I’m writing this shortly after the season seven finale, the series finale. Looking back across seven years of Buffy, I think I’ve found the series’ essential underpinning. It’s somewhere in most, if not all, of the stories. It’s certainly been explored at one time or another with each of the regular characters, and most of the incidental characters as well. It’s the idea of the outsider. Who is an outsider? What does it mean that they are “outside”? When is it better to be an outsider than insider?
But there’s been more to it than that. At the beginning of the show the heroes were energized by their status as outsiders. Being distanced from the norm gave them their ability to see clearly, to move freely and to empathize with others. Insiders, those with power and popularity, were portrayed as shallow, self-centered, or blinkered, where they weren’t actually evil.
Once they left high school, however, the status of the main characters changed from all being outsiders to that of being insiders. They are the only ones in possession of the truth about Sunnydale and its demons. They alone have a clear understanding of how these dangers must be dealt with.
But despite this fundamental change in the portrayal of the characters, the portrayal and consequences of being insiders did not change. Now the heroes are becoming, well, shallow, self-centered, or blinkered, where they aren’t actually evil.
In the beginning, there was the word . . . okay there was the Library. There was also Buffy, alone in a new school and desperately trying not to be who she is. There was Willow, awkward and ostracized and pining after Xander who in turn was awkward and ostracized and pining after . . . anybody pretty (except Willow). They were three outsiders who shared a secret that pulled them even further outside of the everyday life of school, friends, and family.
It wasn’t just the three young heroes who were outsiders in the first three seasons. Giles carries the weight of secrets as well as duty, on top of being a librarian in a California town not noted for its intellectual aspirations, not to mention being an Englishman in America. Then, of course, we had Angel, who couldn’t be true to either part of his nature, and couldn’t be fully trusted. Still later, we got Oz, with his aspirations to be a true musician, and the relapsing-recurring handicap of being a werewolf.
But it was this outsider status that was the source of their strength, and their unity. Their friendships, their secrets, their true lives pushed them out of a mainstream that didn’t have room for them, and didn’t particularly want to make room for them. Our gang not only had their other worldly enemies, personified by Principal Snyder, but the continuous, everyday enemy that was high-school and Life. This pair pounded them with lousy relationships and personal disappointments. It was the fight, the thing that dragged them the farthest outside “normal” life that gave them their rare moments of triumph and a sustaining friendship. If Buffy and the other heroes had ties to pull them away from world-saving, they would not have become so good at it so quickly. They also would not have become such good friends.
The best example of the strength outsider status is Cordelia. Cordelia is directly and repeatedly affected by Sunnydale demonic nature. She, however, is extremely reluctant to join in the fight. Her life is too good as it is. She does not want to change, or to risk the status quo. Cordelia does not become a truly effective member of the team, or a fully-likeable person, until she decides to assert her independence and come out of the closet with her relationship with Xander. In so doing, she becomes an outsider herself and scomes into possession of the personal qualities that are truly important and praiseworthy.
With the arrival of Faith, we get an ongoing example of the dangers of wanting too badly to be an insider. When she feels excluded by the Gang and overshadowed by Buffy, Faith goes looking for approval and inclusion on the other side. The Mayor offers her love and praise that she could not find with the heroes. Unlike Cordelia, who has too much to find her way as an outsider, Faith has too little. Her neediness leaves her vulnerable to the predations of the ones who want to use her (of course, the Mayor really did love her, but that’s another essay).
The defeat of the Mayor and their emergence from high school brings about the reversal of the Scoobies’ status from outsiders to insiders. The Big Bad of season four, the season that covers Buffy’s first year of college, is inherently different from all the other villains we’ve seen. The Initiative and Professor Walsh are not extra-knowledgeable about the situation they’ve entered. Unlike the Mayor, Spike, Dru, and Angelus, or even the Master, they don’t have any special experience or insight. The Initiative’s ignorance is what makes them dangerous. The Mayor understands precisely what he is doing when he seeks to become a demon, and he’s looking forward to it. Professor Walsh, however, has no real understanding of what she’s starting when she creates Riley, let alone Adam. She and the Initiative ignore the reality of magic and the particular logic of the supernatural. As a result, they become the proverbial bull in the china shop, and come very close to smashing what they are seeking to save, namely, the world.
