To get back to BtVS, Buffy comes clearly from a petty bourgeois background: her mother is a self employed small business owner. Willow comes from a petty bourgeois background, too: Her parents are part of the academic petty bourgeoisie/state servants. With Xander we don't know but presumably he comes from a working class background and Giles is a capitalist/seems to come from a capitalist background (he has enough surplus capital to invest this capital to earn a living, even tough he works as a librarian as a cover for his "real job" as a watcher).
While Buffy moves on to become proletariat, Xander moves on to become petty bourgeoisie/payed by the surplus value of the company he works for, hence alienating him from the proletariat which works under him (there are differing theories if this means Xander is merely "well paid proletariat", or "petty bourgeoisie" or even "capitalist", since he is payed out of the same budget - the surplus value - which pays the "true" capitalist's paycheck/luxury.).
Now Anya: She comes from a non-capitalist society where she's presumably part of the peasantry (one of the main classes under feudalism, while only an ancillary class under capitalism). Being a vengeance demon plays very importantly into her class background: Not only is she the patron saint of scorned women, she is revenge incarnated of the oppressed main class of her time: The peasantry. When time moves on and industrialization and capitalism become the dominant economical model within society, Anya moves with the times and sympathizes with the new oppressed main class: The proletariat.
The break in this comes when she becomes a human high school student: Suddenly, she becomes "capitalist" (more like petty bourgeoisie). And the question is: Why?
I have two rather unsatisfactory answers to that:
1. High school in BtVS is coded "petty bourgeois". While this of course is not true in real life, where many, many more people hail from a proletarian background, at least in Sunnydale High School the majority of the students seem to be members of petty bourgeoisie. Hence, Anya becomes petty bourgeoisie herself.
2. As i stated in my previous post, Whedon doesn't "get" the working class. He's unable to depict a believable working class member, nor does he seem to be able to reconcile the idea of "working class vs. capitalists" (the antagonism of the two main classes) with the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1990. Hence, he tries to "talk over" the antagonism of the main classes and denies it's importance to our daily life: The antagonism "vanishes" in his work, the only remnants which stay are certain "mind sets" and self imposed ideologies.
(Also, the majority of the audience self identifies as "middle class", or petty bourgeoisie.)
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branchandroot
cont'd
Date: 2012-11-22 12:59 pm (UTC)While Buffy moves on to become proletariat, Xander moves on to become petty bourgeoisie/payed by the surplus value of the company he works for, hence alienating him from the proletariat which works under him (there are differing theories if this means Xander is merely "well paid proletariat", or "petty bourgeoisie" or even "capitalist", since he is payed out of the same budget - the surplus value - which pays the "true" capitalist's paycheck/luxury.).
Now Anya: She comes from a non-capitalist society where she's presumably part of the peasantry (one of the main classes under feudalism, while only an ancillary class under capitalism). Being a vengeance demon plays very importantly into her class background: Not only is she the patron saint of scorned women, she is revenge incarnated of the oppressed main class of her time: The peasantry. When time moves on and industrialization and capitalism become the dominant economical model within society, Anya moves with the times and sympathizes with the new oppressed main class: The proletariat.
The break in this comes when she becomes a human high school student: Suddenly, she becomes "capitalist" (more like petty bourgeoisie). And the question is: Why?
I have two rather unsatisfactory answers to that:
1. High school in BtVS is coded "petty bourgeois". While this of course is not true in real life, where many, many more people hail from a proletarian background, at least in Sunnydale High School the majority of the students seem to be members of petty bourgeoisie. Hence, Anya becomes petty bourgeoisie herself.
2. As i stated in my previous post, Whedon doesn't "get" the working class. He's unable to depict a believable working class member, nor does he seem to be able to reconcile the idea of "working class vs. capitalists" (the antagonism of the two main classes) with the breakdown of the Soviet Union in 1990. Hence, he tries to "talk over" the antagonism of the main classes and denies it's importance to our daily life: The antagonism "vanishes" in his work, the only remnants which stay are certain "mind sets" and self imposed ideologies.
(Also, the majority of the audience self identifies as "middle class", or petty bourgeoisie.)
Which is not how it works. ;-)