(no subject)

[which_chick]

I woke up this morning the good kind of sore, with three episodes of Buffy left to watch. I have watched them. If you do not want to know what I think about how the last season (7) of Buffy ended, a discussion which reasonably will include spoilery facts about how the series ended, please don't hit the cut.



First off, I didn't want Spike redeemed. I grant that people can change. I grant the power of love to help people change. (Tell anyone I said that and I'll beat you upside the head.) I grant that Spike's got the serious heart-jones for Buffy and he could do worse for role models on the side of light. But I didn't want him redeemed, even if he died and saved the world in the process. He doesn't look good as a chaste (I was all whiskey tango foxtrot with that, myself.) martyr to the cause of Buffy. Bugger that for a lark. I wanted him to slip back, inexorably, wholly, irrevocably, into the dark. He had the coat. It would have worked. Also, I wanted Buffy to kill him because she had to. (Admittedly, she *does* kill him because she has to, but it's not exactly very satisfying.) That would have been heart-rendingly tragic and thematically cyclical and tidy and stuff. This was... lame. Not, admittedly, as lame as having them move to a quirky victorian in San Francisco to set up housekeeping, but still. Lame.

I was split on the preacher Caleb. He was amusingly scary and bad. Misogyny is amusing and he did it quite well. Loved it. But... he wasn't by himself. He wasn't an isolated villian. When you combine him with the freaking horde of slayers-in-potentia and Faith and Buffy... I felt like I was being hammered with someone's message. (The misogynist preacher might have been more effective if he'd been preying on fears I actually had.)

If that weren't bad enough, we got rather a lot of girl power with all the potential slayers in the world y'know, wonder-twin-powers-activated by way of Willow. Estrogen content there got any higher and I'd have bitch tits from watching it. (This is the gender issues part of the post. The actual show episodes probably weren't nearly as squicky as I saw them. I figure it's like Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. However, if the Mona Lisa didn't get looked at by anyone, would it still be art? Isn't art what happens when other people look at and think about and talk about and whatnot with stuff that someone has made? Art that nobody sees isn't very art in my book. Also, human agency. Art isn't made by nature. Neat rock formations in caves are not art. Waterfalls are not art. The patterns in sandy creek bottoms, left by the current, those aren't art either. Don't ask me stupid questions about elephants who make paintings, I'm not going there with this. Art... is the interaction between someone's work and the other people who are looking at it. Look too long at your own work and you'll go blind, you know. It's probably quantum, where the act of observing a potential art work makes it into art. Anyway. Where I'm going here is that my view of Buffy is, on some level, legitimate. I watched it and this is what I thought about it. It's my Buffy. You probably have a different Buffy, constructed from the actual episodes run through your own filters... but this one is mine.)

I'm not against girl power, though sometimes I might sound that way if you're just skimming. Thing is, I am against girl power where that power is bestowed or granted by an agent or a source outside of the girls themselves. I am so, so, so damn tired of the fucking Rapunzel nature of all of it. Sit in your tower, little girl, and wait. You don't have any inherent power, but someone will be along shortly (white horse optional) to give you a leg up so that you can compete. I don't know what it is about this, but I don't find it a very empowering message and it's a message I see a lot. (When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.)

At least Utena didn't do the whole received-power thing much. She got to be her own man. Person. Instead of being someone else's bitch. Er. ...

Look, I want a new language. This one's broken. (People besides me have noticed how gendered casual expressions for power are, right? It can't just be me. Some days I admit that I'm tilting at windmills, but it's not all on my end. Perhaps there are so many fucking windmills because I'm in Holland, ever think of that?)

There are not many stories of women being solidly heroic on their own two feet that manage to do it without making me want to throw the media across the room. I'm not sure if the problem is with me or with the stories, though.

On the whole I really liked Buffy. The show was cohesive, largely well-written, and put together with a distinctive look and feel. The dialogue, taken as a whole, was spectacular. It was a class act and mostly I think it did the right things. Mostly. I wasn't much on the ending, but it was not the worst ending they could have done. It was passable. For many people who are not me, perhaps it was uplifting and inspirational and stuff. Me... not so much. Stuff that tries to tell me that I'm allowed to go be heroic and stuff mostly pisses me off.

I don't need your permission and I never did. Get out of my way.

Comments

[electroweak.livejournal.com]

I think that art, seen once, is forever art. As copyright attaches the moment the creator sets down his pen, when art leaves the hand of its maker it is art. Laocoon lying under the loam of central Italy was still art, although no one laid eyes upon it for a thousand years until it was excavated and reassembled by the Popes of the Renaissance. Art is whatever someone once said is art. Others are free to disagree (and I hope they do - if art doesn't ask or prompt questions, it's useless), but it will have been, for at least one person, art.

On the other hand, I don't believe in Art-with-a-capital-A. Art is an item - or an aspect of an item - made for reasons other than survival, and its place in society is entirely up to the interests and desires of the public. While a sculpture made of junked cars may be art, that status as a work of art doesn't save it from being melted down when people get tired of it.

As to the gender issues in the last season of Buffy...I saw about half the shows in the season, while it was running on TV. The whole girl power, yay! thing struck me as heavy-handed. It could have been written much more skillfully, and would have been much more effective therefore. Part of the problem may have been the limited acting range of Sarah Michelle Gellar.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I'm glad that the girl power thing wasn't just me. I do have issues on that front and sometimes I see what isn't there... but if you can see it too, then it's not just me.