Bye-Bye Buffy

There was no question that I, sometimes Buffy scholar and general trash-talker, would have to write something about this profound-yes, I said it and I meant it-experience. As you are all aware, being a Buffy viewer is an interactive experience. For seven years (or some fraction thereof), we have all been involved in this TV show (silly, "kill your," empty TV) in a way that is unique to our experience. Well, it's unique to mine, anyway. So I'm setting out to be one in a great number of people who attempt to make sense of this overwhelming experience and the large pit (pun intended) its departure will leave in my life.

Within the mythology of the show, "one girl in all the world" fights to save it. Seven times (and this doesn't include her romp at Hemery High in L.A.), Buffy faced some sort of apocalypse. Six times she used her intelligence (more often than muscle) to save the world; once she had no clue and Xander stepped in. This we all know. This is painfully obvious. But what is more amazing to me is that "one girl in all the world" made a huge difference outside of Sunnydale and the Buffyverse. I'm not the first to say this, I know, but I'm going to lay it all out to the best of my ability here. Let's see how Buffy-our Buffy-helped to change the world (even as it begins to change back).

Since I discovered Buffy during season 3 (I caught "I Only Have Eyes for You" during season 2 by accident, but it was "Amends" that was truly my first episode), I have given endless thought to finding her predecessor. It's no secret that the depiction of teenage girls has always intrigued-and infuriated-me. Buffy and the Scoobies were so unusual, so different from any previous model, that I had to know whether it was true that she really was the first, that "one girl." In many ways I believe that she was. She was the first real third wave feminist hero. She loved, she fucked, she shopped, she ate, she was scrawny, she kicked more ass than any girl ever before. Xena (Buffy's TV contemporary) was a great influence, too, but she was an adult and clearly had that Sapphic relationship with Gabrielle (I really do think that Buffy's frank heterosexuality matters to girls of the past who enjoyed sex with boys and were hated for it) and, most important, she wasn't contemporary. She was a brilliant woman hero, but not a Buffy. She's proto-Buffy.

Buffy's uniqueness came in her teen status, even though she ultimately changed roles for women of all ages. With all the punching and shagging she did, anyone on Melrose Place would have considered her a bitch and a slut. In the Buffyverse she got to be the hero. Often flawed (Parker and her shameful brooding over him) but never less than the hero. There were consequences-sometimes movie of the week themes shrouded in soulless lovers and tainted beer-and they were appropriate for the show's viewers. But this show was always more than the sum of its metaphors, and though we loved it for more than its feminist sensibilities, we should ponder the hugeness of this thing.

We all can clearly see the affect Buffy had on shows like Alias, the now defunct Dark Angel, the teen lesbian lovers on Once and Again, the young lesbian on All My Children (ironically the sister of the character Sarah Michelle once played), and the new Charlie's Angels. But you know me, I'll watch anything, and recently I discovered that Port Charles actually has vampires on it, and those who hunt these vamps are called "the slayers." Possible law suits aside, it's extraordinary that the central focus of this soap (it indeed seems to be what the show is now about) is totally cribbed from another TV show. Soaps have done this before-it's their thing. They steal whatever works on prime time, dumb it down, and slap it onto their senseless daytime drivel. But this time they've stolen more than names or the "The Peach Pit," they've stolen an entire universe. Somehow (in a very sick way), this makes me proud.

And while we're on soaps (you are now aware of my sick fascination with this genre), there's something that I find even more amazing than the state of Port Charles. One of the things that actually drew me to Buffy in the first place was my (incorrect) assumption that there is, at the core, no difference between the damsels of daytime and the badass broads at night. I assumed it to be a smokescreen, and I thought that under the kicking I would find yet another dumb girl. Now I've come full circle on my bet, as on General Hospital there is a character-the quintessential good girl-who kickboxes and has cold cocked at least 3 people (one guy a few times) in her year on the show. And she's good. She's nice and sweet and hard-working and from all-American stock. And she's built-guns to kill. Of course, when push comes to shove, she gets saved by her loving beau (who, however, continually mentions how she can take care of herself), but, believe it or not, this is a giant leap forward in the soap world. It's a Buffy-leap forward.

And there's more, lots more. But I want to get a little more personal for a moment.

So why is Buffy so unique to our experience? Why do I feel so empty inside? What has Joss Whedon done to me? I can't pinpoint why I love these characters so much, why they take up more of my time than any media ever has. I mean, when push came to shove, I even gave up on the X-Files. I could have really cared less. But I can't imagine ever giving up on Buffy, and what's more, I can't imagine Joss ever giving me a reason to. I mean, season 7 was my least favorite, and it was still by far much better than anything else on TV. Technically, I think Angel had a better season, and though I love those characters, too, I still have the Scoobies in my heart in a way that far surpasses anything else. What's more, season 7 was necessary. That's Joss's gift. Sometimes we have to let go of what we want in order to fulfill what we need. And after that last episode, it all rang true for me. It came in a full-circle that exceeded (as is Joss's way) every one of my expectations.

And I feel like I'm in mourning over the loss of this show. It was followed up by UPN with some awful supermodel shit, and I knew that the reign of Buffy had truly ended. It's not a good time for feminists right now. Not time for the piddly concerns of women when there's war and terrorism to fight. I really do feel that way-screw tough chicks, we have to give the army their tits and ass. But Buffy's effects are far-reaching, and there are some things that will never change back to crap. There will continue to be a tough soapstar (and I'm sure more to come, if they're not there already), the sorry 80's metaphor for vampirism as homosexuality and AIDS is squashed, boys can change for a woman while she stays on her same path-baking her cookie dough, as it were. But I do feel that her time is over, that our hero (not damsel, or even the [implied lesser] heroine) is forced to walk into the sunlight, leaving a giant chasm in her wake. For those of us who grew up with very questionable pop-culture female role-models (the only good one I can think of is Marlo Thomas and the "Free to Be" crew), we got a second chance. We got to join in the fight against the patriarchy. And on Buffy, it wasn't even a fight. It was expected. Women had already won the war and the bad guys were just slow in catching up. Xander and Giles represented a new kind of man. So did Angel and Spike and Oz. These were men unafraid of, even drawn to, female power. It's time to note that all the men on the show (and eventually Willow) were drawn to women with exceptional power. They never once wanted the damsel. They didn't want a girl to save. They wanted to be awe-struck.

There are naysayers (I know a few) who think that TV is a sick disease, and Buffy is just another symptom. They've never watched closely before. And when someone does watch closely, she/he invariably changes her/his mind. TV is a powerful tool. Joss Whedon has made it a weapon. He not only created characters that did stuff; he created a universe with true emotional beats and entirely realized human beings. They grew; they changed (sometimes seeming to do so on their own volition-no writers or directors necessary); they became more than just characters. I think that is Joss's ultimate gift: he told us more than stories, he told us lives. If they're smart, future series creators will take advantage of this model.

I, the ersatz (I say so because I always feel like an imposter when I'm teaching) English instructor, am quite aware that one should speak of "real" history in the past tense and "text" in the present. But I, the ersatz theorist, am also aware of the simulacrum in which we so often live. Our concept of "real" is subjective now, and fiction's place in history has become mutable. The real is questioned (Disney World is not real. They just take real money, but the place is fictional), and the imagined is "revisionist," or (at least attempting to be) real. So I'm writing about Buffy as actual history. Because these fictional characters have indeed made real history, and they have affected their viewers in profoundly real ways. Perhaps that's what's so hard to let go of-the feeling that one has when saying good-bye to old friends. Real friends.

Mo Snyder, June 2003