Joe, over at The Kugelmass Episodes, recently posted his take on Buffy sexuality as a prelude to a discussion of pop-culture sexuality. If you plan on continuing to read this post after the first two sentences, it might serve you to read that post here. My comment in response follows, and, in re-reading my comment in light of Joe's response (which follows farther down the linked page), I did a double take. Sometimes, it seems, you miss your own point.
I guess I'd start by saying that it seems Joe's point and my point have passed each other in the night without really connecting. You might say they were strangers. Strangers who passed in the night. And couldn't really see each other because it was dark. They might have exchanged glances.
Saying, "Trying to continue holding fast to the shows protestations of romantic feeling creates more problems than it solves," Joe goes on to talk about the romantic choices of the characters as evidence (and, please, correct me if I'm wrong) for the shallowness of sexuality in pop-culture as read through the show.
My point, in evoking Schiller, was completely different from talking about the characters' romantic entanglements as some kind of Tragic Romance that was valuable for the sake of its affirmation of sentimentality. I was trying to evoke the logic of the show itself in Schillerian terms...and I did a terrible job.
Let me try again. After an incredibly long and stupid excursus, I hope to return to Joe's argument on his own terms.
I am going to ventriloquize Schiller for a second. And, since that's boring, I am going to put myself into dialogue with him.
The scene: Jonathan's kitchen, 4 am. Enter Jonathan, hungry.
Schiller: Art is a salve for a wound.
Me (surprised): Who the fuck are you?
Schiller: I am Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller.
Me(rummaging in fridge for sandwich fixin's): What wound is that, Johann? Er...Christoph? Can I call you Christoph?
Schiller: I prefer Friedrich, actually.
Me (under breath): Could have guessed.
Schiller: What was that?
Me (toasting bread): Nothing. You were saying? A wound?
Schiller: And the name of this wound is "history."
Me (gets out stone ground mustard, decides to go with white wine instead): Oh, so. Good. Heals it right up, then, does it?
Schiller: No. Nothing can heal the wound that is history.
Me (prepares cheddar cheese) : That's a pretty crappy salve.
Schiller: No. For the wound is not a wound.
Me (disinterestedly folds roast beef slices so they will fit on bread): No?
S: No.
Me (retrieving bread from toaster and constructing a sandwich): ...
S: ...
Me (impatiently): So, what is it then?
S: It is the anguish caused by the ironic position of wanting to be original in the face of history, when one is trapped within the march of history.
Me: And art heals that anguish?
S: No.
Me (looks at sandwich. looks at door): Of course not.
S: Art merely holds up the possibility of creating something beautiful. Something that would transcend history.
Me: So, art is a time machine?
S: No. Art is failure.
Me: What?
S: Art cannot transcend history. It merely provides us with the eternally foreclosed possibility of transcending history. The art that remains is a failure, but one that contains within it that possibility for others.
Me: Okay. Nice to meet you. I'm going to go eat my sandwich, now.
Fin.
Okay. So, I was not trying to evoke this as a way of saying that the tragedy of their specifically romantic choices was what was worth holding onto in the show. Rather, in my opinion, all the choices by all the characters (not just the principals), through this same formal construction, seem to be attempts to get out of one situation in order to arrive at another. Even the vampires and demons succumb to the idea that the status quo is hell (the status quo I refer to here is specifically not the status quo held up by Buffy as normalcy/popularity, etc, but I will get to that in a minute). The possibility of change, however, is constantly removed beyond reach. Stake a vampire, there's another vampire. Kill a demon, there's another demon. Blow up a hellmouth, there's always Cleveland. The thing that makes this interesting is that it works both ways. Kill Buffy, you get Kendra. Kill Kendra, you get Faith. Kill Buffy again, you get... Like the attempt to make art, the attempt to change the status quo is merely an attempt, and one that results in failure. This is why making art and attempting change are both inferior to making sandwiches.
This particular logic produces two effects, which coincide with Joe's argument in, I hope, productive (or at lest interesting to read) ways.
The first of these effects is the endless production of irony. In the face of the impossibility of the Slayer accomplishing what it is that she is created for, all of her exploits become ironic. This is what leads, on the one hand, to the ironic hahas of the meetings and the Scooby Gang's overall idiom. On the other hand, this leads to those moments of "total negation," where Buffy is alone in the night with vampires: youth destined to kill ancient things that are already dead. This is futility in the face of history. Perhaps that is a useful way to think through the show, perhaps not. It is clear to me, however, how this conception of the show's irony produces the kinds of desire to which you refer, without needing to bring in the death drive.
The second effect that I perceive is perhaps a simple by-product of the first. After all, the problem of irony is that once it begins, it is difficult to tell where it ends. We must examine the status quo with this in mind.
The status quo of this show is ironically presented (it is here where your reading of the show's lack of insight into highschool might be in conflict with mine). The school is simultaneously every school everywhere, and a very specific location--the confluence of ley lines, etc., the Hell-Mouth, we are told. But then, the specificity of this location is revoked. It is A hellmouth. Any hellmouth anywhere. It has become-- because of its ironic construction--both like and unlike any other school.
