For the past couple months, I’ve been re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD. Since the show ended
The first episode I ever saw was the one after Buffy and Angel make love and Angel becomes Angelus again. Drama. Betrayal. Shattered romance. Spike. I was hooked. I wanted to be Buffy. I wanted to be the heroine kicking demon butt, I wanted Spike to love me. I wanted to have a “Scooby Gang” and be pals with Willow and Xander and Anya… I wanted Spike to do naughty things to me… I was a Buffy addict, I watched the musical over two dozen times the first week it aired until I knew every song by heart. When the show ended I cursed and cried and didn’t know what I would do without my weekly Buffy fixes.
Whenever I go back and re-watch something I enjoyed in the past (or re-read an old “keeper”), a part of me is scared that it won’t live up to my memory and I’ll end up ruining it for myself. What if the Buffy magic was gone for me?
Happily, Buffy is still a pleasure to watch. I love the stories, the plot, the characters, the dialogue…and in fact, I’ve discovered new pleasure from the show. Episodes resonate for me on a whole new level. Although a part of me still wants to go out to slay some vampires, I find myself empathizing even more with Giles and Buffy’s mom. Yes, I’m relating with the “adult figures” which makes me laugh. I guess I’m a grownup after all.
So this got me to thinking about just how much our life experiences affect our perception of what we read/watch/etc. How no two people experience any TV show the same way, or get the same thing out of a book, because each person brings their “baggage” into the equation. Since Buffy first aired I’ve gotten married, bought two houses, had a child, become a work-at-home mom, and experienced the death of several close family members. I’ve experienced more life—and that reflects on my choices of what I like to read and watch…Buffy still included.
So my question is, what books have you read, or TV shows/movies have you watched, have you gotten different things out of at varying stages in your life? Has there been a book you absolutely loved growing up that you don’t like as much now? A song you hated when you were young that suddenly fits your mood?
And as an aside, I’d still take Spike any day of the week. Some things NEVER change.
All right, I admit it. Emergency 51 has to be the one show to affect me the most profoundly. Yes, I’m grimacing here and I expect you not to laugh. First off, I only watched it with my grandpa who died when I was in first grade. I don’t remember much of him, so why is it I remember VERY clearly sitting on his lap watching Emergency! I wanted to be…a fire engine. According to my family, I thought I was…a fire engine. Not a dog, or a horse, I didn’t have an imaginery friend, but I was, indeed, a fire engine. At least I told them all I was in a past life. So what was it that made me think that at 4? What made me believe so strongly in my four yr old mind that I had been a fire truck in a past life? An inanimate object for God’s sake! Why couldn’t I have been a queen or something? LOL. I still watch Emergency reruns today…boy has TV changed
But nevertheless, I find myself enthralled by the stupid show, so I know it must have had a profound affect on me for some reason. Probably because I was indeed a fire engine in a past life. Now, ask me if I wanted to be a fire fighter when I grew up. Hell, no. Fire is scary.
Ohhh, I have a couple. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, one of my favorite movies of all times has changed a lot for me. I think because I have moved from the perception of just being in love and married, to being in love, married and with kids now. I understand completely what Sidney Poitier was saying that he didn’t owe his parents anything. And the speech at the end by Spencer Tracey makes me cry even more.
Books, big change for me. IN my college years I wanted to suffer. I wanted long, painful stories without happy endings. I was young and it was THE thing to do as an English major. Now I like the happy endings. While I still love to read literary stories, I almost always pick romance over them. Or at least something with a happier ending or a story of triumph over those suffering times. Life is too short not to read about happy things.
There was one book that everyone told me I should read, other readers. It was before I was published and I can’t remember the book’s name, but I read the first page and gave it away. It was a story about a woman coming to terms with MS, and I just can’t do that. We have someone in our family suffering with that right now, and it is in the final stages(or so they have been saying for three years) and I just couldn’t deal with it. A few years earlier, it probably wouldn’t have bothered me at all.
Mel
When I was a kid (13 or 14) I started reading V.C. Andrews books. At the time I loved them. There was so much drama and hidden meaning in everything she wrote. Going back and reading them as an adult, however, was an eye opener. I re-read the Heaven series…and was depressed for a week afterward. Things I wasn’t able to fully understand as a teen hit home in a big way and the ending no longer seemed as satisfying as it had before. It was a gigantic disappointment.
Funny you should say that about Buffy. While I found the trials and tribulations of teenage, schoolgirl Buffy trying to cope with school and slaying, amusing I still related more to Giles. By the time she got to college I tended to feel “get over yourself, you silly immature brat” . I didn’t really enjoy the series as much after that point, what was acceptable / understandable in a schoolgirl, I couldn’t tolerate in a supposed adult.
The books and movies I truely loved when I was young I still love. When I reread or watch them again I feel the years slip away and I am experiencing my life at whatever age all over again. Reading Charlottes Web still makes me cry. Ferris Buelers day off still makes me smile and wish that I to could skip school and have that exciting of a time. I can turn on a baseball game and swear that I can smell the smoke of my grandfathers cigarettes and no matter my mood I am filled with a sense of safety and love. Music does the same.
I hope you are feeling better.
Terri
Whenever I hear the Ghostbusters theme I remember the uh… shenanigans we used to get up to in junior high school.
Romancing the Stone (movie) brings back a ton of memories, too.
As for Buffy, I think I was far too busy drooling over Spike to do much relating =P
“To Kill a Mockingbird”. I watched that movie when I was a young girl and didn’t understand the significance of half of it. As I got older, everything came together and it was so much more meaningful.
There are so many movies that I watch now that I know would have had no meaning for me years ago. Maturity will do that for you. By the same token, books I’ve read years ago, I find I can “escape” back into now. They never seem ruined for me even though I’m able to view them with a different perspective.
DH and I were the same way with Buffy. We let the show come and go without watching a single episode through. We saw bits and pieces of them and thought they were just too cheesy/corny.
Then came the awesome-ness that is Joss Whedon’s Firefly. After the bastardos at Fox canceled the show (of which the Browncoats revolted and the show was resurrected for one last hurrah in the movie Serenity), DH and I decided to check out Buffy, but only because Joss created it. We LOVED the humor in Firefly. So we thought we’d check it out.
The first season was very rough, but entertaining, and we got through it and bought the next few seasons. Before we knew it, we were buying the ANGEL seasons as well, and watching them in tandem. I think we had a Buffy marathon, and in a course of a few months, had watched the entire Buffy/Angel canon. Yup, we were Uber Couch Potatoes.
We kicked ourselves for never watching the show, however, were soothed by the fact we could just go out and buy the next season when we were finished.
And OMG, Spike!! He’s the reason why I so loved the show. Everyone fawned over Angel, but it was Spike, in my opinion, who stole the show. The vamp all vamp heroes should aspire to be. LOL
Ironically, it was all the other characters DH and I loved, Willow, Xander, Giles, Spike, heck, even Cordelia, but NOT Buffy. All she could do was whine and cry about herself. lol At first, I thought her “sister” Dawn would be like adding a crappy “Scrappy Doo” to the plot, but I ended up even liking Dawn more than Buffy.
To specifically answer the question, there was one song I’d listened to umpteen times as a kid, called “Old Enough To Know” by Michael W. Smith. I sang along, knew the words, but didn’t understand what he was singing about.
It wasn’t until I was singing along with the song in the car years later when I was an adult that it finally dawned on me… He’s singing about a boy pressuring a girl to have sex before she’s ready. Funny how age and experience can really bring in a new perspective on something you’ve seen or heard many times before.
~~Becka