Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Kennedy noticed that Willow always turned off the Moulin Rouge DVD after chapter 32. Chapter 32 ends with Christian and Satine singing their love, i.e., before Satine dies and Christian – who never moves on – writes of his “love that will live forever”. Similarly, Willow has stopped herself at the moment Tara died. The point of the episode is that Willow, unlike Christian, does need to move on.

  Willow has two sources of guilt, namely killing Warren and letting Tara go. Both are triggered (word used advisedly) when she first kisses Kennedy. She was confused by Kennedy at first, then reluctant. To her surprise, I think, the evening at the Bronze actually went well. The kiss was awkward, but clearly Willow liked it and began to respond. Being Willow, though, her self-control never really lets go and her guilt took over. That’s the point at which she punishes herself (as we eventually learn). Willow should be able to move on from Tara, but fears that if she does that might mean that Tara’s really gone, that she’s living while Tara is dead:

  Willow: No, she was never gone. She was with me. We should have been forever, and I— (cries) I let her be dead. She's really dead. (breaks down into tears) And I killed her.

  The metaphor of turning into Warren and (nearly) re-enacting Tara’s murder perfectly expresses both forms of her guilt. Amy serves as Willow’s dark side. If you read them carefully, Amy’s first words to Willow tell us exactly what Willow is going through:

  AMY: It took me a long time to really see myself. But I did. Because you know that's the crazy thing about hitting rock bottom, you get to relive all the crappy things you did.

  The spell makes Willow “really see herself” as her guilty conscience sees her: as Warren. She “relives the crappy things she did” as Warren. Amy’s wording also fits Willow because Warren came to kill Buffy because she had exposed his weakness, and now Willow nearly kills Kennedy for exposing hers.

  Amy pretends to try to help Willow, but the words of the spell Amy recites are ambiguous: “Give back the form the soul requires. See that the balance is set right.” The first sentence could call for Willow’s restoration, but in the context of Willow’s guilt and internal desire to be punished, it could also reinforce Warren’s presence. I see it as the latter – Amy used the spell to amplify the effect of her hex. We can also see this metaphorically as Willow’s dark side reinforcing her punishment.

  The second sentence would have meant one thing to Willow, but something much different to Warren. Willow's first Warren-like behavior came immediately after Amy performed her spell in the presence of the coven. Before then, all we saw was Willow's personality in Warren's body. Amy's second spell contributed to the emergence of Warren and set “him” on a path to “set things right” from his warped perspective.

  Amy, speaking both as character and as metaphor, then gives us further insight into Willow’s internal guilt when she tells Kennedy “It’s about power. Willow always had all the power, long before she even knew what to do with it. Just came so easy for her. The rest of us—we had to work twice as hard to be half as good. But no one cares about how hard you work. They just care about cute, sweet Willow. They don't know how weak she is. She gave in to evil—stuff worse than I can even imagine— She almost destroyed the world! And yet everyone keeps on loving her?”

  Willow, of course, is Buffy’s metaphorical spirit, so if what Amy says is true of Willow – and it is to some degree, or at least true of how Willow sees herself – then the same holds true for Buffy. If you hear Amy’s words as Willow speaking of herself, then except for the part about destroying the world, it’s substantially similar to how Buffy described herself to Webs in CWDP: “I have all this power. I didn't ask for it. I don't deserve it. It's like... I wanted to be punished. I wanted to hurt like I thought I deserved.”

  It’s important, though, to keep in mind that the whole point of S7 is to question the idea of “power”. What Amy’s talking about is one form of power, but it’s not the only one. The question is whether Willow, and therefore Buffy, will find a different way to exercise power.

  Willow, by the way, was right about the spell in the first place:

  WILLOW/WARREN*

  Maybe, but I probably brought it on myself.

  BUFFY

  What makes you think that?

  WILLOW/WARREN*

  Well, it wouldn't be the first time. I have a history with my witchy subconscious making things go kerfloopey. Remember the wacky "I can't see you, you can't see me" spell?

  That’s exactly what Amy’s spell did, as she explained to Kennedy later: “AMY: The hex I cast lets the victim's subconscious pick the form of their punishment. It's always better than anything I can come up with.”

