Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2 x 11: "Ted"

[red_satin_doll]

Originally posted at the Jossverse Big Damn Love Fest: http://big-damn-fest.dreamwidth.org/3818.html


RUNNER-UP: Best Meta (Not Fade Away) category of the Wicked Awards Round 10
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Warning and Disclaimer: I have thoughts - and a lot of feelings - about "Ted".  This is quite serious, and more than a little personal; some very triggery subjects will be discussed. I’m not kidding. If this isn't your thing, by all means feel free to hit the back button right now, and no hard feelings.  If you chose to continue otherwise, considered yourself welcome as well as forewarned. But please leave your weapons at the threshhold before you come in. Then wipe your feet on the mat, and help yourself to cookies.  (Or hot cocoa with extra marshmallows.) Also, I apologize for the formatting but LJ is being very disobedient tonight.

And then there's the simple truth that when you engage in violence, accidents happen. We aren't robots. We can't turn off and turn on with the flip of a switch--and if we could, then we'd be okay with murdering people to gain our own ends. That fact that Buffy's violence is motivated by love is essential; it is both dark and light--she dances on the razor edge and she only has her instincts to guide her. - angearia
http://2maggie2.livejournal.com/33960.html

***

In 1958 Lana Turner’s 14 year-old daughter Cheryl Crane stabs her mother’s boyfriend to death, allegedly in an effort to protect her mother.  (The man, Johnny Stompanato, had gang connections and a history of violence behind him.)  The court rules it justifiable homicide.

***


Thirty years later another teenage girl, oldest of four siblings, reads about Cheryl Crane, admires Crane’s courage, and wonders if she would be able to do the same, if the need arose. Her (second) stepfather is a large and powerful man; her mom is barely 5’3”.  Would a baseball bat be sufficient?  A kitchen knife? She decides on a rusty WW1-era bayonet and hides it by her bed. Her mom finds it and removes it without a word.

***


In the end, it’s unnecessary anyway; her mom divorces her husband and her daughter can breathe again, a little, and home becomes a safe place to be for the first time in years. It’s not that the girl wanted to hurt her stepfather.  She knows that would be a horrific act; she also knows that there are people out there, other girls, for whom such things are unimaginable.  But she’s been surrounded by violence her entire life, and so it’s not off the table. What is unimaginable in all her dark reveries, risking death for the sake of her family, is the notion of defending  herself from her stepfather. Not once does that occur to her.

***

In 2012 the same girl, now a woman, finally watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the first time. She enjoys the cleverness and subversion of the “high school is hell” metaphors, the witty dialogue, the genre tropes and subversions. She is entertained and amused, even moved at times, but she doesn’t really identify with the pretty, perky ex-cheerleader at the center of the story.  It doesn’t really touch her own experiences, and isn’t remotely scary, even when Buffy goes down to meet her death at the hands of the Master for the first time. (There are a total of seven seasons, after all; ergo, nothing to worry about.)


***


And then the woman watches “Ted” and for a few moments, she is terrified - for Buffy, and for the girl who hid a bayonet by her bed all those years ago. Memories she’s (thought she’s made) made peace with and packed away tumble out unbidden, like an overstuffed dresser drawer.  She knows that her experience is not identical to Buffy’s, after all, and there’s a relief in that; the girl she once was couldn’t fight back, couldn’t protect her herself much less her family, and never even dared to protest or sass back; Buffy can, and does. She has resources that girl of long ago, and most abused children, can never dream of - confidence, physical strength, strength of character and will, resourcefulness, as well as devoted friends who come to her aid.


***


But Buffy Summers is just a girl, after all, a 16 year old girl operating on instinct. She’s been given a “license to kill” (demons) and almost zero guidance in how to use it.  The Watchers’ Council cares nothing for her welfare, or for the countless girls who have preceded her; what matters is that the Slayer does her job properly and follows the arcane rules imposed upon her, traditions handed down through the centuries.

Ted Buchanan, as it turns out, would make an ideal Watcher by the Council’s standards, barring his use of physical violence, and even that’s not a sure thing. After all, the original Shadowmen chained a girl and forced the power of the demon upon her; the Watchers' Council may be more “civilized” on the surface, but they uphold a terrible tradition. The Slayer is used, discarded and replaced when she rebels or no longer suits the councils needs. Surely more personal abuse and violations of Slayers by individual Watchers is not beyond the pale.


