Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Willow and Xander give us both sides. Willow’s more than a bit of a romantic, which is understandable given her unrequited crush on Xander. “If you love someone, you love someone,” she says. Xander’s more pragmatic: “You’re in love with a vampire? What, are you outta your mind?” Of course, Xander has a pretty obvious conflict of interest on this subject.

  Notwithstanding my general love for Willow and my view that Xander’s being a jealous jerk in telling Buffy that her duty is to slay Angel, there’s a lot to be said for Xander’s position. Angel may have a soul, but he’s still a vampire, as Darla demonstrated when she opened his refrigerator. He’s also much older than Buffy, as Joyce notes. Not just because he’s lived lots of vampire years, but because he was older at the age he became a vampire. It’s a good thing Angel was a “perfect gentleman” when he spent the night in Buffy’s room, because it would have been a felony in California if he hadn’t been.

  Even Willow recognizes some of the problems: “it is kinda novel how he'll stay young and handsome forever, although you'll still get wrinkly and die, and... Oh, and what about the children?” This isn’t all, by any means: he hasn’t been honest with Buffy, not only when he denies following her, but particularly when he’s evasive about his parents and about whether he snores – he knows he doesn’t because vampires don’t breathe, not because nobody’s in a position to tell him.

  As I see it, therefore, because she walked away at the end, Buffy is still on track for her destiny. She hasn’t let herself be diverted by love.

  Trivia notes: (1) There were subtle clues in previous episodes that Angel was a vampire: he always appeared at night or indoors; he knew too much about the vampires; and most particularly, at the end of the The Harvest he said, “She did it. I’ll be damned!”. Yes he will. (2) As is so often the case, the school subject taught in the episode relates to the episode’s theme. Willow tutors Buffy about the Civil War, and there is a Civil War going on between Angel and his former “family”, including Darla. More directly, Angel himself is undergoing a “reconstruction” since he got his soul back. (3) Julie Benz, who plays Darla, auditioned for the role of Buffy. (4) Angel’s tattoo is a griffin, an animal which is part lion and part eagle, just as Angel is part vampire and part human. (5) Darla’s reference to “ruling in the Master’s court for a thousand years” is presumably a twisted reference to the Christian Millenium.

  I Robot, You Jane

  After waxing enthusiastic about The Pack and Angel, I can’t find much good to say about I Robot, You Jane. It’s generally rated as one of the very weakest episodes by most fans, and I concur. Still, we should see what we can get from it.

  Moloch was the name of an ancient Canaanite god whose worship featured the sacrifice of children by burning them alive. Worship of Moloch became a stereotype for the worship of pagan idols generally, which, in the Bible, distracted the Hebrews from worship of the true God. Moloch is the paradigmatic false idol.

  The person seduced by the false idol is Willow. She’s seduced away from Buffy and Xander, in this case by the internet. I don’t think it has to be the internet per se; that’s just the particular venue for the seduction which would affect Willow. More generally, Moloch the idol represents any distraction which pulls someone away from the true path.

  Mapping this onto Buffy, Willow is Buffy’s metaphorical spirit. Thus, the message of the episode is warning Buffy to maintain her focus on her true destiny and not to let herself be diverted from her destiny by the pursuit of false idols.

  Why does this episode appear at this point in the season? Well, Willow’s love for Xander is unrequited. She lets herself be seduced by Moloch in an effort to escape the pain of that. Since Buffy just walked away from Angel, she’s at risk of sublimating herself into something or someone else, as Willow did, and needs to be warned against that.

  Well, maybe that’s what’s intended anyway.

  Even the weakest Buffy episodes usually have some nice scenes, and IRYJ is no exception. The interplay between Giles and Ms. Calendar is fun, particularly her “that’s not where I dangle it”. The ending scene is terrific.

