to the angry—
In characterizing Tara’s death as yet another in the string of cliched lesbian deaths, you indicate that you do not see Tara as anything but a lesbian, you do not see her as the unique character she was, but rather just as a woman who had sex with women, and, in doing so, you reveal your own homophobia, your own prejudice and, more than anything else, your own lack of understanding of what we did with that character. (Drew Z. Greenberg, Bronze Beta, Oct. 15, 2002)
At the date of this writing, the lesbian drama still continues: Willow now dating Kennedy, Tara not yet returned—even as an incarnation of the First Evil, though this is more due to reported contract negotiation difficulties with Amber Benson, who portrays Tara, than with a decision by the show’s writers.
Then again, members of the Kittenboard have claimed that Amber has said she would not return, out of respect for her fans. But given that Plan C was named after a (joking) plot for Amber Benson to be kidnapped by women in kitten ears en route to a Canadian Star Trek convention, it is possible that Amber’s respect for her fans is tempered by fear:
(Excerpt from planc.bravepages.com/aboutus/manifesto.html)
[. . .]Plan B: Kidnap Amber.
We stealthily take over the hotel at AmberCon (forget TorontoTrek, it was AmberCon, dammit), disguise ourselves in kitten ears, kill the lights, kidnap Amber in an Amber-sized bag tied with velvet rope (no chafing), and escape in a fanboat outside. Due to the large number of kittens involved, some would have to ride outside the craft and thus flutterkicking was practiced.
Then we realized that there would be geeks in Klingon costumes in the hotel, some probably carrying batleffs, and as we are a non-violent group, didn’t relish the idea of having to fight our way out.
And so was born . . .
Plan C.
1) Border guard (with kitten ears) instructs Amber that the path to Toronto is under “construction” and recommends a detour that will get her there faster. [. . .]
After all, an unbalanced fan killed singer Selena Perez, and another killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer. Benson, talented as both, can hardly miss the parallels, especially since her character has already been kidnapped (by Glory) and murdered (by Warren). And death threats have already been sent to executives of The WB, who are far less recognizable and don’t have to make convention appearances to further their careers.
If this is the case, then the fans, in their intensity, have been responsible for an even greater change in the show, the voluntary exclusion of an actor. Which, overall, is far more significant than the dropping of a minor subplot, such as the Double Meat Palace storyline. Tara was the conscience of the show, the hamburgers were a joke.
Finally, Sarah Michelle Gellar has elected not to renew her contract, thus ending the series, at least in its current form. Fans are free to speculate as to her reasoning for this, but it’s fairly certain that all the pressures did not go on the plus side of the scale. And so the story ends . . . for the moment.
The manipulations continue. Buffy is over, but Angel and the gang will continue to face threats and horrors, fighting them, dealing with them, making workarounds and compromises in untenable situations, and even occasionally being beaten. And the same will be true of the cast, crew, and the writing staff of any future shows in the continued mythology.
A native of California, Kevin Andrew Murphy writes novels, plays, short stories, poems, and games. His most recent works are the novels Fathom: The World Below (a novelization of Michael Turner’s Fathom comics) and Drum into Silence, a posthumous collaboration with the late Jo Clayton, concluding her Drums of Chaos trilogy, as well as a novella, “With a Flourish and a Flair,” in Deuces Down, the latest volume in George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. He has poems upcoming in Vox13’s humorous H.P. Lovecraft anthology Hastur, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and the mainstream Poets Against the War anthology. White Wolf will be publishing his World of Darkness novel Penny Dreadful, and he’s currently working on a role-playing game adaptation of Wild Cards for the Theatrix system. More of his works may be found at www.sff.net/people/Kevin.A.Murphy.
1 EW.com—posted June 2, 2002.
Carla Montgomery
INNOCENCE
What’s Joss got against sex? As one who can relate to Xander, I’ve been cheering him on from the beginning, from Bug Lady to Mummy Girl to Faith (now that was a coup), but it never goes well. Nor does the rest of the Scooby gang do much better. Carla Montgomery explores this phenomenon, focusing on the most ill-fated sexual encounter of them all.
A WEREWOLF. A demon. A witch. A vampire.
What do these supernatural icons have in common other than appearing on your doorstep every Halloween demanding candy? Answer: All of them have been, at one time or another, the primary love interest of a main character on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. As followers of the show, we all know that dealings with the dark side are a given around the Hellmouth. For Buffy and company, they are a way of life. And, affairs of the heart, or various other parts of the anatomy, are obviously not exempt from the dangers of associating with Evil and those that are under its sway.
Throughout the series, the writers of the show haven’t flinched in their exploration of all manner of issues surrounding the subject of teen intimacy. Obsession. Promiscuity. Homosexuality. Power plays. Loss of innocence. You name it, they’ve written it. And they have consistently used tremendous deftness, warmth, and genuine affection in their portrayals of teen relationships. But, clearly, when it comes to sex, love, and TV, Sunnydale couldn’t be further in overall attitude from swinging, flirtatious Manhattan.
In this Californian suburb, when a love affair goes bad, it grows fangs.
