Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Third, we have to account for the metaphor. Buffy’s “real me” is not just innocent, she represents the part of Buffy who will balance her slayer powers with human love and innocence. Ben’s “sister” is insane and will destroy the world. Dawn needs to be protected, Glory – i.e., Buffy’s fear – needs to be subdued.

  Dawn, as her name metaphorically suggests, also represents the future. She’s that part of childhood that we need to preserve as we face the fears that adulthood presents, the part that does not bear the weight of the world. It’s no accident that the events on the tower occur as day breaks, just as April said in IWMTLY: “it’s always darkest before [the dawn].” Daybreak, dawn, has always been the poetic image for the promise of a new day, a new future.

  Dawn represents the future, not just for Buffy but, because Buffy stands for all of us, for the whole world. Would the world be worth saving without that, without promise for the future? Not in my view, no, and certainly not if achieving that hollow victory forces Buffy to murder her own sister. Flesh of her flesh, blood of her blood (h/t fresne).

  Buffy didn’t sacrifice herself to save the world as it is, she sacrificed herself to save Dawn and what she represents of what the world may be.

  Buffy didn’t just walk away from Omelas killing Dawn, of course. She also refused to kill Ben. Was Giles right to kill him? For a deontologist, killing is generally wrong, though it might be justified for some on the ground that the person had done something to deserve death. Even assuming Ben had done something of that nature, a deontologist might respond as Gandalf did to Frodo, when Frodo suggested that Gollum deserved death: “Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.”

  It’s more complicated when we consider Giles from the consequentialist perspective. IMO, the answer depends on what Giles knew and when, and on what his motivation was.

  Xander raised the idea of killing Ben in the Magic Box. He rejected his own suggestion in the face of silence from the others on the ground that Ben was an “innocent”. Interestingly, Giles said nothing at this time, but the consensus seemed to be that killing Ben was something they could not do.

  Now, Ben certainly was not innocent, but Giles didn’t know the things we know. He didn’t know that Ben summoned the Quellar demon. He didn’t know that Ben turned Dawn over to Glory. He didn’t know whether Ben would voluntarily sacrifice himself to save the world from Glory. He did know that Ben probably saved his life in Spiral, which makes the killing particularly ruthless.

  Nor can we be sure of the exact timing of the killing. Buffy told Ben that Glory “missed her chance”, which implies that the time had passed for her to use the Key. OTOH, we then see that the breakdown between worlds didn’t begin until Buffy got to the top of the tower. Somewhere in that time Giles killed Ben, so it looks like Glory could possibly have made it if she had re-emerged.

  Then again, Giles didn’t say that he was killing Ben in order to save the world, as would be the case if Glory could have made it. What he said is that he was killing him to save Buffy, with the world as a purely secondary consideration: “And sooner or later Glory will re-emerge, and ... make Buffy pay for that mercy. And the world with her.” Since it’s not clear that Glory could in any way use the Key in the future, maybe Giles meant that Glory could kill people or brainsuck them; bad, certainly, but not apocalyptic. His primary motivation seems to have been protecting Buffy.

  The thing is, though, that Buffy didn’t need protecting, and never for a moment thought of killing Ben to save herself. She was just minutes (at most) away from her dive off the tower, doing so to save the very person Giles had wanted her to kill. And if he had thought it necessary to kill Ben in order to prevent Glory from using the Key, he was too late for that also thanks to Doc. Both of his most convincing motivations are therefore invalid – his act saved neither the world nor Buffy. I don’t know if that makes his action meaningless, but it makes it hard to justify his decision except on the ground that it was right to kill an “innocent” (as far as Giles knew) in order to stop Glory from brainsucking future victims.

  This leaves us to consider Buffy’s actions on the tower. I often hear fans call her leap a suicide. Two factors convince me that it wasn’t suicide. First, Buffy stopped Dawn from jumping before she herself made the decision to jump. Buffy was going to carry out her plan to defend Dawn to the end, meaning Buffy had to stay alive to do that. In fact, she was so determined to live to protect Dawn that she earlier had threatened to kill her best friends if they came near Dawn. Buffy’s decision to jump came only when she realized that she had an alternative that could save Dawn while also protecting the world.

