Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  While it sometimes gets neglected or forgotten because of what happens at the end, it turns out that the events of IWMTLY will have a significant impact on the rest of Season 5 and are seminal for all of Season 6. It’s important to keep them in mind.

  Oh, and April’s words immediately before she shuts down are not random or accidental.

  Trivia note: (1) Before this episode aired, rumors were swirling that the network wanted Britney Spears to play the role of April. Just think what we all missed. (2) The Anya/Tara scene is one of just two in the entire series (the other was when they went into Giles’s bathroom during the fight in The Yoko Factor). (3) You can tell this episode aired in the early days of the internet by Tara’s comment that “everyone’s spelling is really bad”. (3) Spike’s “if looks could stake” plays off the expression “if looks could kill”. (4) Warren Beatty is a well-known American actor from the ‘60s and ‘70s. (5) Warren Harding was elected President in 1920. (6) Willow mentions “code red”, which is typical shorthand for a fire (at least in CA hospitals). (7) “Code Pink” is an anti-war women’s group. (8) Buffy’s description of Joyce’s date as “Prince Charming” refers to a stock character from fairy tales. (9) As is fairly well-known, Amber Benson (Tara) and Adam Busch (Warren) were a couple for a number of years.

  The Body

  There’s a lot of television I’ve never seen, so I can’t say The Body is the very best episode of any show ever. I can’t even say that it’s the very best episode of Buffy, because it has close competition (IMO) from Passion and OMWF. It’s a real tribute to the show, in fact, that an episode as incredibly good as The Body can have competition for “best” and that still others are nearly as good. What I can say is that The Body has to be on a very short list among the greatest television episodes of all time.

  It’s also among the hardest to re-watch – viscerally painful and raw. No matter how often I see it, I find myself tearing up during at least 4 scenes (“Mom. Mommy?”; “We’re not supposed to move the body.”; Dawn’s meltdown; Anya’s monologue). The complete absence of background music heightens the effect. So does the absence of metaphor. In a show devoted to metaphor, the very lack of it here emphasizes the realism and makes the events that much harsher. From Joss’s commentary:

  “And so what appears to many people as a formal exercise, no music, scenes that take up almost the entire act, without end, is all done for a very specific purpose, which is to put you in the moment, that moment of dumbfoundedness, that airlessness of losing somebody.”

  The Body is so powerful and so well done that there isn’t much to offer by way of commentary. I’ll just make a couple of points.

  I’ve said many times before that I believe the school lessons always relate to the episode in some way. The art lesson was to draw “negative space”:

  TEACHER: Okay. Remember, we're not ... drawing the object.

  TEACHER: We're drawing ... the negative space ... around the object.

  I think Joss uses Joyce’s body as the object and draws the negative space around it throughout the episode. He notes in his commentary that every act begins with Joyce’s body as the focus of the camera. We then see the way the events surrounding it serve to define it. The scene in which Dawn breaks down is a smaller example of drawing negative space within a single scene.

  Groovypants made a great point in comments: “The one thing that really hit me that I never noticed before is that the first thing Anya says to Buffy is "I *wish* that Joyce hadn't died." It's like, for a thousand years, wishes had made things happen for Anya and now that she doesn't have that anymore, she has no way to actually deal with anything serious, but she says the wish anyway because it’s the literally only thing she knows.”

  Also in comments, deidre asked whether I thought the vampire in the morgue was distracting. Here’s my response:

  “I remember thinking on first watch that it was kind of distracting. Joss explains it in his commentary like this:

  "But the idea of the vampire is that it is an intrusion, it does belong here the way Tara finds herself the only one sitting with Buffy and not feeling like she belonged. But she actually she had something to offer. But life goes on, and on BtVS, that means horrible things happen.

  And this fight was done differently than any other fight I've done before. I made it as much of a gross wrestling match as I could, you know, hands in the face, and of course, pulling the sheet off of Joyce, in the worst way possible. But rather than a great cool kickboxy fight I made this like a genuine struggle. I wanted to stress the reality of it."

