Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Buffy’s rejection by her friends and allies in "Empty Places" - the most recent episode of "Buffy" - is a development that requires a detailed analysis. Indeed, probably a much more detailed analysis than I provide below. Still, I’ll take a crack at trying to decipher some of the factors underlying Buffy’s current situation. First, I will discuss the dissolution of the Scooby gang - a development which reached its nadir in "Empty Places"- as part of a brief overview of Seasons Six and Seven. Next, I will consider the events of the most recent episode in more detail, in particular the relationship between power and legitimacy and the reasons for Buffy’s turn to an authoritarian style of leadership.

Season Six: the Death of the Family:

Like many people, I really did not like S6 of Buffy. To be blunt - and to use the vernacular - I think that the season sucked. True, there were moments of absolute brilliance - "Once More With Feeling", of course, and the introduction of Dark Willow, as examples - but, on the whole, S6 was dark, depressing and overwrought. It was difficult watching characters that we care about self-destruct so completely. At the same time, I must give the writers their due: as much as I hated the developments of S6, the Scooby Gang did end up becoming far more complex and multidimensional. Qualities and characteristics that the writers had alluded to in past seasons -such as Willow’s crippling insecurities, Buffy’s secret belief that she was attracted to violence and pain, and Xander’s own fears about becoming like his parents - were taken and carried to an extreme. There was nothing inevitable about the course of S6 - events did not have to transpire in the way that they did - but they were, at least, defensible within the context of the show.

The first five seasons of "Buffy" trace the growth and maturation of the Scooby gang into a family. The first three seasons - the favorites of most fans - are, in a way, the most simple. They give us the story of three friends and their older, mentor figure learning to trust and love each other. One of the great pleasures of these early shows is in watching the group as it gradually coalesces into a kind of family unit. S4 is another step in the process of growing up. The friends go off to university (or not, in the case of Xander) and begin to drift apart as they encounter new people and experiences. By the end of the year, however, they are back together. They have learned that they really do need each other. The bonds holding them together are, if anything, strengthened by the experience of drifting apart. By S5, the group is now a self-declared family - there is even an episode ("Family") that makes this very explicit.

S6 is the story of the dissolution of this family. This is spelled out in "Once More With Feeling" (the highlight of the season, in my opinion. OMWF has layers of complexity and foreshadowing which are truly fascinating). At the start of the show, the gang sings that they can face anything so long as they are together. Their song is a throwback to what they have felt in the past, a testament to what they believe - or want to believe - about their family unit. By the end of the show, however, they sing "understand we’ll go hand-in-hand but we’ll walk alone in fear" - an indication of what has been happening to them, what they have tried to deny, and a foreshadowing of far worse to come. From this point on, the Scooby family disintegrates. Giles, the anchor of the group, leaves. Buffy isolates herself further from her friends and family, a process made worse by her descent into a degrading relationship with Spike. Willow becomes addicted to magic (yes, I hate that analogy as much as anybody) and Xander ends up giving into his own fears and abandoning Anya at the altar. Each member of the group is separated from the others. They do not turn to each other for support, and the idea of a tightly knit group of friends who face the adversities of the world together falls by the wayside. By the end of S6, however, there is hope. Early in "Grave", Buffy says to Giles that she does not know why she is back from Death; she feels as though she left something behind when she crawled out of her grave. At the end of the show, Buffy has rediscovered her will to live. She commits herself to Dawn, she expresses her desire to see her friends happy again. Buffy crawls out of her second grave, but this time she emerges into the light of day and, most importantly, she reaches back to pull out Dawn. The implication seems clear: what Buffy left behind in the grave the first time was a connection to the world. What she brings back with her the second time is her sister, and a desire to see her sister grow up into a powerful woman. S6 ends with a sense of renewal. The family may have fallen apart, but Buffy, at least, is now determined to repair things as best she can.

S7 begins on this note. The family is not back together, but they are working at it. Buffy is spending time with Dawn, Xander is there, and Willow is eventually reintegrated into the group. Then, the First asserts itself, Giles reappears with the Potentials, and Buffy begins the process of alienating her friends and allies. The Scooby family unit is stressed to the breaking point, and finally shatters in "Empty Places".

