Troubling Buffy essay...found on pop matters site

[shadowkat]

Interesting perspective on Buffy's choice or according to Pop Matters avoidance of it in the Gift. Not sure I agree with any of it, but it is an interesting perspective all the same.

The writer seems to think that Buffy should have chosen to either kill Dawn or allow Dawn to make the final sacrifice in Chosen, and by not permitting Buffy to make that choice, the writers failed the viewers. That the viewers "deserved" to see Buffy choose to kill Dawn, and the writers copped out?

But, that's assuming the following:

1) That the choice to sacrifice oneself for the greater good isn't a choice but avoiding the situation, that it was indecisive or a cop out (I don't think that's true.)
2) That the correct choice is sacrificing someone else or the person responsible (I don't think this is true.)
3.) That the audience deserves a decisive choice? That sacrificing oneself isn't a decisive choice?? Or even noble? That it would have been more noble and decisive to kill Dawn? How very Machiavellian.
4.) Our choices define who we are absolutely? I don't know about that.

I don't know.

It's a more literal view of the episode than I perceived. There are no comments. So...

But what I found troubling about the writer's essay on the episode -- was the end comment:

Insofar as a story places the hero in a predicament, we deserve to witness her, or him, not only pushed to the boundaries, but also acting on those boundaries. Should the hero refuse to act on those boundaries, frozen with indecisiveness, he, or she, must afterwards contemplate their failure to act; they must confront self-doubt in realizing that, when it counted, their principles did not render one course of action superior to another.

This perspective, regardless of the story it is about, troubles me. I'm not sure the audience deserves anything. We, the listener or viewer or audience, makes a choice when we decide to watch/read/listen to another's story. But it is their story. It's a story that came from them. We make the choice to listen. And the story is not being written or shown to reinforce or validate our worldview or perspective, it's another person's perspective and world-view in which they are sharing with us. I think that by stating that we "deserve" something specific from the story - means we have stopped listening to it. We are instead listening to our own ego, our mind, our mental noise, and projecting that onto the story?

I'm also not sure you can accuse Buffy of being indecisive or not confronting her self-doubts afterwards - what was S6 about, if not confrontation of self-doubt? Also, it's pretty decisive to choose to sacrifice oneself. Taking one's own life is a decisive action with serious consequences.

Troubling essay. But then we do live in troubling times. (shrugs)

Comments

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

I'm not going to bore everybody with details, but the only logical, world-saving, way out of the situation in the Gift was to let Dawn die. The only thing the audience 'deserved' was a story that made sense in context. The truth is this: There was no evidence anywhere in the whole season that Buffy's statement, that Dawn was made from Buffy's own blood, was in anyway accurate. Without that being established beforehand, Buffy's 'sacrifice' is just pointless suicide and the Joss-world should have ended. Is that a story I would have wanted? No. But it's the only one that follows from the whole season of episodes, if Buffy dies in place of Dawn. I suspect the notion of Dawn having 'Summers blood' was supposed to have been introduced in the course of the arc, and someone was doing a horrible job of supervising story continuity that season. Joss didn't seem to care.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Interesting perspective. I obviously perceived it differently and disagree. There was bits and pieces here and there, that made it clear to me they had the same blood. Blood Ties, etc, sort of set that up. In fact it seemed a bit repetitive after a bit, by a certain point, I wanted to say...yes, yes, I know, I know, you used Buffy's DNA to create Dawn, can we move on please? Also the whole medical issues storyline, and Ben being a Doctor, and Glory sharing the same body with Ben, the monks stating that we created Dawn from the slayer and sent her to the slayer, so she'd protect her? Then of course there's the dream bit in S4, about "the little sister" and the whole bit back in S3, with Faith, foreshadowing it.

It seemed pretty cllear to me. But, we do think very differently for numerous reasons, so that makes sense.

In a way that's pretty cool. A plot or story arc may not work at all for one viewer, while it works beautifully for another.
It all depends on how you choose to look at it, and what you focus on as you are watching.

When I was watching Buffy, various things just jumped out at me. Like the whole blood tie bit. And the idea of the hero sacrificing herself instead of an innocent. I mean they played a lot with blood metaphors that season, and links with blood. Joyce dies, after all, of a blood clot. (It was a aneuryism, not cancer, which she'd survived.)

But, if those things don't jump out at you, and other things do, then the story will play out differently.

