Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality Read online

  Growing up involves making all sorts of moral decisions. When are we mature enough for sex? Who should our role models be? What mistakes do adults make which we should recognize so that we don’t make the same ones? How should we act in ethical dilemmas? I could go on, but I believe the point is clear. Buffy faces all of these problems and many more on her road to adulthood. She’s telling us how to think about growing up, even if we’re already “adults”. As Xander puts it in The Freshman, “Let me tell you something, when it's dark and I'm all alone and I'm scared or freaked out or whatever, I always think, 'What would Buffy do?'”

  Don’t get me wrong – Buffy has flaws, some of them significant. She would have been boring without them. Joss Whedon put it this way: “The idea was, let’s have a feminist role model for kids. What's interesting is you end up subverting that. If she's just an ironclad hero - "I'm a woman hear me constantly roar" - it gets dull. Finding the weakness and the vanity and the foibles makes it fun.” What fascinates us about the character of Buffy is that she has to struggle to reach the right decision. Just as we all do.

  The case for treating BtVS as important literature rests, essentially, on these three grounds: it forces us to think about an important topic and treats important themes via the creative use of language and metaphor.

  C. Episode Essays

  As I said, I wrote and published all of the following essays on my blog. Many of the S5-7 commentaries were first written as comments to the reviews of Buffy episodes by Noel Murray of the AV Club (his reviews start at [SPOILERS at link] http://origin.avclub.com/tvclub/tvshow/buffy-the-vampire-slayer,45/3/), who not only wrote insightful reviews of every single episode, but tolerated people like me who used his reviews as an excuse for their own commentary. I’ve expanded those comments quite a bit. There are no spoilers in my episode comments unless clearly labeled. I will on occasion quote from the DVD commentaries. Avoid those if you want to remain unspoiled. Many of the commentaries were recorded much later, and the writers often mention subsequent events.

  I don’t want you to think that everything I write is original to me. Of course it’s not. I’ve read a huge amount of internet commentary on the show and a number of books as well. Sometimes other people stated more clearly what I already was thinking, sometimes what they said was new to me but I’ve incorporated it into my viewing so thoroughly that I can’t separate it any more. It’s more accurate to say that what I’ve done is synthesize all of that reading.

  The majority of discussion I’ve read comes from the forum of a site called All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series. It’s still a live board, though not active; I definitely recommend that you read the forum archives and the annotations on the Board itself. Full disclosure: I was one of the posters on that Board, using the name Sophist. I don’t always agree with myself, so if I seem to have changed my mind, that’s because I have.

  While I can’t really sort out all the influences on my current thinking, I do need to say that one poster at ATPO did influence me more than any other single person. His name was manwitch and you can read his original posts at the ATPO forum. I don’t always agree with him, but he was responsible for articulating what I call the Central Metaphor of the show, namely that Buffy is us. I had always viewed the show through a Buffy-centric lens, but had never conceptualized it that way until manwitch pointed it out. Any extensions of his insight are my responsibility, not his, of course.

  SEASON ONE

  Welcome to the Hellmouth and The Harvest

  The opening scene of WTTH demonstrates that BtVS intends to subvert the viewer’s expectations. By the all the standards of horror genre, we know that the nervous blonde is destined to be the victim. Darla plays on those expectations, both with her “date” and with the audience, until the reveal that she is actually the vampire.

  This scene, like the teaser in every episode, also tells us something important about the episode, whether in plot (early episodes) or in theme (later episodes). In this case, the blonde girl does the opposite of what we expect. That’s the theme of the opening two-parter, but it’s also the theme for the whole series. I quoted this from Joss in the Introduction, but it bears repeating: “Where did the idea [for BtVS] come from? There’s actually an incredibly specific answer to that question. It came from watching a horror movie and seeing the typical ditzy blonde walk into a dark alley and getting killed. I just thought that I would love to see a scene where the ditzy blonde walks into a dark alley, a monster attacks her and she kicks its ass.”

  I won’t mention it very often, but when you’re watching, always pay particular attention to the teaser.

