Right after the fall of Baghdad, I adopted a new slogan for Abu Aardvark: "The battle's done, and we kind of won, so we sound our victory cheer: where do we go from here?"
Taken from the epic Buffy musical, no single quote better captured the ambiguous nature of the American victory or the murkiness of the future.
If anyone wondered whether Joss Whedon might disapprove of my use of a classic Buffy line as the tagline for this blog, wonder no more.
Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, has endorsed Kerry-Edwards.
Shaun Narine, a fellow political scientist, wrote a classic essay "Power and Legitimacy in Buffy", which helps explain why. Here's my take on the same terrain:
In Season 7, Buffy tries to seize leadership and 'build an army' to face off against the First Evil - whose combination of psychological warfare and Caleb's assassinations and bombing campaigns clearly evoke a terrorist threat. Buffy tries her best, initially rallying the troops through bold resolve (killing the first ubervamp in the Thunderdome), but then losing her way by adopting a moralizing, didactic, inflexible leadership style based on showing strength and resolve. She refuses to consult with her powerful allies or to acknowledge their legitimate concerns and fears, and ultimately loses their confidence. And her policies lead to disaster: rushing in to the old vineyard with faulty intelligence and an unrealistic conception of the balance of power, she watches several potentials be killed and Xander lose an eye.
In the aftermath, she loses her position of leadership as her friends, who love her but no longer trust her judgement, withdraw their consent - not so much because of the disastrous decision she made to rush headlong into an obvious trap out of over-confidence in her own powers and a headstrong urgency to take the offensive, but because she took that decision without consulting with others and without bothering to patiently build consensus behind her plan.
When Buffy returns to the gang, it is with a plan based explicitly on sharing power and decentralizing authority, and a repudiation of being a 'chosen one'. Crucially, this did not mean giving up the fight against evil - it meant waging that battle more intelligently, more cooperatively, and ultimately more successfully. Arrogant unilateralism failed; patient multilateralism worked.
In other words, Season 7 of Buffy always struck me as a fairly explicit critique of Bush's foreign policy (even if dullards on the right missed it), and a foreshadowing of a superior Kerryist alternative. Even Willow's tentative embrace of her own power and overcoming of her own fears about how she might use her power for evil echoes the European (and especially German) struggle with the past; as in Season Four (Adam) and Season Five (Glory), Buffy can only defeat evil when working closely with a self-confident and allied Willow.
This theme runs consistently through the Buffy series: strength comes from teamwork, not from one's own power. Defeating evil always requires that the good learn to trust each other and act collectively. But at the same time, power implies great responsibility and sometimes the powerful will have to do things which others will resent. But if the powerful stop believing in the rules, in their allies, in a collective decision making process, they lose their way.
Maybe now the Weekly Standard will stop their ridiculous campaign to claim Buffy for the Dark Side.
wow. You (and Shaun Narine) have managed the impossible: I no longer despise season 7. (Now I only really, really dislike it).
Posted by: Jenny | October 17, 2004 at 09:09 PM
wow. You (and Shaun Narine) have managed the impossible: I no longer despise season 7. (Now I only really, really dislike it).
Posted by: Jenny | October 17, 2004 at 09:11 PM
Good points-- I must, however, add to this analysis one point-- that it took unconditional love and total empathy (on the part of her former enemy Spike) to give Buffy the courage to be a real leader and not a dictator.
Not that Bush would ever accept that kind of support-- empathy being for Europeans or something-- but anyway, the actor who played Spike (James Marsters) is also for Kerry. :)
Posted by: Anaro | October 17, 2004 at 11:51 PM
Wow (also)... that's an amazing analogy between Season Seven and Bush's 'failure' in the War On Terrah. :) And coincidentally, I used that snippet of 'Where Do We Go From Here' for the title of a post on Friday (also about Iraq).
Posted by: John Steven | October 17, 2004 at 11:53 PM
As a bitter BTVS fan, I feel I have to point out that Buffy's final triumph against evil in season 7 was _entirely based on a fluke of luck_. At the end, she went in with an underwhelming force *again*. (a pack of approximately 20 Slayers against tens of thousands of super-vamps, one of which had given her serious trouble earlier in the season). However, she was bailed out by a magic amulet whose powers she had no knowledge of, or really, any right to expect. If BTVS S7 was a portent of things to come, everyone's completely and utterly screwed.
