What can be learned from Buffy?

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This is a really good video about it. It relates John Truby and Aristotle to Buffy. I mean, that's pretty badass!

In fact, let me copy some of that over here as a record so I won't forget it:

John Truby on tragedy:

"Heightening the sense of the hero's might-have-been and lost potential while also showing that the hero's actions are his responsibility."
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"What makes Buffy so different (from other shows, in terms of tragedy) is that Joss Whedon allows the characters to feel the full consequences of their actions—consequences that, many times, are not wrapped up by the end of the hour." (Narrator of the video)

"So many modern genre shows and movies try to create tragedy simply by killing characters off. But they never set up an appropriate level of might-have-been, nor do they stake the death in responsibility or choice. It rings hollow. The character needs to lose something the audience wants as well. If the loss a character suffers is an easy decision in the writing process, then it's going to be all too easy for the audience to accept it, or take it for granted. You can film it as a tragedy, sure, but it won't feel tragic."

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Articles:

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  • Article says Archetypes when it means Stereotypes

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Season 6 is the one where Joss said something like (I paraphrase)—'Previously Buffy always lived in two different worlds. There was her 'normal'world, the one where she goes to school, lives in Sunnydale, and tries to go on dates and find a boyfriend, and then there's the world of vampires, demons and monsters. In one of these worlds, Buffy is a superhero, and in the other she's a lost and vulnerable teenage girl trying to find her way. But in season 6, all the horror and the nightmares are taking place in her 'normal' world. It is the new Big Bad. Now she has to try to figure out how to navigate life as an adult. That's a lot harder than fighting vampires and demons.'​

Best Video Yet

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This one is a mind-blower. A lot going on I wasn't aware of. I knew some of it, but geez!

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Long video, but an excellent one, that highlights much of what was so incredible about Buffy (the show).

I'm reminded of the way so many rock bands 'found their groove' in the 70s despite putting out several (often mediocre or even bad) albums without a hit single. As a specific example, Don Kirshner really liked Kansas, an obviously incredibly talented band with immense potential. He kept telling them "Come on guys, I need a hit single—I'm sinking millions of dollars into advertising for your concerts, and I'm losing most of it. A hit would fix that." And despite so many great songs on all their albums, none of them became a hit until the fourth album I think, when Kerry Livgren wrote Dust in the Wind. Most of their songs were really long and meandering—they were the American prog rock band, and that's what they did. But suddenly, right at the end of the recording session for I think the Point of Know Return album, Kerry was doing his standard warmup routine on the guitar and his wife said "Oh, that's a really nice song, what's it called?" He told her it's not a song, it's just a chord progression he does to get his fingers all dexterous, and she told him he should turn it into a song. He did, and that was their first hit.

Record labels in the 70's would do that if they had enough confidence in the band, but once the 80's hit and the business model changed drastically (partly thanks to the introduction of the newfangled desktop computers into the mix, making decisions human promoters had once made on gut instinct), it no longer happened that way. If a band didn't crank out a hit on their first album, they were done. I've heard the same story from many bands—it takes time to grow and develop into a really great band, you can't be expected to do it on your first album.

And I believe Joss Whedon said much the same about television—that when he was making Buffy was the last period when a show would be allowed to go beyond a single season if it didn't hit a certain ratings mark. What he was doing (attempting) was incredibly ambitious. Television had never done anything like it before, with so much complexity and so many layers—so much metaphor. There was no guarantee it would work or that he and his team would be able to make it work. Thank god they tried, (possibly out of the naive confidence of a first-time director/showrunner), and thank god they were allowed to go to a second season.

I just ordered the book Joss Whedon: The Biography. Got a used paperback—there's no Kindle version available despite one reviewer saying he read it in Kindle.Weird.

Notes on S1E1—Buffyspeak and her two worlds colliding

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The Buffyspeak isn't just quirky, it's creative, and allows exaggeration of emotions or awkwardness or whatever is going on under the surface.

When Xander first meets Buffy, she's dropped her purse and things have scattered. He makes his move to help her, because he wants to meet her, and immediately says "Candy!" She shoots him a What? look. He looks sheepish, as if it was his pronouncement on her (it definitely was, but also some candy had fallen out of her purse) and he says "You dropped some candy." She introduces herself and he says "Xander!" Same way he said candy, as if when he's excited his brain can only handle the one important word and he can only blurt it out. He looks awkward for a moment, then adds "... is... me." And he has that "God, why am I so stupid?" look on his face that he's so good at.

