Putting The Cop Shows Back In The Cop Shows Thread (And Even a Little Deconstruction, too!)

Paul Henry Rosenberg rad at gte.net
Fri Feb 19 09:47:26 PST 1999


Here we go again. Yet another case of dueling interpretations vis-a-vis Buffy...

James Baird wrote (in response to Liza):


> I'll have to disagree with you a bit on this one. I think what we're
> seeing here is a very subtle exploration of the relationship between
> power and social responsibility, yet another Buffyesque subversion of
> genre conventions.
>
> Both Buffy and Faith are superheroes (or Nietzchean Ubermenschen, if you
> want to go that far...) For Faith, this means that the normal rules
> don't apply to them - if a few innocents get killed along the way, well,
> its all for the greater good, you can't make an omelet without breaking
> a few eggs, etc. It's the same philosophy that leads from Marxism to
> Leninism to Stalinism: those who protect the people from the "demons"
> are entitled to a few privileges.

Actually, I thik it's more subtle than this.

Faith articulates this viewpoint, but there's strong evidence that she doesn't really believe it, she's just using it as a rationale. Thus, not only is this idea put into play, but it's simultaneously called into question by the way it's put into play. I have a similar objection to what Liza said about Faith. She, too, was taking Faith's act at face value.

Liza:


> I have been watching this new plot twist with both fascination
> and horror. the Faith/Buffy thing is about a raging conflict
> between appetite and social conscience -- this in a real-life
> cultural climate where both are totally suspect.

(1) Well, doesn't it say something that BOTH are presented in the guise of central characters? Characters who, whatever their flaws, unquestionably ARE superheros?

(2) But, also, in keeping with the larger point I'm making here, what's even more important is the NEITHER Faith nor Buffy IS what Liza or James says they REPRESENT.

What "Buffy" is doing is using both characters to push forward certain themes, but doing so in a way that calls attention to their constructed (and conflicted) character. Faith does represent appetite, but at the same time she uses this representation to deny aspects of herself that make her more like Buffy. Buffy has ALWAYS both resisted and embraced her role as world savior.

Is it simply a Neithzcehan matter of willing ones fate? Not hardly. Instead, Buffy has actively changed the rules, as James points out:


> Buffy takes the opposite tack. Not only does she reject Faith's
> amorality, she also rejects the Watcher's council's bureaucratic
> moralisms. While they tell her she must work alone and in secret, she
> involves the rest of the group, in a more-or-less democratic way, with
> her activities (which has been the key to her surviving long past the
> average slayer)

This is all true, and it's a very significant rejection of two seeming opposites (Faith & the Watchers), both of which represent their own forms of absolutism.

Still, it doesn't give enough attention to the degree that Faith's challenge gets to Buffy. If it was all that was going on it would just degenerate into preachiness.


> These last two shows have been a sort of test for
> Buffy, a tempting from "the dark side", if you will. I don't see them
> as being "moralistic", however: that implies the didactic tone of an
> after-school special. Rather, they have been moral in the deepest
> sense: showing good people struggling to make the right choices in an
> uncertain world.

Ah, but this is what the show has always been about. The last couple of shows have just taken that to a new level.


> I'm probably thinking about this too much, but Buffy is that rarest of
> shows, one that makes you laugh and cry and THINK about it afterwards.
> Not bad for a series on a second-rate network based on a truly awful
> movie...

Actually, the series is based on the original idea. The movie was a typical Hollywood machination that drained away everything original. Thus, the series is the original idea coming back from the dead...

-- Paul Rosenberg Reason and Democracy rad at gte.net

"Let's put the information BACK into the information age!"



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