Well, neither of our experiences was a universal experience, not even a Western or American one. I think that yours was probably more rarefied, though, quite honestly, as is your life, and more dissimilar to the Scoobs' experience that we *saw*; their current lives probably are more similar to yours, traveling, meeting new people, representing something larger than themselves to others. Do you think that for Buffy college would've been an explosion rather than a narrowing? Because I disagree. Xander wasn't in college. Willow isolated herself with her girlfriend. Buffy didn't really feel comfortable in college; she always seemed to me to represent the person who goes to college because that's what you do after high school, not because she had an eye toward a career or even opening her mind with new knowledge/experiences. And like a lot of people in that situation, she eventually dropped out. Which reduced her circle to people she already knew.
What is it about Buffy or any of the rest of them as a character or the show that makes your experience of college as an explosion seem like the more logical thematic choice than the narrowing that the show actually went with? I think someone from Buffy's world *did* experience that; Cordelia. She left. She met people. She got involved in "bigger" issues. I don't necessarily think we were supposed to see Buffy's insular world, overreliance on that tiny group, as healthy; I mean, it certainly was dysfunctional and exclusionary even of people on its outskirts, as Anya was often used to point out, and as Tara's awkward presence often indicated. Thematically I would've liked to have seen S6/S7 invert S4's message of "hold tight to the people you know best, nurture those relationships, don't let them go" and tell me, "Sometimes you have to know when to let go of those same people, when hunkering down with just them is not the best choice any longer." I always felt Joss et al were too worried about backlash (or perhaps just not interested in the show enough) to shake up the group in that manner, though.
Once again, other choices: definitely more interesting to watch and work with. But not, IMO, thematically incorrect. Neither choice is, really. I always wanted to see some representation of the widening world; I thought that Tara, who was so shy and isolated, would be an interesting character to use for that, especially since that would distress Willow. It wouldn't have been a thematic mistake to open it up, but neither do I agree it was a thematic mistake to close it down.
I also think that in high school we had a fairly shallow representation of the world. I mean, in high school we had the same ratio of regular vs. recurring characters, but we had more crowd scenes, more random students hurt/vamped/etc. for Buffy to deal with. In later seasons, randoms took more engineering (the red shirt in O&FA, the girl with the dog in that ep where Spike drapes himself over the cross, etc.) because the whole situation had to be set up; in high school, we naturally come across randoms in our everyday life as we go to class, get forced to work on decorations for whatever, etc. So, I'm not really sure I'm all that impressed that the Scoobs' effect on the world as represented by the teenage population of Sunnydale was ever managed in a way that was anything more than a convenient tool for storytelling.
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Well, neither of our experiences was a universal experience, not even a Western or American one. I think that yours was probably more rarefied, though, quite honestly, as is your life, and more dissimilar to the Scoobs' experience that we *saw*; their current lives probably are more similar to yours, traveling, meeting new people, representing something larger than themselves to others. Do you think that for Buffy college would've been an explosion rather than a narrowing? Because I disagree. Xander wasn't in college. Willow isolated herself with her girlfriend. Buffy didn't really feel comfortable in college; she always seemed to me to represent the person who goes to college because that's what you do after high school, not because she had an eye toward a career or even opening her mind with new knowledge/experiences. And like a lot of people in that situation, she eventually dropped out. Which reduced her circle to people she already knew.
What is it about Buffy or any of the rest of them as a character or the show that makes your experience of college as an explosion seem like the more logical thematic choice than the narrowing that the show actually went with? I think someone from Buffy's world *did* experience that; Cordelia. She left. She met people. She got involved in "bigger" issues. I don't necessarily think we were supposed to see Buffy's insular world, overreliance on that tiny group, as healthy; I mean, it certainly was dysfunctional and exclusionary even of people on its outskirts, as Anya was often used to point out, and as Tara's awkward presence often indicated. Thematically I would've liked to have seen S6/S7 invert S4's message of "hold tight to the people you know best, nurture those relationships, don't let them go" and tell me, "Sometimes you have to know when to let go of those same people, when hunkering down with just them is not the best choice any longer." I always felt Joss et al were too worried about backlash (or perhaps just not interested in the show enough) to shake up the group in that manner, though.
Once again, other choices: definitely more interesting to watch and work with. But not, IMO, thematically incorrect. Neither choice is, really. I always wanted to see some representation of the widening world; I thought that Tara, who was so shy and isolated, would be an interesting character to use for that, especially since that would distress Willow. It wouldn't have been a thematic mistake to open it up, but neither do I agree it was a thematic mistake to close it down.
I also think that in high school we had a fairly shallow representation of the world. I mean, in high school we had the same ratio of regular vs. recurring characters, but we had more crowd scenes, more random students hurt/vamped/etc. for Buffy to deal with. In later seasons, randoms took more engineering (the red shirt in O&FA, the girl with the dog in that ep where Spike drapes himself over the cross, etc.) because the whole situation had to be set up; in high school, we naturally come across randoms in our everyday life as we go to class, get forced to work on decorations for whatever, etc. So, I'm not really sure I'm all that impressed that the Scoobs' effect on the world as represented by the teenage population of Sunnydale was ever managed in a way that was anything more than a convenient tool for storytelling.