BtBR and all that jazz

[maggie2]

A recap of some exchanges about Scott Allie's answer about Buffy the Bank Robber, a few thoughts, and one conclusion

BtBR and all that Jazz

 

I’ve been running around for a few weeks now saying that I remain hopeful about how season 8 will pan out. Part of that hope has been the confidence I have had that Joss meant to jar us with the revelation that Buffy was robbing banks, and that of course he would know that we would need something in the story to help us understand how the Buffy at the end of The Chosen could come to be a bank robber. Not necessarily a flashback to a straightforward report of her making the decision, but something about what’s happened to her that would illuminate for us how she could have come to think robbing banks was a good idea.

 

Anyway, Allie replied to another question that there really wasn’t going to be anything in the way of “filler” about what happened between season 7 and season 8. That was in answer to a question about whether we’d see Anya’s funeral – and I think it’s safe to say that while a flashback like that would provide closure for fans, it’s not something we need to see in order to understand what’s happening now. Buffy’s decision to rob banks, on the other hand, needs some explaining. There are a variety of different stories about how that evolved and they have bearing on how we understand the story as it unfolds.  I  asked the following question (via Enisy and Emmie):
 

I have a follow up question for Scott on a different subject. He has an answer in his latest where he says that they aren't going to do any filler between season 7 and season 8. That's specifically in response to a question about whether we'll see Anya's funeral or anyuthing like that.

What I want to know is whether we should take his answer to mean that we've been told all we are going to be told about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved into Buffy the Bank Robber. Do Joss and Scott think that this is such an organic development of her character that we should have no problem filling in the blanks for ourselves (much as we really shouldn't have any problems filling in the blanks about Anya's funeral)?

 

And Allie posted the reply late last night:

Yes, I believe this is all you're going to be told about how Buffy the Vampire Slayer evolved into Buffy the Bank Robber. You might learn a little more by the end of the arc. I do think there's a story there, of how she came to make the decisions to do these things, how she looked at her growing army of Slayers and tried to think of a way to finance it all, and settled for crime. But I don't think that's a story that needs telling in Season Eight. I know that the desire to fill in continuity goes directly against the narrative device of in media res, and I know that Season Eight still has a lot of open questions. I think what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy, rather than how she came to be a little corrupt. I hope the story is succeeding there, in the long run.

 

So that’s pretty depressing if we take it at face value.

I find it really, really hard to believe that Joss Whedon, for all of his failures and blindspots, would disregard what I had taken to be one of his first principles and that’s that we need to be able to trace out how characters have developed over time and what events and choices have impacted that development. Personally I thought BtBR was the greatest moment of the comics so far. It explained a lot about what had seemed off in No Future For You. And it seemed like such a huge thing, for Buffy the Vampire Slayer to have consciously decided to completely and utterly flout human laws, something that Buffy was capable of, but which she certainly was not necessarily destined to arrive at. Because BtBR helped crystallize for me a good bit of what had seemed puzzling, I took it to be the first in many such revelations, each one of us would give us a better sense of what it is that we’re really looking at. That’s the main reason I’ve been so patient with the fact that we’ve gone nearly two years watching a set of characters who are still not so easily connected to the ones we last saw in Sunnydale.

 

Beer Good Foamy had some interesting reactions when we exchanged about this a bit this morning:

 

His remarks:

Thanks a lot for posting that! Wish I could say I was surprised, but I agree that it's depressing.

I don't think that's a story that needs telling in Season Eight.

Because obviously, the motivations of the main character aren't all that interesting.

know that the desire to fill in continuity goes directly against the narrative device of in media res

That's not an argument against filling in continuity; it's an argument against in medias res, at least the way it's being used here.

think what's important for Season Eight is understanding how corruption/compromise has affected Buffy, rather than how she came to be a little corrupt.

Even when the corruption/compromise is in large part due to her own actions? Like I've said before, it makes the story less about free will and having to deal with the moral and practical consequences of your own choices, and more about fate screwing you over.

Oh well, at least now we can stop wondering when the big reveals that make sense of everything are coming and just enjoy it for what it is. Of course it's possible that he's only referring to the bank robbing specifically - which after all is just a symptom of the New And Improved Buffy - and that we'll get a more general backstory on how she (and Willow, and Giles, and Faith, and...) came to stop being whatever she'd been before. Which would be nice, but I do think that's grasping at straws. I'd love to get proven wrong about that, but it looks like after "Chosen", Buffy becoming a criminal with a Nietzsche complex is just the natural order of things. I especially like the point that if we’re just going to focus on the consequences of Buffy’s corruption, we’re missing the sense of how those consequences connect to the exercise of her agency running up to that big decision. It’s really hard to know how to judge or understand what unfolds if we don’t know how it came to be.

