Buffy The Vampire Slayer

editor’s note: In January, we asked four cultural critics to analyze the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They participated in two discussion rounds and then rejoined for a "closure" round following the news that this season would be Buffy’s last. Welcome to Round One.

From: James To: David, Rhonda, Stephanie

"All specs are within parameters."

That’s The First in the Guise of Warren using Adam-like language, and the sheer density of reference in that one sentence is pretty scary. Nonetheless, I think it nicely sums up my reaction to Season Seven so far. It seems to be developing just fine. So, while I think it’s too early to make any real assessment of the season to date, everything seems on track.

One reason it’s too early to make a real assessment is because it’s clear the writers have just given up making episodic television. That’s not meant as a criticism, just a statement of fact. There is no longer any way to assess an episode or series of episodes until we’ve see the trajectory of the entire season. The show has become so dense with allusions to itself, the story lines so complicated, that no closure is possible within any one episode.

One notable feature of the season practically makes Buffy a hermetic text: the repetition of lines. An example occurs in "Same Time, Same Place" when Spike asks, "What’s a word that means glowing? It’s gotta rhyme." Of course, that’s not the first time he’s asked that, as those are the exact words he used in "Fool for Love."

How can a novice watcher pick up on the resonance of that line? Several of my colleagues, curious about my Buffy book project, have watched an episode of the show here and there. Of course, they ask me the next day what’s so philosophical about the show. At this point in time, there’s simply no way to explain the network of allusions and the development of themes without assuming having seen it all.

The paradigm my colleagues have in mind for a philosophical television show is an episode of Star Trek where everything gets set forth in 45 minutes and resolved. That just doesn’t happen with Buffy anymore.

Having made this necessary caveat that it’s simply too early to tell how the season’s going, I will say that I’m enjoying the new season, with a few reservations. After all, any season that gives us yet another Anya song is going to rank very high in my estimation. Gnarl was, to my mind, the creepiest demon they’ve ever put on screen, even if not the most frightening (an honor that still goes to The Gentlemen). And the experimental format of "Conversations with Dead People" shows that the Buffy staff still have a few tricks up their collective sleeve.

More seriously, how could a philosopher not be intrigued by a season that is offering so many metaphysical mysteries? There are appearance/reality issues (The First, all the "wake up" references), issues about souls and selves (Spike, Anya), and issues about time (the whole season).

In addition to these weekly metaphysical puzzles, we’re also getting lessons about good, evil and power. The last issue, which was flagged in "Two to Go" as a key issue (Willow: Buffy, I gotta tell ya — I get it now. The Slayer thing really isn’t about the violence. It’s about the power.), is perhaps the most interesting to me right now. The founding document of Western philosophy, Plato’s Republic, places that question right at its center and Buffy’s clearly doing the same this season.

The first and last lines of the aptly named season opener, "Lessons," are identical: "It’s about power." Buffy states it at the beginning and The First, taking the form of Buffy, states it at the end. In "Conversations with Dead People," The First, again, makes the point clearly: "Fact is, the whole good-versus-evil, balancing the scales thing — I’m over it. I’m done with the mortal coil."

Now, I have to be careful not to cross disciplines in the presence of two English professors, but there is no way that the Hamlet reference here is accidental in a show in which cast and crew hold Shakespeare readings for fun on their days off. And I can’t help but think that Hamlet’s soliloquy may hold the key (hah!) to the season, or even the last two seasons: "For in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

But it’s not just the possibility that the last two years have been a dream that I wonder/worry about, but rather the whole context in which the phrase "mortal coil" appears. When Hamlet states, "Thus conscience does make cowards of us all," I think again of the Republic, since that is precisely Thrasymachus’s claim there — it’s only because we are afraid of those in power that we have no power.

We saw Buffy get all "resolve face" in "Bring on the Night": "I’m done waiting. They want an apocalypse? Well, we’ll give ’em one." She’s not going to fall into the trap that Hamlet warns about: "And enterprises of great pith and moment / With this regard their currents turn awry, / And lose the name of action."

Buffy has decided to take action, to forget conscience, to take the battle to The First, not wait for it to come to them. There is no more "puzzled will" for Buffy, only "the native hue of resolution." It’s not about right, it’s not about wrong; it’s about power.

