by Field, Mark
Another way to look at the problem is from the point of view of forgiveness. We might see forgiveness in the Christian tradition in which Jesus forgives all our sins when we declare moral bankruptcy. By that I mean that we declare bankruptcy, discharge our debts, and start “over”. The show may very well be making a statement about the power of forgiveness, since Buffy has and will demonstrate remarkable forgiveness over the years. I’ll argue that religious comparisons in her case are fully justified (at the very least as part of the Hero’s Journey), and of course forgiveness is a big part of that in the Western tradition.
Then there’s the question of the point in time at which forgiveness is offered. In the Christian tradition, that would be “always”. At any point in time an acknowledged sinner can come to grace. The issue of atonement complicates that somewhat, because it suggests that atonement is a necessary pre-condition for forgiveness. In Christianity that’s not the case, but it might be on BtVS.
Going one step further on the forgiveness theme, we see that Buffy is not the only one to forgive Angel, as we might expect if religious imagery were the only factor. Willow is also quick to forgive Angel, Xander not really, and Giles is doubtful but ambiguous. Perhaps we can explain Willow in metaphorical terms: she’s Buffy’s spirit and it is, after all, the spiritual aspect of forgiveness which is crucial in the Trinitarian tradition.
It’s also possible there’s a point being made here about gender and forgiveness (h/t Cait), which I’d urge you to consider as we go forward. If Buffy and Willow go one way and Xander the other, does this mean women take a different view than men? Or is this simply specific to their characters? There will be more evidence to come on this, so hold the issue open for now and think about what the consequences might be if there were a gender difference.
Now let me throw out a suggestion that will probably make everyone unhappy. As I noted above, I see Amends as a POV episode. Suppose we extend that idea and treat the whole soul canon not as an objective fact, but as something dependent on POV. In this interpretation, Xander sees Angel and Angelus as one person; so does Angel. Buffy sees them as two, and probably Willow does also. Giles is simply pragmatic. Each of them is right for himself/herself. The whole issue is an attitude, not a fact.
In the end, I don’t think there’s a way to answer these questions definitively, whether within the show or outside it. I hope I’ve laid out both sides enough for everyone to understand that BtVS does raise these issues and to judge for him/herself how they should be resolved. I’m sure the tinybit of extra space given to my own argument doesn’t affect that at all.
Trivia notes: (1) There’s no explanation ever given on BtVS for why Angel returned or what caused the snow. Feel free to speculate. (2) “The Lord is my Shepherd…” (Daniel’s prayer when Angelus corners him) is Psalms 23. (3) Oz asks Willow “You ever have that dream where you're in a play, and it's the middle of the play and you really don't know your lines, and you kinda don't know the plot?” That was Willow’s nightmare in Nightmares. (4) The Sun is a British tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. (5) “He’s a Rebel” (and he’ll never be any good…) was a song by the Crystals. Giles used the phrase to describe the Bringers. (6) The phrase “dead by sunrise” has two possible meanings: dead by the time the sun rises; or dead because the sun rose. That’s how Buffy could find Angel on the hilltop. (7) Joss obviously had Christmas on the brain this season, since The Wish seems based on It’s A Wonderful Life and Amends rather loosely on A Christmas Carol.
Gingerbread
What appears to be the principal message of Gingerbread – tolerance versus tyranny – comes across as lacking in subtlety. There are, I think, two more significant issues raised in the episode which get lost because of that heavy-handed treatment.
First, there’s a point being made about parents who get too involved in their children’s activities, to the point where they spoil it. Think of the stereotypes of Little League parents or those of child actors (a comparison that probably had real resonance to cast and crew). Joyce begins the episode by tagging along while Buffy slays, though she has no real business being there. She then disrupts Buffy’s ability to do her job by inducing hysteria in the rest of Sunnydale.
Second, Joyce raises an issue for which Buffy doesn’t really have an answer (yet):
“Joyce: I mean, you patrol, you slay... Evil pops up, you undo it. A-a-and that's great! But is Sunnydale getting any better? Are they running out of vampires?
