Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Smashed

  Smashed was very controversial when it aired, mostly because of the fact that Buffy and Spike went All The Way, and judging from recent internet debates about the episode it remains that way today. Given that, I might as well say up front that I think Smashed is brilliant – as in top 15 brilliant – and mostly because of the whole 4th act, including the ending. Regardless of what I think of Buffy’s choice to have sex with Spike, I think the portrayal is incredibly good. The house falling down is, of course, a metaphor (Joss added it) which should give some hint about the meaning of it all.

  This probably counts as trivia, but a few years ago TV Guide did one of its “25 Best Of” articles. This article rated the “25 Best Sex Scenes in TV History”. The scene from Smashed was No. 1 (and see trivia note 21). IMO, it’s certainly one of the best dramatic scenes in the whole show, and that’s a very high standard indeed.

  Those who weren’t part of online fandom at the time can’t even begin to comprehend the intensity of the Spike Wars which followed this episode. Lots of fans insisted that Spike was on the road to redemption and that he was good for Buffy. Rob from AtPO:

  “I also don't agree that Spike is "evil." Whatever one's own opinion may be about Spike having changed since the series began, I don't think there is any doubt that now on the show, Spike's personality is a shade of gray, not black or white. The rule that all vampires are evil does not apply anymore, and I believe that makes Spike's story all the more compelling and fascinating. Even before he was "chipped," he was capable of more love and emotion than most other vampires, as evidenced by his love for Dru. This is a further extension of that.”

  Others were just as adamant that canon hadn’t changed, that vampires were evil, and that Buffy had degraded herself by having sex with an evil, disgusting thing. As an example, here’s Malandanza from AtPO:

  “There is something of the adolescent in Spike's passion for Buffy -- he is the boy in the locker room sulking because she won't "put out," throwing tantrums when he doesn't get his way (as in Crush and OMwF), manipulating her friends…, using and discarding poor Harmony to pass the time until Buffy comes to her senses -- all the while convinced that he is irresistible and she is just being coy. Under the "Big Bad" bluster there is a sensitive poet -- but dig a little deeper and you find that under the sensitive poet is a creepy, egocentric misogynist….

  Idealistic? Spike? Machiavellian is more like it. He plots and schemes to gain Buffy's affections. He befriends Buffy's mother and sister and attempts to ingratiate himself (belatedly) with her friends. He systemically works on breaking up Riley and Buffy (playing Iago to Riley's Othello). … Spike isn't tilting at windmills -- he is the pragmatic vampire. He works steadily towards his goal of bedding Buffy….

  Spike will not be redeemed -- he will never be a "real boy" -- he is not on the path of redemption, nor has he ever been. His past good works were for one thing -- to get Buffy. Now he had her, and everything's changed. I doubt we'll be seeing sensitive Spike any longer than we saw sensitive Parker.”

  I’m quoting two very polite people from a very polite board; lots of Spike threads devolved quickly into screaming matches and nearly every thread eventually became a Spike thread. A little Wordsworth (describing the French Revolution) conveys the atmosphere:

  “'Twas in truth an hour/Of universal ferment; mildest men/Were agitated, and commotions, strife/Of passion and opinion, filled the walls/Of peaceful houses with unquiet sounds./The soil of common life was, at that time,/Too hot to tread upon…”

  Remember that Spike’s story continues to be that of Alex from A Clockwork Orange (see my post on The Initiative). The essential (heh) question with Spike is whether the chip is training him away from his violent tendencies such that he’s on a path to redemption, as he claimed in Tabula Rasa, or whether the chip simply restrains the violent actions of an unreformed criminal/vampire. The usual expression among viewers was the “soul canon”: was it still necessary to have a soul in order to be redeemed (Angel), or was it now possible to be at least on a path to redemption without one?