And then there’s Willow. We have started to see real signs of the return of the old Willow. Willow, who just wants to be Willow. I think everybody who watches Buffy attaches themselves to one of the other characters or a relationship between two characters. In my case, Willow’s always been the most interesting of the Scoobies. It’s great to see that they are returning Willow to us, but doing it gradually. The great moment this season is in "Bring on the Night" and I don’t even know how to transcribe it to do it justice, because the Willowness is all in the delivery. The shooting script has:

Willow: "I just ... I want you to know, I’m really sorry about letting you down. Before, here, with the Magicks going all ’eeeh’ and me going all ’aaah’ and everything getting all ’rrrr’ ..."

This is quintessential Willowspeak, and it’s wonderful to have it back.

I mentioned a few reservations earlier, and I’ll dwell on a couple: the fight scenes and the direction. They both lack something this season. The direction seems inconsistent. I think it’s striking that they’ve made use of some newer (to Buffy) directors (Alan J. Levi and Rick Rosenthal) this season in pivotal episodes. While there’s nothing technically bad about most of the direction, the impression I get is a kind of looseness in the look of the show.

Alas, a complaint I’ve had for a while, pretty lackluster fight scenes abound. Just compare, for example, some of the Buffy and Faith fight scenes from Seasons Three and Four with some of the more recent Season Six and Seven scenes and the intensity level is noticeably weaker. Even Buffy’s fight with the über-vamp in "Bring on the Night" can’t compare to the Buffy/Faith fight in "Who Are You?"

Anybody who talks with me for a few minutes about the series knows that my favorite philosophical theme in the show is the issue of self-knowledge. This season promises to be a bonanza in that respect, as The First, in the guise of The Master pointed out, "we’re all going to learn something about ourselves in the process." I’m certainly looking forward to seeing just what everyone learns. It’s pretty clever that they’ve essentially brought every character to a point where self-knowledge is crucial for them: think Anya at the end of "Selfless"; Buffy’s realization at the end of "Help" that she can’t protect people from some things; Willow’s attempt to be Willow again; and, most obviously, poor Spike who seems to have more than one self to contend with. It will be interesting to see how they all respond to the big moments awaiting them this season.

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From: David To: Rhonda, Stephanie and Jim

Buffy continues to secure my passionate interest on many levels, but perhaps the most intriguing matter of this perhaps final season is the structure of the narrative itself. As Marc Dolan showed in an article several years back on Twin Peaks and "serial creativity," a continuing television serial faces unique problems (perhaps unsurpassed in the history of storytelling). Because the actual duration of the narrative line of a series like Buffy is indeterminate, the creators are faced with the difficult task of keeping the story open to further developments (lasting a year or years) but capable of closure at virtually any time. Twin Peaks solved its Laura Palmer mystery half-way through its second season and then opened itself up again (the Agent Cooper vs. Windom Earle story) only to end very badly in BOB’s takeover of the story’s hero in the forever closureless ending.

Having learned from the mistakes of shows like Twin Peaks (and The X-Files, which ended very, very badly), Joss & Company have sought to make each year of the series self-contained. In 22 episodes (12 in Year One) a Big Bad is faced and defeated. Buffy has an unrivaled long-term memory, expecting us to recollect (as Jim South commented earlier) all kinds of resonant major and minor details (from plot developments to jokes) and stands as a wonderful example of a "long haul show" (Sarah Vowell’s term), but the seasons remain relatively discrete and independent.

But Year Seven presents particular problems. SMG may well leave. The series may well not survive the year. Buffy was killed in the diegesis (as we narrative specialists call it) by The Master and died in battle with Glory; Buffy may be terminated extra-diegetically by its star’s departure or by UPN pulling the plug on a show plummeting in the ratings. Or it may not. How to structure Year Seven to allow for all possibilities?

From the first episode ("Lessons," the only one this year for which Joss Whedon claims credit) this season has been self-referential. As the "Morphing Monster" tells Spike in its memorable final scene, we — the First Evil and Spike, of course, but Buffy’s audience as well — "are going right back to the beginning": "Not the Bang . . . not the Word . . . the true beginning. The next few months are going to be quite a ride."

