by Field, Mark
Regardless of the dynamics of any particular group of characters in a Joss Whedon story, the freedom afforded both the characters and the fictional world to draw upon whatever inspiration makes sense for that character or that moment, and the corresponding ripple effect it might bring to the rest of the story, is a deeply woven ingredient in all the works of Joss Whedon, amounting to a deep and scathing disregard for the status quo. This quality has become one of the most identifiable marks of a Joss story, and has made his fictional worlds seem as fully destructible as the one we live in, with nothing and no one immune from change, or able to escape fully the orbital pull of those around them. His stories exist within a construct that borrows heavily from real life in the sense that, there is a consequence to every action, which requires a constant cycle of consequence and change for people, places, and even, in some cases, objects. This is a theme which remains consistent throughout his works, not only elevating his stories beyond the surface pop-culture reference point of which they are so much a part but also serving to help keep his stories grounded in a reality that reacts and responds very much like the one we experience every day, as sometimes painful and heart-wrenching as it is. Partly because of this, the fantastical worlds of vampires, demons, mind-wiping tech, and post-civil war space adventurers, can become as real, compelling, and believable, as the world we live in today.
For the simple reason that he had more time to fully develop his characters and the world they lived in, due to the seven seasons it was on…, this culture of change is perhaps most recognizable in the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As Buffy progressed from the ordinary teenage high school student that she started as (her first words to her Watcher after sucking on her lollipop were a clueless, “Huh?”), to a Vampire Slayer who had no equal (“Apocalypse? We’ve all been there/The same old trips/Why should we care?”), she watched her world become increasingly dangerous while fighting, among other things, personal as well as real demons, transforming herself into almost a completely different person in response to this. Buffy changed, her friends changed, and the world around her changed, and the effect was seen in a slow progression over each season in how she dealt with her enemies and her friends. By the end of the series, almost nothing was as it had been when the show had started….
It is this permanency which has helped make Joss’s stories almost infinitely rewatchable. We feel what the characters are feeling each time through, gaining a deeper understanding of their motivations, and why they react as they do. When something changes in a Joss Whedon story, it usually changes for good with no turning back; there is no magical “reset” button which brings the world or characters back to where they stood before the episode started…. There is no easy escape; the only way out is to continue forward, painful step by painful step. What the characters become as they forge ahead, is a direct response to what it is they are going through, or have gone through. The consequences are displayed in the personality and actions of every character, in every way, requiring them and those around them to change along with it….
Joss Whedon does in fact have something serious to say, serious enough that his stories can be picked apart and debated like any good work of fiction. Through the use of consequence and change, he has fashioned a style of storytelling that manages to strike that elusive chord within us where things that matter find a way to resonate in the same way they do in our own lives. Things like character, story, and most importantly, the common thread of allowing the consequences of actions and events to change substantively his stories and characters. This is a theme that has given his works a foundation that is rare in any medium, and also runs counter to the less honest and adventurous styles. It’s a theme that, more than any other, has come to define what a Joss Whedon story is really all about, even more than his ability with characterization, plotting, or big ideas. And the consequence of this is that he has produced a legacy of works which have impacted pop-culture far more than it would seem they should.” http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/138725-consequence-and-change-in-the-works-of-joss-whedon-and-why-it-matter/
We first meet Buffy in her sophomore year of high school. Buffy gets older, of course. In the seven seasons, she ages from 16 to 22. That means she grows up. We’d expect to see real changes in her during that time, and in fact we do see them. Since Buffy’s the hero of the show – the greatest hero in American literature in my opinion – we’d also expect her to grow up in the right way. As I’ll explain in more detail in the individual essays, the show repeatedly challenges the viewer to think about what it means to “grow up”, to become an adult. What distinguishes a teenager from an adult? Buffy gives us some answers to those questions. Even when it doesn’t give direct answers, it forces us to think about the issues.
In literature, there’s a name for works which describe the growing up process. A novel which explores this theme is called by the German word “bildungsroman”. The reason it’s a German word is that the term was first applied to some works by the great German poet and novelist Goethe. The word means, essentially, “coming of age novel”. BtVS is a bildungsroman.
You don’t need to take my word for the fact that the writers intended to show this progression. Take it straight from Joss Whedon’s mouth (from an AOL live chat, November 10, 2002): “"Buffy" is hard [to write] because it is completely grounded in human experience. Every episode has to be about what, you know, what it feels like to go through a certain period in your life. In the rite of passage that is your life. We can never do an episode that is purely fantastical and exciting because the show is about growing up.” More recently (February 8, 2012) he reiterated this in an interview with USA Today: “"Buffy was always about the arc of a life, and it wasn't ever going to be one of those shows where they were perpetually in high school and never asked why," Whedon says. "It was about change. So there's never a time when Buffy's life isn't relevant."
