Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Growing up, I was a huge fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each week, during its seven season run, also the greater part of my adolescence, Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, brought to life an exciting world that not only entertained, but challenged me to dig deeper into many of the moral questions teenage and young-adult life present. Buffy battled monsters as metaphor for the problems of everyday life. Although Buffy was “created by an avowed atheist” the show attempted to honestly and respectfully portray various religions’ and spiritual practices’ approach to said problems. So much so, that author, Jana Riess, wrote a book entitled, What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide. In her book, Riess “argues that [Buffy] abounds in Buddhist parallels”. She says that “Buffy and Angel are like “bodhisattvas”” and that Buddhism:

[D]rives the show’s central themes: consequences (or karma), redemption through one’s own effort, the pervasive nature of suffering, the need for self-sacrifice. It’s even a pastiche of different kinds of Buddhisms. Inwardly, the show is intensely Zen in its determination to privilege experience over teaching (dharma)-on Buffy, personal experience is the best dharma to be found anywhere. But outwardly, the show more closely resembles Tibetan Buddhism, with its elaborate, exotic rituals and pantheon of supernatural beings. The figure of the Slayer herself has echoes in Tibetan Buddhist tradition: the Slayer is a kind of lama, one individual chosen in her generation to lead others. (Riess 97 – 102) “”

When I read Riess’ book, it soon became clear to me that Riess was most interested in Buffy‘s Tibetan Buddhist influence. But for me, Buffy‘s Zen Buddhist traits arise more fascinating, specifically in an episode from the middle of season four, entitled Hush.

Hush, an Emmy nominated episode, received the highest ratings of the fourth season and a great deal of critical acclaim. It is still remembered by fans as one of the highlights of the Buffyverse: the seven seasons of the Buffy series and the five seasons of Angel, a Buffy spin-off series. This was due in large part to the episode’s provocative concept in which a group of fairy tale monsters, the Gentlemen, steal the voices of everyone in Buffy’s hometown of Sunnydale. Naturally, without their voices, the townspeople are unable to speak, leading to mass confusion and panic. The concept is made even more interesting by the fact that Buffy was known, particularly, for its dialogue. In fact, many critics viewed Whedon and Company’s dialogue as the shows only good quality. So Whedon challenged himself to write an episode in which very little dialogue was used. In the process, he discovered “what the show was about” (Buffy).

In his DVD commentary, Joss Whedon states that “the idea [for the episode was] that when people stop talking, they start communicating” (Buffy). An enigmatic statement in itself, here, Whedon points toward the Zen notion that language is problematic. Or as he puts it, “Language can be annoying”. Designed to point to this very fact—the construction of language—Zen Koans employ the use of negation, surprise, contradiction, and silence. Therefore, its only natural that when conveying a similar idea, Whedon utilizes some of the same strategies, often adapting them to imagistic and filmic technique. Hush unfolds much like a visual Koan.

Hush begins by clearly drawing attention to the difference between communication and language. The show opens with a dream sequence in which Dr. Maggie Walsh, professor and mentor, says:

So this is what it is . . . talking about communication. Talking about language . . . not the same thing. It’s about inspiration . . . Not the idea, but the moment before the idea when its total. When it blossoms in your mind and connects to everything. It’s about the thoughts and experiences that we don’t have a word for. (Buffy) “”

Through the mouth of the Teacher, Whedon utilizes negation in order to point to something hard to describe: “that we don’t have a word for”, that’s “not the idea”, and “not the same thing [as language]”. He uses language to point around the idea, much like describing the field and everything else surrounding a pole rather than the pole itself. Once the teacher feels she has done her best to point her students in the appropriate direction and language can no longer assist, she calls for “a demonstration” (Buffy). Dr. Walsh asks Buffy, her Student, to lay down on the desk in front of the lecture hall full of other students. Buffy obliges, as her love interest and T.A., Riley, stands over her. They kiss. Though awkward and indecorous (remember this happens in a dream), Dr. Walsh is calling for action. “When it blossoms in your mind and connects to everything” language doesn’t always suffice, and you must act. In Zen, an enlightened person acts appropriately, meaning Right, in the moment. The same idea bounces off the celluloid here, presenting a powerful scene that sets the stage for the fairy tale/koan that follows.

Further setting the stage, the first act of Hush features several scenes that demonstrate the breakdowns and insufficiencies of language. Also, a common goal of the Zen Koan. For instance, Buffy and Riley lie to each other about their respective plans for the evening. Buffy is the Vampire Slayer, and Riley is an operative for a secret government task force. Each of them feels an obligation; they must hide a part of their identity from the other. But clearly in love, they want nothing more than to express that love; however, “language can interfere with communication, because language limits” (Buffy). Through their body language, the viewer gets the distinct impression that there is something that they would like to say, but can’t figure out how. The scene only works visually and in time, a unique aspect foreign to the traditional Koan. Whedon builds on the tactic of complexity, presenting a complicated dialogue clouded by allowing his actors’ body language to completely subvert all verbal information. Other scenes within the first act point toward similar breakdowns in communication, like “language used incorrectly” and how “we use language to separate ourselves from other people” (Buffy).