Whedon has acknowledged in several venues that if this is Buffy’s last season, it is well positioned to wrap things up, but what will that wrap be? We can be fairly certain that the series will not end with Buffy being vanquished by the First Evil, and it seems doubtful that Buffy will die again, but we cannot hope to guess what lies in store, though we can be quite certain it will be worth the wait.

As The First Evil (in the form of Cassie) tells Willow in "Conversations with Dead People," "This last year’s gonna seem like cake after what I put you and your friends through, and I am not a fan of easy death. Fact is, the whole good-versus-evil, balancing the scales thing? I’m over it. I’m done with the mortal coil. But believe me, I’m going for a big finish."

In The Sense Of An Ending, Frank Kermode observes that there are, however, really only two sorts of books: ones "which seal off the long perspectives" and those which "move through time to an end," an end, Kermode explains, that "we must sense, even if we cannot know it."

Now the "sense" with which we come to experience such ends, as Kermode makes clear, is nothing else but the generation of fictions. The fate of the former is to end up, "When the drug wears off," in "the dump with the other empty bottles" (170). Most television shows (and most books) are empty bottles. Buffy, of course, has always been full (to overflowing), and so I will watch with interest how it "move[s] through time to an end," whether it is the end of Season Seven, the end of the SMG era, or the end of BtVS itself, and I will be rooting for Buffy and Buffy to kick some narrative ass.

— David

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From: Rhonda To: David, Jim, Stephanie

Hi (alphabetically) David, Jim, & Stephanie-

Well, this is going to be a bit of a ramble, but I think that’s in part because, as James and David have reminded us, we don’t know where we are until it’s over, and we don’t know when it will be over. It being Buffy the Vampire Series. Now there I’m just playing with words and some weird theories some have floated re the possible ending of the series (as opposed to all the ordinary, unweird stuff that goes on usually in Buffy).

I don’t know whether or not I’m glad that I read Jim’s and David’s posts first, because I see that I was/am going to talk about basically the same thing — the serial narrativity of the show. Perhaps this was inevitable, since we all wonder whether or not this season will be the last. Perhaps, also, it reminds us of how important this element of the series is to us.

In any case, here is some of my angle on this element of Buffy as it now (7th Season) stands: One of my favorite aspects of this season is its *fulfillment* of threads of narrative and character development of earlier seasons, in particular the Sixth. Last spring I gave a talk to an audience of Buffy fans at Eyedrum, an Atlanta arts/music venue. The vast majority of the audience, as they expressed themselves in the discussion afterwards, was very upset with the Willow addiction arc. Some of us also connected that to the parallel of the Buffy-sex-as-addiction arc. It was unpleasant to contemplate the possibility that the Buffy folks at Mutant Enemy were being, by implication, puritanical about sex (and despite what the religious right would suggest about Buffy’s wicked sexuality, the fact that Buffy ended up threatened with rape after her involvement with Spike might be seen as punishment for sexual transgression [though not by me]); it was also unpleasant to contemplate the possibility that Willow’s power per se was being condemned (lesbian drug addict Willow!).

I won’t try to recreate the entirety of the debate (and of course I’m not just talking about that night at Eyedrum, but also many, many online posts and articles), but at the time I said that I hoped that what would eventually happen is that the series, as it played out, would show that Willow and Buffy, like many young (and not a few older) people needed to learn a balance — not that any touch of sex is wicked, but that it depends; not that use of power by a woman automatically puts her in danger of being wicked (instead of self-effacingly, power-abdicatingly virtuous), but that it depends.

I suppose I’m in a small way connecting with the conflict of interpretation of ethics as posed by Gilligan vs. Kohlberg (okay, Jim, if you go for literature, I’ll take a blind stab at philosophy. Help me out here, please —), i.e. Buffy (as I’ve actually said elsewhere — I think in Fighting the Forces) goes with the Gilligan view of the importance of connection and contextualization. Context makes the meaning — that I really believe. And boy, does Buffy give us context, right, folks? The serial narrativity allows for the greater exploration of ethics *and* epistemology.

And back to the more specific narrative instance that started my train of thought — Season Seven is really satisfying in its tendency to fulfill and explore past implications. Think of our Christly Carpenter Xander’s recent advice to Willow — advice that came in the form of a carpenter’s analogy: how you hold the hammer; it’s power vs. control.

