Meta: The Hardest Thing In This World Is To Live In It

[clockwork_hart1]

I promise to stop spamming my f-list after this post, okay?

The Hardest Thing In This World Is To Live In It - Life, Death, and Female Martyrdom in the Buffyverse and Beyond (Or, Chosen vs The Gift; a Retrospective)


(Spoilers for S1 of Orphan Black, S3 of TVD, S4 of Lost Girl and the movie Edge Of Tomorrow in the introduction, and y'know, the whole of BtVS and Ats in the rest)

(because seriously, fuck the comics)

The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and suicide is press coverage

Let's face it, in narrative (and out, unfortunately) the sacrifice of a pretty young maiden for the better of all humanity is a trope old as dirt. Girl lays down life, world is saved, and everyone says how beautiful and brave she was to give her life up so that others may go on. We're talking Mayan sacrifices to the Gods all the way down to Lily Potter - and honestly it's a load of shit. Because nowadays there's this weird idea that a girl's greatest weapon is her life, a woman can't save the day but she can let herself die so the strapping young hero has the chance. Even in more progressive narratives - because what other point does Emily Blunt's character have in Edge of Tomorrow but to look fierce, be brash, and die a bunch of times until Tom Cruise gets his shit together?

But why are we so fascinated by the power of female suicide? Orphan Black, a show just aching with awesome feministy goodness begins with the image of Beth Childs hurling herself in front of a train. Granted, she's not one of our protagonists, but she's still part of Clone Club with a huge impact on the plot. Elena Gilbert mirrors her parent's sacrifice to save Matt in the S3 of finale The Vampire Diaries and allows herself to drown (with no intention in herself of coming back as a vampire despite what the Salvatores/Writers endow her with), because she feels no one should loose their life for hard on she happens to bestow upon the supernatural community. I refuse to even speak of Kenzi's role in the latest series of Lost Girl. The writers can harp on all they like about the need to enforce the ever popular "anyone can die" mentality, but they've all made a conscious decision to include in their narrative women choosing to off themselves for the sake of others in a way that male heroes (or at least, the protagonists) aren't expected to. (See George RR Martin on how to actually do this right.)

And OF COURSE men have had to make similar sacrifices in stories, obviously they have. But how about the fact that four out of the six analogies I've made have taken place in the last three years? The problem isn't so much the gender gap but the sheer fucking frequency that heroines are expected to lie down and take death peacefully so the world gets to keep turning.

And that's why I can never take The Gift as an acceptable substitute to Chosen as the finale of BtVS as many fans are wont to do.

Death Is Your Gift

Let it first be known that I'm not okay with the erasing of S6/7 from canon the way people like to do anyway. I love those seasons - Buffy's depression arc? It gives me strength to deal with my own struggle with the disease. The juxtapositions of healthy vs unhealthy relationships? An important commentary on how it doesn’t matter at all what your relationship entails - commitment, kinky sex, casual relations - as long as you're comfortable with who you are and what you may become within those parameters. Buffy being able to run off into the sunlight? YES, I want SO MUCH MORE OF THIS. But my discomfort with The Gift acting as the grand finale (as I have seen many, many fans propose because of the "lackluster" final seasons) is greater than that.

It's a wonderful episode from a storytelling perspective. Beautifully shot, executed and acted; a tight script and one hell of a battle. The Gift, in a word, rocks. BUT - and here's where I get all subjective and you can feel free to yell your opposing views at me - the beautiful swan dive from the tower to close the rip between worlds sort of antiquates Buffy's resurrection in the first season finale when she literally rises up from the earth to save the day. It's like a distorted view of the same moment, a rise against a fall, each one necessary to make the world a livable place. When Buffy stands up to The Master with the defiant smile ("but at least I'm still pretty"), her white dress of purity flapping around her like every subversion of the little girl lost/slaughtering lamb you could dream of, you've got to feel a little rush. When she turns away from Dawn with the resigned smile, her hair whipping around her like an avenging angel's halo that she's got no choice but to let slip, your heart's in your throat, your stomach lodged somewhere low and plummeting still, you've got to feel your heart break. Because that's your hero, your Buffy, a broken doll on a pile of rubble; the angel fallen to earth so far that her body broke alongside her wings. Biblical, perhaps (Joan of Arc, ladies and gents?), but also scathingly sad. Because forgive me for wanting Buffy to be the girl action hero who lived.