Anyway, because this all gives me massive cognitive dissonance – how to square what I had taken to be Joss’s greatest strength with an astonishing disregard of it – I’ve decided to go with plan B and hope that Allie is just misinterpreting what Joss is up to. He’s given us misleading answers on other subjects, and almost always they take the form of answering a specific question in a way that seems to generalize but really doesn’t. In particular, in answer to a question about whether Buffy knew that Cordelia was dead, Allie said we could assume that Buffy knows everything Andrew knows. But that’s belied by the opening scene of the season. Pressed in a follow up it became clear that Allie just wanted to say that Buffy knew that Cordelia was dead through Andrew. In this case, he seems to be tracked on the question of whether we’re going to skip back and have a straight-forward narration of what happened. But that’s not what I need here. What I need is a revelation or something that helps me see just how exactly it made sense for BtVS to become BtBR.

There is some other news in all of this. Having spent time reading Allie’s questions and answers it sure seems like there’s a clear pattern. When asked about something that isn’t going to happen, he tells us. Neither Robin will be back. Tara will not be back. There might be plans to do something with Kumiko but not for a very long time. Etc. When asked about other things that might happen, he replies that it would be spoilers to say. Now, maybe he does say it would be spoilers to say something was not going to happen. But he’s told us an awful lot about what’s not going to happen. Anyway, he was asked about whether Spike would be back and it would be spoilers for him to tell. If there were contracts on Intrade on the question of whether Spike was going to have an impact on the plot in season 8, I’d be buying heavily.

Whether that’s a good thing or not depends a great deal on whether Joss is still the sort of writer who knows that the statement that Buffy just “settled on crime” is not an answer but a big honking question that has to be addressed.

 

Note: I tried to put in LJ links but it's creating all sorts of problems.  Any advice on how to avoid that in the future?

 

Comments

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I just don't think it's at all obvious that after spending 7 years defending the world from apocalypses as the only slayer and without any hint that she wanted to rob banks to get high tech weapons or anything like that Buffy has suddenly arrived at a world where the ONLY way to save the world is to rob banks to get high-tech weaponry.

It’s not obvious a priori. It becomes clearer, however, if you *look* at what’s happening and how the world has changed that there are good in character reasons why Buffy might have come to believe that robbing a bank was the best way she could come up with to get the equipment to co-ordinate international activities (never an issue as long as she stayed in Sunnydale) and protect her Slayers from the increased number of demonic attacks (which she notes in the text). It’s not the only interpretation but it has Occam’s razor on its side in that it works with the text that we’ve been given both in the comics and the TV series and doesn’t depend on a whole set of future revelations being made. IF such revelations are forthcoming then I’ll change my mind but not before.

Similarly I would hazard that Buffy’s not talking to Willow for much the same reason Willow isn’t talking to her. They’ve both made decisions that may have made sense in the circumstances but which are far from above criticism not least from their perpetrators. Whatever Twilight’s assertions Buffy is no stranger to self-doubt. I actually don’t think of her as a “good person and a hero.” I think she’s a flawed person who despite that generally tries to do the right thing and that’s what she’s still doing here. She may of course be wrong about what that right thing is and how she deals with that will be interesting.


Others of us look at bank robbing and other signs of real changes in her priorities and so on and wonder if the actions don't shed more light on the person than the other way around

What *actions* other than the bank robbery (which we’ve discussed)? A discussion with Willow where she suggests that Slayers might defend themselves against attacking army units? She’s killed in self-defense before now. A poorly worded warning to Satsu and Co that they have to be and be seen to be more human than human? Killing a Future!Willow who had outlived her humanity and by her own admission bent time itself to bring Buffy to a place where she had to do just that? She killed Angel remember. Everyone sees what they want to see. I like Buffy, I don’t think she’s a paragon but I like her. Other people seem think she’s annoyingly self-righteous and needs to be knocked off her pedestal. What Joss thinks we’ll see all in good time.

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

Well, we are going to see what we want to see. I've always thought Buffy was a bit self-righteous. And I've thought she's made serious mistakes. But this really does look like a different Buffy, because these are not one-offs, it's a whole life-style.

Taking your last paragraph point-by-point:

I take the bank-robbing to be on-going, not incidental. And the proceeds aren't being used just for necessities, some of it is bleeding into luxuries. And I'm still not convinced that all the high tech stuff is necessary either. We aren't given enough context to judge, either pro or con. (That is, if you are happy using consequentialist morals, which I'm not; and which the 'verse has been pretty hostile to).