  In my reading, Amy deliberately let slip the fact that she had “put a hex on her”. The ending of the episode essentially requires that Amy send Kennedy into Buffy's backyard (of course, the plan must have been that Willow would actually kill Kennedy). Amy couldn't have known in advance what the trigger was for Willow to feel the need for penance, because she set the spell up to let Willow's subconscious choose the punishment. Nor, for the same reason, could she have known in advance what form the punishment would take. Once she saw that Willow had turned into Warren, the first piece of the puzzle was in place. Amy then needed information about the trigger in order to take full advantage of Willow/Warren, and could only get it from Kennedy. My assumption is, therefore, that she let the secret slip on purpose to discover if Kennedy was the one who should be sent to serve as the intended victim.

  This episode seems to have marked the beginning of the dislike for Kennedy that’s so widespread on the internet. Her aggressive flirtation with Willow doesn’t bother me, any more than Tara’s original extreme passivity did. Both were just ways for the writers to address Willow’s situation at the respective times in a reasonable way. Joss:

  “Kennedy is … a bit of a brat. What I wanted was an anti-Tara. I wanted somebody who was as different from Tara as possible. Tara was very reticent, and she was somebody that Willow caused to blossom. What I wanted was somebody who was further on down in dealing with her sexuality than Willow ever was. Somebody who was totally confident, who was totally not earthy-crunchy, who was a completely different person. What I wanted to explore was the concept of Willow moving on. We did that with the first kiss, that turned her into Warren. … the things that Willow has to deal with emotionally, her fear of her power and stuff, and Kennedy's kind of involvement in that. That's what Kennedy was for.”

  In the current situation, Willow was not so much rejecting Kennedy’s previous flirtations, she was letting her guilt prevent her from moving on, from living. Plus, I like that Kennedy could be depicted as openly sexual and gay, and the fact that Kennedy cares nothing for the magic means that Willow can be sure Kennedy’s attracted to her alone (compare Willow’s fear at the end of Wrecked that Tara only loved her because she was superpowered).

  Kennedy also gets real credit from me because, despite the danger, the second kiss was purely compassionate, not sexual like the first one presumably was. It’s that expression of compassion which brings Willow back, and it demonstrated that she understood that Willow needed someone to recognize her emotions. The kiss symbolically seals Willow’s decision to forgive herself and move on. And if you think about it, so does the tea – it’s sexual when Buffy jokes about it, comforting when Kennedy offers it at the end. I mentioned in my post on Beneath You that Joss said he wanted to explore forgiveness in S7, and TKiM is another example of that.

  Trivia notes: (1) I loved Buffy’s description of her experience in Intervention when telling the Potentials about the Vision Quest. (2) As is always the case on the show, the song at the Bronze fits the scene. The words we hear as we pan over to Willow and Kennedy are “So I can be happy again….” (3) The better word for “lesbidar” is, of course, “gaydar”. (4) As Spike suggests, nobody can use the phrase “who you gonna call” because that line was used in the movie Ghostbusters. (5) Kennedy says she likes “skate punk, Robert Pa
rker mysteries”, for which see the links. (6) All the scenes with Willow and Warren were shot twice, once with each actor. (7) Andrew mentioned “dancing schnauzers”, referring to a breed of dog. (6) Willow threatened to tell everyone about Xander’s “Aquaman Underoos”, referring to the comic book character and Xander’s underwear. (7) Andrew is waiting for the new League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a comic book series. (8) Andrew spoke on the phone to Robson, who was the watcher we saw attacked by the Bringers in Sleeper. (9) Willow mentioned the Wiccan’s “bake sale phase”. That was the discussion the first time we saw them in Hush. (10) Andrew wanted to play the game “Ghost”, for which see the link. The name of the game probably references the First and their concerns about Giles. (11) Andrew suggested the license plate game as an alternative. (12) Amy first appeared 132 episodes ago, and now we see that she’s pretty much turned into her mother. It’s pretty remarkable when you think about how they’ve managed to use characters like her and Jonathan even stretching back to S1. (13) Willow’s first two sentences and her posture with the gun as she entered Buffy’s back yard were the same as Warren’s in Seeing Red.