Death is Buffy's gift. By the doctrine of the Slayer, more ancient than law, she has dominion over life and death - of demons, of victims, of the next in the Slayer line - but she's also human enough to be able to die. There is never a time when death isn't a major player in the story; from the Jesse's death where the show establishes that no one is safe; to Jenny's when we realise that this Angelus fella really is the villain of the piece; we have Joyce to show that natural order is playing even in a world of fantasy; and we have Tara to show that, well, fuck knows what point that was to make other than "Joss is an asshat who hates anyone being happy ever". Death plays right into the last moments of the series (Ats season 5 notwithstanding) where Spike trades his role for Buffy's as the martyr so she really can go out and live.

But as equally as death, Buffy's gift is life. She gives life to those she saves from the monsters; she gives Willow the outlet to grow as a person beyond the meek, shy little geek with nothing to show for herself into perhaps the most powerful women in the universe; she gives both Angel and Spike the means to better their existence through her love and care and grace; she gives Dawn life, period. Not to mention on the meta level, all the lives she's saved within the fandom; to speak for myself, without this show - without Buffy - it's not presumptuous to say I wouldn't be here today.

So is it permissible for me to say that for all of the trouble of Chosen; the deus ex machina of the Slayer spell and magic amulet curtesy of Mr "I Left This Show Four Years Ago and Have Very Little Plot Relevance Over Here (and my son just tried to kill our comatose girlfriend)", the sudden ability of the Potentials to take down the Uber vamps that had Buffy beaten black and blue, Anya's death and that damn cookie dough analogy; that I am much happier seeing my Buffy smiling out at the sunlight of the new world she has to explore rather than as a big ol' hole in the earth?

The Weight Of The World

We can look at Buffy's sacrifice at the end of The Gift as a mirror to Darla's in Ats, both in the interest of giving their "child" - (as Buffy acts as both sister and mother to Dawn post The Body) the chance to live - except that where Buffy jumps off of the tower to close the portal that wasn't of her own making, Darla lifts up a stake and rams it into her own heart. Darla's death is explicitly a suicide (a heroic one, in a truly brutal/beautiful moment) and whilst that is how many people view Buffy's swan dive (myself included - the depression begin far before Joyce's illness and is only amplified by the guilt of resurrection), it's a more subjective and ambiguous ending for her.

Buffy spends her life being the "Hero", saving the world for other people (unlike Darla who is a villain at worst and morally ambiguous at best - albeit with sparse but spectacular occasions of goodness/heroism) and again I'll emphasize life. Once she quits the Council in season Three she has no obligation to do this, but she chooses to do it anyway, to give up her own chances at a real life to give one to others. But it's not really giving up anything - she was told way way back in Season Two that she was cut out for police work, to help the lives of others. Despite what she may feel sometimes with the world hanging heavy on her shoulders, Buffy lives to give other people the chance to do the same. Therefore, she has to go on living. Through season six when her world hangs at its heaviest and darkest she still goes on, out every night to save the muggles with no idea she's there at all. And we witness in both The Wish and Bargaining, a Sunnydale without her is pretty damn dismal; leaving us with the knowledge that she is all that stands between us and demonic oblivion.

How, then, am I meant to cheer when she makes a supposedly "final" sacrifice for the benefit of human kind when humanity benefits incomparably when she's alive?

This is a suicide, of a depressive girl - whose tendencies to spiral into mental disrepair date back as far as her break down in Prophecy Girl and creep up consistently after (i.e. the Bangel break ups, the whole of Anne, the death of Alan Finch, Joyce's illness and subsequent death - not to mention the revelations of her earlier time in the mental hospital in Normal Again). This is Buffy joining the long line of female martyrs which came before her. This is not the ending - a leap into (assumed) hell which seems a fine alternative to the horrors of every day - that anyone as culturally important as Buffy deserves.

She Saved The World A Lot

Accuse me of over-identification (please, I encourage it), because I'm forever using Buffy as a reference point/coping mechanism for my own problems, which is exactly what media and art are for - reinterpretation through personal lenses. That established, you can probably understand why I, as someone with depression have problems with seeing a girl with mental illness letting herself die as a final act of heroics. I have lost friends to suicide and no, I don't blame them for taking their lives, not for a second. And I don’t blame Buffy, either. But the implications of treating suicide and martyrdom as bedmates when the girl in question is depressive... are unsavoury to say the least.

So contrast me Chosen, where we have a Spike, perhaps at the closest thing to "adjusted" as we've ever seen him and arguably happy with his current life choosing to die in Buffy's place to keep the world turning and keep her living. There is a difference here. Show me Spike dying with a smile that matches Buffy's as she stands on the edge of the crater that holds her former life, not the contradictions of Buffy's pain/struggle/passivity inside the portal or even the wide-eyes and impassive face as she runs to the edge of the tower.

