Buffy Season One Episode Two: Suspension Of Disbelief Not Fully Achieved

[koganbot]

(1) Why doesn't Buffy get more scared?
(2) Why do she and her gang need to keep this all a secret? (Still not explained.)
(3) Absence of cops not yet explained either. Obviously Buffy and crew won't call 'em, but kids who are being attacked in dance clubs would. (And hey, this was maybe 12 years ago, but cell phones existed, and so did worried parents.)
(4) Don't, like, any other students use the library?
(5) Angel WTF?

(Please, no spoilers in comments.)

Comments

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

(was going to be posted to the previous one but my phone didn't want to)

I never saw these: season 3 was the recommended jumping-on point when I was jumping on. Nor the movie, for which I have no real excuse. Something that I realise I never knew is what Buffy does with her social capital: she's not the loner looking in at the start, she's a cheerleader, the top of the high school pile. Does she ever try and use this as a tool to hand, or does it disappear over night?

One of the reason superheroes have secret identities is as a different answer to the problem of Marlowe: they must act, they must make powerful enemies, but they have ties to society that they must protect (though are Buffy's friends endangered because they're her friends?). Also sometimes the other way around: Buffy's mom is probably generically worried about her daughter drinking and having sex, but wouldn't be greatly relieved to hear that she has little time for that, due to spending increasing amounts of her time fighting the undead.

[koganbot]

Well, my primal experience with dual identity is Zorro, which I saw as a grade-school kid (the Tyrone Power talkie, though the Douglas Fairbanks silent version is better), where it isn't so much that he's protecting his social status but where, as Zorro, he's pretty much single-handedly taking on the authorities and trying to inspire the notables to challenge the Governor. So he has to be able to disappear into another identity or the authorities will kill him. But in his other identity, as Don Diego, foppish and filthy rich son of one of the notables, one who's been going along with the government, he can spy on his enemies on behalf of his Zorro self. But the practical reason isn't as good as the dream-logic reason, which is that as Don Diego he's been told by his dad to acquire a wife, so he as Don Diego literally goes about doing this by offering wealth and status to the pretty young woman whose parents are on the outs with the gov't. And her parents pressure her to say yes, as it will rescue them, but she won't, 'cause she's in love with another man who's been secretly wooing her, the romantic, disreputable criminal, the notorious outlaw... Zorro! -I'm not spoiling anything by telling you this. You figure it all out in the first fifteen minutes or so. What makes this work so well isn't that Fairbanks is a great, dashing Zorro, though he is, but that he's totally convincing as the foppish, irresponsible Don Diego, and there's a powerful tension between the two identities. I don't think that this has much to do with Buffy, however, at least not yet. (I've never read or seen Sheridan's The Rivals, but I have a feeling it's a relevant precursor to Zorro.)