  Trivia notes: (1) The title is a play on the “Me Tarzan, You Jane” joke first uttered by Johnny Weissmuller (the original movie Tarzan). It may refer also to the Isaac Asimov series I, Robot. (2) The name of the character Dave was probably taken from the character Dave Bowman in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some aspects of the plot bear a vague resemblance to Kubrick’s masterpiece. (3) The monk who gathers the circle to bind Moloch at the beginning is named Thelonius, a play on the famous jazz composer Thelonius Monk. (4) It’s probably too obvious to be considered trivia, but Giles’ suggestion of using a computer virus to disable Moloch comes from the movie Independence Day.

  The Puppet Show

  After a series of episodes telling Buffy what she should not do, because false steps will impede her progress towards her destiny, we now get the first of three episodes which tell her the affirmative steps she needs to take.

  The metaphor in The Puppet Show is pretty straightforward once Buffy discovers the plot twist: Sid, the dummy, is a demon hunter, ergo he stands for Buffy. The metaphor is the message.

  Putting aside his “horny” shtick, Sid is very dedicated to his profession. He’s willing to sacrifice his own life to eliminate the final demon. He may have seemed a puppet, trapped by powers and circumstances beyond his control, but in the end he wasn’t a puppet at all because he chose his fate.

  There are other metaphors here which I can’t discuss because of spoilers. I’ll have to cut this short and talk about this episode in more detail when we get to Prophecy Girl. I’ll only say that I don’t think the reference to Oedipus for the hilarious closing scene was accidental.

  There are a couple of little things I love about this episode: Principal Snyder and the irony of Cordelia’s song choice.

  Trivia notes: (1) The episode takes its inspiration from the movie Child’s Play. (2) Xander had the dummy “say” the word “redrum”. “Redrum” is the word “murder” spelled backwards, and comes from the movie The Shining. Nick Brendan adlibbed the line. (3) Xander asked if anyone else felt like “they’d been Keyser Soze’d”. Keyser Soze is (duh) from the movie The Usual Suspects. (4) Alyson Hannigan adlibbed Willow running off-stage. (5) Although I really like this episode, it was the lowest rated episode in the show’s history.

  Nightmares

  Nightmares is the second episode with a positive message for Buffy, this time in the form of Billy. The solution to Billy’s nightmares was, of course, to face his fears. Xander, Buffy’s metaphorical heart, showed the way on this when he turned around and punched out the clown.

  Along the way, we learn about Buffy’s fears: that she’s a bad student; being buried alive; and, most important, that her father doesn’t love her, and worse, that he doesn’t love her because of her own faults. I’m going to focus on the last of these because it’s the real crux of the episode. I say this not just because it’s the most troublesome for Buffy but because Billy’s fear is also reinforced by the belief that it was all his own fault: “It was my fault. … I missed a ball and I should have caught it. … He said it was my fault.” The parallel, and thus the metaphor for Buffy, seems pretty clear.

  When Buffy does knock out the Ugly Man, she realizes that she herself can’t pull the mask off. It’s Billy’s fear, so it’s his responsibility. She learned that from Sid in The Puppet Show. Once Billy rips off the mask, it frees him just like Xander was freed when he punched the clown. We therefore need to consider what Buffy fears and what she ultimately faces in the episode.

  Buffy expressed her fear to Willow at the beginning of the episode:

  “Willow: … Do you know why your folks split up?

  Buffy: (opens her locker) I didn't ask. They just stopped getting along. I'm sure I was a really big help, though, with all the slaying and everything. I was in so much trouble. I was a big mess.”

  Then the nightmare version of her f
ather tells her the same thing:

  “Hank: I came early because there's something I've needed to tell you. About your mother and me. Why we split up.

  Buffy: Well, you always told me it was because...

  Buffy: Then what was it?

  Hank: It was you.

  Buffy: Me?

  Hank: Having you. Raising you. Seeing you every day. I mean, do you have any idea what that's like?

  Buffy: What?

  Hank: Gosh, you don't even see what's right in front of your face, do you? Well, big surprise there, all you ever think about is yourself. You get in trouble. You embarrass us with all the crazy stunts you pull, and do I have to go on?”

