Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Killed By Death

  Killed by Death is another episode which gets little respect in fandom. Part of that is its placement in the season, right after Passion and just before I Only Have Eyes For You. That’s a tough crowd, made worse by the fact that it’s hard to see much point to KbD. As I hope I’ve shown by now, though, I think every episode has a purpose for it and a reason why it appears in the season when it does.

  I start at the beginning of the episode, with Buffy’s illness. This is the only time in the whole series when we see her actually sick (as opposed to being ill from a spell, as in Witch). The illness comes right after the terrible events of Passion and the effect is that she’s weakened to the point where she’s unable to carry out her duties as Slayer, which we see in the fight with Angelus at the beginning of the episode. I think it’s reasonable, in these circumstances, to see her illness as a metaphor for her feeling sick over the death of Jenny. Joyce gives us a big hint that this is the case: “Buffy’s been so down since it [Jenny’s death] happened… I mean she never gets sick….”

  When we get sick, the natural thing to do is seek treatment in order to get well. Buffy fears the hospital because she’s blaming herself and the hospital reminds her of a previous occasion when she, in her mind, failed to act in time. That’s how I interpret the flashbacks to her cousin – Buffy thinks she should have done something to save Celia, just as she now knows she failed to prevent Jenny’s murder when she had the chance.

  One consequence of being sick, at least if you’re very sick, is that you might die. Der Kindestod obviously represents this fear of death for children. The fact that Buffy is able to see him by making herself sicker shows us that she too is still a child in some ways even though she’s at that in-between age of adolescence and on the road to adulthood (“Believe me, I’m not that grown up.”). As I read it, then, Buffy is sick nearly to death about Angelus’ murder of Jenny and prevents herself from being overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness when she saves the children. Cordy’s right:

  “So this isn't about you being afraid of hospitals 'cause your friend died and you wanna conjure up a monster that you can fight so you can save everybody and not feel so helpless?”

  This doesn’t mean Buffy imagined the demon. No, within the confines of the show the demon was just as real as all the others. This is just a case of the dialogue making sure we don’t miss the message.

  That leaves us to explain why the children can see the monster but adults can’t. The reason, I think, is that the feeling of helplessness is something children experience all the time. Adults can, we hope, act to solve their problems. By identifying the problem Buffy’s able to overcome the sense of helplessness all children suffer from and resume her Slayer duties – that is, her metaphorical road to adulthood.

  The death of Jenny Calendar was Buffy’s first important failure on her road to her destiny. A major failure at trying to be an adult is not something any of us take lightly; it could even be enough to discourage the journey altogether. Buffy had to move past that sense of failure before she could resume hers.

  Trivia notes: (1) Der Kindestod was obviously modeled after Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street. For all that I think the episode itself is relatively weak, the monster is one of the show’s creepiest. (2) The tune Angel was whistling as he walked into the hospital and was stopped by Xander was the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. (3) Cordelia’s version of “tact” – “not saying true stuff” – should remind us of Lear’s daughter, after whom the character was named. (4) Power Girl, the role Buffy played with Celia, is a DC comics heroine. (5) Xander’s advice not to play chess with Death refers to the movie The Seventh Seal. And by the way, props to Xander for standing up to Angelus in the hospital. He behaved very badly in BB&B and Passion, but he redeems himself a bit here. (6) This dialogue between Giles and Cordy seems to me a subtle joke at the very premise of the show: “Cordelia: Wait, what does this one do? (points to another) Giles: (frustrated) It asks endless questions of those with whom it's supposed to be working so that nothing is getting done. Cordelia: Boy, there's a demon for everything.” (7) Willow told Giles she had “frog fear” in WML 1; here she uses it to distract the security guards.

  I Only Have Eyes For You

  When I first saw I Only Have Eyes For You, I completely missed the point and therefore didn’t originally realize how wonderful the episode is. I thought Buffy needed to forgive Angel for what he’d done to her. I was so certain that Buffy had done nothing wrong that it never occurred to me that she herself thought she might have been wrong or that she might want his forgiveness. This, in turn, left me confused about who was supposed to be who in the James/Grace scenarios.

