Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor & Morality

by Field, Mark

  Why is Buffy so uncomfortable with Faith? Well, there was that whole “tried to kill me and my mother” thing, but that’s not all. Buffy has subconscious fears about Faith, as shown in metaphor with Faith’s dialogue with Spike in the basement (metaphorically, the locus of Buffy’s subconscious). There we see her unrestrained, sexual, dark half in a very sexual, almost post-coital (note the cigarettes) conversation with the man for whom Buffy’s feelings are very conflicted. It could be jealousy, it could be fear, but it’s making Buffy very uneasy. I think there’s another reason too, but it’s spoilerish so I’ll hold off until the finale.

  The horrible wound Caleb inflicts on Xander in Dirty Girls has been prefigured throughout the season. From STSP, an episode involving “mutual no-see-‘ems”:

  “Buffy and Gnarl are still fighting. Gnarl leaps over Buffy's head and lands behind her. She turns and stabs his foot with her dagger when he lands, pinning him to the ground. He screeches and flails, throwing him off guard. She grabs his head with both hands and plunges her thumbs into his eyes.

  XANDER (to Buffy) Ew. Ew. Thumbs? I can't believe you did that.”

  In Showtime, Beljoxa’s Eye was both all-seeing and made up of eyes.

  From Potential:

  “DAWN Maybe that's your power.

  XANDER (pauses at the door) What?

  DAWN Seeing.”

  All season long we’ve seen Xander fixing the windows of Buffy’s house – the “eyes” of the house, as it were. Andrew even called special attention to this in Storyteller: “Look at the fine work Xander did on replacing that window sash.” And, of course, the Bringers are notoriously eyeless, a point which is reinforced in Dirty Girls when Xander’s instructing the Potentials.

  Xander’s wound is all the more emotionally devastating after that wonderful speech he gave in support of Buffy before the attack. That’s Xander at his best.

  Trivia notes: (1) In addition to the teaser, Joss also wrote about 80% of the episode (Drew Godard, DVD commentary). There’s probably some exaggeration in his estimate, because Marti Noxon wrote the Faith/Spike scene in the basement. If she wrote that, and Joss wrote “80%”, then it’s hard to see why Drew would be credited at all. (2) Caleb mentioned the whore of Babylon, for which see the link. (3) Caleb’s phrase “blue eyed boy” is British slang for the American expression “fair haired boy”. Both mean “favorites”. (4) For Faith’s story since Who Are You, see the AtS episodes Five By Five, Sanctuary, Judgment, Salvage, Release, and Orpheus. (5) Faith told Spike they’d met before, which they did in Who Are You, although Faith was in Buffy’s body at the time. Spike later quotes what she said to him at that time. (6) Faith borrows Buffy’s stake when she first shows up, just as she did in Faith, Hope & Trick. There are also references throughout Dirty Girls to pretty much every episode in which Faith appeared. Most of them are in Andrew’s recital. (7) Caleb got the doctrine of transubstantiation backwards, probably intentionally to emphasize his evil. He said, “The body and blood of Christ becoming rich, red wine.” In Catholic doctrine, it’s the wine which becomes Christ’s blood. (8) Caleb’s phrase “lookin for the Lord in the wrong damn places” plays off the lyrics of the song “Looking For Love”. (9) Caleb refers to the Bringers as the “Ray Charles Brigade”, referring to the blind singer. (10) Caleb told the First/Buffy that he’d “killed all those splits”. That’s a very crude way of saying he’s killed lots of women. (11) Faith killed a volcanologist in Graduation Day 1. (12) In their conversation in the basement, Faith recognized that “the Big C” isn’t an issue for Spike. That’s a slang term for cancer. (13) Willow warned Buffy that Caleb might kill the girls left behind while Buffy and Faith were scouting Caleb. That’s almost what happened in When She Was Bad. (14) Faith’s attitude seems not to have changed much since Bad Girls: “Drop me in the hornet's nest, what the hell?” (14) The discussion between Andrew, Amanda, and Xander about Matthew Broderick and Godzilla refers to the 1998 movie Godzilla. (16) Xander’s phrase “take the little bus” is American slang. It refers to the small buses which bring mentally disabled kids to school; it’s a crude way to say someone is stupid. (17) Spike described the vineyard as “like Falcon Crest”, for which see the link. (18) Caleb’s description of Faith as “Cain to [Buffy’s] Abel” refers to the Biblical story in which Cain was a murderer. (19) Caleb’s admiration for St. Paul probably stems from verses like 1 Timothy 2:11-14 and Ephesians 5:22. (20) Caleb’s words, “for the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever” paraphrases the Lord’s Prayer. (21) Dirty Girls aired about a month after the Iraq War began. Some viewers took the show as commenting on the political events, but the outline for S7 was worked out in the summer of the previous year and had no relation to the War. (Drew Godard, DVD commentary)