In this season, it’s Buffy and the others who have the true understanding of who they are and what is happening around them, and it is their understanding that enables them to stop Adam and his creators.
The character development that best exemplifies the overall shift from outsider to insider in season four is Willow. The pagan group at UC Sunnydale she seeks to join has no idea of the reality of what being a witch means. It’s Willow who knows the truth. By forming a friendship with Willow, Tara is brought inside the secret and from there, into her real life.
In season four, we also get the return of a character who, like Faith, clearly illustrates the dangers of wanting to be an insider. Jonathan. Like Faith, inclusion and acceptance become more important to him than morality or independence. He cannot accept being an outsider, and, as with Faith, this brings about his downfall.
At first, Jonathan is nothing more nor less than a high-school nebbish who falls into an extreme form of the despair many of us who were outsiders in high school felt. I’m never getting out of this. I’m never going to have friends, love, any kind of life. Nobody understands. I might as well be dead.
Jonathan feels even more excluded from normal life than the heroes. He, out of all the students, recognizes Buffy as an insider rather than an outsider. It’s not an accident that it’s Jonathan who gives the speech naming Buffy as class protector, or that he’s in the thick of the fight at graduation, along with Larry (another outsider who got very comfortable with his true self, thanks to Xander).
But in the season-four episode “Superstar” (4-17) we find that instead of being cured of the worst of his troubles by Buffy’s intervention, Jonathan is still longing for inclusion. So much so that he’s willing to take a dangerous magical shortcut to get it. As the Superstar, he not only knows all about the demons and the vampires, he’s better at fighting them than Buffy is. To be fully inside and on top of the world, he’s got to know all that the Scoobies do, and then some. At the end of it, himself once more, and saved from himself once more by Buffy, he’s contrite and, it appears, on the road to recovery. Surely by now he’s going to accept that he’s an outsider and build his life the slow, hard way, as our heroes had to do when they were outsiders.
Fast-forward to season six and we see that’s a no-go. Jonathan is still longing for inclusion, and inclusion once again involves doing the Scoobies one better. He believes that secret knowledge of magic and the demonic will give him the life that he wants. This is the knowledge and power that the Scoobies possess in depth, and he knows it. In joining up with Warren and Andrew, he not only gains inseparable comrades, like Buffy has, he gets to use what little he knows about Sunnydale, to gain, he hopes, power and prestige—again, like Buffy has, in his view. The Scoobies are the measure of what Jonathan wants to be. He just doesn’t understand how to get there.
We see this again at the beginning of season seven when he returns to Sunnydale. He doesn’t seem to really want to save the world, o
r that’s not all he wants to do. He wants to make things up to Buffy and the others.
In season six, instead of being the ones to avoid, the Scoobies have become the ones to beat. By season seven, they are the powers to appease and emulate. Andrew, like Jonathan longing for acceptance, actually manages to become an insider through his status as a semi-scooby.
Another character whose appearance throws Buffy’s status as insider into sharp relief is Dawn. Here is someone Buffy had to protect and keep secrets from. In effect, she had to exclude Dawn from the real life of Sunnydale as she herself was once excluded from the real life of high school and adolescence. The result is a jealous Dawn who desperately wants to come inside the secret world and be on a par with her Slayer sister.
While Buffy was in high school, the other citizens of Sunnydale actively avoided seeing what was going on around them much of the time, accepting what comforting lies they could. Even Joyce did not really want to see the truth. When Dawn is introduced, however, Buffy’s secrets are being actively sought out. She is in possession of desirable, even vital, truths that make her not isolated or outcast, but special and superior.
