Is Buffy Really a Thief? Maybe Not. The Filesharing Argument.

[andrewcutter]

To use your superhero analogy, Batman is a multi-millionaire with a company that apparently just keeps on pulling in the money without any concerns from him. He can afford his bat-toys without resorting to actual crime.

Spiderman, however, is NOT a multi millionaire, finances are a constant problem for him, and he still doesn't resort to crime. Both do basically the same thing, each manages to do it without resorting to actual crime themselves.

My opinion stays the same: rationalize it all you want to, Buffy remains a thief and a hypocrite to everything she stood for for the first 7 years of the series

oh dont get me wrong.

1st off i know batman has tons of money but he does alot outside the law to get the job done..... same as buffy working outside the law to get the job done. thats what i was trying to get at lol

I see the argument from both sides so i an in the middle. On the one hand buffy is doing what she can to get the money to help he protect the world.............

however on the other hand you are right she is a hypocrite to everything she stood for in season 1-7

frankly i like the fact she stealing because it allows us the readers to see buffy as we wish. ether a rouge hero that is doing what she can to save the world.... or as a young adult with tons of power that could become corrupt.

 

[NightBird]

To use your superhero analogy, Batman is a multi-millionaire with a company that apparently just keeps on pulling in the money without any concerns from him. He can afford his bat-toys without resorting to actual crime.

Spiderman, however, is NOT a multi millionaire, finances are a constant problem for him, and he still doesn't resort to crime. Both do basically the same thing, each manages to do it without resorting to actual crime themselves.

My opinion stays the same: rationalize it all you want to, Buffy remains a thief and a hypocrite to everything she stood for for the first 7 years of the series

The pot being a hypocrite doesn't make the kettle any less black.

Like I said in my previous post Buffy never faced the challenges she faces in the comic in the TVS.

Its all very well having ideals but most of the time they don't fit in with the real word.

The example other people have used is The Batman.

Bruce breaks some laws to keep others from being broken, The Batman will take the law into his own hands and break every bone in a thugs face to stop that crook mugging somebody.

Buffy robs a bank to stop vamps and demons murdering humans.

I think that most of the drama about Buffy stealing is a reaction to Buffy becoming a comic.

I wasn't a BB user while season 3 was on air but i've never heard much fuss about Buffy, breaking and entering(which she does all the time, in every season), trying to steal a knife and then assaulting two cops to make her escape, which i'm pretty sure comes under resisting arrest.

All of the above where illegal but no or little drama over those so why the big deal now?

 

[nerd4hire]

Okay, here's the conversation from Issue 10 concerning the bank heist:

Willow--So the mysterious benefactor bankrolling the Slayer army...

Buffy--It's all insured! It's a victimless crime! And we totally found a "watteau" the Nazis hid and sent it to the "tate" That happens in a minute. It's only money...

Willow--And money changes everything.This is where it starts, Buffy. What your enemies saw. Slayers acting above the law and endangering their most valuable possession: their possessions.

So, it's NOT Nazi gold that the Slayers are stealing from some hidden storage vault, it's the bank's funds, the savings of the bank's clients, at least some of whom could be assumed to be honest men and women. And making the insurance companies refund all or part of what was stolen is, in fact, stealing from the insurance companies and their investors.

Except it's not all insured. Again, I think the reason people don't take away the full texture of the moral ambiguities of this scene is they're not familiar with the Nazi loot trope. We know it's not all insured because if Buffy can donate a painting to a museum and nobody comes forward to claim ownership, that painting was not insured. At least some of the Nazi gold was converted into cash. I'm not familiar with the higher economics of it, but I do remember something like after the war the Americans caught the Vatican trying to smuggle millions of Swiss francs across a border. They confiscated the loot. As I understand it nobody knows where the greater portion of the Nazi gold is.

Buffy tells Willow, "It's all insured". She's rationalizing. She's displaying guilt. Again, perfectly in character for Buffy to do, and it suggests Buffy herself does not fully understand what it was she took. This suggests somebody else planned the heist. That also makes sense. I'm going to suggest somebody who knew about Nazi loot, and could make peace with the moral iffiness of stealing it put the idea of the robbery into Buffy's head in a way she was prepared to compromise her moral borders as to the theft.

Another thing I think people are missing is it's not just about "saving the world" for Buffy. She has guilt about laying the slayer trip on so many girls. She feels responsibile for them. The choice to steal Nazi treasure was a result of dueling guilts and the larger one won. I see nothing out of character in the heist as far as Buffy's concerned.