That’s what both Willow and Buffy are working on, and I expect (though I am usually bad at speculation) that Willow is going to come through with the ability to work with magic and not be taken over by it — because she will use it for a greater purpose, not just for her own pleasure (consider Tara’s advice to her on this — and I do think that Tara is meant to be a touchstone character); and I expect that Buffy will become confident in her power.

But I am old-fashioned enough to disagree with you, James, re the issue of whether power — as opposed to good/evil — is what matters. As you yourself note (if I recall your post correctly), and as I have certainly noticed, "it’s all about the power" is stated by Buffy to Dawn and by the First Evil to Spike, framing the beginning and end of "Lessons."

But consider the context: I think Buffy is teaching Dawn to beware of the dangers of power, and that she, Buffy, will learn to more fully use power but not be absorbed by it (as will Willow, eventually — this season, I hope). "We can’t control the universe. If we were supposed to, then the magic wouldn’t change Willow the way it does." (in "Villains," I think.)

This is one of those moments that show us why Buffy is not a shoot-em-up, wish-fulfillment escapist fantasy. The world is real, and we have to deal with it (the immediate context for B’s comment was a discussion with Xander & Dawn about Tara’s death and the possibility that Willow might kill the murderer, Warren — which of course does happen and which of course is presented as a bad thing.) And it is one of those moments that warn us about the abuse of power.

Power, too, depends on context and one’s relationship to it; and good or evil comes out of the context. As does textual interpretation, one hopes. In short (okay, maybe not so short) I do not think that the series is suggesting that power is what matters instead of good. In fact, I get a real chill when I listen to the First usurping Buffy’s form to deliver that line in its radically different, evil context.

Yes, evil — it is the First Evil, as identified in third season’s "Amends." I really need to stop soon, but I will mention one other bit of narrative fulfillment I’ve enjoyed. I (and a number of others) have talked about Buffy’s use of Joseph Campbell’s hero pattern. It seemed to me that Season Six exemplified the Difficult Return part of the pattern, and that Season Seven might show us something of the boon-giving of the returned hero.

One of the most touching moments in this season is the scene in which Buffy and Willow speak — actual communication again at last! — after Willow has been attacked by Gnarl and is trying to heal herself. Both of them dressed in variations of grey and white (and shall we get into color symbolism here?), Buffy offers to join hands with Willow, saying "I’ve got so much strength I’m giving it away."

I very much want to talk about the playing out of sexuality and the physical in a very different context in this season from last season (yes, Jim, Gnarl is creepiest — and he’s eating Willow!) (and how extraordinarily sad is Spike’s "Am I flesh to you? ... service the girl"). But perhaps later in the round-robin.

— Rhonda

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From: Stephanie To: Rhonda, James and David

I suppose I have it easiest tagging along at the end! As just about all of you have (I believe) said, this is a pretty interesting season in terms of narrative structure. The episodes are layered, week by week, so that their intensity builds incrementally. In previous seasons — particularly Season Six — Whedon & co. would give us a breather between the more intense episodes: He’d sense when we needed a break and give us a goofy Doublemeat Palace episode to break the tension. (I think the Doublemeat stuff worked fine as, uh, filler, but it wasn’t really intended, for the most part, to linger in memory.)

Yes, as James pointed out, Whedon seems to be done with episodic television (at least for now), and now he seems to be hurtling toward some sort of bone-rattling climax.

As David said, each season a "Big Bad" has been stared down and vanquished — each season builds toward the end of a world, if not the world. But this season is so much more ominous. We’re all wondering what’s going to happen, but no one wants to speculate; maybe this is just me, but I’d much rather sit back and wonder what Whedon’s going to cook up — just allow myself to have continued confidence in his ability to surprise me and shake me up, rather than try to match wits with him by trying to guess his motives.

It’s such a pleasure to have faith in an "artist" (I do consider Whedon an artist, as you all probably do — the quotation marks are there just as a hedge against anyone out there who might get hung up on semantics!), and to allow oneself to be led along by a narrative one just has no way of predicting. Leading us along like that is what all great storytellers have always done — suddenly I’m thinking of Dickens and his serials — and I think Whedon is one of the best of the modern ones.

