what are your fav metaphors in buffy and can you talkaboiut a couple in depth??
I think my favorite Buffy metaphor is the one Buffy uses in “Chosen,” that she’s cookie dough that’s not done baking. While that seems like an obvious one, through the seasons we see Buffy jump from relationship to relationship, not really sure what she wants or who she wants to be with. But I feel like in season 6, she’s really gotten some perspective in her life, because in season 6 she doesn’t know what she wants. She’s not even sure she wants to be alive, and she doesn’t really want to be with anyone. And that’s when she slowly learns that it’s okay to accept that she doesn’t know who she is yet and what she wants because that will come to her in time and she doesn’t have to rush her maturity, she can just let it come to her and she shouldn’t force herself to grow up any faster than she has to, and for a show about a high school girl that has the major responsibility of saving the world, I feel like that’s the punch line. She is so used to forcing herself to be older than she has to be, and then in season 7, she realizes that it’s okay that she doesn’t have all of the answers, and I feel like that’s one of the most important messages to take away from the show.
Another one of my favorite metaphors is in 2x07 Lie to Me, but not the obvious one everyone thinks of when Buffy asks Giles to lie to her. That is an amazing quote, and one of my favorites, but I love when Ford says, “A couple more days and we’ll get to do the two things that every American teen should have the chance to do: Die young and stay pretty.” I feel like this is a pretty powerful line and can describe so many things, but I feel like Joss was really trying to describe our culture as a whole and why Buffy is so relevant. It’s still applicable now, in movies like Twilight and shows like, The Vampire Diaries. Young, sexy vampires that die young and stay pretty. And we love that, because we are a culture that doesn’t want to get any older. We are a society that is fixated around quick fixes to look and feel younger, from cheap gimmicks advertised at 4 AM to pills and smoothies advertised on Dr. Oz. And it’s supposed to seem like Ford is crazy, right? Here he is, a young kid…he should be enjoying his youth, and instead he is trying to die to make sure that his youth lasts forever. It seems counter-productive, and a bit crazy because it might not work. But if you think about the culture he is in, it’s not as crazy as it sounds. Because he sees the advertisements and the commercials and he sees how aging is so antagonistic to us as a society and he’s like, “You know what? Let’s skip all that. I want to stay young and pretty forever.” And so we’re supposed to watch the show going, “Okay, he’s a crazy person. Buffy’s gonna have to stop him.” But he’s not really crazy, he’s just so tapped into the societal climate, and I feel like there’s a neat sense of irony there. The first time I saw that line rewatching this show, I kind of felt like the line was too carefully dictated, like Joss was really trying to carefully say something here and I believe there are many different interpretations of this, but that’s just one.
I’ll stop there because I’m a bit tired and I feel like the coherency in that last example started to wane a bit, but I hope I answered your question! :)