Buffy: I don't think that you run out of...
Joyce: It's not your fault. You don't have a plan. You just react to things. I-i-it's bound to be kind of fruitless.”
Joyce’s conclusion sets up the remainder of the episode in her attempt to do better than Buffy: the formation of MOO, the raid on the school, the attacks on those who are different, and the near murder of Buffy, Willow, and Amy. As I said in my post on Amends, I believe that Gingerbread fits in with the absurdist themes Joss was developing at this point in the season, so let me explain the connection between those and Joyce’s actions here.
At the end of The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus introduced the idea of what he called “rebellion”. What he meant by that was an individual’s method of opposing the injustice we see in the absurd world. He elaborated on this idea in his book The Rebel: “The Rebel begins with the kind of revolt that rejects oppression and slavery, and protests against the world's injustice.” (All quotes from the link.) I think we get a verbal clue to this theme in Willow’s declaration: “I’m a rebel. I’m having a rebellion.” I think there are other clues as well, but those involve spoilers.
What’s interesting about The Rebel, and what makes me see a connection between it and Gingerbread, is that Camus actually spends most of the book discussing the wrong way to rebel. There was a good historical reason for this emphasis. In 1951, when the book was published, the issue of Communism and revolution was a major political dispute. Camus hated the idea of revolution (and Communists demanded revolution), so he wanted to distinguish it from rebellion, which he considered the proper course for someone who recognized the absurdity of the world:
“In The Rebel Camus takes the further step [that is, beyond The Myth of Sisyphus], which occupies most of the book, of developing his notion of metaphysical and historical rebellion in opposition to the concept of revolution. Applying his philosophical themes directly to politics in the years immediately after the Liberation of France in 1944, Camus had already concluded that the Marxists, and especially Communists, were guilty of evading life's absurdity by aiming at a wholesale transformation of society, which must necessarily be violent.” My emphasis.
The difference for Camus was not that rebellion is individual and revolution involves many. It need not be that way. The difference, rather, is that rebellion accepts the absurdity of the world – which, per Camus, is inherent and cannot be changed – while revolution insists that absurdity can be overcome. There is an irresistible human impulse: “faced with absurdity and injustice, humans refuse to accept their existence and instead seek to remake the world.” That effort to remake the world means that revolution functions like religion in Camus’ eyes. It’s an evasion of the actual state of the world.
“Revolution emerges when revolt seeks to ignore the limits built into human life. By an “inevitable logic of nihilism” Communism climaxes the modern trend to deify man and to transform and unify the world. Today's revolutions yield to the blind impulse, originally described in The Myth of Sisyphus, “to demand order in the midst of chaos, and unity in the very heart of the ephemeral”. As does the rebel who becomes a revolutionary who kills and then justifies murder as legitimate.”
Now let’s take a close look at Joyce’s reaction to the injustice she experiences (or thinks she does) when she discovers the bodies of the children. In the passage I quoted above, Joyce insists that Buffy can’t solve the problems through her individual efforts. Joyce proceeds to organize the adults of Sunnydale to remake the world, which is precisely the
goal Camus rejected. Joyce and Sheila “demand order in the midst of chaos and unity in the heart of the ephemeral.” They become willing to justify murder as legitimate. In short, they become revolutionaries.
We can contrast Joyce with Buffy and Angel. When Buffy mentions her mother’s criticism to Angel, he gives her back an elaboration on the answer she gave him in Amends, and their dialogue demonstrates that they both understand and accept the absurdity of the world:
“Buffy: My mom... said some things to me about being the Slayer. That it's fruitless. (shakes her head) No fruit for Buffy. [Buffy’s striving is pointless]
Angel: She's wrong.
Buffy: Is she? Is Sunnydale any better than when I first came here? Okay, so I battle evil. But I don't really win. The bad keeps coming back and getting stronger. …[I keep having to roll that damn rock back up the hill]
Angel: Buffy, you know, I'm still figuring things out. There's a lot I don't understand. But I do know it's important to keep fighting. I learned that from you. [She told him that on the hilltop]
Buffy: But we never... [get the rock to the top of the damn hill]
Angel: We never win.
