by Field, Mark
Buffy, in turn, is abusive to Spike. She repeatedly insults him, lending plausibility to Spike’s claim that she’s using him while adopting the pretense of purity. Since I talked about Spike’s behavior and Buffy’s response in my last post, I’ll move on to the next controversy.
Now to what’s generally called the “magic/drugs” metaphor. I’ve modified my thinking on this issue a lot over the years, and what I’ll give below is only my latest interpretation. It’s certainly not consistent with many things I said at the time.
Like all metaphors, this one is capable of multiple interpretations (that being the whole point of metaphor). It seems to me that the most plausible are the following, but each has its problems:
(1) Magic is a drug. This makes no sense within the confines of the show. Never before had doing spells been shown or said to result in a craving to do more spells. Some people (like me, at the time) pointed to The Dark Age as supporting the “magic makes you high” theme. However, the dialogue in that episode doesn’t actually say that; I misread it back then. What it actually says is that the feeling of power that came from temporary possession by a demon caused euphoria, a “high”. Here’s the dialogue:
“WILLOW: … (reads) 'Eyghon, also called the Sleepwalker, can only exist in this reality by possessing an unconscious host. Temporary possession imbues the host with a euphoric feeling of power.' *** GILES: I was twenty-one, studying history at Oxford. And, of course, the occult by night. I hated it. The tedious grind of study, the... overwhelming pressure of my destiny. I dropped out, I went to London... (exhales) I fell in with the worst crowd that would have me. We practiced magicks. Small stuff for pleasure or gain. And Ethan and I discovered something... bigger. BUFFY: Eyghon.
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!”
The “it” in Giles’s last sentence refers not to the magic used to summon Eyghon, but, as the passage Willow read shows, the possession of the host by the demon.
Nor, if magic were like, say, cocaine, would it have been plausible for Giles and the rest of the SG to encourage Willow to use it so often. Neither would that analogy make any sense for the W/T arc in S4-5. No, magic isn’t “like” a drug in any way meaningful to the show.
There was lots of discussion in comments about this issue, all of which are worth reading. Karen suggested that Willow’s problem might be similar to gluttony. We need food for nourishment, but overdoing it creates problems. The issue is one of balance. Sadly, we won’t see the issue addressed this way.
As another solution, State of Siege offered this: “What makes the addiction trope potentially brilliant, what would have made it brilliant had it been executed properly, is that makes sense as a way for Willow and the SG to avoid dealing with her problems… —the very pain and difficulty of giving up magic, to cost to Willow, would have been so great to have made it seem like a possible solution… even as it was clear it was an avoidance, creating terrible tension for the rest of the season, as we waited to see how this played out.” Again, though, this is not the route the show will go.
(2) Abusing drugs is like abusing power. Lots of viewers, including me early on, took this as the most reasonable interpretation because Willow’s storyline previously appeared to one of increasing abuse of her power (as I’ve argued in my posts to date). The text doesn’t offer much support for this reading. The problem is that seeing drug use as similar to abuse of power is hard to square with the dialogue we hear or the images we see. When Willow went to Rack, she wasn’t abusing power, she was allowing Rack to abuse her in return for the “high”. As her dialogue with Buffy at the end shows (quoted above), Willow herself saw her actions as escapist. That also seems like the best way to read Buffy’s parallel story of sex with Spike. The idea of escapism is also consistent with the fact that drugs don't make you feel powerful and they don't give you control – what they do is provide you with a means of escaping yourself. This leads us to….
(3) Magic was a way for Willow to escape from herself, or at least what she most feared about herself. She uses it as a tool, and that gives her power that she never had before. “But I mean ... if you could be ... you know, plain old Willow or super Willow, who would you be?” It’s all about her. I’ll let Rufus from AtPO explain it:
“I find I'm happy with the drug metaphor because it allows us to see just how dependant Willow has become on artifice or something that shouldn't be real to have an identity. What was once used for the benefit of others is now used to bolster Willows scant self worth. When Willow was in bed with the shakes I saw that as reality attempting to put the witch back into the jumper of the high school years. Her need to be special as much physical as mental. Willow going "cold turkey" leaves her defenceless from her own self doubt and fear of being exposed as a fake. Willow needs her magic to be more than she thinks she already is. To not be able to use it has brought reality into her dreams of grandeur.”
