Buffy The Vampire Slayer

A growing corner of psychology has devoted itself to the study of “terror management,” or how people protect themselves from the knowledge of their own mortality. One of the experiments in this field sounds like something from an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Participants in the study are given the problem of nailing something to the wall and the only useful thing lying around is a crucifix. The results of the experiment show that participants are less likely to use the cross if they are first made more aware of death (made “mortality salient”). According to the researcher Greenberg and his colleagues, participants don’t want to denigrate their meaning-making religious symbol, especially when they are confronted with the reason they need religion in the first place, death. (This particular setup only works with Christians, naturally, but similar results have been found with other groups.)

Of course, Buffy and her Scooby pals, and in fact all of ironically named Sunnydale for that matter, are ultra mortality salient. No one is confronted with death more than the Slayer and her associates. As a consequence, Buffy and friends should be struggling more than your aver- age mortal to solve the basic riddle of existence: How do we find meaning when we are all doomed?

Thus Buffy, stake in hand, plays out one of the great existential metaphors of modern times. Existential psychology, especially as expressed in the work of Ernest Becker (from which terror management theory is derived), asserts that humans are ultimately motivated by their fear of death. And in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon has explored all the great existential issues-angst, meaning, the limitations of existence, and the striving for immortality.

In our world, one important means of reducing death anxiety is through heroism, because heroism, like other solutions to death anxiety, offers some partial immortality through the chance to be remembered beyond the grave. Unfortunately, heroism as a path for the existentially despairing has generally been reserved for the male version of the death-conscious homo sapiens. Buffy, with her ability to kick some real undead butt (and despite her unassuming teenage persona), takes the usual heroic cultural solutions to the problem of meaning-which have been heretofore mostly supplied from a patriarchal perspective-into new, compelling feminist directions.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Whedon enthralls the viewer by using each character-Buffy, Giles, Willow, Xander, Spike, and even some evildoers-to illustrate the highly individual and even idiosyncratic ways humans deal with the problem of meaning in the face of death. Even more compelling is that Buffy weaves gender into this subtle allegory, showing us that existential solutions can be thwarted, shaped, or encouraged by a highly gendered, patriarchal society. Buffy and the Surprising Problems That Aren’t Solved by Power

Here’s a cold fact of our world: Women, on average, are less physically powerful than men. Although some feminists reject such essentialist notions of male and female, existential feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir assert that women’s lives are heavily influenced by the biological differences between males and females. Through Buffy, Joss Whedon forges an entire anti-patriarchal universe from one creative act-giving a girl physical power beyond any living man. Forget the vampires. While they and other demons generate fuel for the plot, it is Buffy’s power that makes the story.

You would think such power might solve those pesky old existential dilemmas once and for all. Buffy’s solution to the problem of meaning would seem as easy as stone-etched destiny: Given you’re the only one who can save the world, and given the world badly needs saving, then saving the world is what you do-Q.E.D. The rub is that Buffy is still a girl becoming a young woman.

When we first meet Buffy in the film, her goals are simply to maintain her popularity and appearance. Why would she want to give up the easy assurances of being cool and attractive for some icky, bizarre vampire-slayer destiny? But this is not a point of existential choice for Buffy, it is destiny. It’s not long before Buffy begins to revel in her phallic power (yes, phallic-don’t forget the omnipresent stake). Early on it seemed that Buffy had become convinced that her slayer destiny left her with no decisions to make. While her friends were completing career aptitude tests, Buffy bemoaned the futility of considering career options given her unique and permanent vocation. She’s the Slayer, and she just needed to fake the civilian life stuff so that she could continue to save the world. In this respect she seemed just as trapped as a Father Knows Best-style homemaker-her role had been prescribed by forces outside of her with little input on her part.

Human realities and the Hellmouth interfere with such simplicities, both for good and ill. Buffy’s power is not necessarily an asset in the quest to find meaning, and is sometimes even a liability. Her heroic solution did not provide existential peace. She was ambivalent about her role and constantly wondered whether the sacrifices were worth it. Her successes against the legions of death did not seem to count much in the lives of those she loves. The show was known for its human, as well as demon, death count, and for these lost people there was nothing that Buffy could do. Her mother died, not from some demonic or magical influence, but from something as inscrutable and meaningless as a brain tumor. And when Buffy made the ultimate sacrifice and gave her life for her friends and family, they resurrected her after a few months, ripping her from heavenly bliss. Buffy’s existential dilemma persisted even when an eternal life in heaven was assured.