I will admit that I am quite disappointed that S7 has, for the most part, continued the disintegration of the Scooby Gang. Given how S6 ended, I was hoping that S7 would be about the members of the group reconnecting with each other. I had hoped that all Joss’ talk about "going back to the beginning" in S7 would be about rediscovering the more carefree spirit of the "Buffy" of yesteryear. Obviously, that has not happened and is not going to happen. While I expect that the gang will reconcile before the final showdown with the First, it is far too late for the show to handle that reconciliation in anything but a very cursory way. A few group hugs and declarations of love cannot undo two years of gradually drifting apart. In the end, however, I guess that will have to do.

Creating Legitimacy: "Empty Places" and Open (Explanatory) Spaces:

The problem that Buffy faces in "Empty Places" is that she has based her leadership of the Potentials, almost exclusively, on her power and an associated claim to being divinely chosen. I am the Slayer, she declares; I have the power; therefore, you will follow me and do as I say. For the Potentials, who don’t know Buffy and have no reason to trust her, this is not enough, but they have little choice. They need her protection and they recognize the reality of her power. They are cowed by the weakness of their bargaining position in relation to her. However, they do not believe that she really has their interests at heart. When Buffy orders them to put their lives on the line to pursue a cockeyed plan that she has conjured out of nowhere (more on this below), the Potentials - and everyone else - rebel. The rebellion is made easier by the presence of Faith - someone with power equal to Buffy and far less overbearing - but it probably would have occurred anyway.

What Buffy has not understood is that the effective exercise of power and leadership requires legitimacy. That is, other people must believe in her right to be leader. Others must want to follow her because they believe - for their own reasons - that following her is the right thing to do. Acquiring that legitimacy is difficult. It requires the careful exercise of power. It requires demonstrating that you will use your power with a sense of your responsibility to those you presume to lead. It means building a bond of trust. Buffy has not done this with the Potentials. Through her favoritism towards Spike, she created the impression that she was willing to put the lives of the others at risk. Through her callousness towards her charges, she created the feeling that she did not really care for their lives. Buffy has shown very little respect for the people she has tried to lead. As a result, her leadership has lacked legitimacy and the result has been the mutiny against her.

Anya’s words to Buffy encapsulate what many of her allies feel. However, Anya’s comments are not entirely fair. It is true that Buffy was simply born "luckier" than the rest. She did not earn her power. On the other hand, however, she has proven herself worthy of her power over the course of seven years of fighting evil. As Faith has demonstrated, it is certainly possible to get the Slayer power and totally abuse it. Buffy - for the most part - has not done this. She has tried to live according to a moral code that is defined by her role as Slayer. She has always been conscious of her responsibilities. In the previous episode, Xander’s big speech in Buffy’s defense centered around the idea that Buffy had earned the right to be trusted. In the case of the Scoobies, this is true. It is not true for the Potentials. Buffy has tried to treat her allies as a military, with herself as the general, while forgetting that most of her "army" is not there voluntarily.

In fact, Buffy’s position is even weaker than it appears. Buffy has claimed a great deal for herself by virtue of being the Slayer. Buffy says that she must be the leader because she is the Slayer. As far as we can tell, however, the Slayers were not created to be leaders. (Tanya makes this same point in the-buzz review of "Empty Places"). The Slayers were created by Shamans to serve as soldiers in their battle against supernatural evil. (There is also the suggestion they were meant to be the "Guardians of the Hellmouth", a S7- and rather illogical- twist on the Slayer story). Soldiers are not generals. Being a Slayer has provided Buffy with certain physical and psychic powers; it has not given her any special leadership abilities. Whether or not she possesses leadership skills is entirely dependent upon her qualities as a human being. Of course, this means that Faith has no more claim to leadership than Buffy. To some extent, it appears that the others have bought into Buffy’s equation of power with leadership rather than recognizing the fallacy of this assertion. I suspect that the drive to recruit Faith owes much to the Potentials’ desire to hoist Buffy on her own petard; but it should be clear that the logical leader of the group is Giles. Indeed, the traditional role of the Watcher was as commander to the Slayer, acting on orders from the Council. Giles and Buffy’s relationship as Watcher and Slayer was always untraditional and unique, largely due to Buffy’s assertive personality and the fact that she had others to whom she could turn for support. Throughout S7, however, Buffy has tried to be both Watcher and Slayer and she has proven unequal to the task. While it is unlikely that Giles will assume his more traditional role, it is more probable that Faith will run a less authoritarian regime than Buffy and be more open to suggestions from others.