  Buffy fears that being the Slayer is the cause of her problems, that her father doesn’t (or won’t) love her if she commits to her destiny. He may be like the Master – old, wrinkly, appalling in every way. If her nightmare father had a “Picture of Dorian Gray” somewhere, we can imagine he’d look very like the Master. She can’t commit to her destiny until she’s sure her father’s ok with it.

  But her father isn’t really a monster; he only appears that way because of Buffy’s fear. “I [the Master, i.e., a monster] am free because you fear it. Because you fear it, the world is crumbling. Your nightmares are made flesh.” Thus, meeting her father at the end means she’s learned that, as the Master said, “If I can face my fear, it cannot master me.” Once the fear is gone, so is the monster.

  We also see the flip side of this coin with Giles. His words in the graveyard specifically tell us that what we’re seeing there is not Buffy’s nightmare, it’s his. It’s not Buffy who fears becoming a vampire, it’s Giles who fears that for her. He’s Buffy’s putative father in Hank’s absence. Like every parent, Giles fears that his own flaws have left his child unprepared for the trials of adulthood: “I should have been more c... cautious. Taken more time to train you.” Parents have to face their own fears of their children’s journey to adulthood.

  Xander’s fears tell us something about Xander, of course. His fear of being naked is a classic: he fears that there’s nothing to him, that he’ll be revealed as that in front of everyone. The clown was, Xander tells us, not funny. And Xander, who’s always joking, fears that he’s really just boorish and unfunny.

  One part of Willow secretly believes that she’s great – “the world's finest soprano” – but she subconsciously fears that she’ll be exposed as a fraud if ever asked to perform. Note that while Xander confronted his fear, Willow seems merely to have escaped hers. This will be very characteristic of Willow’s personality.

  I should comment on one other point from this episode. When Buffy first faces the Ugly Man, she barely escapes and limps away. This came immediately after the terrible scene with her father, and it establishes a key point which will be repeated throughout the show: Buffy can’t fight as well when she’s emotionally distraught. If you’re ever wondering why Buffy seems off her game in a fight, chances are this is the reason.

  Trivia notes: (1) SMG is somewhat claustrophobic and absolutely hated the buried alive scene. Joss promised her she’d never have to do it again. (2) Willow is dressed as Cio-Cio-San, the title character of the opera Madame Butterfly. (3) The first line Aldo sings to Willow is “Child, from whose eyes shines witchery…”. This will be relevant in future episodes. (4) The Master’s sarcastic line to Buffy – “A dream is a wish your heart makes” – comes, of course, from Cinderella. (5) Billy’s lines upon waking up (“I had the strangest dream. And you were in it, and you...”) are essentially identical to those of Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz.

  Out of Mind, Out of Sight

  Out of Mind, Out of Sight rarely gets trashed like Teacher’s Pet or IRYJ, but I don’t get the impression it’s anyone’s favorite either. It’s just a standard, average S1 episode, a satirical look at the way high school cliques and cruelty can devastate outsiders.

  It won’t be a surprise that I think there’s another reading, but it took me a long time to find it. I couldn’t figure out what the larger point was, or if there even was one, nor could I understand why it’s located just before the season finale. I now think I can explain it.

  As I see it now, the point of the episode is to reconcile Buffy with Cordelia, her shadow self. I mentioned this shadow self view previously in my post on NKABOTFD, but I’ll go into it in more detail in this post. Here’s an explanation of the concept in Jungian psychology from Wikipedia (see link above):

  “"The shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself"…. If and when 'an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions….”

  This is an uncharitable but roughly accurate picture of Cordelia as we see her in S1. If I’m right that she’s in part a metaphor for Buffy’s shadow, then these are qualities which could be characteristic of Buffy if she let them, and we saw in Witch and NKABOTFD that Buffy shares with Cordelia similar desires which turn out to be shallow: to be a cheerleader or to date Owen or Angel. There’s additional evidence here: Buffy, like Cordy, was May Queen at Hemery. Willow and Xander, her metaphorical heart and spirit, immediately say, “Well, you know, you don't need that anymore. You got us!”. Buffy can’t accept this yet because Xander and Willow proceed to share memories which leave her feeling like an outsider. She later looks on wistfully as Cordy is being fitted for her dress. Some part of Buffy wants what Cordelia wants.

