Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight Issue #21: Harmonic Divergence(spoilers)
As one of my best friends would say this issue is as cute as a puppy with knife or in this case as cute as a pomeranian with vampire fangs. It was funny but for me it touched on an issue that I'm passionate about but also upsets me. The influence that our media and popular culture has on the general public. It was very well written. Espenson had to take a big plot point(the reveal of vampires to the general public) and do justice to it in one issue. There are still some unanswered questions which I have a feeling will be answered in the rest of this arc. Some people are asking themselves would the American public buy that? I don't think everyone would, but I think more people would than most people would think. What I've learned from being a communication major is that there are an alarming amount of people that do not understand the effect that the media/news media has on the way they view the world. If you have ever edited footage before you know how different something can turn out depending on how you edit it(On a side note I think that it is incredibly important that public school systems have media education programs). Many people get their information from the news and begin to trust their news station as an end all source of information without wanting to think about the fact that the information is controlled by a group of people that has an agenda(based on advertising, political parties and who knows what else). In a culture that prizes being knowledgeable you have to question who's controlling the information and why. And people can be defensive when you inform them of this because most people want to believe they think for themselves. But the media is such a powerful force that it's easy to be influenced and not acknowledge it. If the media presents us with one side of a story and we don't hear any other prespectives, a large amount of people could buy into it because they haven't heard the counter-argument. Such is the exact case in this story.
Think about it for a minute(from the prespective of someone who doesn't know who Buffy is or about the supernatural world under the known world). The reveal of vampires to the general public was Andy Dick being bitten by Harmony. She didn't kill him, he enjoyed the experience(that wasn't confirmed but one can assume). The first and only vampire the american people see is nothing like what fictional stories make them out to be(a vicious male that drains the life out of women). Harmony seems cute, blonde and bubbly(the exact appearance and charisma of an American celebrity of today) Since it is universal that we all feel misunderstood for one reason or another people indentify with this "innocent" girl that is "misrepresented" and "misunderstood." Mainly, because they don't have any other vampires to compare her to. Then a girl(slayer) shows up and tries to kill this girl(vampire) who doesn't kill anyone(she bites people because she has to survive and those people may derive sexual type pleasure from biting, which could seem amoral, but our culture idolizes Paris Hilton even though she's amoral) and seems perfectly harmless. And if you think about it Harmony is harmless compared to other vampires. She just wants attention(a human quality) and is willing to do what ever it takes to be famous( her biting the executives to get famous=having sex to get famous proves that ). She wasn't doing any of this to hurt Buffy or do anything particularly evil but she ended up causeing Buffy more strife and doing the world more harm then majority of the villians Buffy has encountered. In other words HARMony seems HARMless but caused more HARM to the human race(think of all the people who will die because they think vampires are harmless) than Angelus, who is reguarded as the worst vampire that ever lived. The slayer is the one who appears the villian because she is trying to kill a being that appears to not be a killer. The real nail in the coffin(coffin, vampire, I crack myself up) was when Harmony appeared on the news with a respected journalist. That legitimizes everything that happened on her tv show to the american public. Because of the power, impact and influence of the media, Harmony(the lamest villian in Buffy history, even lamer then the nerd trio), managed to throw the world into chaos. It upsets me greatly to think that if the wrong person is ever represented in a positive light by the media under the right(wrong) circumstances in could cause utter devistation. Ok...I'm done depressing you. I could write another paragraph explaining the impact celebrities in mainstream popular culture like Harmony(Paris Hilton) have on teenage girls, but I'm sure you've heard that rant.
I'm glad that the comic book medium allows Joss and company to tackle this issue. They could have never done a storyline with this message on tv. More sponsers would have backed out than when they got in trouble for mocking fast food during Double Meat Palace(also written by Jane). I think MTV allowed themselves to be mocked because they see comics as a part of counter-culture that doesn't influence the primary audience that watches their network. They saw it is an opportunity to show that they are "good sports" and will allow someone to make fun of them. That's just my opinion. It wasn't my favorite issue in the sense that it upset me but I have great respect for Jane Espenson who certainly shows she has a pair. She was ruthless to MTV and mainstream popular culture in a way that makes me want to sob with graditute. I think she might be a personal hero of mine for writing this for the pure fact that not enough people within popular culture(even if it is a less popular part of popular culture) addresses the impact of our media/ news media on the public(and does it well).
I really felt sorry for the slayer that tried to kill Harmony in this issue. I can't believe Buffy and co. didn't do more to recruite her. You think they would have a better system for finding and recruiting slayers. The way Buffy described their organization did make it sound a little cultish. Buffy has been so focused on her mission and is so self important that she is out of touch with the world. The best example of this is at the end of the comic when Willow says "Buffy, it seems like the world doesn't know we're the good guys." and Buffy says "No. They do. They have to. Right? They can tell who's wearing the white hats." Not that I blame her. It's way more than she can handle or should have to handle.