  On one side there were Buffy’s own words: “SPIKE: A man can change. (She again stops walking and faces him.) BUFFY: You're not a man. You're a thing. … An evil, disgusting, thing.” There was also Spike’s insistence that Buffy “came back wrong” and virtually everything else he says in the fourth act. That wasn’t seductive, that was abuse – he was reinforcing her sense that she didn’t really belong in the world any more.

  The redemptionists pointed in response to the alley scene, which I’ll quote:

  Cut to an alley. The young woman walks along, still hugging herself, looking nervous. Suddenly Spike steps out in front of her. She screams.

  SPIKE: That's right, you should scream.

  She tries to get away but he moves to intercept her. She looks scared.

  SPIKE: Creature of the night here, yeah? (indicating himself) Some people forget that.

  He advances on the woman. She backs away, shaking her head fearfully, backs up against a wall.

  WOMAN: Please.

  SPIKE: She thinks I'm housebroken. She forgot who she's dealing with.

  WOMAN: Anything you want, please-

  SPIKE: Just 'cause she's confused about where she fits in, I'm supposed to be too? 'Cause I'm not. (pacing back and forth) I know what I am. I'm dangerous. I'm evil.

  WOMAN: (scared) I-I'm sure you're not evil.

  SPIKE: Yes, I am. I am a killer. (moves closer to her) That's what I do. I kill. And, yeah, maybe it's been a long time, but ... it's not like you forget how.

  He gets up very close to the woman, who is panting fearfully.

  SPIKE: You just ... do it. (nervously) And now I can, again, all right? So here goes.

  The dialogue doesn’t really do justice to the amount of hesitation James Marsters showed on Spike’s face, nor to the tone in his voice. Spike fans insisted that his hesitation represented progress, that no other vampire would have conducted such an internal dialogue or even hesitated. Writer Drew Greenberg: “Does he want to bite the girl or does he want to want to bite the girl? He has to do a lot of convincing of himself. So what does that mean?”

  Those on the other side attributed his hesitance to the expectation of pain, not to any “moral” judgment; only the latter could lead to redemption in their eyes, and Spike didn’t show it.

  I personally was of Rob’s view at that time, that is, the view that the “soul canon” was no longer in effect and that Spike’s actions during and after Intervention showed moral development. To contrast my own view I’ll offer one more quote, this one from Traveler:

  “When Spike first started going all ga ga over Buffy, I thought it was really funny. I had a little bit of sympathy for him, but I didn't particularly care to see them hook up. However, after he withstood torture on her behalf, I began rooting for him more and more. Since then, he has saved her life and the lives of her loved ones countless times with no expectation of reward. That plus he's a hopeless romantic. How can you not want to see someone like that get the girl?

  So, OMWF should have been a wonderful episode for a Spike/Buffy shipper, because we finally get to see them kiss. The problem is Buffy's one little line, "this isn't real." In one move, Joss gave us what we wanted most and made it almost worthless. Buffy kisses Spike, but it doesn't mean she loves him.

  Then, Tabula Rasa took things one step further. After this episode, I was fully convinced that Spike was on the path toward some kind of redemption and would eventually be someone that Buffy could truly love. At this point, my biggest fear was that Buffy would continue to abuse him.

  And then came Smashed... which turned everything on its head. Spike tries to isolate Buffy by telling her that he is the only person for her. He immediately tries to kill a mortal when he thinks his chip isn't working. Finally, he tells Buffy that she isn't human and they have sex. But this sex isn't about love; it's about lust and power and control. Once again, the writers give us what we want and
then make it worthless. No more redemption for Spike. No love between Buffy and Spike. In fact, it is as if the writers are telling us that Spike's love was never real. Buffy tells Spike that he doesn't love her; he loves pain. And Spike tacitly agrees with her! Indeed, he seems to be satisfied with the physical relationship, just as he was with the Buffybot. It's as if all the incredible things he did for Buffy, all the really beautiful ways in which he proved his love for her, were all a lie! All the growth and changes we've seen in his character were erased in one episode.”