  What happened when Buffy had her epiphany? In The Replacement, Riley told her that being the Slayer was part of who she is. On the tower she realized that Dawn – her human side – was equally a part, even a more important part. Like Xander in The Replacement, she recognized that she needed both halves to be complete. She integrated her two halves, which means she grew up, became an adult. She could now close the split in the universe, which was the metaphor for the internal sense of separation she’s felt from the very beginning of the series (e.g., NKABOTFD).

  Second, we know it wasn’t suicide from her decision in TWotW to keep fighting. Buffy’s last words re-emphasize the decision she made in TWotW not to run away from her responsibility as The Slayer. She tells Dawn “But this is the work that I have to do.” She’s not ducking her responsibility by committing suicide, she’s accepting it by sacrificing herself for Dawn. When she goes on to tell Dawn that “the hardest thing to do in this world is to live in it” – a very existentialist sentiment – she’s warning her of the difficulty that comes with responsibility. It demands courage: “Be brave. Live. For me.” And, again, who is the Dawn to whom Buffy is giving this advice?

  Suicide is a confession of defeat. Buffy wasn’t defeated. She beat Glory – her fears – into submission. She found a way to save her own humanity in the form of Dawn. Adulthood no longer holds any terror for her. Dawn was breaking into sunrise when she dove.

  Joss said, “"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.”

  In five seasons he took her from shallow teenager to heroic adult. And he did it brilliantly.

  Trivia notes: (1) The S5 DVDs don’t show the actual “previously on” introduction when The Gift first aired. You can find that intro on the S7 DVDs as an easter egg. (2) The five previous apocalypses to which Giles referred: The Harvest; Prophecy Girl; Becoming 2; The Zeppo; and Doomed. (3) If you’re wondering how Olaf suddenly became a troll god, and his hammer the hammer of a god, the reason is that he was supposed to have been described that way in Triangle. The word “god” was left out of that episode for some reason and Joss was upset about it. At least that’s the rumor. (4) When Spike tells Xander that “blood is life”, that repeats a phrase which appeared twice in Buffy v. Dracula. Yes, I think that’s intentional. (5) Buffy found the Dagon Sphere in No Place Like Home. (6) Spike tried and failed to lift Olaf’s hammer in Blood Ties. (7) Glory’s reference to Buffy’s friends as her “cartoon pals” is probably a reference to Scooby Doo. (8) Previous references to the Slayer as a killer can be found in Who Are You?; Restless; and Intervention. The idea goes back at least to Faith in S3 (see my post on Consequences). (9) Anya “skedaddled” in Graduation Day 1. (10) Buffy locked Spike out after the events of Crush. She invites him back in here. Note the metaphor in her position vis-à-vis Spike: Buffy stands above him on the stairs, representing their respective status. (11) The St. Crispin’s Day Speech is from Henry V, Act IV, sc. iii. (12) Xander’s exclamatio
n “Shpadoinkle!” comes from Cannibal, the Musical. (13) When Xander says that “the glorified bricklayer picks up a spare”, he’s using a term from bowling. (14) Giles kills Ben by suffocating him, just as the Quellar demon Ben summoned killed the crazy people. That may be its own commentary on Giles’s act. The fact that Giles chose a method which wouldn’t leave a mark also suggests that he didn’t want to face the moral judgment of the SG for his action. (15) If you were wondering how Doc knew about Dawn, there was a very subtle clue: his tail. We saw it in Forever, and it looked reptilian: “From underneath his bathrobe a greenish, scaly tail pokes out.” Put that together with this dialogue from Blood Ties: "The key is also susceptible to necromanced animal detection, particularly those of canine or serpent construct." My emphasis. (16) In Graduation Day 2 Faith’s words to Buffy -- “Little Miss Muffet counting down from 7-3-0” -- refer to the fact that two years (730 days) from that day Buffy will die. This is that date. Note that in GD2 Buffy substituted her own blood for that of Faith. (17) Faith also told Buffy in GD2 that Buffy had “miles to go [before you sleep]”. That’s taken from the Robert Frost poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”. The words of the poem are generally taken to mean that you have duties to fulfill before you rest. Those words therefore describe Buffy’s journey from then to her dive off the tower. (18) A related reference occurs in Buffy’s dream in Restless, a year later, when Buffy looks at a clock which says 7:30 and Tara tells her “that clock's completely wrong”. (19) In Who Are You, Faith finds Buffy’s credit card and uses it to buy an airline ticket. She reads off the number and then the expiration date: 5-01. The Gift aired in May 2001. (20) The Gift was the last episode to air on the WB. The show moved to UPN for Seasons 6 and 7.