  Seeing Red

  This being a Valentine’s Day episode (it aired on February 11), we can be sure that Buffy’s having a true First Date. What we can’t be quite so sure of is the identity of her date. It looks on the surface as if it’s Robin Wood, but I’d argue it was Spike. Since Xander is Buffy’s metaphorical heart, the fact that Xander is attracted to demons (Teacher’s Pet, Inca Mummy Girl, Anya, Something Blue, First Date) is letting us know by allegory that Buffy is attracted to Spike, not Wood. Similarly, Xander’s on-off behavior with Anya mirrors that of Buffy with Spike, particularly with Anya and Spike now comparable as “recovering” former demons.

  Buffy has serious abandonment issues (metaphorically shown through Dawn in Older And Far Away: “People keep ... people have a tendency to go away ... and, I miss them.”). Her father left the family, Angel left town, Riley went off to Central America. Even Giles left her in Tabula Rasa. Spike’s the only one who asks if he should leave rather than telling her or, worse, just doing it. Buffy can’t say yes, even if she’s not entirely sure why. Why does everybody in the house think she’s still in love with Spike?

  Wood’s attraction to Buffy has some faint Oedipal overtones. The fact that he seems to be attracted to Buffy because his mother was a Slayer is a bit off. If you accept this, Spike could stand for the father blocking the son's fantasized union with the mother. I wouldn’t insist on it, but I think it’s there.

  Nor is Wood the only one with “mommy issues”. Here’s shadowkat posting the day after First Date aired:

  “Do you remember our little spec about Spike's mom, leslie? The sick mother? In Fool For Love, Spike tells Dru what? "Mother's expecting me." And in Forever - it is Spike who helps Dawn resurrect Joyce, but insists on doing it the right way. And oh yes, which adult figure does Spike bond with? …Spike bonds with Joyce. Spike is chipped by the evil mom, Prof Walsh.

  Methinks the mother issue with Wood and Spike is going to be a lot more multilayered than we know. Spike has some Mommy issues - Wood is our way of getting to and exploring them.”

  Less speculatively, Wood was not able to save his real mother from Spike; killing Spike is his opportunity to save Buffy and make up for the fact that he was unable to save his mother. It’s obvious that Wood hasn’t forgotten his vengeance quest. In this case, he has the added incentive of removing a romantic rival – he definitely noticed that Buffy went first to Spike after the fight, not to Xander. Wood had a first date too. A date with the First, that is.

  In a certain sense, this season involves a battle for souls. So far, Buffy’s winning with Spike, with Anya, and with Andrew. At the end of First Date, the First opens up a new front with Wood. It plays on Wood’s hunger for vengeance and exploits his jealousy. The First is perfectly happy if it can corrupt Wood even if that means becoming unable to use Spike in some way (similar to the way it shifted gears with Angel in Amends). Very soon, if not now, Wood’s going to have to ask himself just why it is he’s fighting demons.

  Giles’s attitude towards Spike is more subtle. It’s the classic case of the father who never liked his daughter’s romantic choices, reinforced in this case by the obvious danger Spike poses. Needless to say, though, I think Buffy is right about Spike’s chip and that Giles is wrong:

  BUFFY

  Nothing's changed, Giles. Spike had a chip before, remember? When the First had him kill and sire all those people.

  GILES

  We have no idea if his chip was working then. A new chip might restrain him should the First attempt to activate him again.

  BUFFY

  Spike has a soul now. That's what's gonna stop him from hurting people.

  GILES

  Buffy...

  BUFFY

  He can be a good man, Giles. I feel it. But he's never gonna get there if we don't give him the chance…. You think I'm losing sight of the big picture, but I'm not. When Spike had that chip, it was like having him in a muzzle. It was wrong. You can't beat evil by doing evil. I know that.

  Giles, I think, finds himself out of place and not sure what to do. Like any parent, his role has changed now that his child is an adult, and he’s fumbling for a new one. As I read him, he lacks confidence in Buffy’s adult decision-making because of the chaos of S6. He recognizes that she has feelings about Spike, whom he’s despised for years, and this reinforces his lack of confidence in her.

