On aging heroes

[chani]

Should heroes age?

Can we picture an old Superman, an old Batman...an old Buffy?

Today was definitely a DVDS day. Tonight I decided to watch Richard Lester's  Robin and Marian starring Sean Connery and Audrey Hepburn (and the talented Nicol Williamson as Little John and Robert Shaw as the Sheriff of Nottingham). It's a beautiful love story between two middle-aged people (Sean and Audrey are both terrific) but it also asked the question of the aging hero...in this case, Robin Hood.

Goldman, who wrote the scenario, explained that he based much of the story on actual medieval ballads concerning the death of Robin...

20 years have passed, the crusades ended, Ricard The Lion Heart (Richard Harris ) just died in France (very realistic portrait of the king btw), so Robin returns to England.

There he meets up again with his merry band...and with Marian who has become an abbess during Robin's long absence.

Is Robin still a hero while he's is slowing down despite his attempts to keep going and fulfil the legend, and even if he's still the one who gets the girl?

But can he simply be the man whom Marian still loves?

The character is easy to recognize as Robin Hood but the storyline shows that that he was a man mythologized beyond his capabilities by a populace that needed a hero larger than any one man's life.

The complex relationship bewteen Robin and the Sheriff is very interesting, both still sticking to old values while the world is changing around them, the friendship between Robin and Little John is touching and is the core of the film as well as the romance.

Of course the romance betwen perpetually immature Robin and Marian who became a nun by default (because her marrying Jesus would make Robin jealous!), is poignant. There are funny moments, sad ones, moving ones.
I love the scene when Robin tells Marian the horror of the crusades and she tells him how she stopped dreaming of him. Here's a bit of dialogue I love:

Marian : "You never wrote"

Robin:  "I don't know how"

...and you should see Sean's face and eyes when he says that, or when, earlier, he responds to her asking "why didn't you come back then?" by saying "He was my king".

Oh and there's the scene Marian checks his scars and says how beautiful his body used to be, before confessing her suicide attempt, or the scene when Marian asks him to hurt her and to make her cry because she wants to feel again...It's courtly love and carnal love at once. Marian's final speech about her love for Robin is heartbreaking.

I've always loved that film for the emotion it conveys and for its oddity. It isn't an action movie it isn't about adventure and it often sounds like a play. It's a very poetic, romantic and Shakespearian movie that is deviated from the usual Robin Hood movies but that you should try to watch if you have never seen it.

But back to Buffy...Could, should The Slayer age? Maybe there was something about The Cruciamentum ritual I didn't see at the time...

Comments

[chrissie-linnit.livejournal.com]

I really must try and find that film. It sounds like my sort of movie. Rather like the sort of fanfiction I seek out these days.

On the one hand, seeking evidence of a future for Buffy, and Spike... but on the other, full of trepidation for what 'future' actually means for these two. Do we really know the extent of Buffy's 'supernatural' gift? no Slayer has ever lived beyond Buffy's age (although Nikki looked well into her mid-twenties to me), not because they've died by natural means but because they've been killed by Demons. That leaves open the question of just what effect, if any, the Slayer superpowers have on the human recipient. If, as appears to have been conveyed by the First Slayer, Buffy's essence now has an element of demon within can we extrapolate from that a promise of immortality, longevity or enhanced recuperative/regenerative capabilities?

The romantic in me yearns for Buffy to discover that as her number of years grow, there is a clear disparity with the physical ageing process. Not purely because I'd like her and Spike to slay together and stay together for ever and ever, but moreso because I like the romanticism and inevitability of tales like Highlander. No matter what occurs, life will go on and the hero(ine) must learn to live with that, embrace it and, thrive and survive, doing the best they can in whatever manifestation they take. Whether she has Spike by her side, or whether she becomes, in name, a myth and chooses to live and operate in anonymity...