Yet, even as it offered only a partial solution to existential dilemmas, her heroism also seemed to close off opportunities for other sources of meaning and comfort: enduring romantic relationships. Another important body count in the series was the number of men that either could-n’t handle Buffy’s power or were forsaken by her for the greater good. Her superhero life is too much for mere mortals, even for Riley, who was about as close to a superhero as an actual human gets. The non-humans didn’t work out any better. Perhaps one of Buffy’s most poignant turning points came when Angel, her first lover, lost his soul because of their moment of pure bliss. Even though he eventually regained his soul, the relationship could not continue. She tried again with mortals and immortals alike, but it seemed that in the area of love, her powers were of no help.

As the series marched toward its end, and the darkness got stronger, we saw Buffy struggle to hold on to her role as Slayer and to develop as a leader and teacher. Her house was filled with potential slayers, who she was trying to train for an all-out war with an army of demons. Potentials and friends alike challenged her authority and her decisions. As with us all, she was forced to accept the consequences of both destiny and choice. Although, as existentialists point out, in some respects we all ultimately walk alone, there is also the challenge of finding the balance between independence and interrelationship, and this is one of the clearest examples of the way that Whedon has used feminist principles to stretch existentialist ideas. The final note of the series emphasized the latter, when Buffy’s best friend, Willow, was able to awaken all the potential slayers across the world and ignite their slayer power. Together the Sunnydale team fought off the demons and sealed the Hellmouth. The earth was renewed with the common strength of Buffy and her sisters. So, Giles, You Just Watch?

Every Dracula needs a Rehnquist, and every slayer needs a Watcher. No one can escape the existential yearning to be the hero of their own story, yet the Watcher, the Slayer’s sensei and demon expert, has to completely and utterly abandon selfish projects and settle for a backstage pass. Oh sure, he knows all the secrets and he is seldom far from the real action. Yet, as a character in a supporting role, Giles had to bear the existential costs of pouring his entire selfhood into his slayer.

Early in the series we had no sense that behind Giles’s scholarly persona there was a wish to be anything but an unsung hero. In fact, it is only when the Scoobies discovered that Giles did, literally, sing (Clapton, in a-gasp!- public café) that it occurred to the Slayer and the Scoobies that this tweedy bookworm had a personal life. Nevertheless, while youth may get fooled by the repressive efforts of adult meaning-making, the truth will out and it was not long before Whedon treated us to Giles’s personal brand of angst.

It is tempting to say that Giles eschewed the normal male routes for immortality-career and family. In fact, when we met Giles he demonstrated many of the characteristics of the corporate climber and distracted father. He unquestioningly obeyed the Watchers’ Council. He was also the emotionless paterfamilias, who held high performance expectations while too often ignoring his slayer’s emotional needs. In Giles’s defense, he was, like all elders, more aware of grave realities. Nobly, Giles worked ceaselessly to train Buffy. At the same time, he tried to protect her from the reality that she would, in all likelihood, die young. He simultaneously tried to train her to stand independently and to protect her.

In neither our world nor the Buffyverse are these interpersonal dynamics stable states of affairs. Any self-respecting Slayer with her own immortality projects would have gotten annoyed by all that watching before long, and Giles became more and more frustrated with Buffy’s choice to run off, stake in hand, rather than study and train. Initially this dynamic solidified Giles’s role, and existential choice, as representative of the patriarchy. Yet on any existential path, one is inevitably faced with dilemmas. Do we rigidly cling to our best-laid plans for meaning, or do we transcend them when they become worn? For Giles the moment of truth came when he was instructed by the Watchers’ Council to subject Buffy to the Cruciamentum, a test of her slayer abilities that involved deceiving her, using drugs to strip her powers, and locking her up with a bloodsucker. To our dismay, Giles went through with the plan, yet at the last minute he rushed to help Buffy. For his loyalty, Giles was punished by the Council and lost the two life-devotions he had: his job as Watcher, and his protectorship of Buffy.