Even the Watcher’s Council are shown to be outsiders compared to Buffy in season five. In “Graduation Day” (3-21, 3-22), Buffy tells the Council what to do, rather than the other way around, because Buffy is the one with her finger on the pulse of the situation. Like the Initiative before them, the Council’s ignorance of Sunnydale’s hazards and complexities make the situation worse than it has to be. They must learn the truth of the matter from someone on the inside—in this case, Buffy.
By seasons six and seven, what were isolating secrets have become deeper truths. The powers and the knowledge of the Scoobies draw them further into the dark and unpleasant reality of life on the Hellmouth. Instead of being the outcasts, our gang are now the Secret Masters of Sunnydale. This culminates in the season seven finale, in which Buffy one-ups the ultimate insiders—the ancient magicians who created the Slayer line itself. This shift from outsiders to insiders created a serious problem for the ongoing story.
Never mind that now that the Mayor is gone, one has to suspend disbelief on a much stronger hook, because no one seems to be working to hide Sunnydale’s secrets anymore (at least until everyone inexplicably leaves town). The foundation of the show is about outcasts and the status of being outcast, and that it is more important to do the right thing than it is to be included (witness what happens to Riley when he asserts independent thought instead of just going along with the Initiative). The status of the main characters has changed from weak outsiders to powerful insiders, but the overall story’s depiction of the damaging consequences of what it is to be a powerful insider has not changed. Now that the heroes are inside and are the heavy players in the power game, they become continually more damaged and inflict more damage. Xander, rather than constantly being rejected, has the power to reject Anya, and the costs are huge. Willow, who has gone from the weak self-deprecating nerd to cool and powerful witch, nearly destroys the world. Buffy’s attempts to cast herself out of life once she’s been forced back into it nearly succeed, which probably would mean the end of the world, because she’s already defeated all the easy Apocalypses (what is the correct plural, anyway?).
In addition, we have the ongoing problem that because they are so powerful and knowledgeable, our heroes must continually be made weak in order for there to be genuine conflict with whatever Big Bad has come along. The way Buffy and the others have been made weak since the beginning is some personal, emotional damage. The storyline necessitates that our powerful insider heroes be repeatedly emotionally hamstrung, because otherwise they are like Superman without kryptonite—invulnerable. So, there’s not only no end to the evil Sunnydale inflicts, there doesn’t seem to be a bottom to its despair either.
I miss the triumph. Back when the Scoobies were outsiders, there was a respite at the end of each adventure, a sense of “Whew! We did it. Good job.” But for seasons five and six, even the final triumph has left the heroes measuring the deep cost, especially in blood and bodies. It does make you wonder why they don’t seriously consider getting the heck out of Dodge. Except then the world would end, because they weren’t there to stop it, and that really would get the guilt going.
Whistler tells Buffy that in the end she was always alone. Except that’s never been true. There’s always been help. The circle expands, and Good, or at the very least a lesser Evil, chips in. Buffy goes alone to fight Angelus, but she’s still got Spike and Willow backing her up. When the Mayor’s ascension threatened the whole of Sunnydale’s graduating class, Buffy and the others reached out. They found help among their peers and they all fought the good fight together. Not only that, but the good side of Faith, or some Good posing as Faith, gave Buffy the cornerstone to defeat the new-made demon.
But now that they are on the inside of Sunnydale’s secrets, they seem unable or unwilling to reach out. There are no new good characters to come to their aid, no force of Good made manifest beyond them (unless you count Spike, and he’s more of someone who needs saving that someone who will help save them). Good, when it shows, just dumps more responsibilities, like the Key, on the heroes, and vanishes.
I miss the idea that there is Good in the world beyond the main characters, that there is help, that there are resources they can call on beyond themselves. The beleaguered, weakened loneliness of them being the thin red line between the world and The End when they are flawed and tired and burdened by power, is becoming exhausting.
