Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Xander gets to live out his fantasy in his costume. His “manly” side protects Buffy from the evil pirate/would-be rapist Larry, just as we saw in his dream at the beginning of Teacher’s Pet. Willow wants to see herself as sexy and in charge, so she is. Giles, even if he’s not wearing a costume, reveals to us a side we’ve never seen before. And Ethan tells us that the Giles we’ve seen up till now was himself wearing a costume: “Ethan: Oh, and we all know that you are the champion of innocents and all things pure and good, Rupert. It's quite a little act you've got going here, old man. Giles: It's no act. It's who I am. Ethan: Who you are? The Watcher, sniveling, tweed-clad guardian of the Slayer and her kin? I think not. I know who you are, Rupert, and I know what you're capable of. (considers) But they don't, do they?”

  Yes indeed, the world is changing.

  I mentioned Buffy’s “division of self” in my post on NKABOTFD. As I see it here, Buffy is, in essence, fantasizing whether she can give up the hard road to her destiny and be “just a girl”. Her human side feels inadequate after her date with Angel “misfires… due to unscheduled slayage”. She overreacts by imagining herself as a helpless girl, one whom she thinks Angel would find attractive. Of course, we learn that Angel isn’t attracted to such girls at all; most likely, the picture Buffy saw in the Watcher’s Diary was of one of Angel’s victims. Or possibly – and maybe this is worse – Darla. [See note 2 below.]

  Speaking of whom, there are some pretty unattractive consequences if Buffy gives up on her destiny like that. By suppressing her Slayer side, Buffy creates the conditions in which Spike can roam free and make her his near-victim. Only when Giles, acting as her mind/superego/parent, breaks the spell, leaving her just one direction to go, does she resume control and send Spike fleeing. She’s moving forward from this point on.

  Trivia notes: (1) Buffy’s reference to “the stuff dreams are made of” comes from The Tempest, Act IV, sc. i. It’s a line also used famously in The Maltese Falcon. (2) The timeline for Angel given in Halloween is consistent with Angel and Reptile Boy but not later episodes. Based on later chronology, Angel was a vampire in 1775 and had been for some time. In that case the woman shown in the Watcher’s Diary could have been a victim. The other possibility is that the book Buffy and Willow were reading was not about Angel himself, since no one related to Angel could have appeared in the Watcher’s Diaries while Angel was still human; there’d have been no way to know about him. If the woman was not related to Angel as a vampire, then she could have been another vampire such as Darla. Joss has admitted, in response to questions about this issue, that he sucks at math. (3) Buffy’s use of the phrase “friendly advice” when Willow first shows her ghost costume is probably a joking reference to Casper the Friendly Ghost. She later even refers to Willow as “Casper”. (4) Buffy has apparently never seen The Godfather; otherwise she’d have been more suspicious when Ethan offered to make her a deal she couldn’t refuse. (5) Jo-Jo the Dog-Faced Boy, referenced by Cordelia, was a circus performer for P. T. Barnum. (6) The Buffyism “slayage” was adopted as the name for the online Journal of Whedon Studies.

  Lie To Me

  Lie to Me is almost certainly the best episode which I rarely see on Top 10 lists, including my own. In his reviews for The AV Club, Noel Murray suggested it as the episode he’d use to introduce a new viewer to Buffy. It’s truly a wonderful episode.

  Before I get to the episode itself, I’ll note a structural point. The seasons have a definite structure to them. The first 3 episodes lay out plot, metaphor, and theme(s) for the season. It’s worth thinking about this while you watch the first few episodes of each season, but it’s generally impossible to pick out the themes except in hindsight because they’re deliberately subtle. Episode 7 – Lie to Me is Episode 7 of S2 – is a major episode that establishes the most important ideas for the season. Most of the time, Episode 7 will be rated one of the top episodes of the season.

  So let’s take a look at it. When Drusilla tells Angel in the teaser that “it is just the beginning”, I relate that back to my theory that Halloween is the transition episode symbolized by Janus. This episode very much marks the beginning of what we’ll see for the remainder of the season, including much more emphasis on dark settings (note the lighting). It also marks Buffy’s first attempts to understand the adult world.