Later in the series, of course, this corner of the Whedon world was put right: Buffy eventually took full control of her destiny and demanded that the Council knock off the stealth maneuvers and quit interfering with Giles assisting her. In name he became her Watcher once more, but Giles was no longer Boss or Daddy. As Buffy matured even further, Giles increasingly turned to other pursuits, both intellectual and interpersonal. He appeared to have achieved some sense of peace, having made his contribution to saving the world (the rest of us should be so lucky to have such a literal impact on that goal), and to have accepted his evolving role in place of static privilege handed to him by a male establishment. Willow and the Question of Limits

Human beings are finite, limited creatures. When we first met Willow Rosenberg, she seemed almost distressingly comfortable with limits. She was a good, well-behaved student who largely conformed to the restricted roles made available to female high school students. In existential terms, the early Willow demonstrated many classic signs of what Ernest Becker called “fear of life.” She was modest and unassuming even though she demonstrated computer prowess that would make Steve Jobs proud. She spent a lot of time fretting that she was not achieving in the domain of relationships-the accepted preoccupation of middle-class white females. Her personal power was not much in evidence and, like many youth, she seemed to have little sense that she could be turning her energies to more meaningful pursuits. She was rather unremarkable from either an existential or feminist point of view, and her first glimmers of power did not fundamentally alter this profile. Even when she exhibited extraordinary powers, as when she resurrected Angel’s soul, she remained blithely unaware of it. She was comfortable as a limited being and had barely begun to ask what being so limited meant.

It’s no surprise that someone so repressed would be ripe for problems with addiction. As her dabbling in magic turned to a serious interest and then almost to obsession, Willow abandoned nearly every aspect of her former conventionality. She explored her sexuality and began a lesbian affair with Tara, her partner in witchcraft. She started taking little shortcuts, breaking little promises, and then even began ignoring her friends’ pleas to control her power. She thought she could get away with anything, even altering Tara’s memories. She pushed and pushed against limits until finally the world, represented by Tara, pushed back. She tried to control herself but temptation was ever present. The desire to ignore limits-not only the laws of physics but the physical integrity of others-became the central issue of her life.

One limit with which Willow wrestled repeatedly was death itself. She literally resurrected Buffy at the beginning of season six to assuage her own grief, never stopping to think whether this was something that Buffy would want as well. Willow, and Xander, too, refused to face the prospect of continuing without Buffy. When Tara died, Willow was thwarted from completing another resurrection, and nearly destroyed the world in her anger that she could not control all of life’s tragedies. Willow struggled with the temptations of power right up until the end of the series. When she finally harnessed and expressed her full power it was once again with the goal of defying limits, this time ones that had been in place for centuries, by breaking the rule that limited slayer power to one girl in every generation and helping all of the potential slayers to achieve their full power simultaneously. From a feminist point of view, it is a great metaphor for casting off the constraints of patriarchal society. From an existentialist point of view, one wonders if there are limits to casting off limits. Sorry, Xander: Phallic Power Is Not Worth Much in Whedon World

In childhood we feel the helplessness of existence but still have faith in adults’ power to protect and comfort. In adolescence, however, we first glimpse the absurdity and futility of the various solutions to the problem of finding meaning. We begin to see caricatures of all the adult paths that can be taken. Teens do what adults do: they pick up habits, stumble through relationships, switch cliques, and suffer mindless employment. They make their choices, yet they make them with the casualness of someone who is both newly self-conscious and with the shortsightedness of those for whom death seems distant and mostly unreal.

Some young adults just avoid acting altogether. Xander couldn’t be a better example of this. All around him were kids who had something going on, while he had neither a special power nor a special group. He wasn’t smart enough to be a nerd, athletic enough to be a jock, cool enough to be popular, or geeky enough to be a total loser (despite Cordelia’s insistence). With no power, no path, and no group-supported claims, Xander’s existential dilemma was this: How do I fit in a world where even all the women are more powerful than me?