Buffy: Not completely. [Because that would remake the world into something it’s not]
Angel: We never will. That's not why we fight [roll the rock up the hill]. We do it 'cause there's things worth fighting for.”
This conversation completes the journey which began in Lovers Walk with Angel reading La Nausee. He read there of the meaningless nature of the world, the kind of world we saw in The Wish. This realization led Angel to an existential crisis. The ending of The Wish explored one way out of the crisis, but it’s not a way that’s really available to Angel, him being a demon and all. In the throes of that crisis he contemplated suicide on the hilltop in Amends, where Buffy gave him the key to the existentialist answer and the miracle snow granted him the opportunity to walk down the hill, like Sisyphus, during which journey he could recognize that Buffy’s answer was right. Angel has now internalized, if I may coin a phrase, that if nothing we do matters, then the only thing that matters is what we do. Sisyphus and his rock.
Gingerbread makes certain that we know that Buffy knows it too. Unlike her mother, she accepts the absurdity of the world, which means that Buffy can still solve the problem her mother posed. Joyce tried a revolutionary response, but this not only failed, it was disastrously counterproductive and ended only when the monstrous nature of it was revealed (hey, look: a metaphor!). There is a different solution to the evils which plague mankind, but it’s one we won’t get until Buffy adopts it in Graduation Day 2. If you have a sneaking suspicion that I believe Camus is involved in that solution, there’s a clue in the speech Joyce gave after the Mayor.
Fairy tales are real. That’s not just absurd, it’s horrifying. Makes you wonder what, say, Red Riding Hood might look like in real life.
Trivia notes: (1) Snyder’s “I love the smell of desperate librarian in the morning” plays off the famous line from Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”. (2) Giles referred to the cops taking his books as “Marauders”. This may be a reference to the villains of the X-Men comics. (3) Jack traded in his cow for some magic beans in Jack and the Beanstalk. (4) Cordelia asked Giles how many times he’s been knocked out. By my count it’s now up to 10: Witch, Never Kill A Boy On The First Date, The Pack, Prophecy Girl, When She Was Bad, Passion, Becoming 1, Homecoming, Revelations, and Gingerbread. He was also shot with the tranquilizer gun in Beauty and the Beasts. (5) Hecate is a goddess associated with many things, among them witchcraft. (6) Diana was the goddess of, among other things, wild animals. Both goddesses were also invoked in Bewitched, Bothered & Bewildered.
Helpless
Writer David Fury says in his DVD commentary that Buffy’s red coat in Helpless was a deliberate reference to Red Riding Hood. Kralik reinforced the reference at several points: “Why did you come to the dark of the woods?”; “To bring all these sweets to grandmother's house?”; and “If you stray from the path you will lose your way”. So, in line with the theme that fairy tales are real, let’s see what Wikipedia tells us about the original version of Red Riding Hood:
“The antagonist is not always a wolf, but sometimes an ogre or a ‘bzou’ (werewolf), making these tales relevant to the werewolf-trials (similar to witch trials) of the time…. The wolf usually leaves the grandmother’s blood and meat for the girl to eat, who then unwittingly cannibalizes her own grandmother…. In [other versions] she escapes with no help from any male or older female figure, instead using her own cunning.”
And what was Kralik’s plan? He told Joyce: “I won't kill her; I'll just make her like me. Different. She'll go to sleep, and when she wakes up, your face will be the first thing she eats.” But, of course, Buffy escaped using her own cunning (a word Quentin Travers actually used to describe the virtues a Slayer needs).
Helpless shows us Buffy deprived of her Slayer power, though she turns out not to be helpless at all. In my reading, Buffy’s reconciliation with Cordelia in Homecoming was necessary for this episode. When Cordelia stared down Lyle Gorch, that was telling us that Buffy had non-Slayer attributes she could use to face challenges as a person; she’s not limited to her Slayer side. Whatever you think of the Cruciamentum (see below), Buffy experienced the world the way ordinary people – people like Willow and Xander – do. That was a necessary step on her journey to adulthood, even if it wasn’t intended that way by the Watcher’s Council.
