>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!"