Xander’s often immature pursuits of women-including but not limited to Buffy, Cordelia, the Mummy Empada, the demon Anya, and other women who too often turned out to be demons-were all ill-considered attempts to solve his existential problem with a standard male sexual solution. Once, his project even resulted in the poetic justice of every woman in Sunnydale lusting after him with violently vicious force. Yet we knew that he was doomed to fail, as all are who would seek to solve psychological issues purely with sex. And when Xander finally got his wish to have sex with a slayer, it was not with Buffy but with Faith, and she afterward tossed him aside.

How was Xander saved from his adolescent existential stasis? We could say it was the commando training (which he retained from the Sunnydale Halloween where people became their costumes), which gave him the special skills he never had. We could also say that he finally found the courage to fight vampires using his own mettle. Or we could suggest that Xander came into his own as the Scoobies’ heart and soul in this reverse-gendered Buffyverse, where the only man of the superhero group became the caretaker and cheerleader. But it may be most on the mark to say that like so many privileged, aimless males in our real world, Xander ultimately developed in the course of a challenging relationship.

It is Xander’s passionate, mercurial, and downright freaky relationship with the demon Anya that helped him find his path to meaning. Throughout their relationship, Anya was involved in a twelve-step-like recovery from hundreds of years of addiction to power and vengeance. It was no surprise that when Xander became involved with Anya, she was going through the process of learning how to behave herself around people. This is where Xander shines. For even though he showed many signs of (again, standard male) commitment phobia-reluctance to get a steady job, resistance to leave his parents’ basement, terror at the idea of getting engaged-Xander came into his own as an apologist for humanity. As the series progressed, episode after episode treated us to scenes where Xander was teaching Anya about the most crucial of human powers-loyalty, courage, and hope. It was in his role as her helpmate that he grew beyond his adolescent alienation to greater maturity, finding active meaning in relation, rather than sexual conquest. Spike: Even Immortals Endure Existential Dilemmas

When we first met Spike, he was your basic happy-go-lucky evildoer. He relished every wicked act and delighted in the prospect of widespread suffering. It wasn’t long, though, before Spike’s insecurities become apparent. As with many men in our society, Spike’s sense of self was wrapped up in competitive outcomes. When Angel reverted to Angelus, an almost immediate contest between him and Spike ensued, both for Drusilla’s attention and the position of alpha vampire. Although not really sincere in his affections for Drusilla, Angelus met with success in both competitions. In his injured condition, Spike turned to drink and some excessive displays of angst. He had been stripped of two high-status roles, at least in the vampire community, and had a crisis in meaning. Apparently even soulless immortals are not beyond the reach of existential dilemmas.

Spike’s crush on Buffy at first seemed little more than a rebound from his losses. It was so wildly improbable and so actively discouraged by Buffy that it hardly seemed a fruitful path to reestablishing meaning in his (un)life. At first his attempts to connect with Buffy vacillated between expressions of affection and reversions to violence and violation. Although slowly he more clearly and consistently aided Buffy and the Scoobies, at first his “help” (at the end of season two) was purely self-serving-the enemy of his enemy is his friend. Spike’s true choices then became obscured when the chip prevented him from hurting any living thing was inserted in his brain. Even with the crushing pain caused by acts of evil, he could not completely control his violent outbursts. He was dispossessed of one tool of male competitionviolence-yet he was still plagued by the aggressive impulses. Still, despite these existential ambiguities, his new role as sometime-helper provided a modicum of meaning and gave him exposure to the side of good.

When Buffy was resurrected he undertook a highly dysfunctional sexual relationship with her. Although he understood at least partially that he was being used, he so longed for closeness he continued the relationship anyway. When Buffy finally broke it off, he at first reverted to violence and attempted to rape her. His quick regret (at least compared to your typical rapist) led to the realization that he had not gone far enough to regain some measure of his lost humanity. He successfully regained his soul and, in the waning hours of the series achieved a truly heroic sense of purpose. Spike became an actualized being who was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for love and the greater good. That’s as close to an existential solution as any of us ever get. (Yes, we know he rematerializes in Los Angeles for the final season ofAngel. In TV the charismatic seldom really die. The rest of us won’t be so lucky.) Would You Murder for Immortality?