The big revelation in the episode, though, is the nature of the Watcher’s Council (gleefully abbreviated in fandom as the “WC”). We’ve heard about it for some time, but never seen any representative except Giles and (the presumably renegade) Mrs. Post. What we saw in Helpless was not promising, so let’s consider the Council’s policy.
I think the best case that can be made for the Watcher’s Council is along the same lines as Col. Graff made in Ender’s Game. If you haven’t read the book, spoilers for it follow.
Briefly, Ender is a child prodigy who is taken by military commanders in order to train him to become a commander himself. In order to make him ruthless, they isolate him from his fellow students, who torment him repeatedly. This results in Ender using his undoubted talents to find ever more creative ways to get back at the other students by winning the games the commanders set for him. Unbeknownst to Ender, at some point the games become actual combat situations in which his decisions are translated into commands for the Earth star fleet. He eventually ends the war by a ruthless and totally destructive move, something he never would have done but for the way he’d been treated.
The book is somewhat ambiguous about the way Ender was treated. The conclusion suggests real regret on his part, but Col. Graff excuses or palliates the harm done to Ender personally as necessary in the service of a greater good. The ending of Helpless, in contrast, left us with little sympathy for Quentin Travers or the Watcher’s Council.
So the question is, can the “military necessity” excuse justify the Cruciamentum? Or is it, as Giles says, nothing but an “archaic exercise in cruelty”? One could argue that the test is much less cruel than we’re shown precisely because a Slayer is likely to have gained enough combat experience to be able to pass it without as much risk as it may seem. Personally, I don’t find this very persuasive because Slayers will have gained their experience in exercising Slayer powers, not acting as ordinary teenage girls; it’s not like Cordy and Willow are capable of walking out of Thunderdome after a bout with an insane vampire.
That said, a Slayer who did survive – and didn’t realize how she’d been betrayed and manipulated by her Watcher – probably would gain confidence from the knowledge that she defeated a vampire “on her own”. That, of course, implies the “usual” case in which the vampire doesn’t escape and endanger third parties. Quentin’s behavior was inexcusable even if the Cruciamentum itself can be justified, because he was indifferent to the harm to Joyce and his own employees.
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br /> Assuming that military training does serve a purpose, however instrumentalist towards a human being, I find it hard to see why this particular exercise would be applicable to someone who’s already been a Slayer for (in Buffy’s case) nearly 3 years. A Slayer would surely have picked up the skills necessary to survive during that time; if not, she wouldn’t have survived (a la Kendra). Thus, the test itself seems unnecessary for training purposes.
What it is useful for, though, is controlling the Slayer. The WC structure is set up to isolate the Watchers (or at least the Council) from any real risk. The Slayer is the one actually fighting evil, as Giles pointed out. The Cruciamentum seems well-designed to eliminate a Slayer who gets too independent – since another will be called, the WC doesn’t need any particular Slayer. It can simply assert its authority over the newly Chosen One. She may very well be younger and will certainly be less confident of her own abilities, thus more willing to defer to the Council’s authority. The whole test seems designed to perpetuate the Council rather than to make the Slayer “better” in any meaningful way.
The test also seems to serve a disciplinary function for the Watcher in the field, as we saw at the end. The Council asserts its authority over them as an additional method of control. Giles clearly recognized the problem with the process, so we need to understand why he would agree to participate and to betray Buffy as he did. Part of it was surely the sense of duty he had as a subordinate to the WC, which seems to be its goal. We all tend to do as we’re told by our bosses. This would be all the more true of Giles, since his father and grandmother were both Watchers (NKABOTFD) and he was raised from childhood to become one. The fact that he felt somewhat ignored by the Council (Revelations) may have made him more anxious to prove to them what a good job he’s done with Buffy by having her survive the test. Part of it, though, may stem from lingering subconscious resentment at the way Buffy withheld Angel’s return from him. That’s not very noble, but it may be a real factor.