  Lie to Me defines, for me anyway, the theme of the show – growing up – and the dialogue makes it easy to see why. Like any teenager, Buffy’s starting to wonder what growing up actually means. One thing it means is that there aren’t any easy decisions:

  “Buffy: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.

  Giles: I believe that's called growing up.”

  When Buffy says this, she’s sitting at night in a graveyard waiting for her childhood crush to rise so she can slay him. That’s pretty clearly the kind of thing I had in mind in the Introduction, but consider it also in the context of Ford’s situation and his plan. Ford’s fate – to die bald and shriveled and in pain – is a metaphor for the aging process. It’s that resistance to aging which characterizes the vampire. Ford’s solution is to die young and stay pretty. When she slays Ford, Buffy’s not just putting her childhood behind her for good, she’s rejecting the very idea that there can be any permanent childhood.

  Buffy’s argument with Ford in the club is also very revealing. Ford’s situation is dire, but his solution is worse. Aside from the fact that we all think very highly of ourselves, and therefore are sure we’d take Buffy’s side of the argument, there’s a good reason why Buffy can lecture him about choices without sounding self-righteous. She herself made a very difficult and similar choice in Prophecy Girl: she chose to die in order to do what was right.

  This seems like a good place to talk about the importance of choice in BtVS. We saw it was an important theme in S1 – Buffy wasn’t really the Slayer until she made the conscious choice to commit to her destiny in Prophecy Girl. Now, in Lie to Me, which is a very important episode, we see choice emphasized again. It is literally true that the power of choice will remain important to the show through the very end: if you don’t know already, the very last episode is entitled Chosen.

  So where is Joss – who wrote Prophecy Girl and Lie to Me and Chosen, and many others as well – coming from when it comes to the importance of choice? Joss has said in the DVD commentary to the Firefly episode “Objects in Space” that the most important book he ever read was La Nausee. In fact, if you watch carefully, this book will make an appearance in S3.

  La Nausee was written by the French existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre. This novel is considered the seminal work for Sartre’s version of existentialism. Joss says that he was heavily influenced by existentialism but describes himself as an “absurdist”, which is closely related to but not identical with an existentialist. It’s a term Sartre’s contemporary, Albert Camus, used. I don’t want to get too technical about this, and Joss isn’t a philosopher per se, so I’m going to treat the two schools of philosophy as substantially identical here and just refer to existentialism.

  Back to La Nausee. While Wikipedia is far from the best source for discussing the details of philosophy, its plot summary of the ending is fair:

  “In his resolution at the end of the book [the protagonist] accepts the indifference of the physical world to man's aspirations. He is able to see that realization not only as a regret but also as an opportunity. People are free to make their own meaning: a freedom that is also a responsibility, because without that commitment there will be no meaning.”

  Let me try to translate this into Buffy. Buffy is in constant peril from the world because it – that is, the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness – doesn’t care about her; it’s indifferent to her at best, actively opposed to her at worst. She therefore can’t rely on the material world to give meaning to her life. Nor is there any higher power whic
h might give such meaning. Only within herself can she find that meaning, and she does so through the power of choice. She chooses her friends, she chooses to commit to her destiny, she chooses to accept responsibility for the world, because in so doing she gives meaning both to herself and to the world at large.

  Some people see the world of the existentialists as very bleak, but they actually saw it as both realistic and quite optimistic because the power to make the world resides inside each of us. In their view, it’s only realistic to admit that there is no power watching over us and that the natural world is indifferent to us. That’s Ford’s situation with his cancer. What the existentialist insists on, though, is that the power of choice always remains to human beings. They may not have good choices, as Buffy tells Ford, but they have them:

  “A critical claim in existentialist thought is that individuals are always free to make choices and guide their lives towards their own chosen goal or "project". The claim holds that individuals cannot escape this freedom, even in overwhelming circumstances. For instance, even an empire's colonized victims possess choices: to submit to rule, to negotiate, to act in complicity, to commit suicide, to resist nonviolently, or to counter-attack.