THE GENTLEMEN

The first act ends with everyone in Sunnydale going to sleep. Whedon brings us to a clock tower. And within the clock tower, we meet Hush‘s villains—the Gentlemen. As alluded to earlier, they perform a ritual, allowing them to steal the voices of everyone in town. The voices, visually represented as a cloud of smoke, escape the mouths of the population. In a very beautiful series of shot, we see the smoke-voices of all Sunnydale citizens pulled and torrenting into a central location: the previously mentioned clock tower. With this sequence of shots, Whedon manages to paint a poetic image of silence and its power. In Zen, practitioners sit in order to bring themselves to the present, to silence their minds, in order to be completely and totally aware—enlightened. Utilizing visual metaphor, Whedon allows the clock to represent our concept of time, which of course is simply a construction. The visually manifested voices stream, literally, into ‘time’, leaving behind only silence in the town of Sunnydale. The image, paired with its aftermath, forms a powerful statement about communication. In Zen, silence is a method of inquiry for discovering oneself. Or as Whedon puts it, “Sometimes when they [his characters] shut up, they learn more about themselves and each other than they expected to” (Buffy). By being forced into silence, they must become more aware, more present. And it is only in silence that one can see Right path.

Whedon walks us through this transition into a more aware state, beginning the second act with the following morning. Buffy literally awakens (perhaps a nod to enlightenment) and rises from her bed. We follow her as she walks to the bathroom. The shots are designed to hold on her simple actions, as long as the time constraints of the television medium will allow. In the commentary, Whedon admits, “The mundane is what I’m going for here”, “the daily routine stuff” (Buffy). He places more emphasis on the diagetic sound as she goes through her routine, giving the audience a heightened awareness of the smallest actions. There is a sense of slight calm and clarity about the frame, as a result.

Soon he utilizes the same technique in an opposite manner. In a common area within the Sunnydale University, students have gathered to support each other. No one can speak, so many of them are simply holding each other. The room is completely silent and still. A student at center frame drops a glass bottle and it shatters on the floor. The sound is loud and dominates the soundtrack, drawing attention to the action for the audience, but also pulling everyone on screen into observation of the mistake. Whedon uses silence to bookmark the event, only drawing attention to it in the moment. He awakens the viewer and the characters on screen to the present through his use of silence juxtaposed to an isolated sound and action.

When directing scenes, like this, in which the characters would progress the narrative only with gesture and action, Whedon noticed the actors’ inadequacy in the absence of language. He describes how a scene that should have taken several minutes, took merely seconds on their first try. “It was very rushed”, because the actors had such a strong dependency on language (Buffy). He simply told them, “It’s OK to wait”: one of the central ideas behind the episode (Buffy). Characters move so fast in attempt to communicate that they do things like attempt to use the phone not realizing the fruitless nature of their action. Others die at the hands of the Gentlemen, because they try to scream rather than act.

Tara, a female character in the show, is chased by some of the Gentlemen. She, too, tries to scream, but also runs. She bounces down the hallway, banging on the doors of dorm rooms as her attacker pursues her. Here Whedon incorporates the element of surprise. He plays with audience expectation dependent upon filmic tradition. Tara bangs on a specific door in the hallway. We cut to another character, Tara’s friend named Willow, who sits in her room. Willow hears the banging and gets up to get the door. Whedon cuts back to Tara as the door opens, except it isn’t Willow. It is one of the Gentlemen. Here, Whedon subverts a traditional filmic technique called montage. We expect that Willow will answer the door, because the images placed together in the sequence in which they are leads us to believe that. And decades of film history support the notion, but this time Whedon surprises us. He scares the reader and awakens them in the moment.

As described earlier, the Gentlemen steal Sunnydale’s citizens’ voices. They do this so that their victims will not be able to scream when they take from them, their heart. Through the Gentlemen, Joss Whedon employs the Koan tool of contradiction. In fact, the Gentlemen are a walking visual contradiction. They wear perfectly tailored suits and big beaming smiles. They practice general etiquette and politeness in their gesture, bowing and waving their hands for each other. Whedon’s “favorite thing about these guys [the Gentlemen], is how polite they are” (Buffy). Their politeness and their smiles are outweighed by their metallic teeth and their slight shark-like nature. Also, they cut out the hearts of their victims. The Gentlemen represent the construction of societal norms and standards. They only come when all is silent. In other words, we can only see them clearly for what they are when we are silent. As soon as Buffy gets her voice back the creatures are destroyed by her scream. The manifestation of decorum is destroyed.

But Whedon doesn’t end the episode there. He says, “Once we get our voices back, we stop communicating” (Buffy). At the end of the episode, Riley and Buffy fight with the Gentlemen together, revealing to each other their deep hidden secrets. It is only in action that they discover the truth about each other. The next day, with their voices intact they meet in order to discuss the revelation, but have nothing to say.

Though Whedon is not a Buddhist, he utilizes several Zen techniques in order to point towards a Reality that is hard to describe in words. His fictional world favors action over suffering. He even encourages silence as a way to some greater understanding of yourself and others. He is practicing Zen rhetoric.

HUSH