  Note the other metaphor in the very beginning of that first scene: a vampire and her victim break into the science room. Why the science room? To me it represents the intrusion of the bewitched world into our rational, scientific one. Metaphor is critical to the story and it’s established right there at the start.

  Much of the early episodes necessarily consists in setting the stage for the show, or at least the events of S1. The audience – most of whom had not seen the movie – needs to learn who Buffy is, why she’s in Sunnydale, the new characters she meets, etc.

  What do we learn about Buffy? She’s The Slayer, but she doesn’t want to be. She walks out on Giles at the first mention of vampires, and she tells him straight out why she won’t accept her calling: “Prepares me for what? For getting kicked out of school? For losing all of my friends? For having to spend all of my time fighting for my life and never getting to tell anyone because I might endanger them? Go ahead! Prepare me.”

  Being the Slayer isolates Buffy. She’s the Chosen One. Singular, one girl in all the world. We’ll see her sense of isolation as a consistent theme throughout every season. It’s not just Buffy who feels alone, of course. In some sense we all do, notwithstanding friends and family. There’s always a lingering feeling that others don’t fully understand us or realize what we’re going through. This is particularly true of teenagers, who seem to be alienated from just about everyone. Buffy’s isolation may stem from her unique powers, but it’s a feeling we all can identify with.

  Buffy rejects the role of Slayer, but Giles challenges her, appealing to her human sense of responsibility: “Then why are you here?” The question has two meanings: why is she in the school, but more significantly, why is she in Sunnydale? Perhaps even more generally, it might mean “what is your purpose in life?”.

  When I reframe the question this way, it suggests that the role of Slayer may be seen in part as metaphor, and of course I think it is. In my reading of the show, Buffy’s destiny is to grow up, to become an adult just as all teenagers have to do. In rejecting the role of Slayer, I see Buffy as rejecting the idea of becoming an adult. She wants the adult world – “you people” – to leave her alone.

  Buffy doesn’t want to face the question of her purpose in life, so she denies her destiny. She may have been Chosen (passive sense), but she hasn’t yet herself chosen (active sense) that role; Buffy is clear from the beginning that her powers may have been thrust upon her unasked, but she retains the choice to use them “against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness”. That power to choose is what alone makes her free; without it, she’s nothing but a tool in the hands of others.

  And she does choose to use her powers. In The Harvest she accepts responsibility for Jesse:

  Xander: Except for one thing: how do you kill them?

  Buffy: You don't, I do.

  Xander: Well, Jesse's my...

  Buffy interrupts: Jesse is my responsibility. I let him get taken.

  I said in the Introduction that accepting responsibility was the most important theme in the series, so this is a key moment. And it’s not just that she takes the responsibility, she insists that it’s hers alone:

  Xander: So, what's the plan? We saddle up, right?

  Buffy: There's no 'we', okay? I'm the Slayer, and you're not.

  We also learn somet
hing else very important about Buffy, namely that she’s a good person. She immediately recognizes Cordelia’s mistreatment of Willow and actively seeks Willow out shortly afterward. It’s that human side of her character to which Giles successfully appeals in getting her to act as the Slayer at least this one time.

  In reaching out to Willow, Buffy takes an important step for any new student: she finds new friends. These are friends who, it turns out, can help on her way to accepting the burdens of Slayerhood. Xander helps with his courage when he accompanies her to find Jesse. Giles, it turns out, can help with knowledge. And Willow may be wavering and uncertain, just as Buffy is wavering and uncertain about her destiny, but she wants to help in her own way.

  The role of vampires as a metaphor for adolescence is likewise established in these two episodes. Note Darla’s Catholic school girl outfit and Thomas’s dated clothes which tell Buffy that he’s a vampire. “Live in the now”, she tells him. These vampires are frozen in time.

  The Master is obviously the most important vampire, so naturally I think he plays a symbolic role in addition to his storyline one. His symbolic role will become clear in the episode Nightmares, so I’ll hold off talking about it until then.

