Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is not “just” a television show. It is part of the process whereby television as an artistic medium is finally coming into its own in the world of Great Literature.

So what is Great Literature? As we learn in our first high-school literature courses, to qualify as Great Literature the events of the story must cause the main character to change inwardly, emotionally, either to be shattered or strengthened by the events. The characters learn lessons and become different people.

Great Literature is also identified by the effect on the reader—that the reader feels the characters’ emotions and understands the impact of the lessons on the character—understands inwardly how it comes about that this kind of person becomes that kind of person because of the events in the story. Thus the work is memorable. The characters’ journeys of becoming are indelibly stamped upon the reader’s mind.

Beyond that, to be labeled “Great Literature” the piece has to contribute some distinctive evolutionary change to its field of literature and out-last its contemporaries.

Buffy’s field of literature is the television dramatic series, and I believe I already see evidence that the show is contributing to a process whereby television is becoming a medium that can support Great Literature.1

In the 1960s commercial television discovered that the shows that made the most money were the ones that were “anthology series”—with the episode constructed so that at the end of the episode the ongoing characters are restored to the same emotional and physical condition they were in at the beginning. This allowed the individual shows to be aired in random order in reruns and still be understood by a new viewer. Thus the stories that could be told were disqualified from being called “literature” at all—never mind “great”—because the characters must not learn, grow, change, or become.

Gene Roddenberry often explained that Star Trek: The Original Series would not have been aired, or survived to go into reruns, if it had not been an anthology series. Hollywood was bewildered by the effect that Star Trek had on the teens of the 1970s, and tried many other things to capture that enthusiastic audience again. They fumbled for twenty years, but in the 1990s they finally got it.

I suspect the Internet allowed the producers very close contact with fan opinion, and they finally began to listen to what fans were saying. And some of them had been fans!

J. Michael Straczynski hung out with his fans via the Babylon 5 (pilot 1993, first episode January 1994) newsgroup and really listened. Babylon 5 was not the tremendous commercial success it needed to be to complete its five-year mission, but it broke new ground. It was successful in creating intricate characters whose personal stories affected the course of history, and it broke out of the anthology-series mold and used the story-arc format (pioneered in prime time by Dallas) to tell an SF/F story. It treated telepathy, time travel, reincarnation, supernatural beings, and alien mysticism as pragmatic elements of reality.

The Buffy The Vampire Slayer feature film came out in 1992.2 Joss Whedon has indicated he wasn’t able to materialize his vision of Buffy in that film, and is widely quoted as saying the director “ruined it.” But in 1997, when the Buffy TV show aired, he had more artistic control. Of course, that’s partly due to moving from film to television. But what happened between 1992 and 1997 in television to prepare the way for Buffy?

Forever Knight (pilot August 1989, first episode May 1992), with the vampire as good guy. Quantum Leap (1989–1993), an anthology series using the SF-premise as a vehicle to tell a personal story of change. Highlander (1992–98), a hero with monogamous tendencies and a sense of honor. Lois and Clark (pilot September 1993), again a hero with monogamous tendencies and a serious attitude toward wielding power. X-Files (1993), introducing not just UFOs but the supernatural to the mass audience. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1994–99) and Sliders (1995), introducing alternate realities, dimensional gates, alternate history. Xena: The Warrior Princess (1995) and Star Trek: Voyager (1995)—the woman as hero and authority figure. The Stand by Stephen King (1994), introducing the elbow room that the horror format can give to serious drama. La Femme Nikita (1997)—at last a young female hero, tough as nails, forced into an untenable position and doing something about it, carefully, wisely.

Each of these (except Stephen King’s of course) was marginally successful, appealing to a small but seriously dedicated audience. Each has spawned fanfic on the Internet and anguished write-in campaigns at cancellation. Each marginally successful show gets Hollywood moguls thinking about what element caused that success and what caused failure, and how to extract the successful part and combine it with something else to create a blockbuster. And they always measure themselves against a blockbuster like The Stand.

The WB network launched in 1995, countering the earlier launch of the UPN network. The WB deliberately targeted the lucrative demographic teen group and gathered more affiliate stations than UPN.