  So, to anyone else who was as confused as I was: IOHEFY tells us that Buffy does see herself as “guilty” in some sense, and the whole point of the episode is to allow her to forgive herself by learning that Angel forgives her. I’m still not sure why I missed this, because Cordy tells us this directly. When Buffy shows her anger about James, it’s Cordy who hangs a lantern on the fact that Buffy is blaming herself for Angelus:

  “Buffy: No. James destroyed the one person he loved the most in a moment of blind passion. And that's not something you forgive. No matter why he did what he did. And no matter if he knows now that it was wrong and selfish and stupid, it is just something he's gonna have to live with.

  Xander: He can't live with it, Buff. He's dead.

  She just looks back at them all for a moment, then stalks off into the kitchen.

  Cordelia: Okay. Overidentify much?”

  Thus, Buffy sees herself as in the same situation as James; she’s the one who “destroyed the one person [she] loved the most in a moment of blind passion”. Think about this in the context of all the anger James expresses in the episode: the snakes, the vortex, the wasps; if James is Buffy, then that’s her anger too and it’s all directed at herself.

  James, in turn, identifies with her, which is why we see the gender switch when the ghosts take over: James possesses Buffy and Grace – the name is surely deliberate – possesses Angel. It’s grace which allows Angel to forgive Buffy and Buffy then to understand that she can let go of her guilt. “To forgive is an act of compassion, Buffy. It's, it's not done because people deserve it. It's done because they need it.”

  So if this is the point of the episode, we need to consider why Buffy blames herself for her role in Angel’s loss of soul/death. First, we have this dialogue from Innocence:

  Buffy: So it was me. I did it.

  Jenny: I think so.

  Second, consider the implications of Inca Mummy Girl. The mummy was a chosen girl who sucked the life out of others for her own selfish purposes. That’s exactly what Buffy sees herself as having done with Angel. In Buffy’s view, she gave in to her selfish desire when she slept with Angel and that sucked the (metaphorical) life out of him. She therefore sees herself as no better than Ampata.

  Third, Buffy’s decision to have sex with Angel played out in horror format the stereotype of “girl sleeps with boy, boy rejects her in the morning”. In this stereotype it’s often the case that the girl experiences a feeling of guilt that she must have done something wrong, something which caused him to stop loving her. In fact, that’s what Buffy said in Innocence: “Was it my fault? Was I not good?”

  Now let’s turn this around. The relationship between Grace and James was one between a teacher and a student. That’s not a situation we generally approve because the age difference and the teacher’s position of authority make it, well, icky. James may be the one at fault for killing Grace, but Grace was certainly at fault for the relationship generally. She should have been the one to control her passions and not let it get out of hand in the first place. James obviously wasn’t mature enough to handle it. The problematic nature of the relationship would have been perhaps too obvious had the genders been reversed, hence the Sadie Hawkins theme.

  And Angel is Grace, now with the genders in the stereo
typical pattern. He was older than Buffy, not just counting his age when sired, but also the 100 odd years with a soul he spent honing his brooding skills. Like Grace, he’s also in the position of having abdicated his adult responsibilities out of passion. What he does – what Grace did – is assure Buffy that she may have pulled the trigger (so to speak), but that he understood his own responsibility for the tragedy and truly loved her even as he realized what had happened. “It was an accident. It wasn't your fault. … I'm the one who should be sorry…. You thought I stopped loving you. But I never did. I loved you with my last breath.”Angel’s apology both touches the wellsprings of Buffy’s feelings of guilt and shows her his own culpability.

  IOHEFY is a great episode generally, and few scenes in the whole series are as dramatic as Spike standing up from his wheelchair at the end. Buffy’s not the only one who’s angry. Somehow I don’t think Spike’s blaming himself, nor do I think that forgiveness is on his mind.