The dialogue tells us many times that this is happening. Take, for example, this passage from the end of Lie to Me:
“Buffy: Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate. Who to trust. It's just, like, the more I know, the more confused I get.
Giles: I believe that's called growing up.”
Growing up involves choices, making decisions about what kind of person we want to be. Buffy has to make those choices; pretty much every episode presents Buffy with decisions only she can make and the consequences of her decisions. The choices she makes (that we all make) don’t just reveal who she is right now, they shape what she will become in the future. Not only is Buffy “the Chosen One”, the very last episode bears the title “Chosen”, intending both the passive (to be chosen) and active (to choose) meanings of that word. I can’t, obviously, prove this claim here by describing this process for each of 144 episodes, but that’s part of what I’ll be doing in the individual essays.
2. Metaphor
Placing BtVS into a fancy literary genre doesn’t, by itself, make the show important. The substance of the discussion makes the show important, and I’ll talk more about that. For now, let me move on to the way BtVS tells its story. The significant factor here is metaphor. The extensive use of metaphor on Buffy requires a careful reading of the text in order to fully appreciate the story. “[Creator Joss] Whedon … credits his viewers with a high degree of intelligence and assumes that they are capable of absorbing a considerable degree of detail. He assumes a high level of literacy on the part of viewers, such as making nods to highbrow films and movies.” Robert Moore, http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/137783-why-a-spotlight-on-joss-whedon/P1
When I was in college I had a particular English teacher who overdid metaphor. He carried it so far that everything ended up a metaphor. That drove me nuts at the time, and it made me forever cautious about claims to see X as a symbol of Y. The metaphors that I’ll mention on the show are either blatantly obvious or even expressly mentioned by the writers. Quoting again from Joss Whedon’s AOL inte
rview, “Buffy is made by a bunch of writers who think very, very hard about what they are doing in terms of psychology and methodology. … When somebody says there is a philosophy behind "Buffy" that is the truth. When they say there is symbolism and meaning in what we're doing, that's true too.”
A metaphor, in literature, is when a word (or, in the case of television, an image) which literally looks like one thing is used to suggest something else instead. In BtVS the use of metaphor is inherent in the show. Most of the demons Buffy fights are metaphors. If the writers want to show Buffy struggling with lust, they create a lust demon and have Buffy defeat it (that’s an example one of the writers actually gave). The demons are demons of the mind, personal demons that people commonly struggle with.
The most important such metaphor is Buffy herself. She’s the hero of the show; we – the audience – are supposed to identify with her. When she feels pain, we should also; when she’s sad, we should feel her sadness. Buffy is us and we are her. That’s what I call the Central Metaphor for the show. When Buffy faces a dilemma, we learn from her experience because we are, in some sense, her. We feel (or should feel) what she feels: joy at her triumphs, grief at her distress, gratitude towards her friends, anger at those who betray her.
This brings up an important, related issue. Buffy’s a girl (duh). She faces many of her issues as a girl. There’s a definite feminist message here – the female as superhero. That doesn’t make her any less “us” than if she were male. Nobody doubts that we should identify with male heroes in literature; the fact that Buffy’s “just a girl” doesn’t change this. The message is universal even if gender can only be particular.
If Buffy is us, and if the demons stand as metaphors for our flaws and our fears, then what do vampires represent? Put another way, why is the show titled Buffy the Vampire Slayer rather than Buffy the Demon Slayer?
To answer this question, we need to consider one of the most basic facts about vampires in the genre: they never age. Vampires are frozen in time. In School Hard, when Angel tells Spike (a vampire) that “things change”, Spike responds angrily, “Not us! Not demons!” Or this from Smashed: “[Vampire]: A man can change. Buffy: You’re not a man.”
Why are they frozen in time? Because they can’t make moral choices. Within the show, vampires lack a soul. According to Joss Whedon, the soul as it’s depicted in the show serves as a “moral compass”. With vampires, that compass is pointing the wrong direction – their choices are governed by selfish motives, so they can’t develop morally.
Think about what this means – that vampires can never grow up. But the whole story of Buffy is, as I said before, about growing up. Being the Slayer allows her to slay demons which are metaphors for her personal demons that might prevent her from growing up. Thus, she slays vampires – those who can’t grow up – as a metaphor for her own path to adulthood.
Vampires also can’t see themselves in the mirror. The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness: “The test gauges self-awareness by determining whether an animal can recognize its own reflection in a mirror as an image of itself.” Since vampires can’t see their reflection, that’s a sign to the viewers that vampires aren’t self-aware. We’re meant to contrast Buffy with the vampires – she is, or at least is becoming (a key word in the show) self-aware.