  At the same time, he stepped away last year in order to let her succeed or fail on her own. That leaves him in an awkward position now. He can’t consult his books; there aren’t any, so he can’t use them to hand out wise advice. As a result, he’s frustrated and critical rather than helpful, and his attitude towards both Spike’s chip and the “date” reflect this. In the meantime, he’s reverted to the Giles we saw early on, the Giles of NKABOTFD:

  “Giles: All right, I-I'll just jump in my time machine, go back to the twelfth century and ask the vampires to postpone their ancient prophecy for a few days while you take in dinner and a show.

  Buffy: Okay, at this point you're abusing sarcasm.

  Giles: Buffy, this is no ordinary vampire. But we have to stop him before he reaches the Master.

  Buffy: But... Cute guy! Teenager! Post-pubescent fantasies!

  Giles: Those will just have to be put on hold! The dark forces are aligning against us, and we have a chance to beat them back. Tonight we go into battle!”

  and of Reptile Boy

  “Giles: Just because the paranormal is more normal and less... para of late is no excuse for tardiness or letting your guard down.

  Buffy: I haven't let my guard down.

  Giles: Oh, really? You yawned your way through weapons training last week, you, you, you, you skipped hand-to-hand entirely…

  Giles: When you live on top of a... a mystical convergence it's only a matter of time before a fresh hell breaks loose. Now is the time that you should train more strictly, you should hunt and patrol more keenly, you should hone your skills day and night.”

  Now he’s even harsher in tone, with the clear implication that his alone is the adult path:

  GILES

  Children, enough. … Enough! Have you learned nothing from tonight's assorted chaos? There isn't time for fun and games and quips about orientation. (holds up flashcards) These—these aren't a joke. (flips through the flashcards) This—this happens. Girls are going to die. We may die. It's time to get serious. (walks out of the room)

  Giles’s flashcards haven’t improved since Hush.

  As I suggested in my post on Bring on the Night, he’s pushing Buffy very hard to adopt a seemingly more grown-up approach that appears to be very harsh. Buffy remains very susceptible to following Giles’s admonitions, especially in light of her experience on her own in S6. We’re about to see the result, notwithstanding Willow’s advice to “move on from this imposed super-self-reliance. Let somebody get close.�
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  Trivia notes: (1) The opening flashback of Giles and the axe was to Sleeper. (2) One of the tombstones in the graveyard scene has the name “Snyder” on it. AFAIK, it doesn’t mean anything. (3) Buffy and Dawn saw Principal Wood in the basement carrying a shovel in Bring on the Night. (4) Buffy mentioned a reality show about a millionaire, meaning the show Joe Millionaire. (5) Andrew’s “get thee behind me” admonition to Jonathan/First is from Matthew 4:10. (6) His “Jonathan slash The First” acknowledged the internet fans who’d been using that identifier. (7) The pizza stain Anya couldn’t get out of Buffy’s blouse was put there by Dawn in CWDP (“she’ll think it’s blood”). Another small detail the writers knew the fans would remember. (8) Xander thought it would be karmic if Lissa stood him up, referring to the fact that he left Anya at the altar. (9) Giles’s phrase “circling the wagons” is an American idiom referring to the scenes in Western movies in which pioneers bring their wagons into a circle when attacked. (10) Giles’s prediction that “something’s eating Xander’s head” is another back to the beginning reference, this time to Teacher’s Pet. (11) Another reference to CWDP can be seen in the fact that Buffy left her cell phone at home. In CWDP she didn’t hear it ringing. Either way, she’s not connected. (12) Xander envisioned the actor Scott Bakula, who played Captain Jonathan Archer on Star Trek: Enterprise. (13) For those who watch Angel the Series, the German word for “wood” is…. Holtz (spoilers at link, of course).

  Get it Done

  Buffy formally and dramatically took on the role of General in BotN, but she has always seen herself more as a protector than as a commander, even if she does assert authority in some cases (most recently Selfless). We saw her protector role in Showtime. Here in Get it Done, she’s much more playing the role of General; she’s having Kennedy train her “soldiers” in the back yard; she’s recruiting Wood; she’s demanding that Willow and Spike go back to being warriors.