Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  I personally see his comments mostly as “tough love”, but I think they can be interpreted either way. If we see them as causing her to sacrifice her friends, then we need to understand why she would feel that way in the story line (I mentioned the metaphor above). In my view, it’s fear of exposure, especially to Xander. It’s Buffy's fear of Xander's disapproval that causes her to hide aspects of her behavior, that makes her want to appear more "normal". That desire to be normal was driving her fantasy of the asylum.

  I’ve seen two criticisms of Normal Again. One is that Buffy’s statement to Willow about her previous stay in a clinic was a retcon. It’s a close call, but I don’t think so. There’s nothing in the show which says directly that she wasn’t. While it’s a little hard to square a stay in an asylum with some of the dialogue in previous episodes (particularly the teaser to Bad Eggs), I think Joyce’s well-established ability to repress things, emphasized at the end of that very episode, allows us to accept it. Assuming Buffy was in an asylum, that would go far to explain her consistent unwillingness to reveal things about her life, particularly her secrecy about her role as Slayer, and her relationships with the vampires Angel and Spike.

  It would also explain her close relationship with Willow and Xander. She said that she was released from the “clinic” when she stopped talking about the things she saw. That’s a harsh lesson – that people who love you will punish you if you don’t conform, but will take you back if you do. But here were Willow and Xander who accepted the truth of vampires and didn’t reject her. The story of the clinic helps explain Buffy’s fierce loyalty to her friends.

  Some viewers didn’t like the final scene in the asylum with the camera pan out the door. In their view, as I understand it, this cheapened the whole show by suggesting that the entire show was a lie, that it had all taken place inside Buffy’s head. Here’s what Joss had to say about that:

  “If [the viewers] decide that the entire thing is all playing out in some crazy person’s head, well the joke of the thing to us was it is, and that crazy person is me. It was kind of the ultimate postmodern look at the concept of a writer writing a show, which is not the sort of thing we usually do on the show. The show had merit in itself because it did raise the question, "How can you live in this world and be sane?" But at the same time the idea amused me very much and we played on it a little bit, "How come her little sister is taller than her?" "What was Adam’s plan?" We played on the crazy things we came up with time and time again, to make this fantasy show work and called them into question the way any normal person would. But ultimately the entire series takes place in the mind of a lunatic locked up somewhere in Los Angeles, if that’s what the viewer wants. Personally, I think it really happened.” http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/readersopinions/16WHED.html?ex=1185076800&en=7c66de4a5f0e124b&ei=5070&pagewanted=2 (spoilers at link)

  I interpret the scene differently. To me, the important fact is that Buffy hasn’t yet taken the antidote. As I interpret it, the camera is Buffy looking back on the asylum as she rejects it in her mind.

  In a larger sense, though, I’d say it doesn’t matter which Verse is the “true” one. What matters is Buffy’s choice. That’s really the essence of the show for me. As I saw it, the reason she poured out the antidote initially was that she hadn't yet made the choice to stay in the adult world. She was still being tempted by the false security – a form of childhood – offered by the hallucination. It's the same choice she has faced, in varying degrees, since Bargaining: between childhood and accepting the responsibilities of adulthood.

  The lure of the safety and comfort offered by her vision offered her an out from the various metaphorical and story line reasons to hate her life, to be angry with her friends, and to fear their disapproval. She would no longer have to exist in a world where the hardest thing to do is to live in it.

  In the end, she chose the cruel world of adulthood rather than the safe one of childhood. I believe that she made that existential choice when faced with the loss of Willow. Willow is Buffy’s metaphorical spirit. If Willow died, Buffy’s life in the AsylumVerse would have been spiritually dead. That’s no better than where she is now, maybe worse.

  The most significant point of all, I’ll repeat, is that she made the choice before she took the antidote. There may not be “objectively correct” answers to the various moral challenges Buffy faces – Buffy still hasn’t solved her season dilemma of what she needs to do to actually be an adult -- but it’s critically important that we choose. Making choices is how we construct our own lives. Hm, “constructing our own lives”? That sounds familiar; where have I heard it before? Oh yeah, it was the class discussion in Life Serial.

