Season 3 Premiere, "Anne."
Let me set the scene for you- Buffy has been captured and thrown into a dungeon. .... remember that part in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom where all of the villiage kids were kidnapped & turned into dead-eyed slaves to work the mines, looking for those glowing Stones of Power? It's basically that.
Buffy gets lined up with the rest of the new prisoners on the block. The guard goes to work- dehumanizing them, rooting out all hints of "who they are" and grinding them down, until.... they are no one.
Guard: You work, and you live. That is all. You do not complain or laugh or do anything besides work. Whatever you thought, whatever you were does not matter. You are no one now. You mean nothing.
(to boy) Who are you?
Boy#1: Aaron. (gets bashed to the ground)
Guard: (to Lily) Who are you?
Lily: No one.
Guard: Who are you?
Boy#2: No one.
Guard: (to Buffy) Who are you?
Buffy: (beat... suddenly eyes turn from dull to confident/mischevious)
(perky) I'm Buffy. The Vampire Slayer. And you are...?
(She knocks him out)
Buffy: Anyone who's not having fun here, follow me.
Sometimes we need a Buffy- we shake our groggy head and rub our eyes and wonder how we ended up down in the dungeon. A few words from the reigning bully reminds us of how we got here. We faced a choice: be yourself and prepare for a smackdown, or accept "nothingness" and slink to the shadows.
Sometimes, we are Buffy, and we need to enter that dungeon, stop the bully and remind the captives that they are free. They are okay. They just need to remember who they are.
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4 comments:
Some days I want to be Buffy, but I think I might be the bully. Hard to know which one you are at times. Maybe there's a little bit of bully in BEING Buffy, but it still needs to be done. It's too bad that for some, being bullied back is the only way the message gets through.
But no matter what, it's always good to know that someone's got your back when you feel like you're alone and without a voice!
Alise, you have been very YOU for as long as I've known you. I'm sure there's "yet to be revealed" stuff, but you've always been wayyyy more to the Authentic side of the Public Persona Spectrum.
As for being a bully- Gandhi and the nonviolent movement stress looking at ones'self first. Not saying you are a bully (I don't see that), but it's a good way place to squeeze that concept into the conversation.
And, sometimes, the actual bullies do need a smack-down of sorts... like on Scrooged when Carol Kane's character says, "Sometimes you have to slap them in the face, just to get their attention."
(Buffy would just kick their butt and stake them into dust. ...but we're Christians and we don't DO that)
As to your last sentence- to quote Tom P, and for the second time in a day-
Amen.
You just reminded me how much I love Buffy! I need to watch the whole series again although I don't have the super cool Chinese version!
Hi Eljabo! Logo is showing Buffy now, which is a happy thing. I hope that can help off-set the disappointment of not having "Chinese Bu-ffay" ;)
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