Malice Afterthought

As mentioned a couple of blogs ago, 2020 contains quite a lot of notable 50^th anniversaries for me personally. In the broader world, 1970 was no more or less notable than 1971 and probably much less so than 1969, but in a purely solipsistic sense 1970 was a particularly memorable year. Among other things, it contained my final semester of high school, the first semester of college, and (at the tail end of November) registration for the draft on my 18^th birthday. Beneath those surface events, 1970 was also the first full year my sense of identity had a firm footing.

I think most readers will know what I mean. Whatever one thinks of the old Freudian notions of personality formation in early childhood years, it is true that certain personality traits visible in a person’s childhood commonly remain visible in adulthood. Yet, there is less to this than meets the eye. Take a childhood trait of shyness as an example; even if the trait continues into adulthood, it can be expressed in a variety of different ways; what way a 10-year-old will express it at age 20 or 30 is unpredictable. Hence, there are shy criminals, professors, and army Rangers with quite different general personalities. Most of us firm up our final identities in our teens – not our life paths but our identities. Some take longer. I certainly feel I could have become a very different person today had influences during ages 13-16 been different, even if some early quirks would have carried over regardless. However, though much older (and I hope at least a fraction wiser), I’m very much the same person now as at 17. I don’t think anyone who knew me in 1970 would be surprised meeting me today.

For most of us the mid-teens – generally coinciding with high school – are pivotal and are burned into our memories like no 4-year period before or since. The “reminiscence bump” is a well-known phenomenon: even as senior citizens we remember our teens and 20s better than more recent decades. High school is particularly intense since it generally coincides with a lot of “firsts,” though some of us bloom earlier or later than others. Accordingly, there is a whole genre of high school movies, TV shows, and young adult novels that – though ostensibly aimed at teens – finds its largest audience in adults. YA (young adult) novels might seem the least likely medium to win an adult audience, given the teen protagonists and the coming-of-age themes. Yet a majority of readers of them are adults according to Publisher’s Weekly, with age 30-44 as the single largest demographic. For at least some movies, the median age of home viewers is as high or higher – especially for now classic offerings such as 10 Things I Hate about You, the 80s John Hughes movies, Mean Girls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the series, not the movie), and so on. I’m not immune to them, even if they’re not my primary fare. Why does their popularity persist into dodderhood? Because we’ve all been there (metaphorically if we’re referring to the ones with vampires), and thanks to that reminiscence bump are still more likely to identify with the teen protagonists than with the adults, be they villains or supporting cast. I must admit to at least one exception, which must mean I truly am getting old. In Buffy I tend to see things from the perspective of the middle-age high school librarian Giles. (My skills in magicks and the black arts are not as refined as his, alas.)

All this brings us to a YA novel that I did recently pick up: Go Ask Malice by Robert Joseph Levy. Despite having first aired 23 years ago, the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer continues to inspire analyses, spin-offs, and sequels in multiple media. This epistolary novel (the same format as Bram Stoker’s Dracula) is a prequel about the harsh life of the character Faith before her arrival in Sunnydale. The character, as viewers know, after a promising start goes over to the dark side in Season 3. (The famously existentialist Joss Whedon, the series creator, was no doubt punning with the philosophy’s notion of “bad faith.”) The novel is fully consistent with the show, but that can be noticed only by readers who watched the TV series – but then, who else would want to read the book? This is not really a Young Adult novel unless the definition of YA has gotten edgier than it used to be. Elements such as Faith’s alcoholic prostitute mother, her mom’s abusive boyfriends, her own loser boyfriends, her prison inmate dad (from whom she nonetheless picks up the phrase “five by five”), her evil foster parents, and her stint in a mental hospital make this book rougher than most YA fare. There are school violence, encounters with Bacchae (yes, really), a false rescue by her Watcher, and the brutal event that sends Faith on the road to Sunnydale. Upshot: the novel is not bad, but once again is only for Buffy buffs.

And you thought your high school years were rough.

The Runaways - School Days (1977)