  Trivia notes: (1) Angie Hart, who sings at the Bronze in the teaser, is a friend of Joss and will appear in two more episodes later on. (2) The classroom lesson was on the Depression, and of course Buffy is depressed about Jenny and Angel. (3) The Hemingway book James was reading was A Farewell to Arms. If you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a love affair which ends tragically. (4) Xander’s “I’m dead as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” plays off the movie Network. (5) The scene where Cordy’s snake-bitten face suddenly becomes rotten is similar to one in the movie Poltergeist. (6) Xander’s “The quality of mercy is not Buffy” is from The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, sc. 1. (7) The movie Cordy saw where “even the priest dies” was The Exorcist. (8) The song which gives the episode its title was a cover by The Flamingos. The episode used it anachronistically because their version came out in 1959 but the events supposedly occurred in 1955.

  Go Fish

  If S2 is a popular favorite because of the many great episodes, it comes in for its share of criticism due to really weak episodes like Go Fish. The fact that Go Fish interrupts an otherwise incredible run from Surprise through Becoming certainly doesn’t help its reputation, but it’s a regular on bottom 10 lists for the series. While I’m sure that there is a point to Go Fish, I’m not at all sure that I’ve identified it. I struggle with this episode, as I did with IRYJ, and what follows is my best shot. So what’s it doing here?

  When the SG walked back into the library after the James got his closure in IOHEFY, Buffy didn't seem very happy (you have to watch the way SMG plays the scene; the transcript doesn't show her emotional state). She was subdued, even sad, during this dialogue with Giles:

  “Buffy: I still... (exhales) A part of me just doesn't understand why she would forgive him.

  Giles: Does it matter?

  Buffy: No. I guess not.”

  As I read it, she’s realized the point intellectually but her guilt hasn’t yet completely dissipated. For that we need Go Fish.

  What I notice about the fish monsters is that they’re internal. It’s not a case where an external monster devours the boys, it’s something which comes out of them. Another metaphorical case of the monster inside us all. That leaves us with the question what caused this particular transformation.

  This particular monster comes out, in three of the four cases (we don’t see Sean change), after the boy confronted Buffy and then blamed her for the confrontation:

  (After Buffy saves Jonathan from Dodd) “Dodd: I can't believe Buffy. Man, that girl gives me the creeps.”

  “Cameron: I don't know what happened. I mean, first she leads me on, then she goes schizo on me. … Oh, come on. (to Snyder) I mean, look at the way she dresses.”

  “Gage: You're one twisted sister, you know that? Cam told me about your games. Go find someone else to harass. … What a psycho bitch, man.” (And there’s more he says to Angelus.)

  In each case, Buffy was wrongly blamed, since the boy either had been an aggressor or was being protected by her.

  At the end, Buffy didn’t slay the monsters; she was confident we wouldn’t be seeing them anymore because they were going “home” as Buffy described the sea. Her statement here should cause us to reread Cameron’s description of the sea in the teaser: “Eternal. A true mother, giving birth to new life and devouring old. Always adaptable and nurturing... yet... constant... and merciless.”

  The sea can stand as a metaphor for the un/subconscious and that’s what his description reminds me of. See, e.g., the explanation of archetypes for AP students here (pdf: “Water (and bodies of water like the sea, the river, etc.): the mystery of creation; eternity and timelessness; birth-death-resurrection; purification and redemption; fertility and growth. According to Jung, water is also the most common symbol for the unconscious.”). See also here (“Water represents the subconscious mind. Comparing the human mind to the sea, that world in the deep waters is our subconscious, filled with creatures we can only glimpse briefly.”), and here (“The ocean is mysterious, uncharted territory. It can mean excitement at tapping into your potential, or it can be a frightening symbol of your fear of what's hiding in the deep, dark, depths of your subconscious mind.”).

  The way I read the episode, then, is that the swim monsters represent Buffy’s blame of herself for the loss of Angel’s soul. That wasn’t really her fault; when the monsters returned to the sea, those feelings were metaphorically absorbed back into her subconscious (“devoured the old”).

  Maybe.

  Trivia notes: (1) This is the last episode in which Giles narrates the “she is the Slayer” intro. (2) Xander’s “This was no boating accident” came from Jaws. (3) The fish monsters are based on the movie Creature From the Black Lagoon, which Xander mentions. (4) The Blue Lagoon – the movie Cordy confused with the Black Lagoon – was a 1980 movie starring Brooke Shields. (5) This was David Fury’s first episode as a writer for the series (with Elin Hampton).