Was she wrong? Does one act of theft always carry the same moral weight of wrongness another does. Is stealing always just stealing? I don't know. I just know I don't hate the character of Buffy for going there. I do expect her to be punished though. This is what happens to Buffyverse characters. They break the rules, and they get punished. There's nothing un-Buffyverse about that. In fact the same thing is happening in Season 8 to Dawn. In her mind, at least, she broke the rules. She feels guilt. She's being punished.

In fact I'm going to make a wild guess here, and suggest Season 8 may turn out to be all about guilt.

 

[The Arcane]

My opinion stays the same: rationalize it all you want to, Buffy remains a thief and a hypocrite to everything she stood for for the first 7 years of the series

A thief she may be but not so much a hypocrite. A hypocrite does one thing whilst telling everyone else to do the exact opposite. Buffy isn't standing around saying that stealing is wrong whilst running off robbing banks.

Buffy has changed and her view of the world and right and wrong has changed too. Going against a viewpoint you had years ago doesn't make you hypocritical, it just means that you changed your viewpoint.

 

[gilesfan1980]

So Buffy specifically stole from an/or the insurance companies, making sure that the people being covered didn't lose anything, correct?

I think technically she's a "thief", as many folks here want to call her, but to say she doesn't care and disregards others isn't true, in my opinion. I don't think she'd have taken the money to finance her Slayers if the ultimate consequence cost innocent people losing out. She apparently knew they'd get their money back at the expense of the insurance company. That simple act of stealing speaks a fair level of volume, but her intentions were not damaging.

This act doesn't condemn her to a life of evil; her intentions define her actions and her intentions were good.

(enter your Cruel Intentions pun here:__________________________)

 

[white avenger]

If you check the dialog between Buffy and Willow, the ONLY thing identified as Nazi war loot is the painting that she returned to the museum. ("And we totally found a Watteau the Nazis hid and returned it to the Tate") As far as we know from the conversation, everything else that they stole was the legitimate funds of the bank and its investors' And as for "It's insured," I have no idea how much coverage the hard funds contained in a Swiss bank have, but it's almost certainly not the total amount taken. When Buffy says "It's only money," it's a complete lie, unless there's some country whose currency is fist size diamonds. Remember the diamond that the Triumvirate stole in Season 6? Buffy stole one just like it, only bigger. Three nerds steal a gem, it's a crime and they should be punished. Buffy steals a gem, and it's somehow excusable because she will be using it to fight the forces of evil. Both stones were stolen, whether to make objects and Vampire Slayers invisible, or to buy stakes to fight vampires with. Theft is theft.

I agree that Buffy's motives were pure, and the end result was to fight evil and save human lives, but the fact remains that in order to fund her army, she stole bank funds, not necessarily stolen Nazi treasure. That makes her a plain common thief.
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Edit:
[br][/br]
"How many honest people have need of a Swiss bank account?"

How about...honest Swiss citizens. Little old men and women who deposit their life savings; widows; orphans; charitable organizations; hospitals; institutes of higher learning; and most importantly, Swiss chocolate manufacturers. In short, anyone who lives in the country or even elsewhere who has money that they want protected from theft. People like that.

 

[nerd4hire]

Not excusable, understandable. For me fictional characters don't have to meet moral absolutes, but they do have to make sense. I think the heist does.

And the fact they make a point of pointing you in the direction of Nazi loot in a Swiss bank while grabbing gold bullion has significance to anybody who knows the story. That Joss points it out suggests to me he knows the story. I don't believe it's there by accident.

 

[gilesfan1980]

If the goal is simply to call her a thief here, then I guess mission accomplished. But to tag anything more to it--like saying she's becoming evil--we'd have to look at her intentions more than the act itself. Still, there's not enough information on this to really go on to know.

The times do change her, though. We knew in season 5, she wouldn't have let Dawn die to save the world, and that definitely wasn't the case in season 7. I think we've already been clued in that she will do extreme acts to save the world.

 

[white avenger]

If the goal is simply to call her a thief here, then I guess mission accomplished. But to tag anything more to it--like saying she's becoming evil--we'd have to look at her intentions more than the act itself. Still, there's not enough information on this to really go on to know.

The times do change her, though. We knew in season 5, she wouldn't have let Dawn die to save the world, and that definitely wasn't the case in season 7. I think we've already been clued in that she will do extreme acts to save the world.

An act of theft is NOT an indication that Buffy is becoming evil. I don't think anyone thinks that. What IS happening, however, is that the rigid standards that she imposed upon herself in Sunnydale are beginning to become a bit more realistic. She now accepts the fact that the Slayer's job is to fight evil, whether demon, vampire, or human, and she will kill humans if necessary. If the only, or more accurately the most expedient, way to finance her operation is to steal, then she will become a thief. If she "misses the sex and there is someone willing to be with her, just because that person turns out to be another woman, even though that would almost certainly never have entered her mind in Sunnydale...