Joss Whedon brought The WB an idea that combined the vampires which had dominated children’s books in the 1980s, a successful film, and a universe in which magic is blatantly real rather than disguised as science. Buffy might have been pitched as Forever Knight meets La Femme Nikita in a Lovecraftian world that would leave King in the dust.

He gave The WB the strong female lead that had made Xena popular and that Star Trek: Voyager had chosen to emphasize with Captain Janeway, the first woman to captain the Enterprise. And don’t think The WB didn’t know in 1996 that USA Network was incubating La Femme Nikita. But Whedon gave The WB a young hero, young enough to grab the huge audience that had grown up on children’s vampire books and a strong female lead character who could kick ass as neatly as Hercules.

He started with a very clear cut, uncomplicated, emotionally pristine conflict—Buffy vs. the Undead. She can smash and destroy with all her might and she is not committing murder. Walking horrors attack her and she doesn’t have to stop and worry about ethics, she just stakes them. You don’t have to be a teen to appreciate the clarity of these moments.

But then Whedon adds Angel—and suddenly things aren’t clear anymore. Suddenly our powerful hero, Buffy, has an internal conflict. Suddenly this show is elevated to the level of adult drama and we have family entertainment, not a kiddie-show. Here is a teen confronted with an adult’s problem, and nobody can help her with it. She is on her own—as any hero must be.

All great literature explores the depths of human nature, the source of our evil impulses, the source of our noblest aspirations, and the synthesis of Good and Evil that is the dynamic balancing act called Personality, the fuel for all relationships.

But until the commercial-driven business of television found that their most lucrative audience is 14–30-year-olds, we’ve never had Great Literature in the performing arts developed specifically to depict the process of “Becoming” as teens experience it. Well—maybe Romeo and Juliet but they didn’t make it to adulthood.

And overall, through all its seasons, that is what Buffy is about— “Becoming.” It wasn’t just the title of a magnificent two-part cliff-hanger episode—it is the theme of the entire show. The characters change character, change personality, change relationships year after year as they “become.” And it’s that process of change, of becoming, that is the key identifying characteristic of Great Literature—but who would think that you could have Great Literature about teens?

One of many illustrations of Buffy as Great Literature can be found by comparing Buffy and Willow.

Buffy herself was barely a teenager when she acquired enormous Power—magical Power, physical Power, and the Power that comes from being Unique. She isn’t “a slayer”—she is “the Slayer.” We’ve watched her become a woman, surviving a series of classically text-book-perfect magical initiations.3

She’s had to learn to use her power without it using her. She has sent her vampire lover to Hell to save the world (“Becoming, Part 2,” 2-22).

She went into a symbolic Hell in “Anne” (3-1)—the symbolism of the tar-black rectangle she had to dive into to rescue the slaves from that Hell dimension is perfect for a ceremonial magical initiation. When she returns, she’s become Buffy again because she confronted her worst fears. This shows that the initiation took root deep within her psyche where it will grow. In the seventh season we have seen the results as Buffy accepts her identity as the Slayer and nurtures her possible successors. The traditional Initiate must train a successor, and Buffy has tried.4

The magical power of her love is focused through the silver lovetoken5 she divests herself of while mourning Angel, separating from him—letting go, coming to terms with the consequences of her decisions and actions (“Faith, Hope, and Trick,” 3-3). That magical focus allows Angel to breach the dimensional gate and return from Hell. Remember the magical power of silver.

Angel later revealed that the power had let him go. The being wanted Buffy and the world to suffer and the being thought more suffering could be created by sending Angel back to Sunnydale (“Amends,” 3-10).

Buffy, as most young people, has to leave home to confront her identity and returns having become someone else, forever changed. She met the First Slayer and came into possession of her full power, again forever changed (“Restless,” 4-22).

She has buried her mother (“Forever,” 5-17), torn by regrets that can never be mended—learning the meaning of regret. She has sacrificed her life to save Dawn (“The Gift,” 5-22) and the universe, a decision made out of all these changes she has undergone. She was dragged back from Heaven by her best friends (“Bargaining,” 6-1, 6-2)—com-pleting the death initiation, one of the highest degrees in ceremonial magic.6 And she sacrificed her uniqueness to give all potentials the power that she has—and did not regret it.

In any other TV series (except possibly a soap opera) each of these events would have been the whole of a five-year series run.

