought it would be boring… I don’t know. It seems the townsfolk and town government are too incapable of dealing with what they face… But then, aren’t the townsfolk nothing if not the faceless mass of humanity? How can one write a humanist/empowering story when humanity is held in such little regard?

Buffy (and co) worked with what they had, but they didn't work to expand the limits of what they had. Didn't track down a nurse or a firefighter. Or look for anybody who might want to help. And there isn't a single ordinary person going with them into the Hellmouth. Once upon-a-time they were, but not anymore. They’re the Inteligentsia, and they’ve been conspicuous outsiders and conspicuously unrepresentative. This is the Most Powerful military figure in the town marching down with her personal Secretariat and Staff. The Politburo and the Red Army. Is Xander really an everyman substitute here? ”The "boy" who has clocked more field time...

So I don’t find the story about Empowerment, in anything beyond a very narrow sense. It’s about Power, about taking joy in asserting personal power. But it’s not really a case of empowerment.

Why? The community – the average innocent person isn’t a party. Had to be rushed out of the room where all the important stuff goes down, and isn’t going to be told about either, before or after.

To me, S7 was essentially about a bureaucratic struggle. Once there was the Patriarchal Council – and Buffy has junked its rules from within. The new bureaucracy is more open and democratic in terms of how it handles internal processes. For the members of the new incarnation of the Bureaucracy, working conditions will be much, much better. This is a great celebration.

But I'm not sure that this translates into empowerment, for any but those on the inside. As far as I can tell, the Bureaucracy has just as patriarchal view of the constituent/customer as ever before. Those faceless people are the constituency, after all. And they have no voice, no representation, and are completely gone from the town when all that lovely empowerment is going down. They have no input, no oversight.

Life will probably be better, at least for those that can recover from losing their livelihoods and homes. And Buffy, through the empowerment Spell, has provided a bigger army of slayers to fight the mostly secret war.

But the people aren’t anymore powerful w/respect to the forces of darkness. They’be been given fish, not taught how to fish for themselves. So as a Democratic Theorist, it bugs me.

Comments

[elementalv.livejournal.com]

Interesting take on the season. Personally, the message I got from S7 was a persistent drop to rock bottom — literally, in the case of Chosen — before they all finally managed to get to a point where the only direction was up. I was glad of the way it ended, because that meant that I could imagine them finally getting on with their life, without God, the PTBs or Joss Whedon imposing yet more misery on the characters.

I've never seen the Buffy 'verse as being a metaphor for society at large. I've always seen the stories on more of a personal level. I suspect that's because Whedon's view of the world is moderately alien to me. In my world, community functions considerably better than it ever did in Sunnydale. Dysfunctional families happen, but there's still considerably more communication (and compared to the absence of parental figures for most of the Scoobies, more is, unfortunately, better). Grudges flair up and die down, and melodrama is confined to the club scene.

But again, that's me. Your mileage may vary.

[sneaker328.livejournal.com]

Excellent. I remember thinking after the finale that, giant gaping plot holes aside, the finale failed because in the end they didn't save a single life. Not one actual human being. Oh sure they saved some abstract concept known as "the world" but it had no human face, and we didn't see a single person in any immediate danger. And by the way, I felt exactly the same way about the Angel finale. I thought both endings rang false.

But IMHO that’s an easy crutch. If these are just "regular" people, they're just trying to make a living and get by, so it behooves the Powers That Be (and Buffy & crew are a huge power) to help these people see... to empower them.

Interesting juxtaposition with Graduation Day, where Buffy empowered the entire school she'd been protecting by giving them the means to save themselves and leading them into battle. A far more satisfying finale.

[mediumdave.livejournal.com]

Oh, puh-leeze. Dave, why can't you admit that (like most of the guys who hang out in the TWoP Buffy forums) you're deeply threatened by the mass female empowerment idea in Chosen, but don't want to come out and say it? You're rationalizing, and it shows.

[ninerva.livejournal.com]

I must admit that it also bothered me that as time went on the gang became more and more like a gang, an exclusive club that only 'special' people were allowed to be part of. It showed in the way they treated Riley and Tara, but moreso as time went on. I understand that they had all this special knowledge of what was going on and it wasn't their fault that the general population chose to ignore the truth.

"it's revealed again and again, when in a season where “Everything’s Connected”, we are shown just dis-connected the scoobies are form those around them."

One thought about this, when they started they were part of a school community, then college, but when that is gone how do people connect with their community? I had a huge circle of friends in my formative years, but now I have work, family and a few very good friends. The truth is I don't get very involved with my local community, I know and like my neighbours, but the only way I find out what's going on in my town is through the local paper (and the window cleaner, a true font of all knowledge). Maybe Buffy et al should have done a few evening classes?

[ludditerobot.livejournal.com]

Hrmm. That's also a reason to dislike S7 and "Chosen".