  I get what he's saying, even though the scene did pull me out of the moment, so to speak, at first. Now I accept it as part of the episode. It's kind of like sitting down to deal with the bills after your mother dies -- a grinding reminder that life doesn't stand still.”

  I should add that my metaphorical reading of the series, Buffy slays vampires in the course of growing up. Dealing with her mother's death is, of course, a major step in forcing her to adopt an adult role.

  The very last scene – Dawn with her finger poised like that of God in the Sistine Chapel – had some fans speculating that her “keyness” would enable her to bring Joyce back to life. I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that this is not the case. Here’s Joss’s comment:

  “The fact of death being physically real and physically unreal is expressed here in the last shot after Dawn says those words, words that cannot be answered by anybody, and reaches out to touch her mother in a show that's all about physicality. This girl needs to know, to understand. But never touches her. And that was done very specifically. And some people were like "oh that means next week Dawn's going to heal her with her key powers!" and I was like what show were you watching? It meant - we want to touch it, but it isn't there. And to go out just before she touches it was just to express that, to express what I've been talking about the whole way. There is no resolution there is no ending, there is no lesson, there's just death.”

  Trivia notes: (1) Joss had Joyce’s death planned far in advance. He told Kristine Sutherland before S4 began that he would kill her character in S5. (2) Joyce died of an aneurysm. Compare this line from the opening episode of S4, The Freshman, which Joss wrote: “Buffy: Can't wait till mom gets the bill for these books, I hope it's a funny aneurysm.” (3) Joss will work again with the “negative space” theme in the Firefly episode Objects in Space. (4) This episode is the first time we’re shown Willow and Tara kissing. Joss fought a long battle with the censors over this issue, and even threatened to quit if they cut this scene. (5) The sentence “strong like an Amazon” comes from the song “Amazons” by Phranc. Joss liked the song. (6) Xander mentioned Glory’s threat to come after Buffy’s friends and family, which Glory made in Checkpoint. (7) Joss’s fascination with the Avengers appears again in Xander’s line “the Avengers gotta get with the assembling”. (8) Myles McNutt had a terrific review of the episode which you can read at http://cultural-learnings.com/2010/08/06/cultural-catchup-project-the-body-buffy-the-vampire-slayer/ (9) If you’re interested in technical stuff, this description by Joss of the scene when Buffy tries to resuscitate her mother may interest you:

  “Now this shot this is one long take and it bears watching exactly how long it is especially because Alan Houston the camera man had his camera on his shoulder the whole time and was running around. It wasn't a steady cam. He had no harness because I wanted the urgency of handheld. So he kept recreating frames, recreating frames. This is a very difficult thing to do, kneeling down, getting up. It was an extraordinary piece of camera work, and of course, an extraordinary piece of acting from Sarah, where I made her do this about seven times. To go from the extremity of first finding her, the helplessness of not knowing what to do, all of the things that Sarah had to go through in this, she had to go through many many times. And you know, every take was extraordinary.”

  Forever

  Forever provides an opportunity for Buffy to grieve, while giving us a major clue to Daw
n’s role this season. It also raises some disturbing issues about other characters which will be explored at more length later on.

  Regardless of what you think of Spike’s behavior before this episode, he got something right in Forever: bringing Joyce flowers without a card. Before this, everything he did was designed to bring attention to himself as a method of getting Buffy’s respect: “Look at me, I’m doing what humans think is good” (e.g., not feeding off of bleeding disaster victims). The lack of a card shows that he actually did understand Joyce in some way.

  At least since Becoming, Joyce had treated Spike as if he were just one of Buffy’s friends. She listened to him after Dru left him. She made him cocoa. She told him jokes about amphorae. She acted, in a way, like his mother might have. It’s odd to think that a vampire could recognize this, but perhaps Spike’s chip has prevented him from acting on his instincts and left open the possibility for another kind of reaction.