But through the high-pressure rapidity of these events, we have watched Buffy evolve. She has matured faster than the mere years could account for. She has become harder, more self-reliant, more accustomed to wielding power—and more daring. The power she carries does not make her happy, or even relieve her of pain. It doesn’t create joy, either.

This is Buffy’s story—the hard, harsh, demanding, arduous life of the magician-in-training, which is closely parallel to the training of a martial-arts master.

One of the well-known characteristics of a magical initiation7 is that after an Initiation, before the year is out, the Initiate’s life falls apart. We’ve seen this happen to Buffy repeatedly.

She arrives in Sunnydale and is rejected by those she considers her social peers (“Dead Man’s Party,” 4-2). She lost Angel, acquired a mysterious sister and lost her only-child status, lost her mother, and even lost Giles (“Once More, With Feeling,” 6-7).

She dropped out of college with no profession that can earn money— having no visible means of support is the hallmark of the High Initiate. She has even acquired an inner planes master (the First Slayer)— a demanding ancestral presence lurking on the astral plane pushing and guiding toward wisdom.

If you’ve read the books by Carlos Castaneda on the Yaqui way to power (an American Indian Tradition),8 you will see that Buffy’s life does put her through the series of initiations Castaneda is put through by his Yaqui teacher.

Willow on the other hand has not been treading the initiatory path while she’s been learning how to do magic.

So, by comparison, Willow’s life has been relatively (only relatively) stable. She lost Oz (“Wild at Heart,” 4-6), but went on. She acquired Tara—truly a surprise though not a shock to discover she’s now gay,9 an identity change, though not creating any self-loathing or rejection by her peers.

But Tara, as odd as her family is, is not the same kind of challenge for Willow that Buffy faces when falling in love, or lust, with a vampire or a soldier who hunts demons.

Willow has not had an easy time of it. She has suffered. She has dared. And she’s failed ignominiously a few times. But Willow’s response to any failure is to acquire more knowledge and more power.

Buffy’s response to stress, strain, trials, tests, grief, and failure is to look within, to question who she is, to fight against the destiny of the Slayer (“I want a normal life!”) and to reconcile herself to the sacrifices her destiny demands (“I’ll do what I have to do.”) In contrast, Willow tends to look at these same kinds of events as entirely external problems to be solved, or opportunities to gain knowledge or power.

Willow has steadily acquired magical power but without going through the mystical symbolic initiations that have tempered Buffy. She has been able to bring up enough power to solve the group’s prob-lems—and always magic provides an easy and definitive, external solution to the problem of the day.10

Her value to the group lies in her knowledge and power. She can find out anything and fix anything.11

Lured, seduced by such rewards, she has reached for more and more power—and at last acquired more than she can handle. Why? What’s the difference between Buffy and Willow?

Buffy, we have seen from the very beginning, has a robust sense of self-esteem. Though her mother is divorced, and refuses to notice Buffy’s oddities, she has provided the kind of nurturing that has allowed Buffy to develop self-confidence and an inner strength.

Willow, on the other hand, shows through body language, tone of voice, use of eyes, style of dress, hairdo, and social awkwardness that she does not have that kind of inward self-confidence.

We aren’t told why—her parents are not visible enough for analysis. We do see that Willow hardly ever mentions her family, and the bare glimpses we’ve had of her mother12 only reinforce the notion that her parents aren’t part of her life and haven’t been for a long time.

But it doesn’t matter why Willow starts out as the quintessential geek, buried in her computer, with razor-sharp intellect, cutting right through all her schoolwork without noticing it’s there. She takes to Giles’s books like a duck to water, and remembers what she reads (and reads at blazing speed).

Given that much sheer brain power, how could Willow not have the easy social presence and confident manner that Buffy has? Because the product of her intellect (good grades, etc.) has never solved whatever emotional problem lurks at the depths of her personality.

This is a very common situation—in fact to some extent anyone can relate to this problem. We all have some talent, some power, some attribute that we develop early in life to execute our “coping strategy.”

In psychology, “coping strategy” is the term for how we deal with challenges, difficulties, and “life.” For example, when confronted by bullies, some people run away, some retreat without turning their backs, some bluster and shout to intimidate the bullies, and some wade right in and kick ass. When confronted by an abusive spouse, some people appease and blame themselves for the other’s behavior, and some just leave.