The other scenario of Buffy ageing, living a 'normal' human lifespan and having to deal with her diminishing capabilities as well as whatever relationships she has along the way, is another enticing future worthy of exploration. I've read a few fics based on that premise, all of which have been very ansty because they deal with The End of the Slayer. In the case of those I've read, that has also meant having an ageless Spike alongside of her, adding to the poigniancy. These sorts of stories inevitably deal with the impact age has on couples with broad age gaps and tend to lose sight of the impact of lost strength and power on the aged. I often choose to avoid stories that explore this scenario because there's an inevitability in the conclusion. A finality that I want to avoid/deny. This could possibly be addressed by having a different slant, maybe by having the ageing Slayer handing over her burden/gift(?) at the end of her life to her successor. I've seen this touched on, but it's always been Buffy handing over her gift/burden and Spike to her successor and personally, I find that unacceptable/unpalateable. I've also found it harder to accept when the writers had the successor be Dawn. That's just too close to incestuous to me, and I'd expect Buffy to be elderly anyways and her successor to be a young and eager and totally new Slayer. The expectation that someone who has lived with and loved their partner for so many years would not, IMO, expect him/her to transfer their love and/or dedication to another and if they loved him/her so much would never ask that of them anyway.

At least with the hope of immortality or longevity there's a spectre of potential continuity.

I don't know if you've read Somniloquy by Ginmar, but in that Buffy and Spike discuss her mortality and Buffy tells Spike she wants him in Heaven with her or she'll refuse to go there. There's no denying they're going to be parted for a time because of their lifespan differences, but they explore, or at least Buffy explores, solutions that are acceptable. That, to me, was a beautifully written exploration of seperation because of death... which is a drift away from your point of ageing, I apologise.

In answer, eventually, to your question of whether the slayer should age... of course I think she should. Ideally as an immortal... and I'm off to read Isabelle's 'Hundred Years...' again... *sighs whistfully*

Great thoughts Chani. Love how you stimulate my mind. HUGS

[candlelightfrot.livejournal.com]

There is no could or should about Buffy aging. Your question even shows that you are living in the Whedonverse past of season 5. The fact is that Joss set it up so she could age at the end of S7. She's now the head of a corporate structure of slayers. She'll do her slayage from time to time; but that was the whole idea of the show at the end.

It was what Joss meant the whole idea of the slayer to be about. It wasn't just about Buffy, it was about liberating all the potential slayers from the control of the Watchers - the women from the men. To do that you had to give them the strength (metaphorically) to control their own lives, which also meant that they must be unified.

Buffy will age and in that have life, and perhaps give life to others. What quality does a slayer's child have? Probably just human...

[rahirah]

I've always assumed that Buffy un canon would age normally, presuming she didn't die of unnatural causes first. I think that she'd probably live a long life because of Slayer healing and being in excellent physical shape, but I don't think she's immortal or even inhumanly long-lived.

In my own fic I've given a lot of thought to the question of my heroes aging, because I tend to write long continuing series. I know the general outline of my Buffy's life. I know how and why she and my Spike eventually die, and the legacy they leave to the generation that comes after them, and all that junk. For me, that death is going to be an important thematic closure to the whole series (though in practice, I doubt I'll get that far.)

For an interesting perspective on middle-aged heroes, you might want to look up Barbara Hambly's Dragonbane series. It's got one of my favorite couples of all time, a near-sighted, forty-something border lord struggling to maintain civilization when his king and country have forgotten him, and his commonlaw wife, a self-taught mage who's perpetually torn between her family and her magical studies. Hambly puts her characters through hell, and they're wonderfully flawed heroes and totally believable old-marrieds-with-children.

[pfeifferpack.livejournal.com]

I loved that movie! In fact when I got hooked on the British series Robin of Sherwood in the 1980's I thought it tied in rather nicely with this film (not just because the Robin in the last episode was Sean Connery's sone either).

As to the aging question? It depends I suppose. Not too many old age homes for heroes or superheroes either. With Buffy there are lots of fics that explore different possibilites about a Slayer and aging. I have always thought the Cruciamentum was a way for the Council to be rid of troublesome maturing Slayers to replace them with more pliant youngsters (for whatever reason...maybe there is a natural attraction to vampires that could prove pesky if unchecked in a sexually mature and "independent and consentual aged" Slayer *G*).

Good question though.

Love,
Kathleen
thinking of watching the film over the New Year