  Empty Places

  Et tu Brute?

  Empty Places made viewers angry when it aired and I think still does today. It’s comparable to Dead Man’s Party in its plot, and that generated a similar reaction. I don’t like DMP (second bottom on my list), but EP works for me. What’s the difference? Mainly the fact that the abuse of Buffy was SO one-sided in DMP. It wasn’t just that Xander and Joyce, and Willow to a lesser extent, were self-righteous, the episode and its successors implied that they were entirely right. In EP the situation is much more nuanced. We see the conflicted feelings of the SG, we see Buffy’s side, we know that there’s something to be said on all sides. While my heart’s with Buffy, just as it was in DMP, here I can see the point of her critics.

  Let me deal with a couple of preliminary points before I get to the big mutiny. First there was the question of Faith taking the Potentials to the Bronze. Yes, blowing off steam was probably needed. That still doesn’t make the Bronze a good choice. Faith put herself at risk of arrest and everyone at risk of death had Caleb showed up rather than the cops. Bringing up the raid on the vineyard as a way of defending herself to Buffy was not only offensive, it was a terrible argument. There’s a huge difference between a military operation gone wrong and putting everyone in danger in order to get some R&R.

  That said, Faith was very mature and considerate of Buffy earlier when Dawn insensitively tried to talk about Xander. The fact that Buffy didn’t want to discuss that topic, though, shows just how far she’s controlling her human feelings and steeling herself to function as General. It’s another sign on the road to the mutiny.

  In order to discuss the mutiny, I want to review how we got here, even at the risk of stating the obvious and repeating points I’ve made in previous posts. Since BotN, the Potentials and the SG have seen Buffy in full “General” mode. Indeed, to a very substantial extent they’ve insisted that she take on that role. As I’ve emphasized starting with my post on BotN, the logic of this is irrefutable. We’ve known since the very first episode of the series that the Slayer alone can stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. If the Slayer alone can slay, then the Slayer alone gets to make the decision to slay. That means the Slayer must necessarily be in charge.

  The unique status of the Slayer has always made Buffy uncomfortable, and her discomfort has been highlighted throughout all 7 seasons, most recently in CWDP. The inescapable fact of being the Slayer isolates her from everyone else. That was her complaint in CWDP, but really it’s been a factor since the very beginning: “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?” (Welcome to the Hellmouth)

  From the very beginning of the series, Buffy reacted to her situation by accepting the responsibility which came with her unique status. She articulated that responsibility in Selfless: "It is always different! It's always complicated. And at some point, someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I
am the law."

  Note that both parts of the dilemma are expressed in this single quote. The Slayer is isolated, and yet the Slayer must perforce make the decisions because there’s no one else. I think this pretty well expresses what Buffy has been doing for a minimum of 3 years before Selfless (at least since Graduation Day).

  However, accepting this responsibility, good though it is, causes an additional problem. This is the problem raised starkly in Help, but one which has simmered below the surface all along in episodes such as Phases, Gingerbread, and Lessons: Buffy simply can’t save everyone. Thus, accepting the full responsibility which comes from being the Slayer inevitably puts an incredible burden on her, above and beyond the risk of death she faces every night.