  Has Buffy fully and unreservedly committed to being the Slayer (i.e., to growing up) by the end of The Harvest? She did accept responsibility for Willow and Jesse and later for stopping the Harvest, but those were cases where she felt her responsibility was personal. That leaves open the longer term issue of her responsibility to the world. I’ll leave it open at this point whether she’s made that larger commitment or not.

  Finally, let’s talk about a literary concept called magical realism. Rather than getting into formal definitions, I’ll use the example of Franz Kafka. In one of Kafka’s novels, The Metamorphosis, a person, Gregor Samsa, turns into a giant bug. This serves as a metaphor for how Samsa thinks the world sees him. In some sense, Samsa causes his own transformation by the way he interprets himself in the world.

  How does this apply to Buffy? Giles suggests that she herself is the reason why the vampires have appeared at Sunnydale High: “You think it's coincidence, your being here? That boy was just the beginning…. The influx of the undead, the... supernatural occurrences, it's been building for years. There's a reason why you're here and a reason why it's now!” One way to see the events on screen is that Buffy herself has caused them. The demons are her subconscious fears and weaknesses made manifest on the screen for her to battle as she grows up.

  Trivia notes: (1) Principal Flutie mentioned that Buffy had previously attended Hemery High in Los Angeles. Hemery High was the name of the high school Buffy attended in the original movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (2) The classroom lesson will always be related to the theme of the episode. Here, the subject is the Black Death and what are vampires but a plague on humanity? And what is the Harvest but an event which will kill all the humans? Luke even reverses the theme by referring to humans as a “plague of boils”. (3) Just as the classroom lesson will always relate to the episode in some way, so will the music at the Bronze. Here are the lyrics we hear as Buffy enters; they describe her uncertainty regarding her destiny: “Oh, I just want to believe / Can you hear me? / Can you see me? / What's inside of me? / Oh, I just want to believe / If my life can have a purpose / Help me to believe / Oh, I just want to believe / Can you hear me? / Can you see me? / What's inside of me? / Oh, I just want to believe / If my life can have a purpose / Help me to believe/Everybody wants to find the circle / The line of truth that has no end / Because so many nights I've slept with the feeling of empty / And I say, right now I'm ready to believe”. Buffy is ready to believe when she realizes what’s happened to Willow. (4) The Master tells his minions “you are all weak”. That same line was spoken by the character Doug Niedermeyer in the movie Animal House. Mark Metcalf, who plays the Master, played Niedermeyer. (5) Joss said that he adopted the traditional methods of slaying vampires, but added the dusting because he didn’t want to have to deal with the bodies all the time. The vamp face makes it easy to tell when Buffy’s dusting someone evil. (6) Why is it Angel who brings her messages? The word “angel” comes from the Greek and means “messenger”.

  Witch

  One of the great things about BtVS is that it can be watched on multiple levels. The episode Witch begins a three year run of episodes satirizing high school. Joss Whedon had, as we say, issues with high school, and one theme of the show is that high school is Hell, in Buffy’s case literally. Many of the first 56 episodes make fun of the stereotypes of high school life, as Witch does here regarding cheerleading. I’m not going to talk much about this aspect of the show. It’s not that I think it’s wrong to watch Buffy for this reason – it certainly isn’t; I personally think the satire is hilarious – it’s that I don’t think I have anything to add.

  When I first watched Witch I thought it wasn’t very good. The production values, as in all of S1, are sub-par, and I was disappointed that we seemed to have dropped the story about the Master. I’ve come to see that there’s actually a lot going on that I didn’t appreciate at first. Among other things, learning about the Master isn’t the goal of the show, learning about Buffy is. And Witch teaches us, in metaphor, about Buffy.

  Let’s start with the title. Lots of people, even on Buffy web sites, have it as “The Witch”. That’s wrong – the title is just the one word “Witch”. It’s a pun: witch = which, meaning “which is it, Amy or her mother?” Maybe it’s even a question for Buffy: “which direction will you go?”.