The question is, why?
FATAL ATTRACTIONS
“I’m 17; looking at linoleum makes me want to have sex.”’—Xander
Part of the answer may be found in taking a look at one of the basic overall premises of the show. Series creator Joss Whedon has stated in several interviews that part of his original concept for Buffy involved utilizing basic elements of horror to portray the teen experience through ongoing, rather twisted and dark, metaphors:
I pitched [the show] as the ultimate high school horror show, very basically taking the pain, humiliation, alienation, and all the problems of high school and ballooning them into horrific proportions. The show only works if it resonates. That’s the most important thing.
In other words, the demons Buffy and her friends confront are nearly always more than cardboard creatures for our heroes to defeat. They have emotions, needs, passion, ambition, even humor. They represent something. Just rip away the ugly masks, and you find all of the temptations, dangers, and evils that modern teens find themselves facing every day. We have all watched as the naive characters of the beginning of the series took on and defeated various archetypes of Evil and, in so doing, grew up little by little.
Monsters are more than monsters. Sex isn’t just the sex depicted on most TV series. It can destroy. It can transform. The danger can be physical or emotional, or both. But it is never to be taken lightly.
On a purely physical level, several episodes have dealt with the danger that lurks when the body overrides the mind in that teenage, hormonal sort of way. For example, take Xander’s close encounters of the wrong kind with the She-Mantis and Mummy Girl in the first and second seasons. In both cases, the attraction is clearly no more than pheromonal and Xander spends a large amount of time walking through the corridors of Sunnydale High in a lust-induced haze. And, in both cases, the danger to Xander is strictly limited to his physical body. Once the siren has been chopped up or turned back into dust, our hero returns to his normal, quick-witted self.
While the relationship of Willow and Oz isn’t a fatal attraction in a bunny-boiling sense, it is another example of the dangers of the heat of passion. Literally. Despite Willow’s attempts to save it, their romance can’t survive once Oz finds another of his kind and his werewolf-strength testosterone kicks in. He is co
mpletely reduced to a single, primal urge and either he or “the other woman” are quite capable of ripping Willow to shreds if she gets in the way of their baser instincts. By trying to snap him out of his animal nature, Willow endangers both herself and the werewolf she loves.
But by far the most disturbing of these lustful relationships is the one that has developed between Buffy and Spike over recent seasons. There is absolutely nothing healthy in this relationship other than their mutual libidos. Physical and sexual abuse. Obsession. Jealousy. Psychological torment. The strange allure and addiction of dancing with danger. All of the darkest power struggles of sexual intimacy have been yanked into the spotlight through the mutually destructive acts of these two characters.
The difference here seems to be that, in addition to the physical act of sex having some correlation to endangerment of one’s physical body, there is the added complication of a very real danger to the emotional well-being of the participants. While it is safe to say that actual love is not a factor in their relationship, the longer that Buffy and Spike continue their lust affair, the more psychologically damaged by it they become. The complexity of their relationship is more than hunter and hunted, domination and seduction. Spike is continually tortured by his obsession and is particularly dangerous because he is (along with Drew and Angel), according to Whedon, “. . . really a part of Buffy’s life, not just external. Something emotional that she couldn’t just physically fight.” For Buffy, the danger of consorting with such darkness translates into a virtually mortal blow to her spirit. To dance with the dead can kill a vital part of who you are.
It’s been hell to watch. But, just as these two have discovered, it’s been next to impossible to turn the twisted thing off.
In Sunnydale, there is no such thing as safe sex. But, like, is it okay if you love him?
STAR-CROSSED LOVES
BUFFY: “I love you.”
ANGEL: “I love you, too . . . I’ll call you.”
If simply having sex can get you bitten, maimed, or mutilated in Buffy’s world, than what’s a teenager in love supposed to do? The prognosis for any sort of long-term relationship looks grim indeed. Grim. But not hopeless. Although Whedon and company seem to be saying that teen intimacy can have serious, even horrific, consequences and should not be taken lightly, they do not appear to come down on the side of total abstinence, either.
Take, for example, the tremendously comic romance of Xander and Cordelia who are, as Whedon puts it, “so very wrong for each other that, of course, they must have each other and they must have each other now.” It doesn’t work. It can’t. But, through that intimacy, both characters reveal aspects of themselves we haven’t seen before. Cordelia can be vulnerable. Xander can be tender. Neither is the same person they were before their relationship began. Both have edged just a bit closer to maturity.
In a more dramatic sense, the relationship that develops between Willow and Tara changes forever the shy, little science nerd we once knew and loved. It is more than a gentle discovery of sexual orientation. For Willow, it is a personal revelation that is directly linked to her own empowerment. For the first time in the series, she is not the one in constant need of protection, but is gradually transformed by her bond with her lover into a protective, and even destructive, force that is to be taken deadly seriously.
Buffy’s broken heart is revived through her romance with Riley. Anya is humanized (and dehumanized again) by her love for Xander.