  Seen from the other side, many of the Potentials have relied on Buffy to protect them. That was the point of Showtime. Eve/First told everyone “I don’t think Buffy can protect us.” After Buffy defeated the Ubervamp, the Potentials could be confident that they were safe. That kept them on Buffy’s side, notwithstanding her harsher moments, until Dirty Girls called that into doubt. Thus, Buffy feels the burden of protecting the Potentials, causing stress on her, yet the disaster in Dirty Girls means that the Potentials have now lost confidence in her ability to protect them. Her plan to return to the vineyard therefore appears to them as reckless.

  The point of the episodes since BotN is to show how these factors conjoin to isolate Buffy. Get it Done emphasized both parts of her dilemma. She “failed” to save Chloe, but when her guilt at that “failure” caused her to react as General she succeeded in angering everyone around her. Empty Places is the culmination of this cycle. Everything Buffy says to the mutineers is true, but it doesn’t matter. The emotional impact of the disaster at the vineyard means that they won’t follow her once more unto the breach. She’s also now isolated from her friends – and remember the metaphor: they’re her mind, heart, and spirit – even above and beyond the isolation that comes from being the Slayer which she noted in Selfless and CWDP.

  Part – but only part – of Buffy’s problem is that she has not issued her commands in an acceptable way. Farmgirl62 pointed this out in her excellent comments on GiD. Buffy knows this is true. She told Giles this in LMPTM: “Have you seen me with those girls? I mean, the way I've treated my friends and my family and... Andrew.” The truth is, though, that even accounting for this, Buffy’s still on the wrong path.

  The true heart of the problem, to put it in existentialist terms, is that the role of General inherently requires treating other people as objects rather than subjects. You can put a gloss on this by saying that generals should be very nice in the way they treat their objects, but at the end of the day the privates are still objects for the General to order into combat. And yet, the logic of the situation inescapably demands that there be a General.

  Let me state this for emphasis: when Buffy took on the mantle of General in BotN, she made a mistake. We’re supposed to recognize it as a mistake, even those like me who reflexively defend her most of the time. While I’m not going to spoil the finale, I will offer this clue: An essential part of Buffy’s dilemma is that the role of General is a traditional patriarchal role. It reinforces the isolation she feels, there being, of course, just one General. Exchanging a woman (Buffy) for a man (Watcher’s Council) in the role may seem like progress, but it’s actually not.

  Everyone can sense that something is wrong, including Buffy, but nobody (yet) can see a way out of the logical trap I summarized above. Kicking Buffy out of her house is how the SG and the Potentials express their sense that another attack on the vineyard is the wrong plan, but that’s the excuse for the mutiny, not the reason for it. I’ll argue over the three remaining episodes that they’re right to be disturbed – Buffy is indeed on the wrong path – but wrong in the way they went about it and wrong in their solution.

  Having acknowledged that Buffy is on the wrong path, and has gone down that path making mistakes along the way, let me now review the mistakes of the SG and the Potentials. The biggest problem is that they’re trapped by the same paradigm which has trapped Buffy, so they decide to let Faith take command. Wood was the first (heh) to make this suggestion, but Dirty Girls should have taught us to be skeptical of his advice. He was the one who pushed Buffy to “test” the Potentials, and that led to the disaster. As shadowkat put it, “Wood is a metaphor for authority figures who've always under-estimated Buffy.” His last name may very well serve as a double entendre to emphasize this point.

  I’ve said this before, but I don’t think Wood is evil. I think he’s an asshole for not recognizing his own responsibility for the attack on the vineyard, and for attacking Buffy in public, but he’s not nominating Faith because he wants the First to win. That would be derogatory of Faith in a way that’s unjustified given how far she’s come. No, he’s nominating Faith because he’s simply incapable of seeing any alternative. That’s partly on him, but it’s also inherent in the logical trap that the Slayer power entails on the Slayers.

  It’s easy to see, though, that Wood’s suggestion can’t possibly work. If, as I suggest, the whole problem is caused by the fact that Buffy was the General, then making Faith the General obviously won’t solve that problem. She might be a better general, but she’ll still have to bear the same burden Buffy has been laboring under. All that will happen is that the burden will shift from Buffy to Faith; there’s no net progress.