  Although external circumstances may limit individuals..., they cannot force a person to follow one of the remaining courses over another. In this sense the individual still has some freedom of choice. For this reason, individuals choose in anguish: they know that they must make a choice, and that it will have consequences. For Sartre, to claim that one amongst many conscious possibilities takes undeniable precedence (for instance, "I cannot risk my life, because I must support my family") is to assume the role of an object in the world, not a free agent, but merely at the mercy of circumstance....” Cite.

  For an existentialist, this power to make choices allows people to create their own authentic self. Simplifying somewhat, it’s the anxiety about death which leads us to the liberating power of choice:

  “This experience of my own death, or “nothingness,” … can act as a spur to authenticity: I come to see that I “am” not anything but must “make myself be” through my choice. In committing myself in the face of death … the roles that I have hitherto thoughtlessly engaged in … become something that I myself own up to, become responsible for.” Cite.

  I think it’s pretty easy to see how this fits in with Prophecy Girl. Buffy faced her fears and made a conscious choice by committing herself in the face of death. She therefore became responsible for her destiny. An existentialist would say that she was true to herself, or in their word, “authentic”.

  Ford’s situation here gives us another reflection on this. He blamed the world for his actions and refused to accept responsibility for the choice he actually was making, even as he denied the possibility of choice to his unwitting victims:

  “Ford: Okay, well, you try vomiting for twenty-four hours straight because the pain in your head is so intense, and *then* we'll discuss the concept of right and wrong. (points down) These people are sheep. They wanna be vampires 'cause they're lonely, miserable or bored. I don't have a choice.

  Buffy: You have a choice. You don't have a good choice, but you have a choice!”

  To an existentialist, Ford was rejecting his own humanity when he said he had no choice, trying to make himself an object rather than a person. That’s the sign of someone acting in what Sartre called “bad faith”. Quoting again from Wikipedia:

  “As a human, one cannot claim his actions are determined by external forces; this is the core statement of existentialism. ... One must not exercise bad faith by denying the self's freedom of choice and accountability.”

  Buffy’s reflections with Giles at the end show that she recognizes both the need to make choices and the difficulty of remaining true to herself while doing so. “This inner anguish over moral uncertainty is a central underlying theme in existentialism, as the anguish demonstrates a personal feeling of responsibility over the choices one makes throughout life.” Id.

  Ok, that’s enough on philosophy for now. I’ll revisit some of these issues later on. Just keep in mind that Joss has a particular view of the world which informs the Buffy we see on the screen.

  In addition to philosophy, we also learn some important facts in Lie to Me. For one thing, we learn that Angel sired Dru. He did more than that, though – in a very real sense, he made her. She is what she is today because of Angel. This is a critical fact for explaining my view of what Dru represents, which I’m holding off for a while.

  Lie to Me is also important for the seasonal arc, but I can’t explain that now because of spoilers. I’ll talk about it when we get to the end of S2.

  Trivia notes: (1) The title of the song which plays when Ford first goes into his “club” is “Neverland”. And what’s the story of Peter Pan all about? (2) The TV movie which Ford lip synchs is the Jack Palance version of Dracula. (3) Xander’s reference to Angel as “Dead Boy” is perhaps a reference to the US punk band The Dead Boys. (4) Ford asking Buffy on a date, telling her that it’s a “surprise”, parallels Jenny’s invitation to Giles. Buffy probably would have preferred the monster trucks.

  The Dark Age

  Buffy got the last word at the end of Lie to Me: “liar”. We have every reason to think her epithet referred solely to Giles’ description of life just preceding. This very next episode shows us that it had a much more general application. Giles has been lying to all of us, concealing his “Ripper” past. Like the statue of Janus in Halloween, Buffy’s word looked both backward and forward.

  Giles is, of course, relieved when Buffy’s music ends in the teaser, but his words “the rest is silence” apply to Philip as well, as the flash cut shows the life being choked out of him, unable to scream (see also trivia note 1).