Our heroes, once the consummate, creative, energetic outsiders have now been walled up on the inside and do not seem able to find their way back out. For a series that once declaimed the triumphant power of friendship, independence and self-acceptance, it’s a disappointing end.
Sarah Zettel was born in Sacramento, California. Since then, she has lived in three states, ten cities, and two countries. She has been writing fantasy and science fiction since she could pick up a pen. Her latest works are A Sorcerer’s Treason and The Usurper’s Crown.
Charlaine Harris
A REFLECTION
ON UGLINESS
Award-winning author Charlaine Harris has a bone to pick with Joss Whedon. (I’ll just get out of the way . . .)
IF YOU’VE WATCHED as many episodes of Buffy as I have, you’ve probably noticed an interesting phenomenon.
The monsters are all ugly. The good guys are all pretty.
Oh, I’ve had moments of disgruntlement with the Buffyverse.
For example, I’m a round person myself, and I’ve noticed Sunnydale doesn’t exactly cater to the overweight. Well, okay. Probably living over the Hellmouth would make you so nervous you wouldn’t eat much. And I’ve noticed that most of the Sunnydale populace is hardly what you would call racially diverse. Dawn has an African-American friend, and the villainous Mr. Trick is black. Mr. Wood, the last season’s ambiguous principal, is black, and does finally emerge (mostly) on the side of good. But with those few exceptions, and the rare black vampire, the population of the town is pretty bleached. Okay. . . maybe the Hispanics and African-Americans were smarter than the WASPs, and got the hell out of Sunnydale. In a way, that absence of color is almost complimentary.
But ugliness is a different issue. If you’re ugly, you’re evil.
Think of it, if you haven’t already. Buffy herself is lovely, of course. Her clothes are always cute. Her shoes never have scuff marks. Buffy’s hair and makeup are perfection. That’s understandable. She’s the hero! Willow, Xander, Giles, Cordelia, Oz, Dawn, Angel, Riley, Spike—all variations on hotness.
You’d think that Buffy the Vampire Slayer, of all shows—the only television show to ever acknowledge openly that high school is Hell and dating can be fatal—would show a little more sophistication in this department. But . . . no.
The tricky part is, some monsters aren’t always ugly; that is, not one hundred percent of the time. (Well, trolls and goblins are; and demons, most often.) But G
lory, the god, is beautiful most of the time. Even Ben, the male whose body she sometimes inhabits, is a very attractive young man. And Anya, the former vengeance demon, is cute enough in her human form to pass as just another coed at Sunnydale High. Angel and Spike are indisputably fantasy figures for millions of teenage girls—and some boys, too.
Corrupted humans—that is, those who started out good—get to keep their ordinary looks. Think of Faith, the Slayer who turns to the Dark Side in a major way, until season seven. Ethan Rayne, Giles’s old college friend, is quite attractive, too, and evidently he was a barrel of fun when he and Giles were in their early twenties: but somewhere along the line, Rayne, too, felt the lure of Evil. The Mayor, Mr. Trick’s boss, is looking forward to his transformation into pure Evil for much of his residence in Sunnydale, but he gets to retain a passable human form until then; and the same is true of Faith’s evil Watcher, Gwendolyn Post, who seems like a perfectly proper woman at first.
But what happens when the completely transformed monster’s true evil nature comes to the fore? Angel’s forehead bulges, his fangs elongate, and he gets that squinty-eyed look. (Even though Buffy kisses him when Angel’s transformed, he’s definitely showing his ferocious side.) Ditto for Spike—when he’s ready to attack, he bulges to the north and sprouts fangs to the south. Vengeance-demon Anya gets the cracked complexion of a snickerdoodle. Glory is simply monstrous. Seth Green, so adorable as Oz, makes a pretty nasty werewolf. In the first season, the four bullying high school students who are feared by the whole campus turn into hyenas—is that a great metaphor, or what? And they’re really, really hideous.
Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) Page 15