So just think about that, before you write off Chosen for the hodge-podge it is on the surface, before glorifying the beauty of The Gift it passes for. Remember which ending has a "and she lived" to conclude.

And so say I - I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

She really does! And she knows that he needs to do it and that it is his decision to make.

*sbos with joy, hugs you*

Sorry about that (dabs tears) I just see so many interpretations of that moment that are completely Greek to me; agreement is lovely.

Buffy was in such a bleak place prior to The Gift.

Exactly. It's not that Buffy wanted to die, but people who commit suicide don't want to die they want to be out of the pain they are in. Suicide is usually the last step after someone has wrestled with depression, pain, mental illness etc for years; then one day the little message in your head "what if I...?" suddenly seems perfectly rational. (I speak from personal and family experience.)

I don't want to characterize what she did as "just" suicide though; of course there's the heroism of it. The "why" of it shouldn't lead us to dishonor the sacrifice. (How many soldiers, police, firefighters, other people who fall in the line of duty have gone willingly to their deaths?)

Spike was IMO getting to know himself for the first time.

Absolutely! "You don't even know you." (Who of us does, really?) I think Chosen was important also for the fact that over Season 7 he develops genuine empathy, not just sympathy. (The episode does not make it very clear - it's a little clearer in the shooting script - the Slayer Spell is what sets off the amulet; in the shooting script they show him feeling pain when one of the new Slayers is stabbed. It's all connected.

[waddiwasiwitch.livejournal.com]

*passes some tissues* oh you! *hugs you back*

"of course there's the heroism of it. The "why" of it shouldn't lead us to dishonor the sacrifice. (How many soldiers, police, firefighters, other people who fall in the line of duty have gone willingly to their deaths?)"

Buffy HAD to save Dawn and this was the only way she knew how. She basically told Giles she was giving up slaying if Dawn died and she did the same after she sent Angel to hell. However, Spike's death gives her a free choice for the first time in her life. She can continue to slay or she can leave it to the new Slayers. She's not alone and she's not running away. She's living. As much as her friends were there for her, the Scoobies never really could understand her in the way Faith did or the new Slayers could.


"I think Chosen was important also for the fact that over Season 7 he develops genuine empathy, not just sympathy. (The episode does not make it very clear - it's a little clearer in the shooting script - the Slayer Spell is what sets off the amulet; in the shooting script they show him feeling pain when one of the new Slayers is stabbed. It's all connected."

Hmm.. Very interesting about the shooting script. I didn't know that actually. I agree!! Spike loved prior to the soul but that love was selfish love. Not that he wasn't capable of unselfish acts of love - for eg protecting Dawn and Sunnydale even though Buffy was gone. It wasn't until he got his soul however, he could finally understand what true love meant and difference between sympathy and empathy.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Buffy HAD to save Dawn and this was the only way she knew how. She basically told Giles she was giving up slaying if Dawn died and she did the same after she sent Angel to hell.

Can you imagine the outrage in fandom if Buffy had pitched Dawn off the tower? And can you imagine her grief if Dawn had died (even if Dawn had sacrificed herself willingly, which she was ready to do.) I don't think Buffy S6 in that situation would have been less depressed than canon and might have been even more so.

However, Spike's death gives her a free choice for the first time in her life. She can continue to slay or she can leave it to the new Slayers. She's not alone and she's not running away. She's living.

Yes. I love this, perfect description.

As much as her friends were there for her, the Scoobies never really could understand her

I think Willow is starting to more in S7, from the other end - having nearly destroyed the world she understands why Buffy has to stop Anya in Selfless. they get each other in a different way that season but the writers sort of then dropped the ball, if that makes sense. (Like, I expected Willow to be the one to stand up for Buffy in EP and take charge of the situation.) But I think part of the problem was too many characters not enough time etc to really develop that.

But otherwise you're absolutely right. I think Xander makes a genuine effort to try to understand better, or at least be more supportive in whatever way he can in S7.

in the way Faith did or the new Slayers could.

Even then - Faith has never been the One girl in all the world, and the potentials won't be. they'll never be alone with the entire world on their backs the way Buffy and the girls who came before here were. And that's exactly the point. Buffy, Willow and Faith unlock that prison.

[baudown.livejournal.com]

I don't want to characterize what she did as "just" suicide though; of course there's the heroism of it. The "why" of it shouldn't lead us to dishonor the sacrifice.

Yes -- this is so important. Her act was a gift, despite the fact that a part of her wanted an escape.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Yes -- this is so important. Her act was a gift

*high five*