In an ideal world, Buffy would have formed strategy with input and advice from her friends and allies. The decision-making process would have been more consensual, it would have allowed for a variety of views, and it would have brought the others into the exercise of making decisions about their own lives. In the end, a leader may have been needed to make the hard and final choices, but the process would have been inclusive. Indeed, this is the approach to decision-making that Buffy has followed in the past. Remember the brain-storming session from "The Gift", the attempt to formulate a strategy against the Mayor in "Graduation Day, Pt. II", or Xander inspiring Giles to come up with the collective attack against Adam? So what has changed in S7?

The answer to this question is not entirely clear. The obvious explanation - and certainly a major contributing factor - is that Buffy is indulging her self-acknowledged superiority complex ("Conversations With Dead People") Buffy says that she cannot respect anyone else’s opinions, because no one else is the Slayer. This attitude does seem to indicate an evolution away from the strategies that have served her in the past. When faced with a particularly dire situation, Buffy ends up appointing herself the unquestioned commander of her forces, assuming that role by her self-proclaimed authority as Slayer. Of course, being the Slayer does not preclude her from accepting and acknowledging the wisdom of others. Others may not be able to speak from her experience, but this does not mean that they cannot contribute to her understanding. However, I suspect that the reason for Buffy’s move to a dictatorial approach to leadership is more complex than just the operation of a grossly inflated sense of self-importance.

The single greatest factor explaining Buffy’s attitude seems to be her belief that she cannot protect all of the people who have come to her for protection. So, she has created an emotional distance between herself and everyone else around her - even her old friends. She keeps the Potentials at a distance -even having only a vague idea of their names - in order to shield herself from the pain of losing them and failing at her responsibility to protect them. This approach is reinforced by another, complementary idea: the notion that, to be an effective leader, she will have to sacrifice some of her "troops". Making decisions by committee when part of the committee may be needed as cannon fodder probably would not work. To Buffy, making the hard decisions means giving up part of her humanity in order to insulate herself when she may need to sacrifice the lives of others in order to serve a greater good. Buffy is conscious of this; she rejects the power offered to her by the Shamans because she feels that she is already losing her humanity ("Get It Done"). Yet, in creating her emotional distance she comes across as cold and uncaring to the people who need to know that she cares about them. This situation actually gives some insight into Buffy’s fundamental character. In the past, her loyalty to her friends and family has come before all other considerations - most obviously in her determination to protect Dawn in S5, despite the consequences to the rest of the world, but also in her willingness to return the Box of Gavrok to the Mayor in exchange for Willow ("Choices"). Indeed, it is the Mayor who compares Buffy’s unflagging loyalty to that of a dog. Buffy’s coldness may be the extreme reaction of someone whose inclinations are towards loyalty and the protection of her loved ones when faced with a situation that requires her to put those inclinations aside. She comes across as unfeeling when, in truth, she is feeling a great deal - she just cannot allow herself to be governed by her natural impulses. So, she turns away from Xander and Willow at the hospital when they need her comfort (here, her reaction is partly motivated by guilt); she only checks on Dawn’s injuries when her sister is asleep and no one can see her concern ("Lies My Parents Told Me"). This can only be a partial explanation, of course. It would not explain why Buffy is so sensitive to Spike.

