UNTITLED RANT ABOUT HOW MUM WON'T LET ME WATCH "BUFFY"

UNTITLED RANT ABOUT HOW MUM WON'T LET ME WATCH BUFFY

September 99

Buffy: Vampire Slayer begins rerunning next week, at its usual timeslot after Ally McBeal and The Practice. This is good news because I missed the first season.

This is bad news because Mum won't let me watch it.

Most of my friends laugh when I say this. At seventeen, they're pretty much allowed to watch what they want, and Buffy is must-see TV. No one else is forbidden from watching anything, although most of them avoid flaunting R-rateds -- best not to tempt fate.

Mum let me watch about two episodes early in the second season. I was lucky the first time. She wandered next door and left me to myself, only coming back to let me know the volume was too loud.

The second time, though, Mum hung around and didn't like what she saw. I could live with Mum's disapproval -- she already hated Babylon 5 and wasn't all that fussed on The Simpsons -- but the next week when I parked myself in front of the TV she told me, "I don't like you watching that show."

"Aw Mu-u-um," I whined, "it's cool."

"It scares your little brother."

"Okay, I'll tape it and watch it after he's gone to bed."

"No."

"What?"

"I don't want you watching it. It has idiots worshipping the Devil."

"Excuse me? Oh, those guys who got slimed at the end. Yeah, I guess you could look at it like that. But they're the bad guys. They always get punished at the end -- it's not glorifying Satanism."

"I just don't want you watching shows that deal with the occult."

It was here that I wanted to remind her of Star Trek's guest appearance by the Klingon devil-dude (yeah, I know they aren't supposed to have one, but that was the implication, and Mum seemed to be cracking down on subtext) but I decided not to get that banned as well. So I kept my mouth shut and just looked significantly sulky whenever it was advertised. I figured she'd give up eventually -- she did with The X-Files, and I ended up getting bored after a couple of weeks anyway.

Almost a year later, I'm still waiting.

Personally, I don't think Mum was fair. If my brother was scared, I was happy to make other arrangements -- I don't understand why the 7 Network even tried running it before 8:30 anyway. And as for the Satanism argument -- sure, the show deals with the occult. But so do people at my school, and I don't see Mum banning that (in fact, a self-styled 'black witch' told me last month that I was working against her master's plan -- I'm still trying to see why that's a bad thing). And Buffy doesn't glorify the occult in the Satan-worshipping sense. And let's face it, the show's just good. Even Mum's friends watch it -- and they're about as non-cultish as you can get.

A TV show isn't going to inspire me to hold Black Masses in my room. I have free will and I choose not to imitate the actions I see on the screen. I just want to watch the show because it's fun.

And I just can't figure out how to explain that to Mum.

ONE WEEK LATER

After I had gone to all the trouble of spilling my guts to my hard drive, Mum surprised me. She said I could watch Buffy.

I've gotta say to the world, that was an incredibly nice thing of her to do. Because she had no reason to let me watch it, all her original reasons for hating it still stand. But the fact that she's letting me watch it even though she dislikes it herself is, to my mind, a quiet acknowledgement that I'm seventeen and capable of making some choices on my own.

But just to be safe, I think I'll watch it when she's not around.

Questions, comments, amusingly snide remarks and money can be emailed to elizabeth_barr@yahoo.com.au

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