Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series)

by Gilene Yeffeth

  And in the end, she learned that she could master the Power and not be used by it when she had a task to perform for humanity. This time she sought nothing for herself, not even self-confidence or the high regard of others.

  We all understood why, at Tara’s death, Willow went for revenge in the one way that violated the covenant between her and Tara. And so did all the other characters. We understood because we had lived their intimate adventure with them.

  The hallmark of Great Literature is that the reader understands how the events cause the character to become someone different. Our understanding of Willow indicates that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is Great Literature.

  But look again at the sequence of shows beginning between 1989 when I first mentioned intimate adventure in Publishers Weekly, when Forever Knight first appeared—and today.

  Every one of those shows has a following producing fan fiction and vast amounts of e-mail. Every one of those shows touches the creative core of millions of people, just as Star Trek does. When I started writing Star Trek Lives! in 1972 to explain why people like Star Trek,20 I only hoped that Hollywood would eventually figure it out.

  And now we have Buffy, Enterprise, Farscape, and Smallville, and more SF/F than one person can watch and still do a day’s work.

  Buffy is not the end product of this process of becoming that television is undergoing. It has made a major innovation by adding dimensions of relationship to the Babylon 5 breakthrough of story-arc structure. But most important of all, Buffy has given us evolving characters—characters who are significantly changed by the traumas and emotional anguish they have to live through.

  In Buffy, all the characters Become. And in that Becoming lies their power to change television, and perhaps SF/F as well.

  Great Literature is about the process of Becoming, of growth and learning through hard lessons. It explains the human condition, shows us how our own unique experiences are related to common human ones familiar to everyone. Great Literature changes its field, opens new avenues, explores new venues and is copied or emulated. Buffy appears to have all three of these key traits.

  Romantic Times Award-winning author Jacqueline Lichtenberg is the primary author of Star Trek Lives!, the Bantam paperback that revealed the existence of Star Trek fandom and its fanzines and touched off the explosion of fannish involvement in the television show. Star Trek Lives! presents her theory of why fans love Star Trek so much that they write stories about it. Her first published novel, House of Zeor, the first novel in the legendary Sime~Gen Universe now in print from Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc., proved her theory has merit. In addition to her series of vampire short stories, she has a vampire romance published by BenBella Books, titled Those of My Blood. She has two occult/SF novels in print, Molt Brother and City of a Million Legends. Jacqueline has spent more than 25 years as a tarot and astrology practitioner and teacher. She is author of The Biblical Tarot: Never Cross A Palm With Silver, and is the SF/F reviewer for the Occult/New Age publication The Monthly Aspectarian. www.simegen.com/jl/ will provide more details.

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  1 The second-season finale is titled “Becoming” (3-21, 3-22) and marks several pivotal points in becoming. Angel opens Hell by pulling the Sword of Acathla; Willow becomes a witch when she restores Angel’s soul; and Buffy becomes a mature figure when she sacrifices her personal happiness, sending Angel to Hell.

  2 I enlisted the aid of two television experts, fan Cherri Muñoz and the scriptwriter/journalist Anne Phyllis Pinzow to verify the following timeline.

  3 “Helpless” (3-12) aired 1/19/99. This was the ultimate initiation. On Buffy’s eighteenth birthday, the Council of Watchers ordered Giles to give Buffy an injection that would take her powers away. She is then faced with a psychotic vampire where she must kill using only what she has learned in her years as the Slayer. At the end, we learn that it’s not only her initiation but Giles’s too.

  4 Name changing or taking on a new name is a necessary part of Initiation. The use of a disregarded middle name qualifies as a name-change.

  5 Angel gives her a claddagh ring in “Surprise” (2-13). Angel says “The hands represent friendship. The crown represents loyalty. And the heart . . . well, you know. Wear it pointing toward you. It’s a sign that you belong to somebody.”