Posted by: ArC | October 18, 2004 at 02:38 AM
So, does this mean France is the hot but bookish lesbian girl? Or is she Germany? :^)
Honestly, this take on Buffy never occurred to me. The wife will have to hear this one. It goes well with Ron Suskind's piece in the Times Sunday Magazine on the faith-based president.
Posted by: Scott Martens | October 18, 2004 at 10:02 AM
Willow is Europe, probably Germany more than France.
Spike represents moderate Islamism - he has a soul, but his would-be allies find it hard to fully trust him. But Buffy's faith in him is what keeps this pivotal figure on board, and in the end he is the decisive factor - with the light of reason literally shining through him and disintegrating the forces of darkness.
The amulet that Spike uses comes from Wolfram and Hart, which is unquestionably a force for evil - but turns the tide in favor of the good guys, literally by shining light into dark places. Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, perhaps?
Giles, of course, is Britain: a loyal, mature, seasoned ally who has been there before; he does everything he can to persuade Buffy to be reasonable. But in the end, even he can not stand by her in her folly...
Anya, the show's Republican figure (in real life too) dies a heroic but ultimately pointless death in the final battle, and is hardly missed or mourned.
Arc: I agree that Buffy's final strategy was pretty lame, although in her defense (1) it isn't clear that waiting for the ubervamps to get out was a better strategy; and (2) she knew the amulet did *something* even if she didn't know what.
But as for general discontent with Season 7, believe me I'm there. I thought that there were so many missed opportunities, especially with the "wiping out the Slayer line" subplot. But I think the allegory still works!
Posted by: the aardvark | October 18, 2004 at 10:07 AM
Great post. You know, I was thinking pre-soul Spike with the chip in his head is a lot like post-Gulf War Saddaum Hussein under sanctions. Spike wants desparately to be an evil vampire and slaughter innocents, but he can't because of the chip, so eventually he sort of unwillingly joins forces with his previous enemies. Saddam, according to the Duelfer report, wanted to make weapons of mass destruction but he couldn't, and supposedly he thought eventually he would be the US's secular ally in the middle east. The difference between the US and Buffy I guess, is that the Scooby gang eventually did join forces with Spike and turned him into a reasonably good vampire by the end. It's all about diplomacy.
Posted by: Julie | October 18, 2004 at 12:59 PM
Doesn't really add up ... if the rest of the Scoobies were being paid off with oil by the First you might have a point.
Posted by: James | October 18, 2004 at 02:12 PM
Even if the _strategy_ of "liberating the Middle East, starting with Iraq" was crazy, was it inevitable that the _execution_ would get screwed up? Dialogue from "The Harvest" provides one explanation:
Xander: Okay, so, crosses, garlic, stake through the heart.
Buffy: That'll get it done.
Xander: Cool! Of course, I don't actually have any of those things.
Buffy: (hands him a cross) Good thinking.
Xander: Well, the part of my brain that would tell me to bring that stuff is still busy telling me not to come down here.
Posted by: Russil Wvong | October 18, 2004 at 02:21 PM
I'm kind of disappointed to find this analysis, and to find out that Joss supported Kerry.
I think that if, in fact, some of the "allies" you mentioned were actually interested in fighting evil instead of enabling it, this would be extremely accurate. Unfortunately, more and more we find that reducing and eliminating the controls on Saddam Hussein was the actual goal for some of them over the last decade.
I find it interesting that so many writers will right about having the courage to do the right thing, even when everyone says you're wrong, but in the end think that we should just not rock the boat.
I noticed that the post above mentioned that
and yet, with the sweeping changes that have come across the middle east since January it doesn't appear so crazy.
So I guess the real question is this: Should the Iraq war have been avoided because we had no business toppling Saddam, or because it was wrong to do something without France's permission?
Posted by: datarat | April 27, 2005 at 08:39 AM