I’m intrigued by James’ comment about the fight scenes. I too have noticed that they’re not quite as dashingly executed as they have been in previous seasons. They’re certainly rougher. But I do wonder if, in Whedon’s mind, after six seasons the idea of combat is just more of the same old same old.

But to me, the violence on Buffy has always felt more like the age-old tradition of stage combat, rather than just a bunch of people beating up on each other for excitement’s sake. Of course, it IS exciting! Violence can serve many purposes in art, and one of them is that, well, it can be invigorating. But in addition to being exciting, the combat scenes in BtVS always seemed somehow classical to me: nicely staged, well-paced, just incredibly pleasingly executed. In Season Seven, they seem (with a few exceptions) a bit perfunctory, even as they’re getting more brutal.

Then again, maybe Whedon intends them to seem less artful — he may be saying, "This isn’t just art anymore, this is PAIN." Come to think of it, that’s probably exactly what he’s doing! Am I the only one who just caught onto it — ?

Anyway, moving on — Rhonda wrote: "I very much want to talk about the playing out of sexuality and the physical in a very different context in this season from last season (yes, Jim, Gnarl is creepiest — and he’s eating Willow!) (and how extraordinarily sad is Spike’s ’Am I flesh to you? ... service the girl’)."

All I can say is: ME TOO! The sex has been underplayed in Season Seven, but the sexual undercurrents are positively thrumming. We already know that Buffy is not particularly attuned to men’s feelings; in fact, she still seems like a 17-year-old in many ways (as opposed to being a young woman, in her early 20s, who has learned something about men and how they think).

Meanwhile, Spike has gone out and gotten a soul for her sake; now he’s rattling around in some strange place where he’s sane only half the time. (I keep thinking of Keats’ "La Belle Dame sans Merci" — with Spike as the knight "alone and palely loitering.") Meanwhile, Buffy has power over him that she continues to abuse. Although we do see evidence of her ... possibly ... softening toward him.

And maybe THAT is the subject for another day!

— sz

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P O P F O R U M Discuss Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Related Sites Here’s the official UPN Buffy site. From PopPolitics, other Buffy-related articles can be found here. Here are other points of interest related to the ongoing discussion: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Male Defeat" (Bad Subjects); "A Vampire with Soul, and Cheekbones"; "A Weekend with Buffy, Vampire Slayer and Seminar Topic"; "Slaying Terrorism" (The New York Times); Salon’s directory of BtVS articles; Whedonesque (a weblog of all things related to Joss Whedon); and Restless (a Buffy trivia guide).

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Stephanie Zacharek is a staff writer for Salon. She has also written for The New York Times, the New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly and Newsday.

James B. South is an associate professor of philosophy at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis. In addition to numerous essays on topics in late Medieval and Renaissance philosophy, he is the editor of the forthcoming (March 2003) Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale (Chicago: Open Court). He and his wife, Kelly Wilson, collect 1960s spy TV show memorabilia (especially The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). His Web site can be found here.

David Lavery is a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author/editor/co-editor of six books, including Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks (Wayne State University Press, 1994) and This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos (Columbia University Press, 2002). ("Coming Heavy," an article on the intertexuality of The Sopranos, was reprinted in PopPolitics.) With Rhonda Wilcox, he co-edited Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) and runs the online journal Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. They are also organizing the Slayage Conference on Buffy the Vampire Slayer to be held in Nashville in May of 2004. He is now completing a book on Seinfeld.

Rhonda V. Wilcox is a professor of English at Gordon College in Barnesville, Ga. While she has published on subjects as varied as Molière and Thomas Pynchon, her primary area of interest is good television. She is the author of the chapter on television in the Greenwood Guide to American Popular Culture and of one of the earliest scholarly articles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, "’There Will Never Be a "Very Special" Buffy’: Buffy and the Monsters of Teen Life," Journal of Popular Film and Television 27.2 (1999). With David Lavery, she is the co-editor of Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) and of Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. A member of the editorial board of Studies in Popular Culture, she gave the opening plenary address at the 2002 University of East Anglia-sponsored conference "Blood, Text, and Fears: Reading Around Buffy the Vampire Slayer."