Buffy’s change in attitude might be more understandable - if not necessarily more defensible - if we had a true sense that the threat of the First was a particularly dangerous one. We are continually told that Buffy is in "the fight of (her) life"; we are told that the First is worse than anything she has faced before. However, the evidence on this is mixed, to say the least. The First has thrown the Ubervamp and now Caleb at Buffy. Both were/are formidable, but no more so than many other foes Buffy has faced in the past. The big difference between the First and Buffy’s past villains is that it has an army of Bringers at its disposal. The Bringers are numerous, if not powerful. But is the nature of this threat really so great that it justifies the radical change in Buffy’s attitude? It does not appear so, and so we are left with the strong -though, as I argued above, probably simplistic - impression that Buffy is acting out of arrogance rather than necessity.

Ironically, Buffy’s friends and mentor are somewhat complicit in her downfall. As Joyce pointed out to Buffy in her dream, Buffy’s friends put too much pressure on her ("Bring on the Night"). Willow and Xander are ideal followers, but they need to be allies who can think for themselves and who could have offered Buffy advice and perspective. She may not have listened to them but it is also true that Willow and Xander were not inclined to question Buffy or force her to confront the effects of her actions and attitudes on the Potentials.

As for Giles, his contribution to this situation is perplexing. Giles brought the Potentials to Buffy, telling her that she had to protect them. He encouraged her in the belief that everything rested on her decisions and leadership, and he offered little guidance or support. Indeed, he even encouraged her to believe that "the mission" comes before everything else. Yet, in doing this, Giles has reinforced Buffy’s move away from what has made her successful in the past. More than anyone, Giles should know that Buffy’s remarkable accomplishment as a Slayer has hinged on her relationships with her friends and family. What is particularly telling about this situation is that - by Giles’ own definition - Buffy is no longer a hero. Remember that just before Giles’ killed Ben ("The Gift") he defined a hero as someone who would not take an innocent human life. Now, however, Buffy is willing to let Dawn die, she is willing to let Spike kill Wood, all in the name of the mission. While this may make her a more effective Slayer - at least as defined by the Watchers’ Council - it makes her less of a human being and far less than the Slayer she had been. This apparent callousness has also served to undermine her authority and legitimacy with the people that she has tried to lead.

This Is A Plan?

Buffy’s "plan" to attack Caleb and the First at the Vineyard makes no sense. It’s a lot easier for your troops to turn on you when you are demonstrably crazy. Buffy’s plan is based on assumptions that have no basis in fact, or even in educated guesswork. First, Buffy asserts that Caleb and the First are not guarding the school. But does she know this? There may be invisible guardians or protective spells; maybe she encountered Caleb in the school precisely because he was there acting as a guard. When she recovered consciousness, did she look to be sure that Caleb was not just roosting in the basement? For that matter, why even assume that the Hellmouth needs a guard? More significantly, Buffy’s argument is based on the assertion that Caleb and the First are protecting the source of their power. But why is there any reason to think that either has a source of power that needs protecting? Every major "Buffy" villain carried his/her power with him/her. Buffy herself, and most of her major allies, do not rely on some external source for their power. Indeed, from what we know of the First, it gets its power from all the evil in the world. So, why does Buffy make this unsupported assertion?

We are apparently meant to believe that this insane plan has been placed in Buffy’s mind by Caleb -by talking about the school and seal as being important, Caleb knew that Buffy would get the message that these things were unimportant. There is a slight logic to this, though the lack of evidence still does not merit taking such enormous risks on a hunch. However, this circumstance does raise some interesting points. Presumably, the First knows all about the tensions within Buffy’s group - after all, it is selectively omniscient. So, is Faith’s ascension to the leadership of the Scoobies and Potentials part of the First’s plan? It does not sound that way; Caleb seems to be working on the assumption that Buffy will lead her troops into a trap. Still, I’d like to think that the First is manipulating events here - to this point, it has been an extremely disappointing villain. (This -and other disappointments of S7 - will be the topic of my next column).

As a final aside, this week’s "Buffy" is the first anniversary of the death of Tara. ("Buffy" time works in strange ways, but it seems likely that it’s around May in the Buffyverse, too). I would like to believe that Willow will commemorate the anniversary; I have a feeling, however, that she will completely forget about it.