  OTOH, helping Dawn with the resurrection spell may reflect his liking for Joyce, but ranks pretty low on the good judgment scale. The easy way to see why it’s bad judgment is to quote the reasons Dawn gives for wanting to do it: she hurts; “I don't have anybody.” These are selfish reasons, they’re what Dawn wants without reference to Joyce or anyone else.

  Dawn’s attempt may have been selfish, but it was understandable to an extent. She’s young and innocent; she didn’t seem to realize what she was getting into with Doc. As she says, consistent with her metaphorical role this season, she also feels like Buffy’s ignoring her:

  DAWN: I don't have anybody.

  BUFFY: What?! Of course you do. You have me!

  DAWN: No, I don't. You won't even look at me. It's so obvious you don't want me around.

  BUFFY: That's not true.

  DAWN: (harshly) Yes it is. Mom ... died, and it's like you don't even care.

  Buffy’s breakdown at the end, which proves to Dawn that she desperately needs her mother, just as Dawn does, and that she needs Dawn as well, takes place in the very room where Buffy found her mother’s body in the opening to The Body. This is no accident: when Buffy hears the knock on the door, she says the words “Mommy? Mom?”, the exact reverse order of her words in The Body (reverse because now Joyce is coming back).

  Spike had good (well, you get my meaning) company in his poor decision to help Dawn. Willow’s action in drawing Dawn’s attention to the book (and lying about it to Tara) raises a good many issues about both her judgment and her character. William B in comments: “I'd argue that if Willow really strongly believed that Dawn's Right To Know overwhelmed Tara's concerns, she should just give Dawn the book openly rather than hide it from Tara. The fact that she hides it from Tara shows that she either 1) partially knows that Tara might be correct but is trying to dismiss it, and so knows she can't handle an argument with Tara about it; or 2) doesn't trust Tara to be convinced by Willow's arguments even if Willow is correct. I think that it's a combination of the two; I think 1 is closer to the objective truth (which is that Tara has a very good point) and 2 is closer to how Willow rationalizes it, but even if Willow were entirely right and Tara entirely wrong, Tara has a right to be included as Dawn's co-guardian for the night.”

  We know Willow doesn’t like to see people in pain – and this was pretty much the same reason Spike gave for helping – but using magic to make it go away didn’t work very well for Willow in Something Blue and was nearly a disaster here. This seems to be a case when a real strength – not wanting to see others suffer – can lead to very dubious responses.

  Willow has always wanted to help. As early as The Harvest she “needed” to: “Buffy, I'm not anxious to go into a dark place full of monsters. But I do want to help. I need to.” Back then she helped by using her computer skills. Now she relies more and more on magic. It may seem like the two are similar, in that both involve arcane knowledge which Willow has worked hard to acquire, but beyond that they aren’t all that similar. Computers behave in predictable ways because science, by definition, operates within the laws of nature and therefore can’t change the fundamental character of the world. Putting aside the fact that Willow doesn’t treat magic like science (e.g., she doesn’t experiment on small things first), magic isn’t limited like that. It has the potential, if one is powerful enough, to change the natural order of things. Tara tries to deny this, but Dawn isn’t fooled:

  TARA: (steps forward) Of course you wanna bring your mother back, and ... I wish we could, but it's not possible.

  DAWN: Why? You guys do magic for all kinds of things.

  WILLOW: We do, but...

  TARA: This is different. Magic can't be used to alter the natural order of things.

  DAWN: But all you do is mess with the natural order of things. You, you make things float, a-and disappear, and-

  TARA: But we don't mess with life and death….

  WILLOW: I'm not even sure it's possible, Dawn. I mean, I've ... seen things on resurrection, but ... there's books and stuff ... but I guess ... the spells ... backfire?

  TARA: That's not the point.

  WILLOW: That's not the point. The, the point is it's bad ... because ...

