We've decided that S6 is where the show suffered a serious break in universality of the storylines, in addition to the other issues. Unlike the other issues, there's not a good way to address this particular problem. My solution of "have the whole audience spun into an alternate reality where they've dated my ex-honeys" doesn't appear to be practical, you see.
This is something I was thinking about just the other day myself, coming from the opposite side as someone who honestly didn't understand where the writers were trying to go with S/B, partly because certain developments in Spike's character from late S5 and early S6 had me expecting a redemptive love storyline, and partly because of what my own life experience did and didn't bring to the table. It got me wondering what stories really are universal, if any, and how one as an artist goes about making one's particular experience universal enough to resonate with a wide audience.
For example, how would someone who'd had an atypical adolescence from our culture's perspective experience S1-S3? (e.g. someone who'd been homeschooled in an isolated community, someone from a culture so different they didn't have anything like American high school and/or teen culture, etc.) My gut feeling is that they'd miss a lot of the metaphor, but that the overall quality of the storytelling is so good that they'd understand what was going on and enjoy it.
What S6 has done for me as a writer is that, whenever I realize that some character or plot point is me exorcising a personal demon, I have to be really careful to run it by my writers group or a few beta readers to make sure they're having the reaction I want, or something close enough to it, before I submit it to a wider world.
I think what you're saying with the "feel sorry for" Spike comment is really a major problem that season has. Before "Wrecked" the ME writers had spent almost a year making Spike EXTREMELY sympathetic. He's the unrequited lover, he's the selfless guy who protects Dawn even after Buffy's death, he's the only person Buffy can relate to after she's left heaven, and he's the guy who essentially saves her life in OMWF.
See for me, this is what made it work as to the characterization of Buffy. I could buy that she found him hot, not only because of Marster's appearance, and Buffy's fondness for the undead, but because there were some real moments.
I found S5 Spike creepy and stalkery, FWIW, not sympathetic.
And this, for me, also played into making it work. It made it clear there was a big-assed glass ceiling over Chipped!Spike's head, and he wasn't ever butting through it without a soul. It was the perfect set-up for him to seek a soul. The soul was a perfect set-up for him not ending up a big pile of dust (given the rape attempt).
And the rape attempt was the perfect set-up for, in the end, it never really working out for them.
I didn't think Buffy was a bitch for treating Spike like a pariah; I don't think Spike was a bastard taking advantage of Buffy's depression. I thought they were both awful for treating themselves like that. It rang true to me.
The first THREE times I read this, I read it as if you were saying you did think Buffy was a bitch, but Spike wasn't a bastard. I was all ready to shut off my PC, so I didn't go 'splody. Reading what you actually wrote is, of course, much better, because it comes very close to how I feel.
DMP was my first episode, and the dead-eyed dumpster sex was what made me want to watch more - I'd never seen that type of self-destructive sexual behavior portrayed on prime-time TV & it just FLOORED me.
That's what I thought when I watched it, and then I read the script and got all disappointed. That was supposed to be a sexy look. *sigh* Still,
Dead Things
was nothing if not self-destructive sexual behavior, as far as Buffy was concerned, so it's not like the writers missed that totally.
My gut feeling is that they'd miss a lot of the metaphor, but that the overall quality of the storytelling is so good that they'd understand what was going on and enjoy it.
I would call myself a statistical outlier in the cultural regard, but even though I hadn't been through much at all of what they were trying to paint with metaphor, or even been witness, I feel I got it.
I don't know if you'd be an outlier in the sense I mean, ita--I wasn't thinking so much about the specific details of American adolescence as portrayed on the show as much as the broader concept that "adolescence" itself, the idea of an intermediate stage between childhood and full maturity, with its own culture and problems, is not a human universal.
At least, I'm pretty sure I read that in some anthropology text or another at some point, and it made enough sense to me that I nodded sagely and said "Hmm" in a reflective way.
How do you skip human adolescence though? Without being raised by wolves.
I didn't know high school was hell until I started watching TV/movies about it. And I was in university by that point.
How do you skip human adolescence though? Without being raised by wolves.
By going straight to adulthood, with all the responsibilities and expectations thereof, as soon as you hit physical maturity.
IIRC, the article I read described adolescence as a relatively recent invention, from when cultures got complex enough that people needed additional preparation to take on adult responsibilities beyond what they'd have at age 12 or 15 or so.
Of course, I'm describing something I vaguely recall reading years ago, so it's entirely possible everything I'm saying is pure b.s. But it makes sense to me--I mean, I don't feel like my paternal grandmother, who married and had her first child at 14, had anything I'd call an adolescence, though the social concept certainly existed by that time.
By going straight to adulthood, with all the responsibilities and expectations thereof, as soon as you hit physical maturity.
Hmm. You're kind of describing my parents' generation in Jamaica. I think my father could get Buffy, but my mother despises metaphor, so she'd be no use.
Oh God, that's brilliant.