  Trivia notes: (1) Credited writer Diego Gutierrez was an assistant to Joss. Most people suspect Joss of contributing a lot to this episode, since Gutierrez never got writing credit on any other episode despite the brilliance of this one. (2) Jonathan says he’s going “Jack Torrance” in the basement, referring to the Jack Nicholson character in The Shining. In fact it’s Buffy who actually does. (3) Jonathan asked Andrew, “Did you even read Legion of Doom?” (4) Xander called Spike “Willy Wannabite”, which is probably a play on Willy Wonka. (5) Warren described Buffy as “tripping like a Ken Russell film festival.” (6) Warren called Jonathan “Spanky”, presumably referring to the character from the series Our Gang. (7) This dialogue between Andrew and Warren sets up the next episode: “WARREN: Ah, now, there's the vault. ANDREW: I still say we're gonna need eight other guys to pull this off. WARREN: I never should have let you see that movie.” The movie he meant was Ocean’s Eleven. (8) The photo of a young Buffy with her mother and father came from the episode The Weight Of The World. (9) Spike used the phrase “funny farm”, which is slang for an insane asylum. (10) In her delusion, the doctor told Buffy that she had a “momentary awakening last summer” from which her friends “pulled you back in”. He’s referring to the time she was dead. (11) Willow asked Buffy, “No more cuckoo’s nest”, referring to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “Cuckoo’s nest” is also a slang term for an insane asylum. (12) Willow referred to the demon as “tranked out”, meaning tranquilized. (13) Xander entered the house calling “Friends? Romans?”, quoting the famous opening of Mark Antony’s funeral speech in Julius Caesar. (14) The scene where Buffy chokes Xander comes from The Shining. (15) Cheers resounded throughout the nation when Buffy gagged Dawn.

  Entropy

  Another outstanding episode, Entropy is part of a very good run from NA through Villains. The Spike/Anya scenes are just terrific; JM and EC first demonstrated their chemistry in WTWTA and they steal the show in Entropy. Their story is important in their own right, of course, but also in this episode because of the effect their actions have on Buffy and Xander (both as a character and as Buffy’s heart).

  Spike’s claim that he doesn’t hurt Buffy involves a bit of special pleading, IMO. Since Life Serial he’s been telling her she belongs in the dark; in Smashed and subsequent episodes he told her she came back wrong and he hit her repeatedly. None of that is likely to have done her much good. Still, there is a sense in which he’s right, which makes the fact that Buffy was genuinely hurt by his tryst with Anya all the more meaningful. Spike’s tenderness towards Anya also tends to validate his feelings about Buffy and to reinforce the schizophrenic nature of his personality at this point in time.

  As was hinted at the end of Hell’s Bells, Anya’s humanity (metaphorically, her adulthood) was fragile enough that it couldn’t withstand the crushing emotional blow of Xander leaving her at the altar. I know a lot of people didn’t like the ending of Hell’s Bells, but I think the fact that she returned to vengeance reinvigorates Anya as a character, extending her journey rather than leaving her as a one-note character. Plus, there’s a wonderful payoff in S7. Even if I had disliked the ending of Hell’s Bells, I’d have put that aside given the way it played out.

  I’ve suggested previously that Xander’s regular belittling of Anya was wrong,
and we now see the cumulative impact it had on her: “ANYA: When, really, I ... (tearfully) can't sleep at night, thinking it ... has to be my fault, somehow...” That’s the secret fear which is driving her – that it was her fault after all, that she wasn’t good enough. In substantial part, that comes from Xander.

  That’s not to defend her attempt to wreak vengeance on Xander. Her planned wishes were pretty horrific – “I wish you’d never been born.” That was Cordy’s wish for Buffy in The Wish; imagine how Prophecy Girl might have changed if Anya’s wish here had come true. Her punishments were so out of proportion to even the pain she suffered that they reveal some very deep seated “issues”. At bottom, though, I saw her behavior as seeking validation for her pain. She didn’t really get that from the SG females, but she did with Spike. And when she did, she hushed his wish.