  Becoming 1 & 2

  If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose just one of the top 4-5 episodes on my personal list of best episodes, I might choose Becoming 1 & 2. Certainly they contain many of my favorite moments from the entire series: “It’s a big rock…”; “someone wasn’t worthy”; Whistler’s voiceover as Buffy races down the corridor; the whole extended dialogue between Spike, Buffy and Joyce; “the police of Sunnydale are deeply stupid”; every single thing from the moment the sword fight begins through the end of the episode, including the best single word of dialogue in the series (“Me.”).

  As I said in my post on Surprise/Innocence, S2 is an in-depth exploration of the issues raised in S1 regarding Angel and the impact of Buffy’s relationship on her destiny/route to adulthood. In Angel she had the strength of character to walk away from her beloved, recognizing that “this can’t ever work”. In Surprise she succumbed to a moment of weakness, no not a moment, more like three months of weakness. (Those were the lyrics of the song which played in the Bronze when Spike first observed Buffy in School Hard: “I did a stupid thing last night / I called you / A moment of weakness / No, not a moment / More like three months of weakness.”) The remainder of S2 has shown us the consequences.

  What makes the season brilliant is that the entire issue is never portrayed as one-sided. Buffy does love Angel and he does love her. Buffy, of all people, deserves love. Many viewers see it as a fairytale romance, and it certainly has those elements. And yet the relationship was wrong in many ways, as I detailed in the Innocence post. Buffy wasn’t and isn’t ready for this relationship; it threatens to divert her from her destiny.

  Though neither Buffy nor Angel could have foreseen the consequences of letting their ids take control, Buffy, correctly in my view, takes responsibility for the consequences. Innocence gives no protection against tragedy: the death of the unfortunate prostitute and those of Enyos (Innocence), Theresa (Phases), a “quaint little shop girl” (BB&B), the Magic Shop owner (Passion), Jenny Calendar, and Kendra; Xander and Buffy nearly were killed, as was Gage; Giles was tortured and Willow p
ut into a coma; and the world very nearly sucked into Hell. And in the end, Buffy herself had to destroy the man she loved. Walking away seems like it might have been a good choice.

  Now let’s back up just a bit and consider how she was forced into having to kill Angel. Willow decided to do the spell all on her own. We could question this from Buffy’s standpoint, but Buffy had previously asked her to do it and her reasoning at that time still made sense. If Buffy failed, this would be the only hope.

  Willow acted at some not-insignificant risk to herself in casting the spell: “Giles: (very concerned) W-Willow... channeling... such potent magicks through yourself, it could open a door that you may not be able to close.” Giles knows this all too well from his experience with Eyghon. Note his phrasing, too. It’s not that Willow would generate the magic, it’s that she would channel it. That seemed to have happened from what we saw – it’s as if something took over Willow part way through the spell and completed it for her. As we’ve seen with Buffy and Giles, losing yourself in something may have consequences.

  The other contributing factor to Buffy’s horrifying moment was Xander’s lie to her. In fandom this is The Lie. It was, and maybe remains, an extremely contentious issue, so I’ll explain how I see it.

  I think everyone agrees that Xander’s Lie probably stemmed from mixed motives. He no doubt thought he was doing the right thing, but his thoughts on that score were inevitably colored by his jealousy of Angel and desire to be vindicated about Angelus. While some of his motivation doesn’t do him much credit, I’ll leave that aside and just consider whether he was morally right.

  The argument in Xander’s favor is what I’ll call “military necessity”. That’s probably the wrong term (see the link), but that’s the term everybody uses and it’s the answer Joss gave when asked about The Lie. In essence, the argument says that Xander was saying what needed to be said in order to get Buffy to do what she had to do: kill Angelus. Buffy had been unable to face up to that duty for months now, and too many people had died as a result. If she had known that Willow was going to try the restoration spell again, Buffy might have wavered just when she needed to be determined.