Season 8 Buffy is becoming more realistic in her view of the world. To quote Robert Heinlein in "Glory Road," "knights errant sometimes spend their nights erring. That doesn't make her evil, just more realistic.

Some of the things that the Slayers in general and Buffy in particular have done, are doing, and probably will be doing in the future are wrong. Theft is one of those things. Some things that they do might be questionable. The taking of human is one of those things. Finally, some things they might do are simply a contradiction to what might have seemed "normal" in the past. Sleeping with Satsu is one of those things.

The scope of what the Slayers' mission has always been is changing. Buffy is simply adapting. She might do some things that are wrong in order to serve the greater good and she might have to adjust her views on some matters to be more realistic. Sunnydale was an isolated, self contained part of the world where the concept of black and white were easier to uphold. The real world has a lot more gray in it, and Buffy has at last had to face that, and has begun to come to terms with it. Just like the agent in "Serenity," Buffy is attempting to build a better world, even if that means that she will have no place in it.

 

[andrewcutter]

does it bother anyone that buffy has stolen?

 

[Rowan Hawthorn]

I'm happy to admit that Buffy is stealing but at the same time I'm equally happy to admit that I don't think she is wrong in doing so in the slightest. Therefore I don't feel I'm having to rationalise the actions. It's simply what I feel she was entitled to do.

"Entitled."

How do we get from "justifiable" or "excusable" to "entitled?"

There's some commentary in this thread about there not being any such thing as "right or wrong", or any "clear black-and-white consensus regarding whether theft is wrong." Of course, if you ask - oh, say, a thief - they'll agree with you. But here's a question: Do any of you know anyone who's been robbed? Ask them for their side of the question.

It's pretty easy for me to justify (or even rationalize) Buffy's theft: she'll put the money to good use, and I can't see any other feasible method for her to get the kind of cash an operation like that would require. Those posters who seriously believe that it could in any way be funded by the kind of jobs these teen-age girls could actually find (yep, I've actually heard that. One person even suggested some kind of arts & crafts thing...) must be smoking stuff that Cheech & Chong's doper characters would run from.

But, moral and ethical concepts still exist, and are very real; just because some people reject such things, doesn't mean we all should. If that's a little too quaint for today's modern sophisticated world, then allow me to fill you in on a little cold, hard fact, children: in the Real World, the only thing that anyone is "entitled" to take from someone else during a robbery is a bellyful of lead. The idea that anyone - no matter what the justification for the act may be - is "entitled" to violate other peoples' rights just because they can reminds me of something, now what was it...

...oh, yeah. That's the line that pretty much every dictator and petty criminal has used ever since civilization started.

 

[white avenger]

During all of this discussion, has it occurred to anyone that, even if Buffy had stripped that vault to the bare walls, and that's assuming that she had enough people and time, plus a method of transporting the loot, there would not have been enough gold, gem stones and cash there to fund just the set up and continued operations that we have so far seen in Scotland and Japan, much less the kind of global organization that the combined Slayer force has become? That one swiss bank must be just the tip of the Slayers' proverbial criminal iceberg. Buffy and her gang are a super powered crime wave!

 

[Rowan Hawthorn]

comments on this post
williamtheebloody agrees: yeah, they should just have gave Buffy a belly full of lead.

Congratulations on completely missing the point. Hope you didn't strain anything with the effort...

 

[NightBird]

During all of this discussion, has it occurred to anyone that, even if Buffy had stripped that vault to the bare walls, and that's assuming that she had enough people and time, plus a method of transporting the loot, there would not have been enough gold, gem stones and cash there to fund just the set up and continued operations that we have so far seen in Scotland and Japan, much less the kind of global organization that the combined Slayer force has become? That one swiss bank must be just the tip of the Slayers' proverbial criminal iceberg. Buffy and her gang are a super powered crime wave!

I figured that Buffy and Co., would have committed more than just the one crime.

I don't like Buffy breaking the law, but the reason that we love the show/comic is because the characters are 'real' and aren't morally perfect.

I'm assuming that Joss wanted this kind of debate as it keeps the comic fresh and vibrant.

 

[hyperballadbrad]

The scales of her life have tipped ridiculously, so it's not like it's a base of black and white, wrong and right! It's so much more complex that than, and the situation is one that crosses so many boundaries

it's global and political! And neither of those things can be defined ever.

 

[Rowan Hawthorn]

Congratulations on completely missing the point. Hope you didn't strain anything with the effort... Comments on this post
williamtheebloody agrees: T'wasnt meant to be serious, you intelligent man you....

Oh. Oops...

(Message too short? Well, that takes the fun out of it.)