  And then there’s Xander. Xander’s had some pretty great moments over the years (Prophecy Girl, The Freshman), but this must be rock bottom. As indefensible as his behavior was in Hell’s Bells, I think it’s worse here. He can’t even apologize properly, he doesn’t seem to understand how he wronged Anya, and his self-righteous pose as the betrayed lover is as offensive as it is false. In essence, he inflicted the maximum possible pain on her, and then convinced himself that this was for her own good. This was the Xander of his nightmare in HB.

  Metaphorically, though, I see Xander’s reaction to Anya as mirroring Buffy’s reaction to Spike. She’s angry with him as a way of deflecting her anger at herself. That’s Xander when he heads out with the ax.

  Taking out his anger on Spike isn’t likely to do Xander any good in any event. Even if you take the position that Spike is unconditionally and eternally evil, restrained only by a chip, he’s defenseless against Xander’s assault. Xander’s desire for revenge rested on the assumption that he and Anya were still a couple, and that he had some ownership rights in her behavior. His anger was as unjustified as his reaction, and vengeance is never justified on this show. We could say, as Xander himself once did (The Freshman), that anger leads to hate, hate leads to the dark side.

  Was Spike right or wrong to blurt out Buffy’s secret? I think that in order to judge Spike's action we need to know 2 things:

  1. Whether he had a right to disclose it.

  2. His reason for doing so.

  Some viewers defended Spike for not "telling" earlier. I can't see that as praiseworthy. His relationship was with Buffy. Disclosing it, like all decisions in a relationship, has to be mutual. Spike was certainly right that Buffy's concealment of it was insulting to him, but his remedy was to break it off, not to tell.

  I can see 3 motivations he might have had: to justify himself; to hurt Xander; to defend Anya. It's pretty hard for me to see either of the first 2 reasons as praiseworthy. He hardly needs to justify himself to Xander; that's spitting in the ocean. Hurting Xander, while certainly understandable given the provocation, isn’t a good reason. While I suspect his motivations included all of the above, my view is that he said it to protect Anya. In other words, he was telling Xander that he had no basis to attack Anya for something Buffy had also done.

  This brings us back to point number one. Revealing her relationship with Spike was what Buffy herself should have done in order to protect Anya. If this was Spike’s reason, and if Buffy herself should have made the disclosure, then I think Spike was right to say it.

  The intensity of Xander’s reaction to learning that Buffy has been sleeping with Spike shouldn’t come as a surprise. Buffy dared Spike to tell in the teaser, but I saw that as just what anyone would tell a blackmailer: go ahead and publish. That doesn’t mean she really wanted it to happen. She knew Xander.

  I see two components to Xander’s reaction: (1) A sense of his own inadequacy, something he truly didn’t need at this point. His reaction is very similar to that of Willow in Innocence, when she caught him kissing Cordelia: “It just means that you'd rather be with someone you hate than be with me.” (2) Disappointment. Xander always tends to put Buffy on a pedestal, then to become disappointed and judgmental when she fails to live up to his expectations. It’s his least attractive quality in my personal view.

  Entropy finishes on a surprisingly upbeat note, after all the angst of HB, NA, and the first ¾ of the episode. Tara’s willingness to skip the hard parts generated a lot of debate amidst the joy of her return. Part of the issue involves the magic/drugs metaphor. If you see Willow’s problem as “drug use”, then the fact that she’s been “clean” for several months might justify Tara’s decision. This is particularly true because the support of a loved one can be crucial for a recovering “addict”.

  If, on the other hand, you see Willow’s problem as an abuse of power and the violation of Tara’s (and Buffy’s) integrity, then giving up magic is at best symbolic. Willow hasn’t ever apologized to either of them. At least with Buffy she’s helped out (Doublemeat Palace, Normal Again), but all she’s done with Tara is go out for coffee. Many viewers found that unsatisfying:

  Ian (AtPO; slightly edited) “To me, the drug-like nature of Magic has always seemed mis- represented by the show. Magic was addictive to Willow because Willow was on a power trip. Willow was addicted to *power.* Magic was just Willow's tool. Willow may have used magic improperly, but it was always Willow's responsibility.