Generally, what a person does in response to a challenge is determined by what has worked well for that person in early childhood. In the teen years, coping strategies are developed, honed, practiced, and mastered to the point where the twentysomething people don’t even realize they have them. It just seems like the only right response.

Buffy is an ass-kicker—that’s her coping strategy. When she was the social queen of her school, she out-dressed, out-insulted, out-clique-gathered, and out-flirted everyone. When she became the Slayer, she out-punched, out-staked, out-kicked, and out-sassed the vampires. The smart remarks are the holdover from her social-queen days, a brilliant piece of writing.13

Willow is a conflict-avoider and, as some self-help books would term it, an appeaser. In the very first episode, when Buffy introduces herself to Willow, Willow’s first thought is that Buffy wants her seat, and she is prepared to give it to her.

Typically, the appeaser personality tends to be preoccupied with issues involving status, and power, and the idea that power confers status, which releases one from the need to appease someone who is more powerful. For example, Willow says “I’m not your sidekick” in a tone that indicates a sidekick is someone with less status or power.

When confronted with an angry person, Willow tries to soothe them. When confronted with a problem, she does research. Her power is intellectual. In high school, she avoided social situations, stuck with the boy-next-door for a friend, and gravitated to Buffy’s crowd because they valued her intellectual abilities.

Willow is a person who thirsts for an external acknowledgment of her value, but fears that acknowledgment as well. Although this is built into every episode from the beginning, it is verbalized finally in season six. Willow actually tells Buffy she only feels useful when using magic. Without the magic, she’s simply an ordinary human who is only in the way.

The pain of that conflict was not assuaged by her intellectual abilities, so when she was offered a plum of a scholarship, she turned it down to stay in Sunnydale with Buffy, fighting vampires and demons.

At that point, she was in the midst of developing a new coping strategy, or rather a refinement of the one that had always worked for her. Willow was feeling the awakening of her magical powers, which depend on the ability to concentrate—an ability she had honed to perfection hiding from life within her computer.

Most likely, Willow was unaware of why magic was so alluring to her subconscious mind. It was a renewed hope that here at last was the tool she could use to become self-confident, to find her self-esteem, to define her identity, to cause the world to accept her—or at least stop forcing her to appease.

When she entered college, she had already had a taste of wielding magic, but she knew she didn’t have access to the information she needed. So she was drawn into investigating witchcraft. She found a very ordinary college group and a woman even more shy than her-self,14 someone who didn’t have to be appeased, but who would do the appeasing—at least at first.

When Willow discovered that, in addition to being more shy than herself, Tara was the genuine article—a real magic-user schooled and trained in the craft—Tara became the instant love of Willow’s life. It was not a healthy relationship from the very beginning.

How can that be? How can the most beautiful and perfect relationship on this show be unhealthy at the core?

Tara had knowledge and skill in magic, but apparently lacked the training to be an initiator. She was still very much a student and not qualified to be a high priestess. She could not lead Willow to self-confidence because she had none herself. She became Willow’s tool in the relentless pursuit of power for power’s sake.

She appeased Willow—which melted Willow into total adoration— and very often that appeasement was done by allowing Willow to have access to Tara’s knowledge, and, through joint rituals, directly to her personal power—much more power than Willow was prepared to channel.

In other words, this relationship is unhealthy because it is a prime example of a codependent15 relationship. Willow supplies Tara with the confidence of belonging to a peer group, thus allowing her to avoid tackling her shyness. Tara supplies Willow with magical power to augment her intellectual power, so Willow can repeat the unsuccessful coping strategy of her childhood—using her intellectual power to gain acceptance. This time she substitutes magical power for intellectual power, as if that would make a difference.

Tara comes to wisdom first, however, possibly because of her family background. When she saw Willow becoming addicted to using magic, she practiced “tough love” and left Willow16 in spite of how much it hurt both of them. If you study the psychology of addiction and the process of breaking addiction—where the term “tough love” is used extensively—you will find that such a leaving is absolutely the final, last resort to help a person come to their senses. There is no act of love more convincing than tough love. It is Tara’s initiation of sacrifice.

But, from Willow’s point of view, this separation was only provi-sional—“just until you get a grip on yourself”—not the absolute, total and irretrievable loss that Willow so needed at that point to begin her Becoming—to begin her initiatory path.