This seems consistent with Buffy’s conversation with Willow about magic taking Willow away from herself. Whether it’s consistent with Willow’s arc prior to S6 is more problematic. Yes, Willow has always been insecure, but she’s been insecure about very specific things, namely, her personal appearance and her value to others. She certainly never lacked for self-esteem about her schoolwork, say, or her hacking (she’s proud of that even here in Wrecked).
Magic wasn’t her route to overcoming the particular insecurities she did have. She didn’t take up magic to attract Oz – they became a couple before she ever did a single spell. He didn’t stay with her because of magic either, in fact he cautioned against it (Fear, Itself). Nor did Willow take up magic as a means of attracting Tara. She was already using magic long before that. It would speak poorly of Tara if her attraction to Willow was based on magic rather than on Willow (as Buffy tells her at the end of Wrecked). It would also be problematic for the metaphor used in S4-5 (see below).
Willow didn’t use magic to become Buffy’s friend either, though it’s certainly arguable that she used hacking to stay involved in Buffy’s life in S1-3 and that magic served the same purpose in S4-5. Whether Buffy saw it that way or not, and I think she didn’t, Willow might have.
While we can speculate about Willow’s internal motivations, the official reason Willow pursued magic was expressly stated in the series. In Choices she told Buffy “I mean, you've been fighting evil here for three years, and I've helped some, and now we're supposed to decide what we want to do with our lives. And I just realized that that's what I want to do. Fight evil, help people. I mean, I-I think it's worth doing. And I don't think you do it because you have to. It's a good fight, Buffy, and I want in. … And, besides, I have a shot at being a bad ass Wicca, and what better place to learn?” In my view, Willow pursued magic not to solve her self-esteem problem, but to fight evil.
One way to avoid this problem is to argue that Willow used magic to fight evil, but also found along the way that it contributed to her self-esteem. It’s hard to deny that this could be true, but it’s also hard to find text to support it. For example, Willow denied that she was Buffy’s “big gun” in The Gift and the idea never seemed to have occurred to her. She even denies to Rack that she has power. Thus, if magic might be a boost to Willow’s self-esteem, she doesn’t seem to have noticed it. Willow can’t be using magic to boost her self-esteem and yet be completely unaware of that.
This leaves one last possibility, namely that Willow wants to believe that magic makes her valuable to others on one level, but deep inside she’s not sure that it does. This form of insecurity is common among successful people, who sometimes remain insecure about their own accomplishments; that insecurity even drives them to accomplish more. Seen in this light, her magic can be seen as a plea to be noticed, just as her hacking was. It would explain her insistence that nothing would go wrong with the resurrection spell and her boastful statement to Giles that “I’m very powerful.�
� (h/t State of Siege) While this is certainly possible, it’s also true that most of the time her spells have been directly helpful to Buffy and had no obvious connection with Willow’s internal issues.
On the other hand, arguably consistent with the “escapist” theme, Willow’s use of magic in S1-5 was sometimes a response to the pain and helplessness (h/t State of Siege) she felt. We could interpret that as pain arising from an internal sense that she’s not worth much. An episode like Something Blue is the perfect example of when Willow did use magic for her own benefit, though it’s not entirely clear that her pain stemmed from lack of self-esteem or simply that Oz left (the two can, of course, be related). The magic which she used there to alleviate the pain, however, ended up increasing it, which would seem to discourage the idea of using magic to avoid pain. Tough Love is another possible example of Willow using magic to avoid pain, with similar dubious consequences, and Fear, Itself is arguable. Whether a couple of examples from previous seasons suffices to validate the metaphor in Wrecked as consistent with Willow’s character arc is something each viewer has to decide.
State of Siege suggested that magic use actually reinforces Willow’s lack of self-worth:
“I also think that magic works to wear away at Willow’s sense of self—not because magic itself is evil, not because of anything magic is, but because of Willow herself. This, I think, is what she is getting at in her conversation with Buffy, and what we see in the later abuses: as her power grows, she increasingly comes to depend on magic to solve problems, relies less and less on her other powers, so that she becomes less sure about them—and loses sight of the values bound to them. Thus, when faced with a very human problem, she does not trust herself to solve it in a human way: there was obviously a better way to solve the fight with Tara, but Willow was so threatened by it (for reasons that you and others discussed at the time) that she felt helpless and turned immediately to magic. … And I see the next spell, in TR, as an extension of the same sense of powerlessness combined with guilt and self-loathing…, first from the resurrection spell, and then from the one on Tara alone. But this only compounds the guilt and self-loathing, so she turns to Rack, giving him use of her magic so that she can use his to completely escape: the guilt and self-loathing are utterly self-corrosive, leaving her with almost no self at all, and her use of magic becomes completely auto-telic, further corroding what little self remains, leaving but the desire for further escape. But this is not addiction, even on a metaphorical level, self-destructive as it may be.”
Leaving aside my issues with the magic/self-esteem issue, the larger problem is that even if magic/drugs works well in describing Willow’s internal problem, it fails completely when it comes to her behavior towards others. It’s easy to say that Willow was fixing things to her own liking (as Tara said in Tabula Rasa) because of her own insecurities. It’s just that this doesn’t seem to express very well the real evil of what Willow did to Tara. Willow’s moral failure was not her attempt to hide or escape from her own failings – that was a merely personal flaw. Her great moral failure was the fact that she violated Tara’s mind. One is an internal issue, the other is external.
I’ll offer a real world example. Suppose I become addicted to heroin. That’s a problem for me and may be a sign of internal “issues”. But if I steal money from you to support my addiction, that’s a moral wrong done to you. The fact that I took up heroin because of my own flaws doesn’t really get to the separate and distinct issue of my behavior towards you. It’s that disparity which weakens the “magic as escapist” metaphor; indeed, the drug use metaphor actually avoids the serious ethical issues arising from the external wrongs. And treating the issue as a physical “addiction” – “No more spells. I'm finished.” – doesn’t solve either problem.
Whatever the “right” interpretation of the metaphor might be, there is no doubt that the use of magic as metaphor underwent a significant change in S6. As I’ve noted in previous posts, in S4 and S5 magic was a metaphor for Willow and Tara’s relationship: a healthy, normal, loving relationship. Reading the new metaphor on to the Willow/Tara relationship would cause serious problems for some viewers – they took it as degrading the lesbian relationship.
I don’t see it that way. There’s no reason a metaphor has to be used with perfect consistency throughout 7 seasons of a TV show. That said, however, the risk in switching a metaphor is that the audience will be confused, and Wrecked is a perfect example of that. Metaphor works because it takes advantage of double meanings. But if ambiguity is the soul of art, confusion is its bane. The confusion would have more consequences later in S6.
My bottom line view then and now – on this I haven’t changed – is that the magic/drugs metaphor was a serious mistake. I have two reasons for saying this, one which appears now and one which I’ve mentioned but can’t explain further until later in the season because of spoilers. For now I’ll just say that, for me, the depiction was too clumsy and heavy-handed; it came across like an After School Special, complete with the obligatory “tripping” scene, the implied trade of sexual favors for drugs, Amy stealing to support her sudden “habit”, and multiple clichés such as Willow in the shower trying to wash her soul clean.
I know a lot of people were turned off by the seemingly relentless dark tone of the show at this point. The dark tone even inspired a book title: Buffy Goes Dark. That didn’t (and doesn’t) bother me, but I don’t have anything particularly good to say about Wrecked. It’s one of my least favorite episodes in the series, since I think it suffers from clunky dialogue (“meat party in my mouth”??) and bad acting (from AH of all people, in her breakdown scene), in addition to the poor choice of metaphor.
On the plus side, the scene of Buffy and Spike waking up after their night of debauchery is very good, and Jeff Kober (Rack) is really good at playing creepy characters (he was the crazed vampire Kralik in Helpless). Oh, and the scene where Willow fills up Tara’s dress recalls what Tara sang in OMWF: “Willow don’t you see, there’ll be nothing left of me.”
Trivia notes: (1) The title is a pun based on American slang. Willow wrecked the car, which is a metaphor for the fact that she and Buffy are also in the process of wrecking their lives. “Wrecked” is also a slang term for “drunk” or “drugged”. (2) Amy said she could do “transmography”, meaning she could transform people into different creatures (or vice versa). (3) Anya apparently thinks highly of Martha Stewart’s skill at decoupage. (4) Anya said Xander didn’t have to perform the rite of “self-flagellation” which means literally to whip oneself, but is probably a double entendre for masturbation. (5) Rack called Willow “strawberry”, which is (or was at the time) street slang for a new prostitute. Willow’s red hair makes the allusion especially apt. (6) Dawn said Buffy was “feeling all Joan Crawford”, which is a reference to Mommie Dearest. (7) Dawn’s description of Buffy as “such a pig after she kills things” refers back to Faith’s comment in Faith, Hope & Trick that slaying made her “hungry and horny”. We’re supposed to make the connection to Buffy’s sex with Spike. (8) Amy said she was about to “boot”, a slang term for “vomit”. (9) Spike suggested a Lojack for Dawn, referring to a product which allows you to track the location of a car.
Gone
Notwithstanding the nearly disastrous consequences of Willow’s escapism in Wrecked, and notwithstanding her conversation with Willow at the end of Wrecked, Buffy finds herself drawn back into an even more extreme form of escapism in Gone. Some viewers were frustrated with Buffy’s plunge back into the depths, and Gone is generally a low-rated episode. But as I said before, the Magic Box sequence in Life Serial was important in foreshadowing a theme of S6 and we’re beginning to see that Buffy hasn’t yet figured out how to “satisfy a customer [in this case herself] with a task that resists solving.” This strikes me as very true to life for those suffering from depression.
If one is really depressed, I guess it can seem like a good idea to take a free pass from adulthood. Like the Trio (and War
ren emphasizes it by telling Jonathan and Andrew “You guys are so immature!”), Buffy’s entire goal in Gone is to do juvenile things while avoiding responsibility. Her conversation with Willow at the end may be a small step up from where she was at the end of OMWF, in the sense that she’s now accepting life itself, but she hasn’t reached the stage of accepting adult responsibilities. Spike drives home the message: “Free of life? Got another name for that. Dead.”
We’re obviously supposed to dislike Doris (the social worker), but Buffy’s behavior towards her is pretty hard to justify. It’s not that much different from the way Willow and Amy treated the people at the Bronze in Smashed. The big difference is that the patrons in the Bronze were entirely innocent, while Doris certainly was not. She was officious, meddling, unsympathetic and, despite her protestations, not all that interested in Dawn’s well-being – note that she never even spoke to Dawn, who is 15 and capable of having an informed opinion.
There was plenty in Gone to excite both sides of the Spike Wars. On the one hand, Spike continues to insist that Buffy “belongs in the dark with him”: “… he's always going on and on about being the only one that understands me. 'We're alike, you and me. Birds of a bloody feather.'” That can easily be interpreted as seducing Buffy to the dark side.
At the same time, though, Spike gave her the tough love advice I quoted above. He also kicked her out because her self-destructive behavior was too nihilistic even for him.
Then there’s Willow. If I’m right that S6 gives us a strong parallel between Buffy and her metaphorical spirit, then we should interpret Willow’s behavior in Gone in some way consistent with Buffy’s own actions. Virtually all we see of Willow in this episode is her determined effort to go “cold turkey” by avoiding magic altogether. We get a number of scenes with the stereotypical behavior of an addict in that situation: cleaning out all the magic supplies (don’t forget the candles!); drinking all the water; shaking; temptation; etc.