  For these reasons, I'm also unsatisfied with how their reconciliation was handled. Willow stopped using Magic. Good. However, has Willow ever voiced that the problem lay in her intent and behavior? Not really. Willow and the SG, with the exception of Tara, have treated this as a case of "bad magic." However, Tara left precisely because she understood she was being mistreated.

  I have no problem with the two of them getting back together. In fact, I welcome it. However, I was aggravated that Tara came back without even a simple *statement* from Willow saying, ‘I'm sorry. Magic didn't abuse you, I did.’"

  For all that happens in this episode, I think the most important words are spoken by Tara when she walks into Willow’s room at the end: “Things fall apart. They fall apart so hard. You can't ever ... (sighs) put them back the way they were.” That’s a pretty good lay definition of entropy, in the sense of the irreversibility of many processes. It’s the response to Xander’s statement to Anya that “I wish we could just go back to the way things were before.” That’s no longer possible; Tara’s words apply even more to him than they do to Willow: “There's just so much to work through. Trust has to be built again, on both sides ... You have to learn if ... if we're even the same people we were, if you can fit in each other's lives.”

  More important than even this, though, is that Tara seems pretty clearly to quote William Butler Yeats’ “The Second Coming”. The relevant passage reads,

  “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

  Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

  The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

  The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

  The best lack all conviction, while the worst

  Are full of passionate intensity.

  Surely some revelation is at hand;

  Surely the Second Coming is at hand.”

  You should have chills running up your spine about now.

  Trivia notes: (1) Warren called Jonathan “Short Round” after the character in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (2) Anya’s reference to Xander’s “beady eyes” should recall her two mentions of that in OMWF. (3) Dawn asked Buffy if they were the “International House of something”, referring to International House of Pancakes. (4) Buffy and Dawn were walking down the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. (5) Halfrek mentioned “Take Back the Night”, for which see the link. (6) The scene where the light from the candle reflects through the disk onto the map is an homage to Raiders of the Lost Ark. (7) We previously saw the camera in the skull in the Magic Shop in Life Serial. (8) Note that Buffy is now using the weapons chest Xander gave her in OAFA. (9) Xander accused Anya of having sex with Spike “Because he was ther
e. Like Mt. Everest.” The reference is to British mountaineer George Mallory, who was asked why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest and responded “Because it’s there.” (10) I didn’t mention Buffy’s conversation with Dawn in the kitchen about Dawn being exposed to danger, but it’s a critical point in the season arc:

  DAWN: (smiling) No, you're not, it's not that, it's just ... what if, instead of you hanging out with me? Maybe I could hang out with you.

  Buffy stares blankly, not getting it.

  DAWN: Why don't I come patrolling with you tonight?

  BUFFY: Oh. And then? Maybe we can invite over some strangers and ask them to feed you candy.

  DAWN: Well, you guys went out patrolling every night when you were my age.

  BUFFY: True ... but technically, you're one-and-a-half.

  Dawn gives her patented adolescent exasperated look.

  BUFFY: See, I thought a little levity might ... but okay, also no.

  DAWN: I just ... I just think I could help.

  BUFFY: I'm sure you could. But it's a little more dangerous than I had in mind.

  DAWN: But-

  BUFFY: Dawn, I work very hard to keep you away from that stuff. Okay, I don't want you around dangerous things that can kill you.

  DAWN: Which would be a perfectly reasonable argument, if my sister was chosen to protect the world from tax audits? But, see, my sister is you, and ... dangerous things that want to kill me seem to find me.

  BUFFY: But you don't need to go looking for them.

  Seeing Red

  The episode Seeing Red was a flash point in the popular culture of BtVS, so I need to provide some background before I get to the episode itself. One notable feature of the series, which I mentioned briefly in my Introduction, is how it became embedded in culture. The show debuted in March 1997, just as the internet was beginning to come into widespread use. By Season 6 there were so many Buffy sites I’m sure nobody could keep track of them all. They had become the water cooler around which the fans met to debate each episode. The writers were aware of fan reaction to each episode because they read some of the sites as well and occasionally even posted at The Bronze.