Buffy Anne Summers, aka

Hello again. So… are you ready for me to post more about Buffy?

Yes, I’m a little bit disappointed in Obama, too, and not too keen about a lot of what’s going on these days, and yes, I’ve been sorely tempted to post and post and post — but I know I’ve promised a couple of times that the next post would be about Buffy, and I may’ve even implied it would be sooner rather than later (sorry about that)… but okay already.

So let’s talk about Buffy! Or more specifically, why we (or I) love Buffy (the show) and maybe even why and how Buffy loves.

Yes, I’m going to be talking about her love life.

First though, some of the why we love Buffy, or at least some of the why I do: the characters connect to me, and I think it is largely because they all seem so comfortable in their own skins, even when they are uncomfortable, and even in extraordinary circumstances. To a very large degree, in spite of superficial characterizations of a neurosis here and there, in no particular order, Xander, Willow, Buffy, Giles, Oz, Tara, and even Cordelia, all seem to accept themselves for who they are (though not always what they are), and they bring that to their relationships with each other and those around them.

And I guess this is largely true of the villains and demons in the show. Who would say any of the Big Bads were not comfortable with who and what they were? The Master, Angelus, Spike, Drusilla, Mayor Wilkins, Adam, Glory, the Trio, Bad Willow, the First? Okay, sure, Jonathan and Andrew had their little insecurities, and Bad Willow had all that Weltschmerz, and the First was only tangentially an actual character, but still … on some level, nearly all were not only okay with who and what they were, they pretty much delighted in it.

I pointedly did not mention Riley or Faith (Edit: or Angel and Dawn; jeez, I can’t believe I forgot Angel and Dawn!) because, although they did exhibit a share of this delight, their characters don’t strike me in quite the same way. More perhaps on that subject sometime.

No doubt I’m overstating the point anyway, but nevertheless it is part of Buffy’s appeal, I think, that the show is delightful, i.e., it is about characters who delight each other, delight in each other, often delight in the challenges they face (and when not, at least delight in overcoming them), delight in the wit of a well-turned phrase and delight in their own passions.

That’s right. Sounds like I’m back on the subject of love.

And what is love in Buffy’s world if not simultaneously delightful and dangerous? And isn’t it often that way everywhere for all of us?

Whatever love is, most of us would agree that love is a many splendored thing. And I think most of us could agree that love can also be hell. Certainly if you love someone who treats you consistently well and consistently loves you in return, love is great comfort against the often hard realities of life, and certainly if you love someone who treats you with an utter lack of regard, or if you love someone and lose them — to death or intractable illness or to another — that is emotional hell.

But Buffy takes it one step further, doesn’t it? Because in BtVS love isn’t just delightful, it is soaring, romantic passion, mythic in depth and scope — love affairs for the ages; and because in BtVS love isn’t just dangerous, it is deadly, demonic passion, and again sometimes quite mythic in its consequences for our heroes.

As a matter of fact (or at least my impression), BtVS was (or is, depending on how we think about it) bolder than any other prime-time television show I can think of about the relationship between love and violence and sex and death. Passion is passion, BtVS seems to say, and as surely as passion can raise you from the dead, it can kill you.

In some ways BtVS is a stand-in for what we all desire in life: to live life full throttle, with all the excitement, all the passion, to drink deep of all life has to offer; and it is likely most of us would live that way if we were absolutely certain that, like a good, satisfyingly upbeat story, all would end well for all concerned — or at least for ourselves and all those we care about the most.

But we know better. Life teaches us that, doesn’t it? — over and over again from the day we are born; don’t touch the hot stove, don’t fall off your tricycle, don’t run with scissors, look both ways before you cross the street… and be careful what sort of folk you hang with… and who you fall in love with — or you most definitely will get hurt, sooner or later. It’s inevitable.

Of course we get hurt anyway, no matter how cautious we become, but most of us — or at least the brighter among us — eventually learn not to jump blindly into this or that world of pain as if we haven’t a care. But all that caution’s just a little too grown-up sometimes, isn’t it? And it leaves us a little bit sad, too, doesn’t it? And maybe just a little bit bereft of… passion?

So we watch Buffy and vicariously experience the delight, the passion, the danger, the sometimes even disturbing twists and turns and implications of love, of sex, of violence, of death, of grief, of the depths and heights of the all-too-human passions as played out by our hot-blooded surrogates. But we don’t just watch, do we? We flirt with the very things we are afraid of, and long for: death and immortality, and love and lust; and a passion that transcends all, perhaps that transcends even our perceptions of wrong and right, or of good and evil, and certainly that transcends the world and death itself.

And isn’t that why we love it? Why we love these fascinating, passionate, emotive characters, their snappy, nuanced dialogue, and the sometimes great mythic story arcs they (and we) get all caught up in? Isn’t that why we love Buffy?

You bet. Or maybe it’s just me? Whatever. But why does Buffy love Angel? Or Riley? Or Spike? Is it because she is the Slayer? Is it because, on some profound level, our heroine doesn’t merely dance with death but actually makes love to it?

Perhaps. There is certainly that quality to her relationships. She is a killer after all, the Slayer, and yet young and full of life and passion. Drawn to sex and death, to light and darkness, to love and pain and hate and violence, and back to desire and life and love again.

Or maybe it’s just because they’re sexy good-looking hunks? (Hey, as I heard someone say once about interpreting scripture, you tend to take from it whatever attitude you bring to it, right?)

And no, this post hasn’t turned out the way I first envisioned it. I began with the expectation that it would be more about Buffy’s love life, but it has turned out not so much as I intended. Some odd combination of Clio, Polyhymnia, Erato, Calliope, Thalia and Melpomène, perhaps, have had their way with me. Still — now that I’ve broached the subjects of sex, death, light, darkness, love, pain, hate, violence and life itself (all in the same sentence!) — lest I wade in any deeper and find myself lost in the realms of ontology or (God forbid) theology, I will end this post (with a promise to write more about Buffy’s love life someday) right here and now!