Buffy at Play - Enigmatic Resolutions
I use the word “resolution” rather than “ending” because it connotes the image of coalescence which is so often seen in Buffy. Endings, from season to season, and even at the end of the series, are rarely -- if ever-- final. Buffy, who dies and is resuscitated in season one, dies again in season five, and is resurrected in season six, exemplifies the way that death is not the end in the Whedonverse. When she is shot near the end of season six, and nearly dies again, Xander teases her that “This dying is funny once, maybe twice, but…” (Buffyology 6.20). In a world where slaying is commonplace, Whedon and company make the point that when it comes to death, and a number of other seemingly absolute notions, nothing is certain.
Accordingly, while Angel and Oz are “gone”, having left the series, they return to make occasional cameo appearances. So does every single major villain (and a handful of other characters from all previous seasons) during season seven, by means of a “character” called “The First”, an evil force which can take on the form of any person who has experienced death, including Buffy and Spike (Buffy 7.1). Even Buffy’s mother, Joyce, who dies a natural and apparently permanent death in season five, returns as both The First (possibly) and in an episode in which Buffy believes she is in a mental institution and has imagined her entire life in Sunnydale (Buffy 6.17).
Through such manipulations of the impermanence of “ending”, the text opens perceptions to “the realms of the extraordinary and non-linear” (Hynes 205). Similarly, in the abovementioned episode, “Normal Again”, in which Buffy thinks she is insane, the show engages in a questioning of the impermanence of perception itself. This is not the only time we come upon examples of “psychic explorers” who “[break] through into the world of normalcy and order” (Hynes 208,210). Spike also grapples with sanity throughout much of season seven, and when Buffy asks him, “Are you insane?”, in a moment of lucidity he replies, “Well, yes. Where have you been all night?” (Buffy 7.2).
After Buffy is resurrected, she confides to Spike in “Afterlife” that “everything here [in the “real” world] is hard and bright and violent” (Buffyology 6.3). This brings us back to the necessity of mythmaking. As Simpson clarifies, we have a strong need for “entertaining falsehoods” as an alternative to “boring facts” and harsh reality (2). While the text of Buffy makes clear that when it comes to the gap between myth and reality, it is “not always the same difference,” there are times when it just might seem to be. It is this act of brilliant seeming which demonstrates the difference in the series between taking myths literally, and taking them seriously (Simpson 3). While Buffy is, on the surface, “flip and playful”, the nature and scope of that playfulness creates a form of televisoin literature which can be “studied and fruitfully analyzed the way that any good allegory can be” (Buffy “Buffy 101” 7.6).
In observing this, we can see how Buffy in many ways explores the “play of meaning” as posited by such theorists as Jacques Derrida and which Lewis Hyde designates as the work of the trickster in our world. The necessity of “serious play”, particularly in the crafting of mythological narratives of this nature, from ancient times to the present, is in evidence, as well as an elusive sense of authorship and binary-opposition crunching development of plot and characterization. Moreover, “play” at the most basic level of word formation and sentence structure, with Buffy’s witty, well-thought-out turns of phrase and language re-invention, is also a component of the text which marks it as a trickster entity.
The result is a body of work which provides a number of examples of how the principles of the play of meaning in post-structuralist analysis are, themselves, at play with mythic structures and thus, perhaps more importantly, accessible to the masses. If, in a time period when “Reality TV” dominated, a show like Buffy could have so much appeal, then clearly the world is still in need of myths and their power to get at those aspects of existence which are otherwise inaccessible, inexplicable, and unthinkable without deconstructing the parameters of “real life” through narratives.
Accordingly, while Angel and Oz are “gone”, having left the series, they return to make occasional cameo appearances. So does every single major villain (and a handful of other characters from all previous seasons) during season seven, by means of a “character” called “The First”, an evil force which can take on the form of any person who has experienced death, including Buffy and Spike (Buffy 7.1). Even Buffy’s mother, Joyce, who dies a natural and apparently permanent death in season five, returns as both The First (possibly) and in an episode in which Buffy believes she is in a mental institution and has imagined her entire life in Sunnydale (Buffy 6.17).
Through such manipulations of the impermanence of “ending”, the text opens perceptions to “the realms of the extraordinary and non-linear” (Hynes 205). Similarly, in the abovementioned episode, “Normal Again”, in which Buffy thinks she is insane, the show engages in a questioning of the impermanence of perception itself. This is not the only time we come upon examples of “psychic explorers” who “[break] through into the world of normalcy and order” (Hynes 208,210). Spike also grapples with sanity throughout much of season seven, and when Buffy asks him, “Are you insane?”, in a moment of lucidity he replies, “Well, yes. Where have you been all night?” (Buffy 7.2).
After Buffy is resurrected, she confides to Spike in “Afterlife” that “everything here [in the “real” world] is hard and bright and violent” (Buffyology 6.3). This brings us back to the necessity of mythmaking. As Simpson clarifies, we have a strong need for “entertaining falsehoods” as an alternative to “boring facts” and harsh reality (2). While the text of Buffy makes clear that when it comes to the gap between myth and reality, it is “not always the same difference,” there are times when it just might seem to be. It is this act of brilliant seeming which demonstrates the difference in the series between taking myths literally, and taking them seriously (Simpson 3). While Buffy is, on the surface, “flip and playful”, the nature and scope of that playfulness creates a form of televisoin literature which can be “studied and fruitfully analyzed the way that any good allegory can be” (Buffy “Buffy 101” 7.6).
In observing this, we can see how Buffy in many ways explores the “play of meaning” as posited by such theorists as Jacques Derrida and which Lewis Hyde designates as the work of the trickster in our world. The necessity of “serious play”, particularly in the crafting of mythological narratives of this nature, from ancient times to the present, is in evidence, as well as an elusive sense of authorship and binary-opposition crunching development of plot and characterization. Moreover, “play” at the most basic level of word formation and sentence structure, with Buffy’s witty, well-thought-out turns of phrase and language re-invention, is also a component of the text which marks it as a trickster entity.
The result is a body of work which provides a number of examples of how the principles of the play of meaning in post-structuralist analysis are, themselves, at play with mythic structures and thus, perhaps more importantly, accessible to the masses. If, in a time period when “Reality TV” dominated, a show like Buffy could have so much appeal, then clearly the world is still in need of myths and their power to get at those aspects of existence which are otherwise inaccessible, inexplicable, and unthinkable without deconstructing the parameters of “real life” through narratives.
posted by Brita Graham @ 10:54 PM
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