So the Buffyspeak is serving a purpose, at least sometimes. I can imagine how cliche this scene would be on a regular CW show, with two model-perfect people playing it totally straight—not nearly as good.* It's a fun creative and quirky way to express the inner life of a character, or the subtext of the scene. Of course besides good comedic writers it also requires good comedic actors, but this show has those things in spades.

Later in the same episode Buffy walks up to Willow and says "Hi." Willow looks at her, stunned, and says "Why? Oh, I mean hi." Again, it's the same thing. The subtext is put right up front. She's thinking 'Why would she want to talk to me, I'm a nobody, and she's all like popular-girl, and was talking to Cordelia earlier.'

It isn't always used that way, but for these two introductions it is.

Her 2 worlds colliding
Later, when Buffy goes back to the library to ask Giles if he knew about the dead guy stuffed in the locker with two little holes in his neck and all his blood drained away, he informs her she's the slayer and gives her the whole spiel, that she already heard at her last school (the series starts shortly after the events from the Buffy movie). These are her two worlds colliding. He's telling her she's the slayer and must do her duty to protect Sunnydale, but all she wants is to live a normal teenage girl life. He asks her how much she knows about Sunnydale and her response is "That it's 2 hours away from Nieman-Marcus." This pretty much encapsulates the essence of the entire show, her two worlds that keep colliding throughout.

* Not that everybody on the show isn't model-perfect—they all are, but they're also good actors and allowed, in fact encouraged, to exhibit some range and make things fun and different from the standard. Usually on the CW shows and their ilk the actors are cardboard cutouts with no personality, or at least that's how they're written, and the writers and directors don't take chances, they play it straight and shallow.

Notes on S7E5—Selfless. AKA All About Anya

I'll be choosing episodes from this list as candidates for anaysis. For this one I pick Selfless (S7E5). Not only does it include an amazing song by Anya—literally a previously-unheard flashback to the musical episode—but it's also a textbook lesson in how to really do tragedy the Truby way. Actually, I don't need to do a written analysis, I just found the song posted on Youtube. All I really need to do is throw that up here:

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Ok, a bit of analysis, or at least explanation:

The song shows her could-have-been, her potential—the life she was looking forward to. The fact that she does it while he's sleeping shows that it's really her inner desire, not just something she said to him to put on a false front. But of course just seeing the song alone doesn't get it across properly. She had a lengthy arc where she first showed up as a demon who destroyed men's lives and really loved her job, then she turned good, and little by little she learned how to be a real girl, to develop human-type emotions and to really love another person. She had grown so far over several seasons, that it was beautiful to see this heartfelt love song and dedication to the man she loved hoped she could learn to love, and then—well, the ending. In a way maybe a bit anti-climactic, but also shockingly powerful. That's what Buffy (the show) and Joss are known for.

Ok, clearly just seeing it in the context of this little video the sheer insanity and pain of it doesn't come across. This is what I mean, you sort of have to know her character arc leading up to this to get it. Yes, she's actually dead there at the end. I don't really remember why or how now, I need to watch the episode to bring that all back.​

Ok—clearly I didn't remember the context myself. Hey, it's been years since I saw this—I took the song at face value until I listened to the lyrics and something jumped out at me. She doesn't seem to actually be in love with Xander, it's more like she's going to marry him anyway and hopes she can find love. But she honestly does seem to want to marry him and make a real go at it, and her desire to fall in love with him does seem totally legit. Then I watched the beginning of the episode and remembered what else happened. Can't find the beginning online, but despite her very honest desire to marry and try to love, she went back to her old ways, or seemed to anyway.

Watched some more and it's coming back even more now. Damn, I really made that post prematurely! Best I can recall now, she did go back to her old Vengeance Demon ways and killed a group of fratboys in a dorm room. But I also recall she did it because they were rapists. And even though to her that's a totally justified reason, Buffy doesn't see it that way. She should have let the police deal with it. Interestingly, demons and vampires (which are sort-of half-demons) are presented much like psychopaths—no real empathy. At best they can only fake it. That's why she can't really love Xander, but really really hopes she can learn to. The song was a flashback to some time ago, when the events of the musical eposide took place, when Xander had proposed to her and she accepted. So it cut directly from her happiest moment, filled with hope and the dreams of a glorious beautiful future, for both her and Xander (though they both also had their secret fears that they weren't really cut out for marriage or couldn't handle it), to her inglorious and unceremonious death, impaled by Buffy against a wall.

Here, this promo gives some more context:

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Note to self—don't post until I've seen the whole episode.