By applications of intellect or magic, Willow has been able to avoid the consequences of her actions time and again. She needs the initiation of confronting the whole, total, irreversible, irretrievable, consequence of her choices.

Buffy had to choose to send Angel to Hell. And she had to live through the consequences of that choice. When Angel returns from Hell, he lurks awhile, and then leaves permanently. She chose not to cling to Riley—and by the time she changed her mind it was too late. When Buffy makes a decision about fighting the monsters, it changes the world, permanently. Her actions have irreversible consequences and she’s learned to live with that.

Willow had Oz walk out on her—but again, it’s only temporary— only because he needs to get a handle on his shifting and his beast. We all expect to see him come back. Willow had Tara walk out on her, but again, only until Willow gets a grip on her problem. Now Tara is dead— but not as a direct consequence of a free will choice that Willow has made. In all these critical instances, the situation Willow is in has been caused by someone else’s choice, not Willow’s.

This kind of a life pattern does not equip one to handle great power. It makes one the victim of power, should it ever materialize — as money, position, weaponry, or even magic.

Though Willow’s friends are supportive of her attempt to cope with her addiction, they see Willow’s condition as similar to that of an alcoholic. Nothing could be further from the truth.

For a magician, the breath is the power. Life itself is power. Every thought, every emotion, manifests in far-reaching ways. A magician cannot take a step without the earth trembling. It is like physical strength. A very strong man has to turn a door handle very, very gently so as not to break it off. A magician must tread lightly through the world, leaving not a trace, for the alternative is to leave a swath of destruction behind.

Willow is not addicted to magic. Willow is addicted to the surging hope that this deed or the next or the next will finally assuage her inner pain.

The cure is to find that inner pain, penetrate it to the underlying fear, confront that fear, find the little person inside the fear (the child within) and love that little person.

Willow has to learn to accept herself, accept her own inadequacies, her intellect, and her talent for magic and by the series finale, she apparently does.

To achieve that, she had to have her standard, tried and true coping strategy of appeasement destroyed, and be left naked before the world with no way to cope.

The death of Tara has the potential to do this for Willow because it is permanent. Willow’s first move upon finding Tara dead was to appeal to a god who could restore Tara as Buffy was restored. She did everything she could to appease that great power, and it didn’t work.

Left with no one to turn to, no one to appease, and all that power burning holes in her soul, Willow finally surges forth into a more mature and aggressive Willow.

But typically for an appeaser who has so much power that she becomes the one who must be appeased, she fastens on the motive of revenge. She has the power to kill a human being, and she proceeds to do so without mercy.

Many fans see this as Willow’s character changing, but that isn’t what’s happened. The seeds of this moment have been there since the first time we ever saw Willow. In that moment of murder for revenge,17 Willow’s character has come to full maturity.

And that is incontrovertible evidence of a master craftsman at work on this show, making it truly Great Art and Great Literature.

We never saw this coming—never expected Willow to pull in all her magic and focus it on revenge. It is so out of character for Willow as a person!

Yet, now that we’ve seen it actually happen, now that we think about Willow as a human being, not a character in a story, it is so absolutely inevitable, so perfectly right and correct, we can only stand in awe of the writer who has spent seven years developing this before our eyes without our seeing it.

Magically, at the end of the sixth season Willow faced the greatest initiation. She was in full, direct confrontation with the consequences of her own weakness. She had been used by her power—she had become the victim of her own power.

She has used magic to commit murder, and it didn’t help her feel any better. She just went on to attack her very dearest friends. Giles and Xander saved her by touching her emotions, but as the seventh season opened, we had no reason to expect that the power that is within her won’t grab her and use her again.18

In season seven Willow, fresh from a sequence of Magical Initiations in England, faces the requisite tests following any Initiation. She is confronted with opportunities to use her Power and must judge each situation for herself. Because of the intimate ties to her friends and her ability to be emotionally honest with them, she finds she now has the strength to resist the temptation to use Power for personal gain, and thus has more strength to use it for the good of all.

She had to go entirely back to the Dark-Haired Willow and climb out of that trap by her own Will. This is also very typical of the aftermath of Initiation. What has been done within Ceremonial Initiation must be manifested in the life.