I don't think there's a wrong or right way of perceiving it. Nor do I think we can hold the writer's reponsible for how we interpret what they are conveying. I mean they have no control over how we choose to react to their story. All they can do is tell the best story that they could, which they clearly did, with the tools available to them at the time.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

the monks stating that we created Dawn from the slayer and sent her to the slayer,

Nope, the surviving monk simply said they sent Dawn to Buffy to take care of her and that memories were altered so that they would *believe* they were sisters. The rest of the monks were all murdered, so we don't have what they would have said. It was Buffy who said in the Gift (with no evidence) that they had *made* Dawn from her so they shared blood!

The episode Blood Ties is all about Buffy trying to keep Dawn from feeling abandoned, not about factually proving 'blood ties.' Buffy thought she was really Dawn's sister at the end of the first episode that year, and when she learned differently she did not want Dawn to learn the truth. With all those times in the hospital, they had all those chances to say, 'Hey Buffy and Dawn have such similar blood...,' but that never happened! Once Buffy knew Dawn was the Key, she could have asked someone to research how *someone* could be created from *something.* Willow could have said, "Oh, that's very difficult and you'd need someone's blood as a seed." That would have worked, but that never happened. By the Gift, Buffy knows at least that Dawn was not born, as Buffy remembers it and she knows next to nothing else about what the monks did. The season very clearly showed that Buffy should have been emotionally tied to Dawn, but there was nothing that showed they were physically tied. If they hadn't made the Gift about a *need* for the physical tie between the two, there would be no problem. But, that physical component was required by the story. The story of Buffy being the physical source of Dawn was purely made up at the last minute during The Gift and many people liked the idea of Buffy sacrificing for Dawn so much they filled in their own details, not realizing they (and apparently you) were actually retconning. I assure you, this is not a subjective matter.

I will agree with Suran Parker, that if Buffy had chosen to let Dawn go it would have been an interesting choice. They could have made a very interesting season six starting from that starting point. But that wasn't the story they wanted to tell and arguing they should have told a different one doesn't make a lot of sense. What I am saying is that Mutant Enemy did not tell the story they chose to tell at all well.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

"But that wasn't the story they wanted to tell and arguing they should have told a different one doesn't make a lot of sense. What I am saying is that Mutant Enemy did not tell the story they chose to tell at all well."

I am mostly happy with s5, but I agree - if s5 doesn't work, the fault lies in the writers not setting up the story they wanted to tell, not in the writers not telling a different story.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I agree generally speaking with this : "if s5 doesn't work, the fault lies in the writers not setting up the story they wanted to tell, not in the writers not telling a different story. "

I think that's true.

But here's the thing - whether it works or not appears to be a matter of opinion. For some, it worked, for some it didn't or so I've noticed.

I noticed this is true of all fictional works - it works for some, it doesn't for others. I don't think anyone can say the story didn't work for anyone, any more than they can say it worked for everyone. Nor, do I think it is possible for a story to work well for everyone. This is true of everyone from William Shakespeare to JK Rowling.

Whether it is told well or not? Also a matter of opinion. It depends on what you want from a story and what criteria it needs to meet, and your expectations. Which varies from person to person. I mean some people require tight plot, don't care much about character, other's require character development, plot be damned, many require tight plot and character - but plot driven, other's want character driven...etc.

I was about to say it's not like a mathematical equation in which there is only one answer because in math it depends on how you work the equation and the rules. If you use one set of rules, you get one answer, if you use a separate set, you get a different answer. If you don't know the rules, you get a completely different answer. Yet in math, it is required everyone use the same rules, which everyone should memorize and be taught in school. (If you suck at memorizing the rules, you probably struggled with math.)

But, in story-telling, that doesn't really apply - there really aren't any set rules, except basic language requirements and guidelines. (Which is why I prefer story-telling to mathematical equations.) And you can bend those, many do...look at David Foster Wallace or various surrealistic films by people like Luis Bunuel (whose name I probably misspelled.)

I mean, I blasted the comics, saying they weren't told well, but there were a lot of people who disagreed and the Buffy comics worked for them. Just because I didn't think it was told well and it didn't meet my expectations, doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't told well. Nor do I think it really matters that it didn't work for me, but worked for someone else.

If anything, I find it oddly reassuring.

To say we deserve one story over another; sort of dismisses the people who got the story they loved and needed. And to say the story is bad or not told well, because it didn't work for us, but worked for others, feels somehow arrogant? I mean, who made us the authority on the manner? And should there even be an authority in regards to storytelling?

[sophist.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. I think the author missed some pretty significant stuff, including the metaphor of Buffy diving into adulthood, the "same blood" stuff (which gets repeated in Potential), and other factors.