  6 The candidate is led into the ceremonial hall in near darkness, placed in a coffin with the lid closed, and left in this sensory-deprivation chamber for a long time. When the coffin is opened, sometimes by the candidate’s own efforts, the candidate arises with a new name. These ceremonial initiations are designed to replicate the psychological processes we go through in real life, telescoping seven years of hard living into a few hours. But the most effective Initiations are those lived through life. Every Ceremonial Initiation, to be effective, must be followed by a recapitulation of the lesson life-events. Then the ceremonial “Death” initiation is followed by massive lifestyle changes. In the language of “Death –”Birth.”

  7 The Training and Work of an Initiate by Dion Fortune is a good place to start learning about the Western Ceremonial Initiatory tradition. As Star Trek drew upon Shakespeare and other great literature, Buffy draws upon Ancient Greek, Kabbalistic, and Egyptian sources. Besides studying mythology, anthropology, and archeology, the curious student should investigate the traditions behind the magical systems alluded to in Buffy. For the beginner, the best place to start is Fortune’s book Psychic Self-Defense (various publishers over nearly a century, look for a cheap current paperback) and my own Biblical Tarot: Never Cross a Palm With Silver (Toad Hall Inc.), both of which can be found on amazon.com. Or read my award-winning SF/F review column from The Monthly Aspectarian which examines what can be learned about magical initiation by reading science fiction novels: www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/

  8 Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda, Pocket Books; ISBN: 0671600419; Reissue edition (June 1985)

  9 “Doppelgangland” (3-16)—Vamp Willow crosses over from a different dimension. Our Willow dresses in Vamp Willow’s dominatrix black outfit so she can rescue Oz and the others in the Bronze. Willow is distressed by Vamp Willow. Later she talks about Vamp Will, stating, “And I think I’m kinda gay.”

  10 Willow gives Angel’s soul back (“Becoming, Parts 1 & 2,” 2-21, 2-22). Willow casts a spell so Tara doesn’t see her use magic (“Tabula Rasa,” 6-8).

  11 “Halloween” (2-6). Willow is a ghost but she’s still trying to hit the books so she can help solve the problem. Only thing, she can’t turn the pages because she’s a ghost.

  12 “Gingerbread” (3-11). Willow’s mother helps Joyce with the MOO campaign and later helps Joyce capture the girls so they can burn them at the stake for being witches.

  13 When Willow was trying to keep Sunnydale safe while Buffy was away, she tried to imitate Buffy by writing and saying puns. They usually fell flat (“Dead Man’s Party,” 3-2). Even years later, Willow still didn’t have the art of punning down. Remember, the puns she programmed into Warren’s Buffybot also fell flat (“Bargaining, Parts 1 & 2,” 6-1, 6-2).

  14 “Hush” (4-10) is the first episode where Tara is credited, but Willow meets her prior to this.

  15 Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie—you’ll find this on amazon.com also.

  16 In “Tabula Rasa” (6-8) Willow uses magic to erase Buffy’s memory of Heaven, but instead everyone’s memory is erased. When memory is restored at the end of the episode, Tara realizes the magnitude of the danger to Willow and does the only thing she knows how—she leaves Willow. Note that Willow’s horrible mistake is completely fixed when they get their memories back. She does not suffer a consequence of her actions—except that Tara leaves.

  17 In “Villains” (6-20), Willow tortures Warren to death.

  18 In the first few episodes of the seventh season we see that Willow has undergone some heavy ritual initiation at the hands of a coven
in England—people qualified to initiate Willow. We see her with a changed attitude, but ritual initiations can’t be completed without manifestation in Life—without tests to be passed where the stakes are real. Now, if the initiatory pattern is to be completed, Willow’s life has to fall apart.

  19 Intimate Adventure—Publishers Weekly, November 10, 1989, p.22. Defined and explained at www.simegen.com/jl/intimateadventure.html where you will find links to the complete article “A Proposal for a New Genre,” reprinted from The Monthly Aspectarian (www.lightworks.com)

  20 Jacqueline Lichtenberg biography and bibliography can be found at www.simegen.com/jl/.

  Kevin Andrew Murphy

  UNSEEN HORRORS

  & SHADOWY

  MANIPULATIONS

  Here’s a disturbing thought. What if the Buffy we know and love is not the pure thing, not straight from the mind of Joss, but rather has been meddled with by forces of evil too awful to contemplate. The very brave Kevin Murphy takes on this horrific idea, and lays out the cold, har’d truth.