  At the time Dirty Girls and Empty Places aired, there was lots of argument that Buffy had showed herself to be a bad General tactically as well as in the way she treated her subordinates. Many were enthusiastic at the idea of Faith taking over. I don’t agree with these arguments, but I think my point about burden shifting demonstrates that the whole issue is irrelevant to the themes established in the opening episodes to S7. Good tactics or bad, the mere fact of being the General leaves the Slayer isolated and unable to protect everyone.

  The next problem with the mutineers is that they don’t actually know what Buffy’s plan is. Yes, she wants to go back to the vineyard. They don’t, understandably enough, but they never allowed Buffy to explain how she would return or what she planned to do. They simply refused to go.

  There were lots of bad arguments in the room besides those of Wood; the Hellmouth must have been really acting up. That’s a joke, but we were shown Storyteller and the earlier scene here with Giles and Willow for a reason:

  WILLOW

  (walking away with Giles) Good idea. My control was fading. What's up with those cops?

  GILES

  Oh, same as everyone. The Hellmouth is active again.

  Buffy undoubtedly interpreted the mutiny as a sign of the Hellmouth’s influence, and we can see it that way in metaphor to some extent: we can interpret the whole scene as the blooming, buzzing confusion of Buffy’s internal thoughts. I don’t doubt that the Hellmouth influenced everyone’s reaction, but as was true when it was Spike in The Yoko Factor, “trouble was stir-uppable”.

  In each case, the bad arguments stemmed in part from existing resentments. I mentioned Wood already, and his resentment is easy to understand after First Date and LMPTM. Anya has shown all season that she still resents what happened in Selfless. She made the claim that Buffy was “luckier” than everyone else: “But you didn't earn it. You didn't work for it. You've never had anybody come up to you and say you deserve these things more than anyone else. They were just handed to you. So that doesn't make you better than us. It makes you luckier than us.”

  As we saw in Get it Done, the Slayer power isn’t a matter of “luck”, it originated in a primal violation. That doesn’t make Buffy a victim – she’s not – but it does mean that Anya is effectively criticizing Buffy’s personal moral character. That’s pretty hard to take after what we’ve seen over the last 7 years, and is pretty rich coming from Anya. Note also that if Anya’s argument had any merit, it would make no sense to expel Buffy and then pick Faith as the new leader. Choosing Faith is internally contradictory
to Anya’s position in two ways: first because Faith would be just as “lucky” as Buffy; and second because Faith’s existence actually refutes Anya’s assertion that Buffy is “luckier than anyone else”.

  That said, Anya’s comments mirror what Buffy told Holden in CWDP: “I have all this power. I didn't ask for it. I don't deserve it.” So while Anya’s comments are indefensible in character terms, they do express Buffy’s own internal insecurities.

  Rona’s joy at seeing Buffy gone made her even more widely disliked than Kennedy, high a bar though that may be. Rona was the one who showed up in Sunnydale expecting to be protected. She’s lost confidence in Buffy’s ability to protect her. Her obnoxious comment reflected that the whole issue is more about being protected and about resentment than it is about anything else. I do wish, though, that Dawn had slugged her instead of just telling her to shut up.

  One reason that Wood, Anya, and Rona all spoke up is that they have come face to face with Buffy’s harsher side over the course of the season (Selfless, GiD, LMPTM, the scene at the Bronze here). We, the viewers, have had the advantage of also seeing Buffy’s moments of doubt and compassion: her rescue of Spike in Showtime; her rejection of more power in GiD; her caress of Dawn in LMPTM; the scene with Andrew in Storyteller; her tears on seeing the picture of herself with Xander and Willow earlier in EP. The important thing about all these scenes is that the other characters have NOT seen these moments when Buffy lets down her mask. Thus, she has appeared harsher to them than she has to us. This makes their rebellion more understandable even if it doesn’t improve their logic.