  So how should we interpret the fact that Spike can hit Buffy? Local-max offered this in comments: “I think that Spike's ability to hit Buffy is partly about his being able to affect her emotionally. In season five, he may have been able to sting -- but he couldn't really, really hurt her, and if he tried the "come back wrong" stuff then she would have, as she did in Fool for Love, get angry for a moment and then shrug him off. He can hurt her physically now because he can hurt her emotionally.”

  As I see it, it’s a metaphor for how Buffy feels about herself: wrong. Staying on the metaphor theme, it seems pretty clear that the episode is paralleling Willow (Buffy’s spirit) and Buffy. Willow is abusing others with magic and throwing off restraints, reflecting Buffy beating up Spike and then casting off her own restraints. The scene in the Magic Box where Buffy, Anya and Xander talk about Willow makes this parallel express:

  XANDER: Tara thinks Willow is doing too much magic. And she's not the only one. BUFFY: I know. But I-I think she'll be fine. You know, it's, it's Willow. She of the level head.

  ANYA: Well, those are the ones you have to watch out for the most. Responsible types. BUFFY: Right, she might go crazy and start alphabetizing everything.

  ANYA: I'm serious. Responsible people are ... always so concerned with ... being good all the time, that when they finally get a taste of being bad ... they can't get enough. It's like all (gestures) kablooey.

  BUFFY: That's not true.

  ANYA: Okay, not kablooey, more like bam. …

  XANDER: It's gotta be seductive. (Buffy looks up in alarm at the word 'seductive.' Her eyes widen.)

  XANDER: (OS) Just giving in to it. Going totally wild.

  And, of course, the fourth act cuts back and forth between Willow/Amy and Buffy/Spike.

  Why would Buffy react so strongly and be so disturbed when Spike tells her she came back wrong? Because of what happened in Forever:

  BUFFY: You have no idea what you're messing with. Who knows what you actually raised, what's gonna come through that door!

  DAWN: (tearful) No, I-I know. It'll be her.

  BUFFY: No. Tara told me that these spells go bad all the time. People come back ... wrong.

  When Spike proved that he could hit her, that also confirmed Buffy’s internal sense of feeling wrong now. “Rat. You? Dead.”, one of my favorite bits of dialogue in the series, pretty much describes it. That sense of being “wrong” was precisely the thing which released her remaining inhibitions about sex with Spike. If she’s already “wrong”, she no longer needs to do the right thing.

  One more event contributed, IMO, to the sex. In the teaser Spike yelled after Buffy “It's only a matter of time before you realize I'm the only one here for you, pet. You got no one else!” Buffy started to approach Willow just after the teaser, which was brave of her in light of the way Willow’s spells have affected her in S6. Nonetheless she started the conversation, only to hear Willow tell her that “it's nice, having another magically-inclined friend around.” On top of all the rest, I think Buffy couldn’t be sure that Willow was really there for her any more (in metaphor, her spirit wasn’t there). It made Spike’s abuse seem true.

  Willow, in turn, obviously felt the loss of Tara, despite the bold face she put on in The Magic Box, and, I hope, remorseful about Buffy too. She needed someone to be there for her, but didn’t think she could turn to Buffy. Drew Greenberg: “There’s this undercurrent of loneliness and sadness [with Willow]”. The sense of isolation each of them felt, combined with Willow’s obvious pride in using magic to de-rat Amy, therefore reinforced the downward spiral. In comments, local-max suggested that Amy’s release from her cage parallels Spike’s newfound ability to hit Buffy, and the impact is similar in each case. I’d add that Amy serves also as a metaphor for Willow deciding to release that part of her which she’s kept caged up all these years.

  One final point to consider before getting to Wrecked. During their research, both Xander and Buffy praised Willow for hacking. “XANDER: All right, back to basics. A little old-fashioned state-of-the-art hacker action. BUFFY: That's great, Will, I haven't seen you do that in a long time.” It would be hard, in my view, to provide a convincing moral justification for hacking as opposed to Willow’s use of magic instead. There are some distinctions: hacking uses natural rather than supernatural tools; and the collateral risk to others is non-existent except in very unusual cases of hacking. Still, the failure of anyone to articulate any such distinction probably helps explain Willow’s path from hacker to magic.