During the last episode, “Chosen” (7-22), Willow is still unsure of herself. She has to perform Magic to unleash the power of the slayer to all potential slayers. Her fear is that darkness will overpower her and she will lose control once again. Buffy tells her that she is confident in Willow, possibly because Buffy recognizes the changes in Willow as being akin to the changes she has undergone which allow her to control her Power.

Willow uses the sickle to perform the needed magic and turns white (a first). The expression on her face tells it all. She has ‘become.’

So now the show has ended. With the exception of Spike and Anya, the Scoobies are safe and Sunnydale is no more. The Hellmouth is closed. Both the demons and the humans abandoned the city long before its destruction. The potentials are Slayers and have become the ones who must find the other potentials and instill that confidence of becoming in the ones who never made it to Sunnydale for the ultimate sacrifice.

Now think back to Buffy’s Becoming and compare it with Willow’s Becoming—notice how all the other characters have lived, loved, laughed, and touched both Willow and Buffy? And each of them has “become” as well. When one changes, they all change.

What is the power that changes them? What makes them become?

The power that binds this group in a dynamic process of becoming is emotional honesty. They suffer together, they heal each other’s wounds, they move in together and shelter each other. They accept Dawn even though she was inserted into their lives, and pitch in to raise her as best they can. They change because of what they feel for each other.

Joss Whedon has been writing a perfect example of a new genre I call “Intimate Adventure”19—where the real adventure demanding courage is on the field of relationships, not action. Note that the “action” in Buffy is routine, repetitive, and unoriginal—face the monster, get beaten to a pulp, vanquish or kill the monster. But each season there are new relationships, new emotional complexities, and new challenges to emotional courage.

Buffy has allowed characters to grow, change, learn, and evolve because of the pain, the angst, the loves, losses, and emotional battering they take standing between us and the Hellmouth Spawn.

And what is the hallmark of Great Literature that was lacking on television up until the 1990s? Character maturation due to the power of intimate relationships. And that’s what we see in Buffy—a trait that was forbidden to televised SF/F when Star Trek first went on the air. Close friendships and love change the characters before our eyes, so that the next time they face a challenge, they tackle it with a different coping strategy—step by step evolving a more mature coping strategy until they face major challenges.

How many characters on other TV shows do we learn to know, understand, and love before they commit deliberate murder?

Murder is something only bad guys do. The import of what Willow has done is not in the murder itself, but in the wellspring of personal emotion—the deep and terrible love for Tara, the vast and unstoppable pain of that loss, and the righteous rage that loosed her magic to take over and rule her. She used her power for personal gain—the gain being entirely emotional.

And in the end, she learned that she could master the Power and not be used by it when she had a task to perform for humanity. This time she sought nothing for herself, not even self-confidence or the high regard of others.

We all understood why, at Tara’s death, Willow went for revenge in the one way that violated the covenant between her and Tara. And so did all the other characters. We understood because we had lived their intimate adventure with them.

The hallmark of Great Literature is that the reader understands how the events cause the character to become someone different. Our understanding of Willow indicates that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is Great Literature.

But look again at the sequence of shows beginning between 1989 when I first mentioned intimate adventure in Publishers Weekly, when Forever Knight first appeared—and today.

Every one of those shows has a following producing fan fiction and vast amounts of e-mail. Every one of those shows touches the creative core of millions of people, just as Star Trek does. When I started writing Star Trek Lives! in 1972 to explain why people like Star Trek, I only hoped that Hollywood would eventually figure it out.

And now we have Buffy, Enterprise, Farscape, and Smallville, and more SF/F than one person can watch and still do a day’s work.

Buffy is not the end product of this process of becoming that television is undergoing. It has made a major innovation by adding dimensions of relationship to the Babylon 5 breakthrough of story-arc structure. But most important of all, Buffy has given us evolving char-acters—characters who are significantly changed by the traumas and emotional anguish they have to live through.

In Buffy, all the characters Become. And in that Becoming lies their power to change television, and perhaps SF/F as well.

Great Literature is about the process of Becoming, of growth and learning through hard lessons. It explains the human condition, shows us how our own unique experiences are related to common human ones familiar to everyone. Great Literature changes its field, opens new avenues, explores new venues and is copied or emulated. Buffy appears to have all three of these key traits.