  Bargaining 1 & 2

  I need to begin S6 with some comments about how I see the season in the overall context of the series. I saw S1-5 as tracking Buffy’s progress to becoming an adult. As I read The Gift, she dived off the tower into adulthood. The natural consequence of that reading is that S6-7 should be understood as dealing with the first stages of Buffy’s journey as an adult.

  In all previous seasons, Joss never knew if the show would be renewed for another season. At the end of S5 the show moved to a new network and he had a two year deal. I see S6 and S7 as one long, extended story about Buffy’s adult journey. That, in my view, explains both why Joss didn’t write the finale to S6 (the only finale he didn’t write), and why S6 ends on a cliffhanger.

  Because of the move to the new network, because UPN had a very relaxed view of “standards and practices” (i.e., censorship), and because Buffy moved into new territory as an adult, S6 made some daring choices. There are very dark passages, very adult themes; naturally, the taste for such things will vary, especially given the contrast with previous seasons.

  To say that S6 was controversial would be understating the situation a lot. I doubt there’s ever been a more controversial season on any show (not that I could measure such a thing anyway). As if further evidence of this were needed, the Mark Watches reviews of S6 episodes within the last few months generated raging internet debates over 10 years after the original air date. I guess I should be impressed that the show can inspire such emotion over such a long period of time, even if things got more than a bit out of control. Still, what happened there was just a small sample of the fights which took place in real time.

  The season as a whole was controversial, one particular metaphor was controversial, and one episode, Seeing Red, became probably the most controversial episode of any TV show ever. Since I think the social impact of the series is important, I’ll be discussing all of this in addition to the individual episodes as we go along.

  In previous seasons we saw Buffy learn from the mistakes of others. The show used devices such as “shadow self” (Cordelia, Faith) to tell us what she should not do, leaving Buffy herself to learn to follow the right path after seeing the wrong one. This changes to some extent in S6 and S7, and I think that the change is one reason why these two seasons are so controversial among fans. In these two seasons, Buffy often learns from her own mistakes, as adults generally do. That is, we see her take the wrong path initially, only to figure it out by the end. Many people felt that this made her unsympathetic as a character. I disagree – I see that as true to life and as making her character less remote, as superheroes so often are.

  My overall assessment, up front, is that S6 was like A Tale Of Two Cities: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The peaks of S6 are (JMHO) the highest of any season. Unfortunately, I have very strong criticisms of one part of the story. Whether you love it or hate it, though, there’s nothing else like S6 in the whole history of television.

  “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

  Joss wrote the season openers every year except in seasons 5 and 6. I don’t know why he didn’t write the opener in S5, but he had a very good excuse for not writing Bargaining in S6. We’ll see the result in, yes, episode 7.

  The title – Bargaining – has multiple meanings in the episode: Willow bargains for Buffy’s life; the vampire attempts a bargain with the demon bikers. Most important, though, is that “bargaining” is one of the five “stages of grief” hypothesized by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. The reference to the five stages is very clever on multiple levels, but I want to remind you in particular of this dialogue from Intervention, which I obviously think is intentional:

  ANYA: We’re just kind of thrown by the you having sex with Spike.

  BUFFY: The ... who whating how with huh?

  ANYA: Okay, that's denial. That usually comes before anger.