Vampires also bite; that’s been part of vampire lore since at least Bram Stoker. BtVS adopts this lore, along with other aspects of the tradition (wooden stakes to the heart, holy water, etc.). In this tradition of vampire literature, the vampire’s bite generally serves as a metaphor for sexual intercourse. Vampires reproduce by biting. As Buffy explains in the very first episode, Welcome to the Hellmouth, “To make you a vampire they have to suck your blood. And then you have to suck their blood. It's like a whole big sucking thing.” But a vampire’s bite is also just a way to kill you. This means you need to be conscious of which metaphor they’re using. Or, as Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But do consider the implications of using a stake…
This brings up an important point: metaphors are common on BtVS, but they aren’t universal. Some demons serve no metaphorical purpose (e.g., Clem in Seasons 6-7). Don’t make the mistake my former English teacher made of looking for metaphor in all the wrong places. Do be sensitive, though, to the principal metaphors that I’ve just described.
Buffy herself and the vampires and demons don’t exhaust the list of metaphors on the show. Buffy’s friends, Willow and Xander, and her mentor, Giles, are also metaphors sometimes. Willow is Buffy’s spirit, Xander her heart, Giles her mind. Often this is obvious in a particular episode, but in any case the show made the equation explicit in the episodes Primeval and Restless. As is true with vampires and sex, this is true sometimes but not all the time; you need to evaluate the actions of the characters and think about how they play out as both metaphor and in “real” life.
Using other characters as metaphors for aspects of Buffy herself raises interesting issues. One that gets debated on the internet a lot is whether the show is “all about Buffy”, or whether it’s best seen as an ensemble show with supporting characters who lead independent lives and have their own story lines. (The writers were aware of this debate and even refer to it in the dialogue.) I lean towards the “all about Buffy” side, but really there’s no reason that both can’t be true. To the extent that other characters do function, at times, as metaphors for aspects of Buffy, it’s essential that they demonstrate their own characteristics and develop over time. The best metaphors, after all, work both as metaphor and as straight story. Thus, we can appreciate Xander’s attraction to demon women as part of his own life story, but also see in it a reflection of Buffy’s attraction to “bad boys” (since Xander represents Buffy’s heart). Part of the sophistication of the show is that it forces us to think about these issues and reflect on what we see on-screen. That’s what good literature does.
Magic is a metaphor too, sometimes. Principally so in Seasons 4-5-6, though the metaphor changes during that time (with not always happy results in my view). So is Buffy’s house. Other metaphors get used episodically.
When we think of important works of literature, we expect them to use language in creative ways and to make good use of metaphor. BtVS qualifies on both counts. But the real test for literature is that it communicates an important message. BtVS does that as well.
3. Themes
If I were asked to identify the single most important message communicated by BtVS, my response would be this: accept responsibility. This theme appears early in the very first episode, Welcome to the Hellmouth:
“Buffy: Oh, why can't you people just leave me alone?
Giles: Because you are the Slayer. (comes down the stairs) Into each generation a Slayer is born, one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, one born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires...”
If Buffy didn’t accept her responsibility as The Slayer, there’d be no story to tell. That’s why the Prologue to every episode in Season 1 recites that “In every generation there is a Chosen One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness. She is the Slayer.” (My emphasis.)
Note that word, “alone” and its complements, “One” and “the”. That’s responsibility, all right. There’s nobody who can take her place, no higher power to aid her:
“Buffy: (exhales) You don't have anything useful to tell me, do you? What are you, just some immortal demon sent down to even the score between good and evil?
Whistler: (impressed) Wow. Good guess. (grins)
Buffy: (steps up to him) Well, why don't you try getting off your immortal ass and fighting evil once in a while? 'Cause I'm sick and tired of doing it myself.” Becoming 2.
Buffy stands for the world. Consider what this means in the context of the show’s metaphors. Each time Buffy acts, she’s implicitly telling us how we should act if we face a similar dilemma. If Buffy is us, then by identifying with her, we put ourselves in that same posit
ion of having to act to save the world. She’s acting in metaphor; we’re supposed to take that lesson into real life. The show not only forces us to think about how to grow up, it gives us insight into what adult – that is, moral – behavior consists of: We are to act as if the whole world depended on our actions. That’s a boatload of responsibility all right, even if, unlike Buffy, we don’t face more apocalypses than birthdays.
Don’t get the impression that BtVS is an After School Special. Only rarely do the writers fall into the trap of dropping anvils in order to send a message (it does happen a few times). The vast majority of the time they succeed in provoking discussion and reflection, seldom making the mistake of becoming wearyingly pompous like Polonius in Hamlet. And whenever the show runs the risk of being melodramatic, some humor undermines the self-importance: “It's like you've got to have at least one moment that says "No, no, no, no. We're not taking ourselves that seriously." (Joss, Lessons DVD commentary.)
Buffy learns by making creative choices, ones that force the viewer to think. Sometimes she learns by making the wrong choice, sometimes the choice is so difficult that there simply is no obvious answer and the internet erupts in screaming debates. The point of the show is not to drive the message into your head with a railroad spike, it’s to force you to think about the kinds of dilemmas we all might face.