I presume you've read my position that it's a deeply ironic for me because it seems to say "girl power yay yay empowerment yay" but there are huge hints that things went down exactly like the First wanted them to.

[stephanierb.livejournal.com]

Part of the problem for me is that no adequate explanation is given for why they don't reach out to the townspeople to battle the First, when they did to fight the Mayor and were successful as a result.

After Season 3 I had a very difficult time accepting that the residents of Sunnydale would continue to be so willfully blind to what was happening around them. It's one thing to consistently ignore the occasional exanguinated body with two holes in its neck. It's another entirely for a good number of the town's residents to do battle with a ten story snake and then resume daily living as if nothing had ever happened. I have a hard time believing that the Mayor turning into a giant snake wouldn't have spread through the "one Starbucks town" like wildfire.

I agree that the message of empowerment doesn't actually mesh with the story that was told. I think it's yet another example of how the writers didn't know what they were doing in S7, or didn't care.

[ros-fod.livejournal.com]

Yeah, in a nutshell.

BtVS S7's failure is definitely determined and defined, at the end of the day, by Chosen. I didn't/don't mind that the group was so disconnected from each other and from the community at large. After all, that's a pretty typical storytelling technique, and not new to the Jossverse (see BtVS seasons 4, 5 and 6).

I think that what ME was trying to do was to globalize the effort, yeah? Take the fight beyond Sunnydale, and so when Sunnydale went down, it was a setback. Losing the battle, but in the end ultimately winning the war (for now). But they were so incredibly clumsy with that metaphor. And if the Potentials were meant to represent The People (as I think they were), then their expendability and lack of willpower in determining their own lives/fates, were troubling, oftentimes disturbing.

Buffy and her gang, standing at the edges of the destruction that have wrought, and smiling. In relief, probably. And during a temporary respite, certainly. But those aren't the images that we're left with - we're left with Chosen.

I think it's telling as well (in a snobby way, I know) that it took AtS to carry the empowerment of all the Potentials to its logical conclusion with Damage.

[cornerofmadness.livejournal.com]

very interesting. And what you said about not contacting doctor/police/fireman always kinda bugged me a bit. It was, as you mentioned, probably budgetary. And I can't say anything more since S7 bored me so badly I didn't watch over half of it and couldn't form a coherent opinion if I tried

Chosen or Graduated?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

My biggest problem with your antipathy to S7/Chosen on the basis that all Buffy does is to create a new Bureaucracy, is finding it difficult to understand how you aren’t equally unhappy with S3/Graduation Day II.

Buffy didn’t enlist the whole town or even the whole school to fight the mayor, she empowered only those people who were, literally, members of her own class and had recently given her a personal endorsement in the Prom. If the intention was to found a new Politburo she would seem to have much more coherent starting material here than in Chosen. As far as I remember she doesn’t attempt to warn Synder or the group of local dignitaries/ parents attending the ceremony (although most of them, rather miraculously, seem to run away before the Mayor’s Vampires get them).

The lack of a Buffy:Scoobies::Scoobies:Community metaphor really does seem to rest on who, as a viewer, you identify as Community. For you it seems to equate to people living in Sunnydale. But Buffy’s job is to save the world not the town. Personally, as a non-Californian woman, I find it much easier to perceive a metaphor for Community in an unknown number of girls from all backgrounds and nationalities.

[a2zmom.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of problems concerning season 7 (as you probably know, lol), but some of my problems are significantly different than your.

For example, I don't have a problem with Buffy not enlisting the town of Sunnydale against the first. While the writers do a piss poor job of it, imo, I think we are supposed to see that Buffy is terrified throughout most of the season. That she is convinced for a long time, that she is not going to win and she is going to lead all those potentials straight to an early grave. Given that mindset, it makes sense to me that she wouldn't wan to involve anyone else in the battle.

As far as GD, I see Buffy as being much more optomistc at that point. I think at that point in time, in her heart of hearts, she was convinced that good would prevail.

What dioes bother me, is there seems to be no else present in Sunnydale. One of the brilliant things in season 1-3 was the judicious use of recurring minor characters. They didn't have to be involved in the fight, but I did feel that there was a larger world out there that Buffy had regular contact with. That all disappeared in this season.

One of my other major problems is the stupidity of the FE. Luddite, I know your arguments, but they just don't work for me.

Drowning a vampire. What was the first attempting to accomplish here?

Never using FE Buffy to talk to the scoobies of the potentials. Don't do it a lot or it loses effectiveness, but at a judicious moment - talk about weakening you enemy.

Not triggering Spike when he was ensconced in the Summers home.

Not using FE Spike to talk to Buffy. Or even better, FE Angel (and I don't wan't to hear about network crossover problems. If you can't tell the story properly, don't write the story to begin with.)