Even the least charismatic vampires still have the great existential prize-immortality. There is just the teensy problem of having to become a serial murderer in order to achieve it. Most vampires, at least in the Buffyverse, can say that they weren’t trying to become vampires-they became vampires because they caught the eye of someone who already was. But it is also true that virtually all of them, with the notable exception of Angel, kill humans to live and to slake their demon appetites, even though they could subsist on other blood. A few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer explicitly broached the appeal of this Faustian bargain for the general public.

One of the most telling Buffy episodes, from an existential point of view, was “Lie to Me” (2-7). A group of adolescents had decided to become vampires so that they could achieve immortality and “stay pretty.” Most seemed blithely unaware of the danger they were courting. They were dabbling in the camp of vampire culture as it is portrayed in old movies-all capes, pointy hair styles, and candlelit rooms. They didn’t really appreciate that they were actually going to die, much less be replaced by demons. They didn’t understand that you have to be selected to become a vampire; otherwise you’re just dinner. Their naïveté about the costs of immortality almost exacted the price of their lives. Only one of them, Ford, beset with terminal cancer, was truly earnest and evil enough, even in his pre-demon state, to seek immortality at any cost. He betrayed Buffy; but Buffy, of course, prevailed, and was waiting to stake Ford upon his emergence from the grave.

In psychological terms, the surviving youth in “Lie to Me” experienced growth and increased ontological awareness. Somewhat unusually for people of such a young age, they had directly felt their yearning for immortality. As adolescents, they were also willing to break rules and engage in taboo pursuits. These are actually behaviors that are associated with repressed death anxiety, so their behavior was in some regards an expression of the conflict between partial existential awareness and typical adolescent death repression. With the exception of Ford, by the end of the episode these teenagers had made psychological progress on both of these fronts. Regarding their yearning for immortality, they had come to terms with some of the parameters of human existence. In a Beckerian analysis, it seems likely that they would now pursue some of the more traditional paths to immortality-achievement, family-and reject trying to obtain it literally. Chanterelle (later Anne), although initially somewhat lost after this encounter, did find more meaning in her later appearances in Buffy and Angel. As with many adolescent brushes with death, these youths’ too-real encounter with vampires also led them to value the life they had. The Answer to the Problem of Existence?

Writers of books on existential psychology are plagued by a tricky issue: If they pose the question of how meaning can be found in an ultimately meaningless existence, people will be searching for a solution in the back of the book and may be quite disappointed if they don’t get one. In his book The Denial of Death, Ernest Becker addresses this issue by first slashing through some pat answers-longer life through medicine (hah!), living more in your body rather than your head (double hah!) and then challenging the reader to find the best solution he or she can.

How should we each evaluate the quality of our own solutions? By how much life and death we take in-or in existential lingo, how much being and non-being we encompass. The catch is that the more real being you take in, the more non-being you get. Buffy received more power, thus Buffy received more meaning, more joy, but clearly more suffering, too. Xander finally reached adult maturity and came to care for Anya, only to lose her in the final battle. Willow came to a more mature and relational understanding of her power, but then had to humble herself with endless hours of practice to learn its judicious use. Every character’s true growth can be traced this way, because being and non-being are the essential and ultimately inseparable yin and yang of existence.

Whedon reminds us, however, that even though we are free to choose a greater, more-encompassing circle of living (and more dying with it), culture, here in the form of gender, must be confronted in making those choices. In Xander’s search for greater purpose and meaning, he had to overcome the narrow definitions of his male role. Spike, too, had to find a way to grow beyond his macho survival-of-the-fittest perspective.

Existentialism has always been a fairly macho pursuit. The ideals of existentialism are characteristics like courage (Rollo May) and idealized exemplars like Nietzsche’s “superman” (“übermensch” in the original German). Existentialists often argue that we are essentially alone and disconnected. Can’t get much more masculine than that. But Joss Whedon has helped show that you can address the big existential questions of meaning and purpose-and do so with courage-without hypermasculinity. The ultimate intersection of gender and existence is presented in the final episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the forces of evil defeated through the expression of female power. Nonbeing was not vanquished-losses were endured, the future was uncertain, and other bulwarks of evil were yet to be challenged-yet hope was kindled. The ending of Buffy was the ultimate melding of clarity of purpose and the power of interrelationships-a beautiful expression of both existentialist and feminist ideals.