if the apocalypse comes, beep me

I don’t watch much television. In fact, I think I’ve turned on my t.v. to watch something other than a DVD about once in the past year. Where I grew up in Vermont, we got one channel: CBS. Sometimes, if we moved the t.v. around the living room, we would get PBS or NBC with a lot of snow. But that was it.

So I’ve never really watched a lot of t.v., which is not to say I don’t love it. I do. I’m a big phat pop culture whore, and what is more popular than television. Absofuckinglutely nothing.

Pop culture makes me feel better when I’m feeling bad. Like ice cream, my other panacea for what ails me, the rapid, rabid consumption of pop puts a big psychic band-aid on my pain du jour. And like ice cream, I’m not convinced it’s good for me, but I realize that the occasional pop binge isn’t going to be that deleterious to my overall health.

So that was the wind-up and here’s my confession: I have a Buffy problem. I can sit down and watch DVD after DVD of Buffy, season one to season seven, skipping over my lesser loved episodes, or not, and be happy for hours. Days, even.

When I’m feeling blue, and I am, nothing makes me feel better than a little trip to Sunnydale and the Hellmouth.

I am not going to talk about how well written it is. Much. But it is. I never watched the series when it was in production. Friend after friend would tell me, you should watch it it’s really good you’ll like it you really will. And I dismissed them. It’s really well written, they’d say. Uh-huh. Whatevs.

I just didn’t see what could be compelling about a group of preternaturally good-looking teens dealing with the supernatural. I mean, ick.

Dawson’s Creek with the undead? Who gives a fuck?

Frankly, teens, teen drama, teen comedies, teen dramadies bore me to freakin’ tears. I was a teen. I hated it. There is no power on earth that could make me willingly relive my adolescence. I would rather suffer the fates of the heretics in Dante’s hell, be buried head down in flaming pits of sulfur and have demons stick my bare feet with pointy tridents for eternity, than be a teen again.

So why, I thought, would I want to watch Buffy?

One day a few years ago when I was sick with the flu, I rented the first three DVDs of the first season. This is really rather good, I thought, as I blew my nose and watched a very young Sarah Michelle Gellar make vampires go poof with a stake. It was funny and it was sly. It was self-aware and it had a fully formed sense of irony. All good things.

But what was really great was it was metaphoric.

I love metaphor. I live my life seeing things in the shapes of other things. I think that because my childhood was so painful and so lonely that I couldn’t cope with things as there were—combined with the fact that I read like it was going out of style, and it was—I see the world as symbols.

Yes, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But Freud died of oral cancer from smoking. So do you really want to believe him?

Buffy is all about metaphor. What better metaphor for high school is there than being on a Hellmouth? High school, in fact adolescence, is hell. There are those who pretend, and pretend successfully, that it is not, but let’s be real. All those hormones? All that pressure? All those new hairs? All that desire to leave the nest paradoxically combined with a fear of the world? Hell, my friends. Hell with blackheads.

When Buffy falls in love the first time, she falls for a vampire, a good vampire, Angel, a friendly vampire, kind of “a CareBear with fangs,” as one character puts it. What better metaphor is there for not understanding the opposite sex? He is almost exactly unlike you. And then, when they finally finally finally fuck, he turns evil and leaves. And Buffy is heartbroken.

Girl, you are singing my song.

And yet, Buffy is empowered with strengths she doesn’t even know she has. Again with the metaphor, this time for growing up. Through the seasons, she shoulders challenges ranging from averting the predictable apocalypse (“What,” Buffy and friends say in one episode when warned of the upcoming end of the world, “Again?”) to the death of her mother to raising her sister. Buffy is girl power embodied. What’s not to like?

Actually, a bit. She’s too thin. Too blonde. Too well-dressed in her Dolce & Gabbana tank tops. Her hair is too improbably coiffed, even when she too vociferously protests she looks like a street urchin. The show, sometimes, lapses into the stereotypical and hyperbolic. But, again, whatevs.

It rocks.

And it makes me feel better. Because Buffy is not alone, I can remember that I am not. Because Buffy can kick ass, I can embrace the pugilist within. Because Buffy can provide a witty remark at inopportune times, I can appreciate my own funny. Because Buffy can find solve her crises, I can find my own solutions. Because a slayed Buffy returns to life repeatedly, rising from her own ashes, I can remember that I too can recover the self lost to pain, to depression, to whatever.

And I can remember that this hell, like high school, will end. And when it’s over, I’ll be the better for it.

Comments

[Tima]

I worship Buffy and Angel is not too far behind. Nothing like really beautiful young people kicking ass, always doing the right thing and being ethical 100% of the time. No manipulation, no inuendo, straight forward no nonsense battle against all bad things. I love them.

[Autumn]

I'm not a fan, simply because I'm not into TV. at all really. I watch cartoons with my man. That's it. Otherwise, the thing stays off. I rather despise it, but there you are.

But I'm glad Buffy helps you so. :)

[plum]

television is what binds us together as a nation. i think that god gave television to adam and eve in the garden.

[koshka]

i'm a bit late on this bandwagon...only by a year or so. i've loved your blog since i first started reading it, finding i identified with much of your prose, seeing bits of myself in the baring of your soul. and now to realize you appreciate the brilliance of buffy....
my darling, you simply rock.

[badinfluencegirl]

buffy was one of the most underrated television shows of all time. i'm glad i found it at episode four because i got to watch it new instead of spoiled by hype and hyperbole.

but really, regardless of when you get on this train it keeps you there.

[she didn't start out too thin, i think the stress of being the title character or a tv show for seven years with martial arts tossed in would make anyone get either fat or thin... it's a pressure cooker and some people don't eat and some people eat too much with stress right?]

[meg]

Friend after friend would tell me, you should watch it it’s really good you’ll like it you really will. And I dismissed them. It’s really well written, they’d say. Uh-huh. Whatevs

that is exactly how i became the buffy freak i now am. i bought the first season for a roommate and she somehow convinced me to watch it with her, after i'd successfully made it through two years of cohabitation without watching any current episodes with her. so we sat down and watched one episode. and another and another and soon, i was hooked. i rented seasons two - seven and watched them straight through the summer.

man, i know what i'm watching tonight. tabula rasa, what?