  Witch introduced an important structural feature of BtVS, namely the “Little Bad”. In the language of the Buffyverse, there is always a Big Bad who poses a challenge for Buffy throughout the season. “Little Bads” last only an episode or maybe a few episodes. It’s usually the case that Buffy’s defeat of the various Little Bads will set the stage for her confrontation with the Big Bad. I see Catherine Madison as the first of the Little Bads, though I suppose you could also see Luke as the first.

  As I explained in the Introduction, the bad guys on Buffy are generally metaphors. If Buffy defeats a lust demon, then the point of the episode is to show that she has defeated the challenge posed by lust. So what does Catherine Madison tell us, in metaphor, about Buffy? Well, Catherine, like vampires, is frozen in time. She’s an adult, but wants to remain forever in the body and role of a teenager. Note particularly the contrast with Joyce: “BUFFY: Y'know, there's this girl, Amy, and, um, she trains with her mom, like, three hours a day. JOYCE: Uh-huh. BUFFY: Sounds like her mom's pretty into it. JOYCE: Sounds like her mom doesn't have a lot to do.” Joyce’s reaction may seem harsh, but grown-ups should be interested in their children’s lives, not trying to live them.

  Cordelia is so awful to everyone in her relentless pursuit of cheerleading glory that we should also consider this as another clue that Cordelia’s path may be the wrong one for Buffy. We’ve seen enough of Cordy by now to realize that she’s not a very good role model for anyone. Cordy represents the path not taken, or perhaps the path which should not be taken.

  Buffy’s goal of being a cheerleader plays off the movie, in which she was depicted as a shallow cheerleader until called as the Slayer. Her desire to recapture her role as a “normal teenager”, which she enjoyed at Hemery, just as Catherine tries to recapture her own youth, is actually a distraction from her calling as the Slayer, as Giles tells her straight out in the teaser: “This is madness! What can you have been thinking? You are the Slayer! Lives depend upon you! … You have a sacred birthright, Buffy. You were chosen to destroy vampires…” And since, in my view, Buffy’s commitment to being the Slayer is, in part, a metaphor for her commitment to growing up, Giles warned Buffy that cheerleading was a distraction from that goal.

  Joyce drives home the lesson at the end by distinguishing herself from Catherine Madison: “Buffy: Do you ever wish you could be sixteen again? Joyce: Oh, that's a frightful notion. (exhales) Go through all that again? Not even if it helped me understand
you.” Joyce’s example confirms Buffy’s choice of which route to take: “Amy: (to Buffy) Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that you wanted to be on the squad. Buffy: Oh, hey, that's okay. Cheerleading's just a little too hairy for me these days.”

  And note the metaphor for Catherine’s end. Buffy doesn’t kill her. No, she shouts “Grow up!” and shows Catherine her own reflection, which forever traps her in the statue of a cheerleader. Frozen.

  There’s a final reason why Witch is more significant than I originally realized: the events and/or characters of this episode will be referenced at least once in every single remaining season. One of the great things about the show is that it expects its audience to remember the events of previous episodes, and it builds on them. I obviously can’t say any more about the details of these future episodes because of spoilers.

  Trivia notes: (1) Charisma Carpenter, who plays Cordelia, was herself a cheerleader for the San Diego Chargers. (2) The plot of the episode seems loosely based on the story of Wanda Holloway, the Texas woman who hired a hit man to kill the mother of her daughter’s rival for the cheerleading squad. (3) The biology/chemistry class of course mirrors the witch’s cauldron.

  Teacher’s Pet

  Teacher’s Pet is widely considered one of the weaker episodes in the whole history of the show, an opinion I share. Still, and consistent with my view that all of S1 was carefully planned to lead us to the conclusion we’ll see in Prophecy Girl, let’s see if perhaps there’s at least some small point in its favor.

  In Witch we saw that Buffy had to understand the type of adult she needed to try to become. It wouldn’t do any good for her to get older without actually leaving childhood behind. Catherine Madison was the metaphor through which (heh) Buffy came to this understanding.