More fun things I liked about the issue. Jane wins for best things in the comic frame that are insignifigant to the story but make me laugh my ass off. My favorite of all these is the horse coming on to Dawn and Willow(Willow was in overalls! *gets all choked up and nostalgic for the earily seasons*) and Xander pushing it away. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up. Also I loved Willow braiding Dawn's tail, Andrew's Spice World shirt, all the unicorns and my little ponies in Harmony's room, the name of the tattoo parlor, hot vamp gets a taste of A. Dick, and all the superhero symbols on the tattoo board. I love the fact that Clem was in this issue. I missed him and he works perfectly being Harmony's friend/lacky. And I loved how Harmony said that no one understands what MTV stands for. And that perfectly understandable when Music Television doesn't really focus on music.
Think about it for a minute(from the prespective of someone who doesn't know who Buffy is or about the supernatural world under the known world). The reveal of vampires to the general public was Andy Dick being bitten by Harmony. She didn't kill him, he enjoyed the experience(that wasn't confirmed but one can assume). The first and only vampire the american people see is nothing like what fictional stories make them out to be(a vicious male that drains the life out of women). Harmony seems cute, blonde and bubbly(the exact appearance and charisma of an American celebrity of today) Since it is universal that we all feel misunderstood for one reason or another people indentify with this "innocent" girl that is "misrepresented" and "misunderstood." Mainly, because they don't have any other vampires to compare her to. Then a girl(slayer) shows up and tries to kill this girl(vampire) who doesn't kill anyone(she bites people because she has to survive and those people may derive sexual type pleasure from biting, which could seem amoral, but our culture idolizes Paris Hilton even though she's amoral) and seems perfectly harmless. And if you think about it Harmony is harmless compared to other vampires. She just wants attention(a human quality) and is willing to do what ever it takes to be famous( her biting the executives to get famous=having sex to get famous proves that ). She wasn't doing any of this to hurt Buffy or do anything particularly evil but she ended up causeing Buffy more strife and doing the world more harm then majority of the villians Buffy has encountered. In other words HARMony seems HARMless but caused more HARM to the human race(think of all the people who will die because they think vampires are harmless) than Angelus, who is reguarded as the worst vampire that ever lived. The slayer is the one who appears the villian because she is trying to kill a being that appears to not be a killer. The real nail in the coffin(coffin, vampire, I crack myself up) was when Harmony appeared on the news with a respected journalist. That legitimizes everything that happened on her tv show to the american public. Because of the power, impact and influence of the media, Harmony(the lamest villian in Buffy history, even lamer then the nerd trio), managed to throw the world into chaos. It upsets me greatly to think that if the wrong person is ever represented in a positive light by the media under the right(wrong) circumstances in could cause utter devistation. Ok...I'm done depressing you. I could write another paragraph explaining the impact celebrities in mainstream popular culture like Harmony(Paris Hilton) have on teenage girls, but I'm sure you've heard that rant.
I'm glad that the comic book medium allows Joss and company to tackle this issue. They could have never done a storyline with this message on tv. More sponsers would have backed out than when they got in trouble for mocking fast food during Double Meat Palace(also written by Jane). I think MTV allowed themselves to be mocked because they see comics as a part of counter-culture that doesn't influence the primary audience that watches their network. They saw it is an opportunity to show that they are "good sports" and will allow someone to make fun of them. That's just my opinion. It wasn't my favorite issue in the sense that it upset me but I have great respect for Jane Espenson who certainly shows she has a pair. She was ruthless to MTV and mainstream popular culture in a way that makes me want to sob with graditute. I think she might be a personal hero of mine for writing this for the pure fact that not enough people within popular culture(even if it is a less popular part of popular culture) addresses the impact of our media/ news media on the public(and does it well).
I really felt sorry for the slayer that tried to kill Harmony in this issue. I can't believe Buffy and co. didn't do more to recruite her. You think they would have a better system for finding and recruiting slayers. The way Buffy described their organization did make it sound a little cultish. Buffy has been so focused on her mission and is so self important that she is out of touch with the world. The best example of this is at the end of the comic when Willow says "Buffy, it seems like the world doesn't know we're the good guys." and Buffy says "No. They do. They have to. Right? They can tell who's wearing the white hats." Not that I blame her. It's way more than she can handle or should have to handle.
More fun things I liked about the issue. Jane wins for best things in the comic frame that are insignifigant to the story but make me laugh my ass off. My favorite of all these is the horse coming on to Dawn and Willow(Willow was in overalls! *gets all choked up and nostalgic for the earily seasons*) and Xander pushing it away. I laughed so hard my eyes teared up. Also I loved Willow braiding Dawn's tail, Andrew's Spice World shirt, all the unicorns and my little ponies in Harmony's room, the name of the tattoo parlor, hot vamp gets a taste of A. Dick, and all the superhero symbols on the tattoo board. I love the fact that Clem was in this issue. I missed him and he works perfectly being Harmony's friend/lacky. And I loved how Harmony said that no one understands what MTV stands for. And that perfectly understandable when Music Television doesn't really focus on music.