  ON TELEVISION, Buffy and her gang must contend with unseen horrors, unspeakable evils, and the dark and shadowy manipulations of secret organizations bent on reshaping the world in their own image. In reality, the writers, producers, and cast of the show contend with much the same.

  The names are different, of course, but the objectives and methodologies are remarkably similar—as are the tools at their disposal, the main ones being censorship and pressure. Censorship to remove thoughts and images they find offensive, and pressure to incorporate ones they deem desirable. The degree of success in achieving these goals depends on the power of the entity.

  Starting with some of the most powerful beings, in the Buffyverse, the Powers of Darkness are opposed by the mysterious Loa, the Spirit Guides, and the Powers That Be—benevolent entities that guard, protect and shepherd, but not to be trifled with lightly. In the real world, there are the various corporate sponsors, whose advertising dollars pay the bills of commercial television, keeping shows safe from the dreaded cancellation. Both rarely speak, but when they do, the pronouncements are dire.

  As Joss Whedon remarked in an interview with Zap2it.com, “Double Meat Palace was the only thing we ever did to make advertisers pull out. They did not like us making fun of fast food.” Consequently, Buffy got a new job for season seven and the Double Meat Palace storyline was scrapped.

  At the same time as the advertisers would have been making their displeasure known, there’s an exchange in the “Loyalty” (3-15) episode of Angel, where Wesley goes in supplication to an icon of the Loa, only to find it’s a human-size anthropomorphic hamburger. The fiberglass statue grows and animates, then hits Wesley with a lightning bolt, crying, “Your insolence is displeasing!” Wes responds, under his breath, “Try chatting with a cranky hamburger . . .”

  It’s hard not to read this as a commentary on Joss Whedon’s company, Mutant Enemy, dealing with the burger advertisers.

  Of course, the Loa, the Spirit Guides, and the Powers That Be (and the related corporate sponsors) are not the only entities our heroes must contend with. Buffy and the Scooby gang also deal with the Watcher’s Council, which is also generally benevolent but is interested in the Slayer only as she is of use to it. Whedon and crew? The network executives, again with a similar relationship.

  Television networks censor and pressure in service to their financial needs and corporate ends, not the artistic needs of an individual show or the wishes of its fans. For example, the much-anticipated kiss between Willow and Tara had to wait until another show on the WB, Dawson’s Creek, showed a kiss between Jack (Kerr Smith) and Ethan (Adam Kaufman, who also played Parker that same season on Buffy). This quick peck was a television landmark, a gay kiss in a teen show, but the WB chose to give it to another show—not because it was necessarily better for Dawson’s than it was for Buffy, but because it was better for the network. It would be another season before a lengthier gay kiss on Dawson’s and the even longer and more comforting kiss between Tara and Willow in “The Body” in season five. And even then, it is something that the network is still sensitive to.

  As reported by Nicholas Fonseca in The Crass Menagerie article “Foul Language. Raunchy Sex. Gore galore. On TV?,”1 “Buffy exec producer Marti Noxon says UPN censors have more qualms about Willow’s romance with Tara (Amber Benson) than the show’s campy violence or ravenous (straight) sex scenes—including that racy interlude last winter in which Gellar’s Slayer offered oral pleasure to Spike. Laughs Noxon, ‘Yeah, that one was pretty dirty.’”

  A more significant example of network censorship occurred in season three, with the suspension of the episode “Earshot” (3-18) in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings. “Earshot” (3-18) dealt, in part, with the possibility of a school shooting, and the following interchange was viewed as something too sensitive to be aired in the United States only a week after the murders:

  WILLOW: We have a list of the people in the cafeteria. I’ll do some computer work, match it against the FBI mass-murderer profiles. We can rule some people out.

  XANDER: I’m still having trouble with the idea that one of us is just gonna gun everybody down for no reason.