That said, I think his argument fails on its own terms. While Giles wanted to limit Buffy's choices to just two, in fact there was a third option. That doesn't negate the difficulty of choice, it means that we have to explore all the options before deciding which one to choose. It's like the situation in GD: we think the only 2 choices are letting Angel die or feeding Faith to him, until Buffy reminds that her blood offers another way out.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

That's how I saw it as well.

I don't think it would have worked for Dawn to die, that sort of went against the thematic arc of the story, not to mention the story the writer was trying to convey. All the metaphors went against that.

I mean, the whole point of being the slayer is not to just "save the world" no matter the cost (which is the Watcher's world-view and clearly Pop Matters), but to save "innocent life" from demonic hordes. They repeat this constantly. That Buffy must not take a human life, and must save innocent life. And it is made clear that of everyone gathered in the group, Dawn is the most innocent. She's the human life that Buffy has been charged to protect.

It's not the same as Angel in S2 or Faith in S3 -- and even in those instances, Buffy goes out of her way to find other options. In fact, she doesn't kill Faith in S3, she feeds her own blood to Angel. And in S2, she sends Angelus to hell after he opened the portal, but tries frantically to stop him from opening it and prevent it. Also in both instances, they are directly responsible for bringing about the chaos. Neither are innocents. Both are actually sadistic killers.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Suran's argument also misses the whole point of Triangle. The "Sophie's Choice" Olaf offers Xander -- choose between his girlfriend and his best friend -- is structurally the same choice Giles offers Buffy in The Gift. In both cases, recognizing the "insane troll logic" is the whole point. You aren't actually bound by the choices offered, you can make others of your own.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Agree - that's what I was trying to get at, I think.

We are not bound by the choices some authority dictates to us. That's what I liked about the show, actually, was how Buffy continuously found a third option or an option that was not on the table. She didn't limit herself to what the authority provided or taught. She thought outside the box and often lead with her heart.

[sophist.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

That's what I liked about the show, actually, was how Buffy continuously found a third option or an option that was not on the table. She didn't limit herself to what the authority provided or taught. She thought outside the box and often lead with her heart.

Exactly so - one of the most interesting things about Buffy as a character, to me, was that she continually found another way - through her intelligence, intuition, mercy, strength of character, stubbornness and sometimes just plain luck.

But I don't understand the essayist's points anyway.

[rahirah]

I think the audience deserves the best story the author is capable of telling under the circumstance, but that's about it. What kind of story it is is up to the author.

However, that view was very prevalent in fandom in S5. I remember seeing tons of disgruntled posts about it on the Usenet newsgroup at the time, bemoaning Buffy's sentimentality, and complaining that by making the portal close for her death as well as Dawn's, Joss was cheating and taking the easy way out by allowing Buffy to avoid the difficult but correct decision to kill her sister. Considering the tack Joss took in Cabin In the Woods, though, I think that if Buffy sacrificing herself hadn't worked, Joss's opinion would be that the world deserved to burn.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

The difficulty I have with fandoms is that whenever the story doesn't go the way a particular fan wants it to, they act as if the writer did them a personal injury. But here's the thing? The writer can't please everyone. A portion of the fandom is always going to be disgruntled with the direction the story is going. As Spikejojo points out below, if Dawn had died in Chosen, a portion of the fandom would have been unhappy and thought it didn't work and the writer had failed them.

This is generally speaking, true of all works of art, or so I've noticed. Go pick any best-selling or popular book, tv series or movie, google reviews, and for every good review, you'll find one that blasts the book or movie or television series for epic fail. Some people will love what you wrote and it will work perfectly for them, others will think it unbelievable, and that it doesn't work at all.

This happened to me when I wrote and self-published my novel. While the two book clubs that read it, enjoyed it, and various others did, I did get two very nasty and disgruntled reviewers who claimed it was unbelievable and didn't work, etc, etc. What I found reassuring in a way, is that I noticed this also happened to Donna Tartt with the Goldfinch, Joss Whedon, JK Rowling (yes, there are people who think Harry Potter sucks), etc.

It's just impossible to please everyone. People just think too differently, I guess.

[spikesjojo.livejournal.com]

And yet if Buffy had gutted Dawn like a fish and tossed her into the portal, there would still be those who complained....
Dying to save the world is avoiding a choice if you can kill your sister, or let the world be destroyed...I have to say that logic does not work for me! I also assume that if the portal had not disappeared then Dawn would have jumped as she was prepared to do. This wasn't just Buffy's choice.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

You bring up two very good points. Thank you.