  TARA: Because witches can't be allowed to alter the fabric of life for selfish reasons. Wiccans took an oath a long time ago to honor that.

  DAWN: So it's possible ... to bring someone back? They wouldn't have taken an oath if they didn't know they could do it.

  TARA: Maybe they could, but we can't.

  WILLOW: She's right, Dawn. It's too dangerous.

  Tara’s “can’t” really means “shouldn’t” when Dawn presses them. The more accurate reason is that every use of magic has to be balanced against the potential for drastic and unforeseen consequences.

  This brings us back to an important distinction which arises out of the basic philosophical view of the world we’ve seen within the show. To get at this, we need to consider what it is that’s wrong about resurrecting the dead on a show which, after all, uses magic for many reasons. I think it relates back to the distinction I noted in S3 between revolution and rebellion (posts on Gingerbread and GD2). Revolution is wrong because it attempts to remake the fundamental nature of the world. Failure to respect the limits of the world leads to tyranny and cruelty.

  Death is inherent in the human condition. Resurrection is therefore a revolutionary act – that is, bad in Joss’s view and in the view of Albert Camus – because it tries to overcome this inherent fact of the human condition. I’ll have more to say about this in S6.

  Then there’s the emotional cost. Imagine how either Dawn or Buffy would have reacted had Joyce come back “wrong” (to use Tara’s word). That would have been devastating to the way they want to remember her. Worse yet, Buffy might have had to destroy the thing which now walked the earth wearing her mother’s face. That’s a whole new level of trauma. There’s another reason, related to this one, but it involves spoilers so I’ll discuss it later.

  Some additional points:

  A good measure of Buffy’s sense of guilt and lack of confidence in being a grown up can be seen in this part of her talk with Angel:

  BUFFY: (shakes her head) I don't know. I keep thinking about it ... when I found her. If I had just gotten there ten minutes earlier...

  ANGEL: You said they told you it wouldn't have made a difference.

  BUFFY: They said ... "probably" ... wouldn't have made a difference. The exact thing they said ... was "probably." I haven't told that to anyone.

  In fact, neither the paramedics nor Dr. Krieger used the word “probably” when they told her that there was nothing she could have done.

  The episode title seems to apply in some way to Angel as well as to the fact of death. Buffy says she wants Angel to stay “forever”, but they both are reminded by her kiss that the curse is “forever” too.

  Dawn reinforced the message of Blood Ties by behaving much like Buffy. She was brave, impulsive, and ultimately did the right thing. Spike even comments that she’s “Bitty Buffy”
.

  The brief shot of Giles listening to “Tales of Brave Ulysses” hearkens back to Band Candy. That was the song he and Joyce listened to in his apartment. Note the last line we hear from the song: For the sparkling waves are calling you to kiss their white-laced lips...

  Doc humming “Peter and the Wolf”, though, has a very different implication.

  Trivia notes: (1) The episode bears a loose relationship to the short story “The Monkey’s Paw”. (2) Buffy previously mentioned that her father was in Spain in Family. (3) The funeral service we hear for Joyce is from the Anglican service. (4) There’s an extremely subtle clue in this episode which helps explain something which happens in the finale. (5) Ben previously hit Jinx in Checkpoint. (6) Dawn invoked Osiris in her spell. He was the Egyptian god of the afterlife. (7) Those of you who watched on DVD don’t realize how lucky you are. In the original run, seven weeks separated The Body and Forever.

  Intervention

  He who does battle with monsters needs to watch out lest he in the process becomes a monster himself.

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

  For all that there’s a good deal of humor in Intervention, it’s got a very serious point to it. This episode lays out in express terms Buffy’s feeling of separation between her human half and her Slayer half, a feeling which we saw prefigured in The Replacement, and which has been reinforced since by the recognition that Glory and Ben actualize the “separate parts in a single body” which Buffy feels. Buffy’s concern now is that the Slayer side is winning, that she’s becoming “hard”: