Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Whatever side you take, it’s consistent with her behavior in Ted. In my view, Buffy’s instinctive reaction was correct, though an argument could be made that the Watcher’s Council, rather than the police, would have been appropriate. She seems never to have considered calling Giles; at the very least he could have reminded her of what he told her in Consequences:

  “Giles: The Slayer is on the front line of a nightly war. Now, it's, it's tragic, but accidents have happened.

  Buffy: W-what do you do?

  Giles: Well, the Council investigates, um, metes out punishment if punishment is due. But I... I have no plans to involve them.”

  Even if she had called Giles, her decision probably wouldn’t have changed. Whether the WC is right in this is a separate issue, but compare their view to Faith’s (below) and you can see that if Buffy rejected the one she pretty much has to reject the other.

  Buffy believes she’s being responsible by turning herself in, and so she is in a way. That said, while Dawn’s reaction seems consistent to me as that of someone who’s immature and thinking more of herself, there’s an element of truth in what she tells Buffy:

  DAWN: (almost crying) You don't want to be here with me. You didn't want to come back. I know that. You were happier where you were. (crying) You want to go away again.

  BUFFY: Dawn...

  DAWN: Then go! You're not really here anyway.

  Certainly Buffy is quick to blame herself, in part no doubt because she feels so wrong and even corrupt at the core at this point in her life, and this is another way for her to give up. As AtPO poster Alcibiades put it, “She was beating Spike up because he stood between herself and her greatest desire -- to lose herself back into powerlessness, lack of responsibility and spiritual and emotional exhaustion.”

  Dead Things emphasizes the similarity to Bad Girls in the way Spike disposes of the body and his arguments to Buffy. Both parallel the actions and arguments of Faith in Bad Girls and Consequences:

  “BUFFY: I'll show them.

  SPIKE: (coolly) Show them what?

  BUFFY: (very angry) What ... did you do?!

  SPIKE: (firmly) What I had to. I went back and I took care of it. It doesn't matter now. No one will ever find her.”

  ***

  “Faith: (faces Buffy) Okay, this is the last time we're gonna have this conversation, and we're not even having it now, you understand me? There *is* no body. I took it, weighted it, and dumped it. The body doesn't exist.”

  “BUFFY: (tearful) A girl is dead because of me.

  SPIKE: And how many people are alive because of you? How many have you saved? One dead girl doesn't tip the scale.”

  ***

  “Faith: (steps closer) Buffy, I'm not gonna *see* anything. I missed the mark last night and I'm sorry about the guy. I really am! But it happens! Anyway, how many people do you think we've saved by now, thousands? And didn't you stop the world from ending? Because in my book, that puts you and me in the plus column.”

  I doubt we’re supposed to think that Faith was right all along. By repeating Faith’s arguments after he asked her to trust him to “sort this out”, Spike’s amorality stands revealed in a way that Buffy can’t deny. Her reaction – beating him to a pulp – reflects not just her distaste at Spike’s ethical blindness, but her own self-loathing for associating with someone who thinks that way. Buffy is really beating herself, even as Spike bears the brunt. Again the parallel is to Faith, this time to the beating scene in Who Are You:

  BUFFY: You don't ... have a soul! There is nothing good or clean in you. You are dead inside! You can't feel anything real! I could never ... be your girl!

  ***

  Faith (in Buffy’s body): You're nothing. [Punch. Punch.] Disgusting. [Punch. Punch.]

  [“Buffy” grabs “Faith's” hair with both hands and bangs her head.] Murderous bitch. [Bang. Bang...] You're nothing. [Bang. Bang...] [Switches back to punches] You're [“Buffy” is now crying.] disgusting.

  The fact that Buffy could abuse Spike like that is strong evidence to me that she doesn’t love him. Their relationship has always incorporated an element of violence, but never has it reached a point like this. The fact that he does love her, so much that he willingly lies back and takes the beating for her sake, means that she’s wrong either way: she shouldn’t love him because he’s evil, as confirmed by his amoral arguments in the alley; if she doesn’t love him, then she’s abusing him (not that he’s an innocent on that score either), as I think she realized after the beating. The beating itself is the outward manifestation of her emotional abuse of him previously (“you’re …convenient”).

  It wasn’t just the look of horror on her face as she left him bloody, her dream foretold it. In her dream, Spike and Katrina trade places; Buffy handcuffs Spike and stakes him/Katrina, drawing a clear parallel of guilt. It’s her subconscious understanding that she’s responsible for the way she’s treating Spike. She wants to be punished – that’s part of her motivation for going to the police – but Tara offers her only compassion and the hard truth that Spike truly does love her. I think she never really admitted that to herself before. Buffy’s breakdown in the face of Tara’s compassion demonstrates that punishment would have been easier for her to accept than despair. That’s what makes her tears and her plea not to be forgiven so heartbreaking.

  Trivia note: (1) Remember Joyce pulling out the handcuffs in Band Candy? Like mother, like daughter, I guess. (2) Buffy mentioned New Kids on the Block, a boy band from the 80s and early 90s. (3) The record album Jonathan pulled out was “Frampton Comes Alive”. (4) Jonathan used the idiom “on the lam”, which means hiding from the police. (5) Andrew’s “bazoombas” is a slang term for breasts. (6) Anya and Xander describe Buffy as looking “pounded”, which is a pun. It means “tired or worn out”, but it’s also a slang term for sex. (7) Warren’s suggestion that they solve their problem with “one big stone” refers to the idiom “killing two birds with one stone”. (7) Buffy mentioned Soul Train, which was a musical variety show which ran from 1971-2006. (8) I need to explain the internet description of the balcony sex scene as the “Bronze Beta” scene. When the series moved off the WB network, they had to change the website because The Bronze was owned by the WB. The new site got the name “Bronze Beta”. The “joke” in the expression comes from the fact that the angle of intercourse in the sex scene suggests anal sex. (9) Willow mentioned The Brekenkrieg Grimoire. That means “Broken War Magic Book”. (10) Buffy’s conversation with Dawn describes in metaphor the critical issue of the season. Keep it in mind when we get to the finale. (11) When Buffy said that “time went all David Lynch” she was referring to the American movie director who is famous for surrealist movies.

  Older And Far Away

  In S3-5, episode 11 gave us a clue to the season finale by presenting a version of Buffy’s challenge in the finale and giving us a solution which was either wrong (Gingerbread) or incomplete in some way (Triangle). For reasons I don’t know, in S6, as in S2, it’s episode 14, Older and Far Away, which gives us this clue. I won’t say anything more in order to avoid spoilers.

  I think OAFA is extremely well constructed – the demon trapped in the sword, the gang trapped in the house. And Buffy feeling trapped in her life.

  The title of the episode comes from the book Empire of the Sun, which is the book Dawn’s class is discussing when she’s summoned to the “counselor”. This is never an accident, so I’ll review the outline of the book and note how I see it applying to OAFA.

  The basic plot of the novel is the story of Jim, a young boy who is separated from his parents in WWII. After barely surviving on his own amidst the chaos of war, he ends up in a Japanese prisoner camp. There he’s safe and secure, even if he’s a prisoner. However, the other prisoners simply ignore him. When the war ends, he leaves the camp but soon returns there because the world outside seems so insecure. He’s finally reunited with his parents, but “for all their affection for him, they seemed older and far away.”


  This reasonably summarizes Dawn’s view of her own life. She survived a war last year (albeit not on her own), and now she’s feeling trapped. Naturally the world outside seems unsafe to her, particularly since Buffy was so overprotective of her last year and pays no attention to her (in her view) this year. For all Buffy’s affection for Dawn, to Dawn she seems older and far away.

  Two flaws keep OAFA from being a great episode IMO. First is the magic/drugs stuff which dominates much of the plot. I’ve given my views on that issue before, so I’ll leave it at that except to note one glaring failure: Tara’s “work without the net” advice is terrible. Whether it’s a good idea or not for Willow to go “cold turkey”, only a crazy person walks a tightrope in a dangerous situation without a net. The two situations aren’t comparable.

  The second flaw involves Dawn. Dawn is feeling trapped, and we should see this on the level of both story and metaphor. As metaphor, it works perfectly: Dawn represents Buffy’s human, adolescent self, which Buffy has locked up in the belief that she needs to do so as part of being an adult. This is causing Buffy the psychic distress which we see played out by Dawn: cries for attention, feelings of neglect by friends and family. Dawn’s immature behavior is Buffy’s. It works for the episode, and it’s essential for the seasonal arc.

  As storyline, though, it doesn’t work quite so well. Dawn is a teenager, and we’re all familiar with whiny, ungrateful teenagers (all too often from personal experience). The trouble is that from the outside, it’s real damn hard to sympathize with a whiny teenager. Yet the end of the episode – Halfrek’s final words about the failure to hear Dawn’s cries (“the cries around you, you don’t hear at all”), Buffy’s decision to stay inside with Dawn – leaves the impression that we’re supposed to be sympathizing with Dawn. MT succeeds in playing a spoiled brat all too well for the sake of the audience on this level.

  Here’s an example of contemporary reaction which I’ll leave anonymous, but which is pretty typical for the episode:

  “Alright, I'm obviously already in disagreement with some posters about this episode, so I'm just going to rant.

  Dawn is fifteen years old, not eight. Not ten. Yes, I'm sure we were all inconsiderate brats at at least some point in our teenage years, but great googly-moogly, the whole house is in mortal danger and Dawn stomps off because people 'don't want to spend time with her' against their will by being trapped in a house? And what's all this 'child' nonsense? She is not a child. She's almost sixteen, for crying out loud!

  This episode starts showing us just how terrible poor Dawn has it, as her sister gets 'called to work'…. Buffy does the concerned but overworked mom thing as she heads out the door; I'm surprised she didn't remind Dawn to brush her teeth. Dawn does the 'I'll be okay, sitting here alone, in the dark, like a dog. You go ahead!' stiff upper lip guilt thing. Then she wanders on over to the Magic Box to get a little face-time with the Scoobs. Those horrid, unfeeling brutes put things like earning a keep and staying on the wagon above shopping with Dawn (who has at least one friend, Janice, who I'm sure could've gone with her) so Dawn is apparently forced to go by herself and shoplift to fill that gaping attention hole left by her sister's... friends. Yes, not being able to hang with your sister's friends is now a cause of juvenile delinquency. Would that I had known such a handy excuse was right around the corner in my formative years; I too might never have had to pay for lipstick again. Somehow, though, I got the idea that STEALING was WRONG, even without the benefit of having a twenty-one-year-old hold my hand while I wandered the big store with the shiny, candylike tubes of lipstick/jewelry/leather jackets to prevent me from taking what I wanted.

  Then we get to the party itself; Dawn is once again trying to fit in with the older. She listens politely enough, then as Buffy is opening her present (noticing the security tag still on the coat) and tells her she likes it, Xander and Anya wheel in Xander's hand-made weapons chest. Buffy immediately goes to coo over the chest, which of course upsets Dawn mightily. Oh God no, how dare Buffy like something her friend obviously spent hours crafting with his own hands better than her five-fingered discount leather jacket, which she told her she loved? Dawn, the ever-persecuted. She just gets worse from there, and the thing is, everyone goes along with it! Even 'say what I think' Anya cuts her some serious slack in order to goad Willow into magicking them out of there.

  Dawn proceeds to get pissy about everyone treating her like a kid with Anya, everyone wanting to 'leave rather than be in the house with her' (at this point, I'd say they have ample reason to want to get away, Dawn's just icing on the cake) and the Scoobies once again make with the understanding 'we were all teenagers once' schtick which I don't buy for a minute. See, I was a teenager too, and the last thing I remember wanting to do is spend time with my parents, my siblings, or my sibling's friends (well okay, maybe sometimes I'd tag along with my sister). Now granted, I had not lost my mother and almost lost my sister, but I rarely saw the former because of work (or because I was out when she was home) and I never once pulled the 'I want you to not work so you can stay home with me.' Of course, I had impressed upon me at a young age just how important work was to things like bill-paying and roof-keeping and food-buying. Apparently Buffy's money troubles (she has no excuse for 'saving the world' ignorance) have just slid right by Dawn.