***


Likewise Ted demands obedience from a string of women, discarding and destroying them when they disobey him or are no longer useful. How many Slayers throughout time have come before Buffy (later Kendra and Faith)? How many other people has Ted hurt or killed, women who wouldn’t follow the program, in addition to the four wives in his closet?  The Watcher’s Council and Ted both operate within closed systems; they may allow minor changes and adjustments so long as the original paradigm is preserved.

***

Of course Buffy defeats Ted, motivated not just by her Slayer instincts but the instincts of a daughter and friend to protect the people she loves. She’s the Hero, after all. And yet she suffers for her actions; social ostracization, guilt, and shame. Heros may not end up in court charged with justifiable homicide but there are still consequences to bear. (There are always consequences.)


***


Or at least there are if the Hero is a teenage girl. Violence from men is so common as to be unremarkable; violent acts committed by women are still considered shocking. It’s no accident that at the end of the episode Buffy and Joyce agree to a rewatch of Thelma and Louise, a movie that disturbed and polarize audiences because two female protagonists commit violent acts against male characters onscreen; the same violence by male protagonists is a commonplace in movies, and a guarantee of box office sales.


***


So Buffy succeeds but at a cost.  Her mother is safe but heartbroken and terribly lonely, unable to even look her daughter in the eye. Whatever her personal animosity towards Ted, much of it justifiable in light of his behavior, the last thing on earth Buffy ever wanted to do was to hurt her mother. The bond between them, one that suffered fissures long before “Ted Buchanan” came into their lives, is further damaged.  And yet they love one another, deeply, no one questions that, and there’s the rub.  The anger and love are warped and woven into one another so tightly that what poisons their bond also strengthens it.


***


And so it is with her best friends, with her mentor, with everyone who comes within her circle. Violence begets violence. It stains and spoils everything it touches; it cannot be put back into a tidy little box, locked up and tossed away.  We can atone for it but we cannot undo it.


***


But this a fictional story and in fiction, unlike real life, there must be some catharsis for the viewer, a chance to release the anxieties the story has provoked, to relax and breathe again. And so it is for the characters themselves, or at least it seems at the moment.  The episode ends happily, one might say conventionally, enough. More dramatically than the story of girl with the bayonet, perhaps (real life has no resolutions, remember); but Buffy and her mother come to an uneasy, unspoken peace on the back porch, their home (women’s space) reclaimed, and they can breathe again, for a time. Rupert Giles and Jenny Calender share a passionate kiss for the first time, Xander and Cordelia giggle while Buffy averts her eyes. It’s an ending worthy of Shakespearean comedy: All’s well that ends well.

Except, of course, that we’ve seen the entire series, and we know too much. The moments that made us smile and cheer when we first watched are painful now. (Not as painful as the memory of that bayonet and all it represented, but certainly poignant.) The characters onscreen have the luxury of perpetual innocence; they can’t know yet that Buffy will hesitate to kill her lover and it will cost Jenny her life, and Giles his only chance at love; that Buffy will eventually run a sword through her lover’s heart. The truth of Buffy’s calling will be forced upon Joyce at the worst possible hour and their relationship will be very nearly destroyed.


***


Much has been made of Buffy’s “daddy issues”,  at the cost of the complex mother/daughter relationship, and so scholars and fandom inadvertently repeat the sins of Ted Buchanan, and of the Watchers Council.  We forget, dismiss or overlook the fact that it always comes back to this: the love between a girl trying to grow up in an uncertain and frightening world, and a lonely mother so deeply in denial she cannot see what’s in plain sight before her eyes.


***


And Ted’s fingerprints (do robots have fingerprints?) can be found in the final hours of Buffy’s story when Giles and “General Buffy” and their friends represent the last vestigal traces of the WC, haunted by ghosts and locked into a closed and destructive paradigm. Violence begets violence.


***


In 2012, Buffy became my Hero - by which I mean my fictional hero, my avatar, as opposed to real life heros such as my mother.  (Make no mistake - in her capacity to love and endure, I consider my mother heroic.) My brothers grew up with Spiderman and Batman and Hans Solo; with countless tales of soldiers and kings throughout the ages. I had to wait until I was in my 40’s to find her.


***


Was it worth it the wait? Yes, it most certainly was. Yet I can’t help feel a little wistful that Buffy Summers wasn’t around in the 1970's or 1980’s; I certainly would have loved her then as I do now, if perhaps for different reasons. I can hope that in the years since that at least one other girl or boy, etched with anger and violence, haunted by dreams of murder that are so common as to be unremarkable, has felt just a little less frightened and alone because of her.