  Trivia notes: (1) The word “smashed” is US slang meaning drunk (or drugged). It usually has the connotation of being extremely drunk. (2) Buffy called Spike “Jessica Fletcher”, who was the detective hero of the TV series Murder, She Wrote. (3) Buffy’s “get your rocks off” in reference to Spike is sexual slang meaning an orgasm. (4) Amy turned herself into a rat in the S3 episode Gingerbread. (5) Willow’s spell de-ratting Amy was in Italian. A rough translation is “What was, is no longer. What was done, undo. The danger passed, the trial no more, set it right.” (6) Andrew’s descent into the museum using the harness mimics a scene from the movie Mission Impossible. (7) Jonathan tells Andrew that they’re not breaking into Langley, which is where CIA headquarters is located. (8) Larry came out as gay in Phases and he died in Graduation Day 2. (9) Amy’s “have you heard about Tom and Nicole” refers to the divorce of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. (10) Dawn drank her milkshake to wash down the Raisnettes, which are chocolate coated raisins. (11) Tara’s request that Dawn eat something that’s not “gummi green” refers to Gummi Bears. (12) The movie Tara and Dawn saw where all the inner city kids taught their coach a lesson was Hardball. (13) Warren’s “size is everything” refers to the 1998 movie Godzilla. (14) Spike’s reference to Warren as “nimrod” is American slang for a stupid person. (15) Andrew hadn’t seen Red Dwarf, which was a British science fiction sitcom. (16) The first band we see in The Bronze is Virgil. They later turn into the Halo Friendlies. (17) The name of the woman in the Bronze, Brie, was presumably a cheese joke based on Amy’s time as a rat. (18) When the obnoxious guy in The Bronze referred to Willow as “Ellen”, he was referring to Ellen Degeneres, who came out as a lesbian a few years before Smashed aired. (19) When Anya told Xander he was reading a “D&D manual”, she was referring to Dungeons & Dragons. (20) Xander called Spike “Captain Peroxide”, referring to the chemical used to bleach hair. (21) The ending scene, as filmed, had even more sex in it than the version shown on air and on DVD. You can see the original here.

  Wrecked

  Wrecked added a lot of fuel to the fires of controversy over S6. The string of episodes from Wrecked through Seeing Red is surely the most controversial stretch in the show’s history. I think it’s fair to say that the majority of fans of the show didn’t like the magic/drugs metaphor, meaning that Willow’s story line now joined Buffy’s in the internet screaming matches debates. Two members of my family stopped watching the show after this episode.

  Let me start with the Buffy of the episode before I analyze the controversial aspects of the metaphor. The basic idea is that Willow lets magic take her over, as Buffy does Spike. Both are escapist:

  “WILLOW: I just ... it took me away from myself, I was ... free.

  BUFFY: (looks down, pensive) I get that. More than you- (breaks off).”

  That’s the parallel, made obvious in several scenes, including the research in The Magic Box, the conversation between Buffy and Spike while they search
for Dawn (note the drug use double entendres), and the ending. Buffy’s crisis of the spirit continues, with Willow’s incapacity reflecting Buffy’s internal lack of spirit.

  Spike’s behavior in Wrecked continues a theme introduced in Life Serial. I mentioned in my post on Life Serial that each of the four vignettes foreshadowed the behavior of the characters later in the season. Spike’s is the first one we see. He told her in Life Serial that “You're a creature of the darkness. Like me.” Most of his dialogue with Buffy here in Wrecked develops that theme: “I may be dirt ... but you're the one who likes to roll in it, Slayer. You never had it so good as me. Never.” That certainly doesn’t sound like what Buffy (or anyone) needs. This was more ammunition for those who insisted Spike was evil. Of course, then he helped Buffy rescue Dawn.