The normalcy that Buffy craves is ironic because it doesn't exist. The show points this out over and over again. Find one character that fits the image of the status quo that Buffy longs for, and the whole show falls apart. Those characters that are marked by their lack of supernatural abilities, occult activities, etc., are also those that are torn apart in most unnatural ways. Buffy can never win. To win would be to assert a status quo that is some kind of status quo ante. This is impossible both in the Schillerian sense of the impossibility of transcending history, and because there is no before time within the context of the show. Demons have always existed, and vampires, and humankind has always been on the brink of death, ("Apocalypse. We've all been there.")
This is the element of the show that I find to be insightful. It is not the equation of the SAT and money to college applications on the show--just to take one example among many--that is damaging. It is that equation outside the show. The show is contextualizing this kind of decision-making within a discourse wherein everything the viewer's status quo presents as valuable is made laughable by virtue of irony and the basic questions of survival that the show raises.
Last thing. I promise.
This relates to the "'real' perversions" of the show. The thing that is being shown to be perverted on the show is the perception of high school held by people that incorrectly perceive themselves as holding up a vision of the status quo. This is ultimately why Cordelia, the champion of that vision of reality, is subverted and brought into the fold of the Scoobies. If you believe that SM culture--this example will have to stand in, synechdochally, for others--is not taken seriously by the show--is somehow marginalized or made insignificant by the fact that Spike and Drusilla engage in it (and, here, I am thinking of the suggestion that none of the "principals" engage in it)--I suggest that you take a look at the sex life of Buffy and Spike again. There, if nowhere else, are moments that specifically address your concerns about sexuality. If I have to put it in psycho-analytical terms, and believe me, I do so only as an example of the structures I am trying to suggest, what the show does to the status quo of everyday life is what Freud does to the status quo of sexuality in--and here you have me at a disadvantage--"Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." Please correct me if I have my reference wrong, but it is here where Freud suggests that the norm, when it comes to sexuality, *is* pervervsion--or, if I must qualify, that perversion is present in even psychosexually healthy beings. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, from the moment of its title, enacts this belief, but not in purely sexual terms.
2 comments:
I'll tell you what I find funny: how closely much of this anticipates or perhaps reincarnates the debates I've been having with surlacarte over irony. (You're probably familiar with surlacarte via his other, American name.)
I'm definitely excited to see the relationship with Spike develop, if only because that would mean that Riley was no longer Buffy's boyfriend. I'm sure it will prove to have strange elements, just as the relationship with Riley proved to be strangely vanilla. But actually I don't disagree with your overall point. Perversion is in the nature of the show, both in the literal sexual sense, and in the sense of an inevitable weirding -- the perversion of normalcy. I was just keen not to have the weirdness of all the relationships overlooked in favor of a relatively scarcer number of explicit references.
Also, it would be easy for me to agree with the Schiller if it didn't seem (from the wonderfully amusing dialogue you've constructed here) that somehow Schiller views artists as absurd heroes, somewhat along the lines of Sisyphus. In other words, if the Schillerian pathos involves an effort at transcending history that is doomed in the first place to failure, than I wouldn't see any value in creating art. The only point to art, in that case, would be to tug the heartstrings with a vision of what never can be.
(Note: The fact that I do see value in it leads me to think that Schiller and I might have different accounts of temporality.)
We may be getting close to the heart (ha!) of the issue if the stakes (haha!) are survival; that is, if people need to believe in a better world in order to continue to fight off darkness, even though that darkness is continually laying siege in a way that makes the better world impossible. In fact, this is more or less a direct quote from the show.
This is where the matter gets extremely dicey for me, for two reasons. First of all, there is simple defeatism. I know you're kidding when you say that making sandwiches is better than art, and better than attempting change, but the appeal to common sense and simple pleasures only goes so far. I mean, is it really worth defending to the death the right to make sandwiches? Vampires eat too, and as far as I can tell, they "live for the moment" a lot more when they eat than me with my peanut butter and whole wheat.
But the other point is that once you've accepted that you have to believe in a fiction in order to live (such as the fiction of the possibility of transcending history), then you are completely vulnerable on the question of what that fiction should be. Religious evangelists are constantly preaching that man cannot live without faith in God; "if God did not exist, he would have to be invented." You would have to believe in him, and thus obey him, if you didn't want to fall into despair. That kind of vulnerable cynicism, which leads to a deadly combination of self-loathing and credulity, is exactly what I hope to continue writing against.
One other comment: Buffy has a side to it that isn't fun. It's not exactly a dominant side, thank goodness, and I've mostly been able to avoid it by reading reviews of each episode beforehand. I'm talking about the show's propensity for allegories about drinking beer, joining fraternities, abusing your children, wanting to commit suicide and so on. While I would like to allow the infinite tide of irony to carry me far away to sea, the fact that Buffy can make a speech to Jonathan that Whedon calls a "mission statement" for the show, about the reasons he shouldn't kill himself, implies that the show's writers understand that their art has real implications for its audience.
I'm not in love with the most predictable moralizing episodes, which are usually standalones. But the approach shows up frequently enough (including in great episodes) that I can't discount the relationship between the show and real life on the grounds of irony.
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