  We’ve had hints about Giles’ background for a few episodes now, but here we learn the details. The metaphor of his rebellious years takes the form of drug use: Giles is drinking; he looks drunk; Buffy refers to him “lost weekending” (see trivia note 3); and we learn from Willow and Giles that possession by the demon was a “high”:

  “Willow: … Temporary possession [by Eyghon] imbues the host with a euphoric feeling of power.'…

  Giles: Yes. One of us would, um... (nervously pours a drink) go into a deep sleep, and the others would, uh, summon him. It was an extraordinary high!”

  So Giles experimented with drugs when he was younger, and this comes back to haunt him. But of course there’s a message for Buffy as well, and I think the name of the demon gives us a clue: Eyghon is pronounced “I gone”. If you let something take you over completely, you may never be entirely free of it again. There will be two instances where this will come into play in S2.

  In comments I added some thoughts on Angel: It's interesting because Angel isn't a "hero" at all in S1. He's helpful, but he never puts himself in any danger except in PG (with Xander right there with him). The heroic image is partly, well, imagery. He's shown rather heroically: mysterious, brooding, dark, gorgeous, etc. He looks the part. His actual bravery doesn't begin until S2, and the buildup is gradual. As of SAR, saving Cordy from an arm was probably third on his list of actual deeds. While he did do some fighting in PG, WSWB, School Hard, and Reptile Boy, it was peripheral to the main action and nothing comparable to Xander in PG. This episode showed him willing to really put himself on the line. While Buffy wasn't sure she trusted him in Lie to Me, Angel's behavior here may have convinced her. There’s a reason for this, and it’s coming soon.

  Trivia notes: (1) When Buffy’s aggressively loud music ends, Giles says “And the rest is silence.” That’s a quote from Hamlet, Act V, sc ii. They are Hamlet’s last words. (2) Joss must have been feeling very Shakespearean around this time, because Buffy thinks All’s Well That Ends Well with cute ER doctors. (3) The Lost Weekend is a 1945 movie about a writer who binge drinks. (4) “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” – what Eyghon says to Giles – is a song written by Cole Porter and made famous by Frank Sinatra. (5) T
he picture of “young Giles” actually superimposes a head shot of Anthony Stewart Head onto the body of Sid Vicious.

  What’s My Line 1 & 2

  What’s My Line would be a fan favorite if it had nothing else but the Xander/Cordy basement scene, but it also has a satire on Microsoft; classic Spike and Dru scenes; Willow, Oz, and animal crackers; and the first reference to the group as the “Scooby Gang”, which will become the standard from now on. “What’s the flum?” “I’m thinkin’ maybe dinner and a movie.” “Eb diminished ninth.” “That’s me only shirt.”

  Buffy’s feeling constrained by her destiny: “Y'know, if you don't like the way I'm doing my job, why don't you find somebody else? Oh, that's right, there can only be one. As long as I'm alive, there is no one else. Well, there you go! I don't have to be the Slayer. I could be dead. … Either way I'm bored, constricted, I never get to shop, and my hair and fingernails still continue to grow. So really, when you think about it, what's the diff?” The irony of this outburst will soon become apparent, but she’s acting immaturely, which she basically admits to Giles.

  What’s interesting about her reaction to career day is that her dissatisfaction is not at her lack of normalcy today. After all, she’s doing exactly what all the rest of the students are doing. No, she’s chafing at her future. That’s where she differs from her fellow students – she’s committed to a goal and they aren’t.

  Perhaps seeking compensation for her frustration at her lack of a “normal” life, i.e., for the way her commitment “limits” her, she turns more towards Angel. In Lie to Me she told Angel that she loved him but wasn’t sure she trusted him. Though Angel didn’t reciprocate her declaration of love, Buffy finds him “the one freaky thing in my freaky world that still makes sense to me.” Her own lack of “normalcy” leads her to find comfort in the idea that she won’t have to be alone in that state, that someone decidedly not normal can share it with her. Notice how this mirrors Daryl’s desire for a “mate” in Some Assembly Required, though Buffy certainly doesn’t plan to kill anyone to find her true love.