  There will be more evidence for this in later seasons, so let’s assume it for now and consider what it means to reconcile one’s shadow self. We first need to understand why this is necessary. The basic answer is that we can’t really avoid our shadow selves; they’re part of us, like it or not. Accepting that is part of growing up. In fact, we may need some of those less pleasant aspects of our character to function as grownups. That would be regrettable in a perfect world, but it’s a fact of life in this one.

  Under Jungian theory, the process of becoming one’s true self – what I would somewhat loosely call becoming an adult – requires a merger of the conscious mind with the underlying dark impulses. Quoting from Wikipedia again,

  “… the struggle is to retain awareness of the shadow, but not identification with it. 'Non-identification demands considerable moral effort...prevents a descent into that darkness'; but though 'the conscious mind is liable to be submerged at any moment in the unconscious... understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious' - reincorporates the shadow into the personality, producing a stronger, wider consciousness than before. 'Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak', and provides thereby a launching-pad for further [growing up].”

  Now let’s see how this plays out during the episode. It takes a while, but Buffy connects the dots and realizes that Cordelia is Marcie’s target. Buffy then realizes she has to protect Cordelia, which is inevitable given the metaphor because Cordelia is a part of Buffy. Cordy is the one who approaches Buffy for help. Consider her words: “I know that you share this feeling that we have for each other, deep down...”

  Buffy then has her conversation with Cordelia and begins to understand her:

  “Cordelia: (stops Buffy) Hey! You think I'm never lonely because I'm so cute and popular? I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone. It's not like any of them really know me. I don't even know if they like me half the time. People just want to be in a popular zone. Sometimes when I talk, everyone's so busy agreeing with me, they don't hear a word I say.

  “Buffy: Well, if you feel so alone, then why do you work so hard at being popular?

  Cordelia: Well, it beats being alone all by yourself.

  She continues down the hall. After considering that for a moment Buffy quickly follows.”

  Buffy and Cord
elia are then both rendered unconscious – heh! – and brought together under the word “Learn”. Marcie threatens to make Cordy visible in a way no one will ever forget, which is a metaphorical way of calling everyone’s attention to Buffy’s flaws.

  If you see it this way, the focus of the episode is not Marcie; she’s just a mechanism by which Cordelia’s (and Buffy’s) faults are made visible (pun intended) so that Buffy is forced to confront them. Buffy recognizes the need to take control. She first tries to reason with Marcie (“I just want to talk to you”), but eventually concludes that she has to assert control more forcibly (“You're a thundering loony!”). In order to defeat Marcie she tells Cordelia, her shadow, to shut up so that she can hear. Only then can she at last “see” Marcie – “I see you,” Buffy says – and bring her under control. At the end of the episode, Cordelia and Buffy have reached a new understanding and Cordelia seems to have accepted Buffy’s special role – in metaphor, the shadow (Cordy) has accepted its limits and will now work together with the conscious mind (Buffy): “You really helped me out yesterday, and you didn't have to. So, thank you.”

  I’ll explain my understanding of the reason for the placement of OOM, OOS at this point in the season when I post my Prophecy Girl essay on Monday.

  Trivia notes: (1) I won’t always mention the classroom lesson, but the study of The Merchant of Venice seems pretty obvious in its connection to the episode theme. (2) Buffy’s description of demons as “crush, kill, destroy” comes from the ‘60s TV show Lost in Space. (3) Marcie’s line “I see right through you” is not only ironic, it expresses the theme of the episode: that same loneliness which Cordelia just expressed causes all of us to feel invisible. (4) Cordy’s reference to Helen Keller is also, of course, consistent with the theme that people don’t see others. (5) Willow wore a Scooby Do shirt in this episode. This will be relevant later.