But to really get to the pulsing heart of the matter, you have to look at the relationship of Buffy and Angel as the ultimate example in the series of the life-altering consequences of sexuality and love. Says Whedon:
‘Surprise’ and ‘Innocence’ represent the mission statement of the show more than any other shows we’ve done because they operate on both a mythic level and a very personal level. On a mythic level, it’s the hero’s journey. She loses this very important person to her . . . Angel goes bad and now she has to fight him . . . But on a personal level, this is the show about, ‘I slept with someone and now he doesn’t call me anymore.’
From the beginning, we know they couldn’t be more wrong for each other. A vampire. A Slayer. It’s worse than Montagues and Capulets. Their doom is inevitable and absolutely riveting. But even as Buffy and Angel’s relationship careens out of control, the motives of the creators of the show become a little more clear. Almost nothing could be worse in terms of finding the horror of the high school experience than turning the guy you gave your virginity to into, literally, a soulless monster. The pivotal moment in Angel’s bedroom the following day as the two recent lovers face the consequences of their sexual act has got to rank as one of the most devastating of such scenes to ever air on prime-time television.
Both characters are utterly transformed by the intimacy they shared the previous night.
Angel’s metamorphosis from tortured soul into monster strikes a terrifying chord with anyone who has felt the vulnerability of love and sexual intimacy. To allow another individual such closeness, physically and emotionally, requires a level of trust that grants the lover a tremendous amount of personal power. Power to hurt. Or betray. In the case of Angel and Buffy, the abuse of that power translates into the emotional rape of an innocent who is learning to love for the first time.
The one point of light here seems to lie in the very gypsy curse that sets the whole thing in motion. Try to forget that the whole thing is irrational. To give a vampire his soul and then, once he achieves a moment of happiness, yank it back away from him again is a ridiculous plan. The fact is, that at least for a moment, Angel truly loves Buffy and he finds ultimate happiness as a result of that love.
The curse does not take effect because Buffy and Angel have sex. Angel’s soul is stolen from him because he is in love. Whedon and company seem to be saying metaphorically here that, while sex and love are not one and the same, making love with someone you deeply care about is a somehow sublime, or even profound, experience.
And what of our hero?
Buffy’s sexual initiation is the catalyst of an epic journey that has been building for the first two seasons of the show; namely, the crossover from adolescence to young adulthood. According to Whedon:
One of the distinguishing features of the blond girl in the alley who always got killed was that she actually had sex . . . Buffy was created partially to be a stereotype buster on that level . . . the issue of sex was one we were going to have to deal with eventually . . . ‘Innocence’ represents the effort to do that.
Despite the potential dangers to herself physically and emotionally, Buffy chooses to sleep with Angel and, like most teens, finds herself in way over her head. The results are nothing short of nightmarish.
“I said I didn’t want to kill the girl who has sex,” says Whedon, “and yet, I punish the hell out of her . . . I believe that Buffy and Angel were in love and that what they did wasn’t bad . . . But, inevitably in a horror show, you end up punishing people for everything they do just so you can find the horror, the real emotional horror, of everything they go through.”
What makes Buffy such a heroic character is her reaction to that punishment. Yes, there are tears. But there are also rocket launchers.
After Angel summarily rejects her, she is spiritually wounded, but she doesn’t crumple up in a corner or retreat to whatever the modern equivalent of a nunnery might be. She tracks the creep down and they fight it out hand to hand. Their battle in the blasted mall is simultaneously an epic fight of Good vs. Evil and, as Angel taunts her in sadistic, sexually explicit fashion, the intensely personal battle of a young woman confronting the man who has wronged her. Says Whedon, “This show was designed to be a feminist show. For her to be so abused by him and for her response to be, as Spike might say, ‘kick him in the ghoulies,’ it’s very primal. It’s very important. It’s kind of empowering. And I kind of love it.”
Buffy is changed forever by her loss of innocence. She is punished. But she is also empowered by
her experience as she crosses the line that separates child- from adulthood. She can no longer be the naive young lover she once was; she is warier, worldlier, and a whole lot stronger because of what she has endured. She has passed through the, “baptism of adolescent fire, the romance gone wrong,” and emerges as a heroic young woman on the other side.
CONCLUSIONS
“Do you want me to wag my finger at you and tell you that you acted rashly?You did. And I can. But I know that you loved him.”—Giles
One of the real pleasures of viewing the Buffy series over the years has been to watch as, amid all the prosthetics and gore, the characters have gradually grown up. And a big part of that process for each of them has been to learn how to deal with the issues that arise out of sexual and/or emotional intimacy.
Sex in Sunnydale can be dangerous. Even deadly. But it is not bad in itself. There is often pleasure and even true love. The point is, that like everything else in Buffy’s world, there are consequences for every action. Affairs of the body and/or soul should never be entered into lightly. For these teens, sexual and emotional intimacy is a doorway to adulthood. A means of gaining personal power. And, ultimately, an act of transformation.
Perhaps that is why the final scene of “Innocence” (2-14) has such poignancy. We know how much Buffy has gone through, how much she has suffered because of her choices, and how very much she has changed and matured through that process. Yet, her mother hugs her and says, “You look the same to me.”
Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) Page 20