The author of the Pop Matters post seems to forget that Dawn is a human being, and has a choice as well. And unlike Angel in Becoming - wasn't the initiator of the problem, but an innocent who got caught up in it through no direct fault of her own. (A lot of fans including the Pop Matters author, compares this to Becoming and GD, forgetting that in both those scenarios, Faith and Angel acted and wanted to bring about the horrible events, no matter what Buffy tried to do to change their mind or stop them. And in both cases, she tries to avoid killing them and succeeds in a way, since neither die, and both come back as heroes.) Dawn, unlike Angel and Faith, is also the whole point of the slayer, which is to protect powerless and innocent human life from demonic forces. Buffy had no obligation to protect Angel or Faith, but she does have an obligation to save and protect Dawn, who has no powers, is blameless, and is helpless. Killing the damsel to save the world is a bit counter-productive because as Buffy herself points out, what's the point of saving the world -- if you have to kill an innocent child to do it? The logic of the Pop Matters post seems to overlook this theme completely.

And yep, people in fandoms, regardless of the fandoms, complain whenever the story doesn't go the way that they personally wanted it to or thought it should go according to their world-view or thought process. Notice this a lot in long-running television and book serial fandoms (such as GoT, Doctor Who, Marvel comics, Daytime Soap Operas...).

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I wasn't in fandom at the time but I can just imagine the reaction then and now, if Buffy had "let" Dawn die or, as you say, tossed her into the portal....it's bad enough that Buffy is "bitchy" to Spike. Letting a child die? Isn't that the exact opposite of what Slayers - and women in general - are supposed to do?

If people think Buffy is a bitch as it is.....

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Yeah, even if we agree that Buffy should have killed Dawn in that situation (which, like you, I don't think is necessarily true), that is obviously not the point of the story anyway. It's quite literally about how Buffy emotionally needs not to kill Dawn and to defend her even when the world tells her to kill her. It's about whether being a slayer just means being a killer or if there's more than that. The story promised us nothing; the Knights, Giles etc saying she will have to kill Dawn is not a promise to the audience. Buffy nearly does kill Dawn in Normal Again and considers she would have let Dawn jump in LMPTM (and implies she would have murdered Andrew in Storyteller, though she leaves open whether she would have gone through with it if the tears didn't work) so it is hardly settled with no revaluation. Buffy killed Angel in s2 so the story of her going through with killing a loved one was also done. It's not even that I am certain it is worth letting the world be destroyed to protect Dawn for a few more minutes until she dies too, but at least on the narrative level the ending is by design the answer to the problem. Maybe the design is faulty (I don't think so, but maybe), but to understand the show you have to understand that Buffy dying for Dawn is the answer for which the *question* of The Gift's apocalypse was created by Whedon et al. It's a category error to put the blame on the show for not delivering Dawn's head; if The Gift fails (which, again, I don't think it does), it fails in delivering the ending we got properly.

What troubles me is the idea that killing a teenage girl is somehow required for good storytelling (and a good coming of age story). You aren't a real grown up until you accept and execute child murder for the greater good. Uh-huh. I think I associate it with the problem of the US/the West (I know I'm Canadian, but I am taking responsibility as part of the West rather than trying to point fingers as if I am part of a different culture) where you have Donald Trump saying we need to go after terrorist's families or the Obama administration sending drone strikes which kill children by accident in a way that suggests indifference. The casual acceptance that it's just a part of adulthood to accept child murder is a little ingrained right now. (And I'm not necessarily saying that it is different outside the West.) And that's sad, because I think it breeds indifference and cynicism, to believe that this is so necessarily part of the world that there's no point trying hard to stop it.

ETA: Also, IMO, I think Buffy would have let Dawn jump at the end had she not had her epiphany. She planned for everything to save Dawn but seems surprised that Dawn wants to jump herself and doesn't have much of an answer to Dawn saying "You know you have to let me." Buffy seems to slump into despair before Dawn brings up her blood. And I don't think Buffy could fight Dawn to prevent her from jumping, emotionally. So I don't think the world would have ended, anyway -- Dawn would have died, and Buffy would have probably been permanently emotionally broken. That still marks a difference between willing and unwilling sacrifices -- if Dawn insisted on living, Buffy would have died protecting her. But I think that Buffy's steadfast need to protect Dawn at all costs wouldn't have withstood Dawn's insistence on jumping, if Buffy couldn't come up with a world-saving alternative. So at the very end, I think the big threat was still not the world ending but Buffy losing Dawn and becoming just a killer / person who can't stop death.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you, you've managed to articulate rather well what bothered me about the Pop Matters essay and essayist's apparent world-view.