And what exactly did the FE want? I know LR's answer, but without seeing any hard evidence of that, I find it hard to believe.

OK, stopping now before I get depressed and angry.

[glumpish.livejournal.com]

If I go from Buffy lending her strength to Willow in "Same Time, Same Place" to "Chosen," then I can see the dim outline of a theme. But in between there's a giant mess. Honestly, I can't make enough sense out of the season it to find a message I don't like; it's incoherent in so many different ways that it's not even fun for me to play "this is how I'd fix it."

The difference between "Chosen" and "Graduation" is that in "Graduation," people who know Buffy are volunteering their service, out of loyalty to and respect for her, as well as enlightened self-interest. I love that moment. In "Chosen" we see people who don't like Buffy and don't respect her* join in an incoherent battle, and they and some random other people got to share her powers, or whatever. I didn't feel like the underdogs teamed up to achieve the impossible; I felt like I'd been hosed.

*And this is where they could have maybe done a last-minute save. But Buffy never earns their trust. She just comes back with a shiny weapon and they go along with her plan out of, I don't know, ennui.

Fire Bad. Tree Pretty.

[mshepnj.livejournal.com]

I had to take a few days to digest this before formulating a response.

You know, in the past I have found some of your comments about Buffy (the character) in season 7 to be rather harsh. But I think that's because I personalize my feelings about the characters, especially Buffy, based on my own experiences. It's an emotional thing for me rather than rational.

I think your post/rant helps me understand somewhat better why you feel the way you do about Buffy's failures as a leader. I hadn't really considered the political implications in such depth.

So as a Democratic Theorist, it bugs me. I get that now.

A few thoughts:

One of my major problem with the season is the absence of a Buffy:Scoobies::Scoobies:Community metaphor. At the end of the series, the community of Sunnydale Buffy came to protect is left a smoking hole in the ground with its inhabitants refugees. People Buffy et al did not reach out to. I've always found this to run counter to Collective Heroism. After all, many in the town are innocent, average people, and yet they are ignored until they go away.


I think you're right, but by design, Buffy serves the higher power as proxy for the average people by their own abdication of responsibility. I think it's pretty common for ordinary people in RL to invoke an unseen higher power and by extension his/her/their/its agents here among us rather than actually having to ask "Why" bad things happen which leads to "What" they can do about it. For example, some people invoke the mantra "it's God's will" which makes it possible for them to willfully disempower themselves by attributing whatever bad (or good) happens to forces beyond their control. I've never understood this behavior, but it happens.

The people of Sunnydale, I think, willfully disempowered themselves because it's easier than having to admit what's going on and actually have to confront the demons among them. This is a set up for authoritarianism which is dangerous, but some people will always prefer the security of ignorance to the insecurity brought by facing reality. Looking at what's been going on in our own society since 9-11, and the affect it's had on some aspects of our civil liberties - with the approval of many of our people - I don't see Sunnydale as so much different than the broader culture in which we live right now. Unfortunately.

I'm not saying I agree with this approach to life. In fact I'm very concerned about it. But it's been shown that people will vote against their own best interests for a degree of "certainty" that their leaders will protect them from "evil" so they don't have to feel insecure or confront evil by themselves. Frankly, I think that many humans want to be given a fish rather than be taught to fish, especially if the fish is a great white shark with lots of sharp teeth.

So what's a Slayer to do? Forcing the hapless villagers to face the crisis would be preferable perhaps - more empowering, but impractical unless Buffy has lots of time to change mindsets.

That said, I think that Buffy's behavior demostrates a loss of hope (or faith in her friends/the Powers) more than a specific desire for power. Buffy took on the roles expected of her because she didn't believe she could trust anyone else to come to her aid. Except Spike, ironically. The relationships between Buffy and her friends were I think irrevocably changed for the worse during seasons 6 and 7 and never recovered. She came to believe she had to rely on herself above all else as the expedient thing to do.

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I think the early seasons worked better from a community perspective because the characters who did get involved were ordinary people. Xander and Willow had no powers at first, nordid Cordelia, and even Oz started out as an ordinary boy. There was still a disturbing tendency to ignore the victims as long as they weren't part of the group, but there was still a feeling that anyone could become a Scooby. Well, at least any teenager - the only adults were Giles and Jenny, both included because of their abilities.

This got lost somewhere in season 4. New additions like Anya, Tara and Riley were already in the game, and the earned abilities of the Initiative were shown to be all wrong-headed compared to the "given" abilities of the Slayer. (There's a disturbing aspected of being "Chosen": true power comes from without.)

Interestingly enough, Angel as a show has worked from a somewhat different perspective: more focus on the victims, more characters with learned rather than given abilities - and someone mentioned Anne, who came to her final blossoming on that show. Still, even there the message changed over the years and became more centered on the main characters, less about the world around them. Aspects of soap opera taking over? I don't know.

(Here from metafandom.)