  CORDELIA (sarcastically): Yeah, ’cause that never happens in American high schools.

  OZ: It’s bordering on trendy at this point.

  Canada, however, was not as traumatized by the US high school shooting, and in certain areas, “Earshot” (3-18) aired as scheduled, leading to a rampant bit of tape-trading between US and Canadian fans, and, even more significantly, the rise of Internet bootlegging of copies of the episode in MPG file format. This only increased as the WB decided they would also delay the second half of the season finale, “Graduation Day, Part 2,” (3-22) for fear of being held liable if any violence happened anywhere during a high school graduation ceremony.

  Thankfully, only Sunnydale had its mayor turn into a giant snake and attempt to eat the graduating class, so there was no spontaneous use of flamethrowers and crossbows from high schoolers across the United States. What there was was an unprecedented rise in file-trading and tape-swapping, much to the chagrin of the WB. Especially after series creator, Joss Whedon, told USA Today, “Okay, I’m having a Grateful Dead moment here, but I’m saying, ‘Bootleg the puppy.’”

  In the end, the WB could only put a stop to the file-trading—and their own projected loss of revenues for a couple million-dollar episodes—by finally airing both of the “forbidden episodes,” as they were dubbed by Joss in one of his postings in the Bronze, the Buffy posting board:

  It’s nice to see how much people care about seeing the ep—although there were threats made against WB execs, which is, uh, most creepy. Look to poor Britain, who gets it in clumps, out of order, on different networks or not at all. All we have to do is wait a couple of months. Besides, now they’re the FORBIDDEN EPISODES, and isn’t that a treat in itself. And to be slightly SPOILERISH, all this fuss over the graduation scene means the scene at the end of act one just slipped right by ’em. La la la . . .

  Then, of course, there is self-censorship on the part of the writer, because they know what will sell with the network, and there are only so many outrageous things one can do at once. As Joss said to Entertainment Tonight on March 31, 2000, “The censors aren’t really a problem for me, because I’m not really big into gore.” This, for the WB, was a selling point, as reported by A.J. Jacobs in the April 25, 1997, Entertainment Weekly: “‘It’s the least bloody violence on television,’ boasts The WB’s Garth Ancier.” Thankfully for Joss, this was a stricture he could work with, responsible for gore-free vampire dustings, as well as the following quote in the same article: “As far as I’m concerned, the first episode of Buffy was the beginning of my career. It was the first time I told a story from start to finish the way I wanted.”

  A popular argument goes that since the networks own Buffy, all of this is not, in fact, censorship, merely editorial control. Nevertheless, editorial proh
ibitions and pronouncements—especially ones which the creators do not agree with—are censorship all the same. They are merely called something different for internal politics and to separate them from government censorship, which is, in principle at least, prohibited in the US by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

  Buffy, however, is global, and the First Amendment only protects the freedom of those who own the presses, not the freedom of those who work for them. Studios are free to make whatever edits they want, subject to their agreements with the artists, and television networks are free to “edit for content” (censor) for rebroadcast, subject to their own agreements with the studios.

  Beyond the networks themselves, there’s the industry-sponsored Television Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board. This industry ratings board is appointed by the networks to regulate their shows, and is roughly analogous to the late unlamented Principal Snyder, whose final words before being eaten by the Mayor were “This is not orderly. This is not discipline! You’re on my campus, buddy! And when I say I want quiet, I want . . .”

  Like Principal Snyder, the bureaucrats of the ratings board are often clueless, unable to deal with things that don’t conform to standard expectations. (“You. All of you. Why can’t you be dealing drugs like normal people?”) While policing episodes for George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television” (excepting “piss,” which has been used multiple times on Buffy), they miss obscenities that aren’t part of the American idiom. For example, Spike continually flips a two-fingered gesture that means the same thing in Britain that flipping a one-fingered gesture with the middle finger means in the US. Then there are interchanges such as the following from season five’s “The Gift”:

  BUFFY: Remember: the ritual starts, we all die. And I’ll kill anyone who comes near Dawn.