  Denial and anger are, respectively, the first two stages, bargaining is the third.

  As applied in its original form – to impending death – bargaining “involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, ‘I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time...’” Quote from link.

  It’s worth asking whether someone in these episodes promised to be better – to reform her life – as part of a bargain, and what that might mean metaphorically:

  DAWN: You told me I had to be strong ... and I've tried. (tearful) But it's been so hard without you.

  Buffy still has eyes closed, frowning.

  DAWN: I'm sorry. I promise I'll do better, I will! (still tearful) If you're with me. Stay with me ... please. I need you to live.

  In my view, we need to interpret this via the metaphor. Dawn isn’t the Key anymore, but she still has a metaphorical role as Buffy’s inner child. Buffy’s inner child wants her slayer half – the adult half – to pay more attention to her, and promises to be better in return. Keep that metaphor in mind as we go through S6.

  But remember also that there are 2 more stages; I think those are critical for understanding this season. That’s a hint.

  Willow’s behavior in Bargaining touches on the debate regarding Buffy’s refusal to kill Dawn in The Gift: what price is worth paying, when does the end justify the means? It seems to me that when Willow sacrifices the fawn she’s metaphorically sacrificing her own innocence. She tells Tara that the ingredient was “vino de madre”. Literally translated, that means “wine of the mother”. Symbolically, it means “blood of Mother Earth”. Note the color change of Willow’s clothing: she’s wearing white in the scene with the fawn, red afterwards. She’s stained with blood. Will she ultimately think it’s worth that price?

  Making matters worse is the fact that Willow concealed her actions from Tara and everyone else. I was a bit surprised that Tara went along with the idea, but it seems likely that pressure from Willow, her own sense of wanting Buffy back, and an unwillingness to ask the hard questions about Willow’s methods led Tara to agree.

  For all that Willow gets a lot of criticism for resurrecting Buffy, she has some good arguments to make on her side. On
e is the one she emphasizes in these episodes, namely, the need to rescue Buffy from Hell. If you honestly believed someone was in Hell, I assume you’d be willing to do a lot to try to get her out. Medieval Catholics paid lots of money for indulgences to keep themselves and their loved ones out of “mere” purgatory or to shorten their time there. The incentives are huge.

  In addition, there’s the fact that we as a society go to fairly great lengths to preserve life. Doctors try their best to restore a beating heart or otherwise bring back someone from the brink of death. Willow’s actions are consistent with that.

  There are personal and consequential arguments too: Willow understandably misses her best friend. She recognized Buffy when Xander, Anya, and Tara didn’t; Buffy’s especially important to Willow, and there’s a good metaphorical reason for that in S6. Bear in mind also that Willow’s been saddled with a great deal of responsibility, and it’s clear that she’s barely held herself together except with the thought that Buffy might be brought back: “Nothing, it was all for nothing. Buffy's gone. She's really gone.” She’s obviously been leading the SG in the nightly war against vampires, but Sunnydale needs a Slayer. Giles strongly implied this in the teaser and the invasion by the demon bikers reinforces Willow’s exercise of responsibility to restore the Hellmouth’s guardian.

  Against all these, though, are some pretty serious downsides. Willow didn’t just conceal her methods from everyone, she and the others hid the very deed itself from Giles, Dawn, and Spike, all of whom had a right to know. It’s doubtful that Willow considered the full price of her spell, assuming she knows it. The gang seems never to have considered bringing Faith into Sunnydale in order to establish a new guardian. There are some other downsides in addition, one of which we’ll see next episode.

  I’ll talk more in my next post about what it means for Buffy to be back. For now I’ll just make one point. Buffy’s first words were “Is this Hell?”. Writer Marti Noxon refers to the destruction Buffy sees as “the external manifestation of Buffy’s inner turmoil.” Buffy must have thought that her sacrifice in The Gift had been for naught. When she looks out over the tower, remembering back to the events of The Gift, it’s hard to tell if she’s thinking of suicide or if she believes she needs to jump again in order to save the world from the Hell it appears to be.