What troubles me is the idea that killing a teenage girl is somehow required for good storytelling (and a good coming of age story). You aren't a real grown up until you accept and execute child murder for the greater good. Uh-huh. I think I associate it with the problem of the US/the West (I know I'm Canadian, but I am taking responsibility as part of the West rather than trying to point fingers as if I am part of a different culture) where you have Donald Trump saying we need to go after terrorist's families or the Obama administration sending drone strikes which kill children by accident in a way that suggests indifference. The casual acceptance that it's just a part of adulthood to accept child murder is a little ingrained right now. (And I'm not necessarily saying that it is different outside the West.) And that's sad, because I think it breeds indifference and cynicism, to believe that this is so necessarily part of the world that there's no point trying hard to stop it.

Our fictional media has grown increasingly dark in tone since 9/11, with anti-heroes killing their enemies with barely a backward glance. Although there are dire consequences. It's gotten so that I don't watch a lot of television any longer.

The essayist's view that the story would have been better or more interesting if Buffy killed Dawn, and that was the only choice or logical choice, deeply troubles me. And like you say, it appears to miss the point of the story being told. Or the heart of it.

And, it reflects our troubling times - the whole worship/rallying behind Donald Trump, who preaches hate and sounds a lot like Buffy's Watcher Council, and the continuous wars being waged around the globe, often against the innocent. Look at Syria, where children are barely escaping with their lives. It reminds me of Suzanne Collins's final statement at the end of Mockingjay - where she says that a society that continues to sacrifice its children for its own survival and/or entertainment, should not survive. The whole point of that story -- is Katniss, like Buffy, sacrifices herself for her sister, who is innocent and unmarked by violence.

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

I went and read the essay, and I too found it rather disturbing.

[cjlasky.livejournal.com]

We need to make distinctions when arguing the finale of The Gift.

First, there is the matter of simple plot mechanics: are the events of this episode logical in the context of all previous events in this particular work of fiction? IMO, the naysayers might have a point here. Despite all the hints indicating a primal, blood bond between the Slayer and the Key, there is absolutely no supporting evidence from previous episodes guaranteeing that Buffy's sacrifice will work. Does Buffy feel, with metaphysical certainty, that it will work? Yes. And that should be good enough. But for this viewer, it seemed like a bit of a stretch then... and it kind of still does now.

Which brings us to the second part of the equation--whether Joss punked out on the audience by not allowing Buffy to a) kill Dawn or b) watch Dawn make the sacrifice herself.

This one is easy: no, no, and HELL no.

As you and others stated above, the entire run of BtVS was about Buffy rejecting binary options and finding a new way. The "kill Dawn or the universe dies" argument is given straight up by Giles--which is a dead giveaway, storywise. Even though we love our man in tweed, he's a Watcher, and they're not known for their flexibility. Giles kills Ben because he knows Buffy won't. She's a hero. Heroes find a way to protect life, no matter how impossible it may seem at the time. The logistics of Buffy's sacrifice may be dubious in my eyes, but the act itself is entirely consistent with everything Joss has told us about Buffy Anne Summers as a person.

And, given that, the whole argument over Joss' "obligation" to his fandom in this case is rendered absurd, if it wasn't absurd already. If the artist makes the point he wants to make, then it's up to the reader/viewer to agree or disagree with the statement... period. If I may be blunt? He don't owe anyone shit.

I've been reading more and more incidents of angry nerds outright telling creators what they can or can't do: the outcry against the Ghostbusters reboot (which I actually enjoyed); and just recently, a group of Steven Universe fans chased one of the series writers off Twitter because their particular 'ship hadn't materialized (yet).

What the hell?

I realize that with the internet, it's possible to interact with the creators of your favorite shows in ways you never could have dreamed of before. But this kind of cyberbullying is destructive to the creativity we supposedly admire in our artists.

You can have your opinions. You can bitch about storylines. Hell, write fanfic if you can't get what you want in the actual series. (God knows, there's probably a billion Ghostbusters fanfics with the original crew and enough Peridot/Amethyst shipper fics to fill a galaxy.)

But let the storytellers work, people.

Come on.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

I realize that with the internet, it's possible to interact with the creators of your favorite shows in ways you never could have dreamed of before. But this kind of cyberbullying is destructive to the creativity we supposedly admire in our artists.

An excellent point - I've seen people attacked on the internet for the crime of having an opinion, or being the wrong skin color, or not telling the story "they" wanted, and it's frightening. Every one has a platform now, and so many people use it to be mean and destructive.

I'm taken aback by the original essayist's notion that there is a story that they "deserve" and if they don't get it they are being cheated somehow. The entitlement of people nowadays is astonishing.