Comments

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

the episode, to me, was majorly about this character abusing Joyce and Buffy.

And about divorced families, and the awkwardness of dealing with a parent's new partner; but to me this episode is also very much about the abuse of power and responsibility in general but ESPECIALLY in terms of the responsibilities of parents/adults (including teachers, administrators, etc) to children, which has huge ripple effects throughout the series. I just rewatched the dream sequence between Buffy and Hank in Nightmares and the actor and character reminds me so, so much of Ted- in the dialogue, in his physique and coloring, in the extreme close-ups of the two of them. (The resemblance makes a lot of sense - that Joyce would be attracted to someone who in some way reminds her of Hank, who may have reminded her of her father, etc etc.)

But somehow the theme of "misuse of power" gets pinned almost entirely to Buffy, that she's "irresponsible" in not pulling back. (Ted using his knowledge in computers to create robot Ted is another such abuse of power, and Willow's lines at the end of the episode foreshadow S6.) And it's odd to me; people have acknowledged that she take responsibility for Ted's "death", but earlier in the episode, when Ted catches her cheating at mini-golf she immediately owns up to it, even if it's a much bigger deal to her than him. And therein lies the problem; if he'd joked with her a bit, or winked or shrugged his shoulders, the outcome might have been completely different; she might have been more willing to give him a chance. When he threatens her - forget it. She's on high alert.

And here's the irony - if she'd let down her guard, the consequences certainly would have been worse. Eventually she would have eaten those cookies, she would have been lulled (drugged) like everyone else by his charming exterior. She and Joyce might have ended up dead, and so forth. That's a very real possibility, and a very frightening one in part because it's so terribly true. Abusers are not wearing warning signs on their chests, or scarlet letters; they're ordinary people, they can be charming and lovable; they can put on a good front for their friends or at work and then unleash their frustrations at home, etc.

[kikimay]

Right there with you. It feels like there's the initial part - very short - of the episode is about Buffy's parental issues because it's hard for her to watch her mother with another man, but then he gets extremely creepy at the mini-golf. And it always scares me that sequence not only because of what he says - and what he says about slapping her makes him more clearly as potential abuser - but the bit in which he nervosly beats his leg and that is the moment in which I feel like he's restraining his intense wish to attack her. I think that body language is far more sincere than actual language and you can see what people don't what to say at laud with their instictive actions.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

Oh I agree with every word of this. As I mentioned, when I first watched the episode I wanted Buffy to give the guy a chance at first - I'm older now, and have more sympathy for my mom, more forgiveness of the past, and so I wanted Joyce to have some happiness on her behalf. (Just like I want Buffy to be happy on behalf of myself.) I mean, he cooks! (My second stepfather was a great cook though; that should have tipped me off right there. Not kidding.) He's generous, and unstuffy and he makes Joyce happy, and he's John Ritter! I grew up watching him on the comedy show "Three's Company", and he projects "likability". Comedy hijinks will ensue, right? And THEN...

And it always scares me that sequence

Exactly.

And I think a lot of people - on the show itself and in fandom - chalk up Buffy's intuition to Slayer sense, or at least that's implied - but I don't think that's the whole story. Kids are remarkably attuned to what's going on around them; and in households where there is abuse, you have to be. It's about survival. Buffy's parents are divorced, she's grown up listening to them fighting, she's had to develop a very sensitive antenna. I think her Slayer skills simply interlock with or enhance what she already possesses. She's a good Slayer because of who she is, not the other way around IMO.

[kikimay]

she's had to develop a very sensitive antenna. I think her Slayer skills simply interlock with or enhance what she already possesses. She's a good Slayer because of who she is, not the other way around IMO.

I agree. And I really believe that physical force without resorcefulness or ability to study the situation is nothing for a good warrior. The difference could be that, for example, a normal person can also detect all the creepy aspects of Ted but if you aren't strong enough physical you can't fight him in case of attack. Buffy has the combo of these two aspects: she detects Ted's strangeness and she also can kick his abusive ass.

[red-satin-doll.livejournal.com]

She says it to the Potentials in S7: If your instincts tell you to run, you run. And we can apply that to RL, and not just to situations of "abuse". How many of us have gotten uncomfortable "red flag signals" in our gut about a person or situation - a potential mate, a new boss or a job, etc - and ignored those signals until it was too late?