Killing in self-defense in the moment is not the same thing as contemplating killing in a very blase manner. There's no sign that it *bothers* her.

Poorly-worded or revealing?

Killing without hesitation. Running Angel through devastated her. This girl is MUCH harder.

Actions you've omitted (off the top of my head):

Callous attitude to the dead and dying humans in her battle in #4.

Very nearly killing Gigi when there was no imminent threat to herself, but rather cause she was just mad at her. (And specifically because she hurt a SLAYER. Contrast Buffy's feelings about slayers with her feelings about humans -- it's part of why some of us take her "more than" as revealing).

Not wanting to save humans in ToYL so she could focus on the big picture, and not caring about the humans who would have been killed if Fray hadn't been compelled to jump in. More evidence that "more than" is revealing.

In point of fact, Buffy is only roused to anger when it comes to things threatening the slayer line. She tortured a vamp and set him on fire; and was very cold about killing every last one -- because the slayer line was threatened and Renee killed. These are not bad of themselves, but compared to her lack of concern for human well-being it further suggests that "more than" is revealing.

And "more than" matters because it was the "more than" that separated Buffy from Faith and it's the "more than" that Buffy felt bad about feeling in CwDP.

I don't think Buffy needs to be knocked off her pedastal. I think she's off. She's not a compelling heroine. She's a hardened leader who seems to be primarily concerned with the welfare of her own tribe. She has lost the mission.

And I think we are meant to see that. In NFFY we start off thinking that the mirror is Gigi and Faith -- rogue slayers, mirrors in the bathroom. But the true mirrors are Gigi and Buffy. They are in castles. They don't show signs of caring about their lessers. They have red-headed mages working for them. NFFY begged us in a million different ways to see that Faith is now what Buffy once was, and that Buffy is in danger of becoming what Faith once was.

That's the comics I'm reading. I find it interesting. And as for how much sympathy I have for Buffy? Depends on how she got here. But we haven't been told that.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

I take the bank-robbing to be on-going, not incidental. And the proceeds aren't being used just for necessities, some of it is bleeding into luxuries. And I'm still not convinced that all the high tech stuff is necessary either.
In A Beautiful Sunset Buffy describes Willow as being upset about her Thomas Crown affair. Singular. What luxuries have you observed, as in items not directly connected with Slaying or self defence? Even Faith is using high tech rope shooting gun thingies to get around Cleveland. Both the frequency and the luxuries are your assumptions with no direct evidence in the text. They’re what you think Buffy would do based on your opinion of her.

Killing in self-defense in the moment is not the same thing as contemplating killing in a very blase manner. There's no sign that it *bothers* her.
But that’s exactly how Buffy typically reacts to things that do bother her. She keeps up a surface façade of “it’s our guarantee.” One of the things that’s struck me most about her in these comics is the difference in demeanour between the public face she shows to the new slayers (and to a certain extent to Willow possibly because lately they haven’t been around each other much) and the much more introspective thoughts she has when she’s alone or occaisionally with Xander (in A Beautiful Sunset).

Poorly-worded or revealing?
Could be either.

Killing without hesitation. Running Angel through devastated her. This girl is MUCH harder.
Your main problem with her seems to be that she’s not emotional enough. But she looks pretty devastated all the way through stabbing Willow starting with that single tear and breaking down to her knees whaen re-united with current Willow. Her Sunnydale-Pleasantville dream specifically chooses Angel as the character to address the Willow issue. The difference is that now she can’t afford to indulge her emotional breakdowns the way she could when she was a teenager.

Callous attitude to the dead and dying humans in her battle in #4.
She knew Willow could save them. All of them. If she didn’t care whether they lived or died it would have been much easier to kill a few as she did the Knights.

Very nearly killing Gigi when there was no imminent threat to herself, but rather cause she was just mad at her. (And specifically because she hurt a SLAYER. Contrast Buffy's feelings about slayers with her feelings about humans -- it's part of why some of us take her "more than" as revealing).
Buffy’s a trained swordswoman. If she really intented to kill Gigi she wouldn’t be waving the sword around over her head, she’d be going straight for the heart. Buffy’s feelings about Slayers are the same as for her people, Xander (Renee’s death affected him directly and her first instinct was to protect him and leave the other Slayers to fight their own battles), Willow, possibly even Andrew. Being prepared to risk the nameless mass of humanity in order to save her friends or family is a flaw she’s always had as I noted in the second half of my original comment.

She's not a compelling heroine. She's a hardened leader.
Then we simply have very different ideas about what makes for a compelling heroine. Hardened leader Buffy has always been more interesting to me than the schoolgirl who let her emotions rule her. Not surprisingly, I find Elinor more compelling than Marianne.