Essay: ‘Apocalypses on BtVS’ or ‘Why Buffy smiled’

[elisi]

I was thinking about ‘Chosen’ a while ago, and about Buffy’s smile and her friends’ banter at the end and how sharply it contrasted with everyone’s grief at the end of ‘The Gift’. Did this mean that no-one cared about Spike, Anya and all the dead Potentials? Personally I never thought so, but I began to wonder about the differences between Glory’s

Comments

[aycheb]

So Buffy chooses life. She runs as fast as she can, so she can live for both of them. And of course she smiles. Because she knows what it is to sacrifice yourself for the one you love - for the world.

I think you’re so right about this. And the more you think about Chosen and The Gift the more differences there are. For one thing the Gift ends with everybody seeing Buffy’s broken body for the first time. The grief is a very visceral response and heightened by the fact that at this point none of them know that she died willingly, understanding that this was the work she had to do. Except for Dawn who’s too involved and too young to comprehend fully. Even so, for Dawn, her grief is relatively subdued.

Another comparison that could be made is with Not Fade Away. In the final scenes only Illyria has actually had to witness Wesley’s death. The others acknowledge her grief but there’s hardly time to do more. And we have Spike making jokes about Gunn’s mortal wounds. Is that obscene?

And she leads out her troops with hope, not despair

Again big difference. And whereas in The Gift all they were able to do was restore the world to its previous condition, minus Buffy, to beat back the dark for a time; in Chosen they’ve changed the world, they’ve set the potentials free.

[elisi]

These are excellent points. Especially about the response to seeing Buffy's body and the parallel to NFA. I wish I'd thought of all of this and managed to incorporate it in the essay! :)

Instead I'll just opt for admiring your brain.

[paratti]

Except that in NFA the two dead things, the dying man and the broken god show respect for the dead before moving on to the task in question and trying to keep Gunn on his feet. A decency that's all too lack in the Mall Rats.

[asta77]

And we have Spike making jokes about Gunn’s mortal wounds. Is that obscene?

I'd say no, then again, we were cracking jokes at my dad's memorial service. We all deal with grief/loss differently and I think the Scoobies used humor as a way to cope and put off dealing with the reality of the situation. I have no doubt they cried buckets of tears later. I mean, if they were real. ;)