  Dawn doesn't want to be treated like a child. Hallie says 'none of you could feel this child's pain because you were too wrapped up in your own lives!' Well excuse the hell out of Buffy's friends for having their own lives, including such selfish pursuits as _doing their jobs_ and _trying to get their own lives in order vis a vis addiction_, or in Buffy's case _working a crap minimum wage job to try and keep a roof/food/clothes yadda over a certain ungrateful kid's head_ while _trying to keep people from being killed_ in her off hours. So is Dawn a kid or not? She's a teenager, in that nebulous between area, but so far she's been acting like an eight-year-old.”

  The one thing to say in Dawn’s favor is that this is the one year anniversary of her discovery that she’s not real (called back, to the distress of most viewers, by the “get out” screams), and it’s been a tough year. She’s gone from the center of everyone’s attention to an outsider who’s neglected. Dawn isn’t wrong about that, she’s just immature in the way she tries to compensate. When Joss said that the theme of S6 would be “oh, grow up”, he meant it.

  Trivia notes: (1) The story line of being trapped in the house is based on Luis Bunuel’s The Exterminating Angel. The movie also includes a witch and references to drug addiction. (2) Dawn’s kleptomania began in Intervention. I’ve called attention to it each time she’s done it. (3) Willow’s “Spellcasters Anonymous” group takes its name from Alcoholics Anonymous. (4) Buffy’s dialogue with Tara puns on the gay experience: “TARA: So, is, um... (looks around) Spike coming? BUFFY: No. He may be a chip-head, but ... he still doesn't play too well with others. BUFFY: Besides, I'm definitely not ready to, to...TARA: (turns back) Come out.” (5) Star Trek fans will have appreciated that Richard wore a red shirt. (6) Willow’s described her gift to Buffy as a “back massager”, but it could obviously be used as a vibrator as well. (7) Xander’s mention of a cornfield refers to the Twilight Zone episode It’s a Good Life. (8) Buffy’s birthdays are notoriously disastrous on the show. Previous birthday episodes include Surprise/Innocence, Helpless, and Blood Ties. (9) Dawn said she was “called out of class like I was a total J.D.”. The initials stand for the phrase “juvenile delinquent”. (10) Drew Greenberg took advantage of Kali Rocha’s roles as both Cecily (Fool For Love) and Halfrek to tweak the audience by having Halfrek seem to recognize Spike.

  As You Were

  Anyone who’s so obsessive as to rank all 144 BtVS episodes (ahem) will, necessarily, have one which finishes dead last at No. 144. For me, that episode is As You Were, one of only 2 episodes I actually dislike (the other is Dead Man’s Party). I’ll summarize the reasons why without even mentioning the “Mary Sue” nature of Mrs. Finn or the addiction dialo
gue.

  The demon(s). The dialogue is hopelessly contradictory within the space of 10 lines: the demons are “rare” and “nearly extinct”, but they’re “breeders”: “As soon as we put one Suvolte down, a dozen take its place. … One turns into ten, ten becomes a hundred.” In which case they pretty obviously aren’t “rare”. That’s why Buffy could refer to them as “tribbles”, creatures which multiplied faster than the bunnies in Tabula Rasa. Nor is it very plausible that Riley would forget to tell Buffy not to kill the demon.

  Spike’s purported international arms dealing makes no sense, particularly when sprung out of the blue in this episode with no lead-in. Among other problems, how can Spike be a demon arms dealer when he's a social outcast hated by all other demons and doesn't even have a telephone line (he used a pay phone to call Buffy in Smashed)?

  Nor is Spike noted for his competence: “He-he's too incompetent.” Notwithstanding Todd’s reference to Machiavelli in the teaser, Spike doesn’t exactly fit the image. As recently as Dead Things he couldn’t even weight a body properly, and he has a long history of bollocksing up plans beginning from his first appearance in School Hard. Perhaps the “arms dealing” plot is satirical, but that’s not obvious and satire usually makes a relevant point.