Oh, and it just occurred to me—it also shows that she's responsible for her own decisions and actions (Truby's other requirement for tragedy). She took it upon herself to kill the rapists fratboys. She didn't know any better—even though she's lived in the human world for years now, she simply doesn't have empathy, and like an addict is very quick to relapse. Buffy understood this meant she was incapable of love, and just not the marryin' type (or the type that's safe to hang out with at all, or to allow to live in the human world). Buffy has had plenty of experience with this type—some of her boyfriends have been evil soulless vampires, and she had to kill them too.

Well looky here—this is a nice find:

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This sheds a lot of light on Anya's character arc (Flat arc? Attempted arc? Failed arc?). And what the hell? She pulled the sword out?!! I didn't remember that part either. She did die though (or... went back to demon-land or something). Lol, despite what I said at the end of the last post, I still haven't finished watching the episode.

Anya is what drew me into the show in the first place. Possibly The most gorgeous woman in TV-land. And once she starts in with the singing and the dancing—sheesh! Fuhgeddaboudit!

And this brings up something I ran across I think last night. Not sure now if it was in the book or one of the videos.

Xander is Buffy's heart in the show. It's all extremely symbolic and metaphorical (no wonder I like it so much). The fact that he's drawn repeatedly to bad girls who want to (and usually do) harm him (and try to kill him) is a reflection of the fact that Buffy is the same way. Her taste in men is just as bad—first Angel and then Spike (vampires are like psychopaths).

It's really remarkable how complex and well-done the show is. A far cry from what I originally thought it was—just a silly fanciful comedic teenage soap opera with rubber-faced vampires and monsters. I mean, it is that, including the silly part, but there's so much more underneath that. You don't discover the depth and profundity of it until something draws you in and you watch a few episodes (actually just one all the way through is enough if it's one of the good ones).

This definitely comes from the book—
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The author claims work-of-art status for the show (and I must agree) because like literature, it uses symbolism, it has multiple layers of meaning, and it makes profound and not-simple statements about life in all its complexity.

And yet it's also incrediby entertaining.
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Nice little last-minute add-on:

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Other perfect add-on:

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It's perfect that she's obsessed with money and sex. It shows how shallow she is, and several times in these videos she's also shown that she just isn't one for marriage, long-term relationships, or child-rearing (she wanted to trade her children in for money... ).

I went back and re-watched her little song-and dance number about marrying Xander. Damn, they got references into the song to both sex and money—sex twice! What's really incredible about the show is all the work the writers go to to keep the characters consistent, but also complex and surprizing at times. And somehow, with everything that's going on—all the layers, the symbolism, the postmodernist comedy, etc, the drama shines through it all, and gives it all shape and meaning. It's really hard to wrap your head around how they did that, and did it so well most of the time.

Say it with me—Little. Ginger. Genius. (With great writing team)

I just realized, Buffy may very well be what got me hooked on symbolism/metaphor in the first place. Almost certainly. The first time I used it in a story was Passing Strange, which I wrote in 2011, well after Buffy had wrapped. The final season premiered in 2002 I believe, and I don't think I was seeing it when the episodes were originally airing, pretty sure I caught it in syndication. Yeah, FX carried it in the 2000s, I think that's when I saw it. I'm not sure exactly when I got the box set, it might have been before 2011, but at any rate I was thoroughly steeped in Buffy by the time I decided to write Passing Strange, and it cast a long shadow across that project. I mean, Passing Strange was postmodernist comedy, filled with magic, monsters, gods, and various mythological creatures, it had symbolism out the ying-yang, and I freely mixed comedy and bizarre sometimes almost cartoonish ideas with some pretty serious drama at times. Though of course I didn't do any of that nearly as well as Buffy.

What I'm saying is I owe a huge debt to Joss Whedon and Buffy (the series). Probably More so than to any of my other influences.

Fact check—I got a couple of things wrong above. Anya actually didn't die in this episode, and the fratboys weren't rapists. They were cruel and taunted a college girl. They invited her to what they said was a party, and it was only her and them, and the one she was going out with (and apprently in love with) dumped her right there in front of everybody, and they all made fun of her. So she made a wish that they would all die, and that summoned Anya, who granted the wish. I'm still not entirely through the epsisode—it's actually extremely layered and complex, with multiple timelines going on.

It's quite likely I said some other things wrong too, but I'm not going to keep making corrections. I'll just assume there are other mistakes and let it go at that. I don't want to spend the next week correcting everything I messed up here.