#theme:patriarchy

[herinsectreflection]

But You're Just A Girl (Helpless)

The test that Buffy undergoes in this episode – in which she is stripped of her powers, locked inside a house, and forced to fight a mentally unstable vampire – is named in the script as The Cruciamentum. Giles describes it as “an archaic exercise in cruelty”, and it’s difficult to think of a description that could be more accurate.

The word Cruciamentum is an invented declension that roughly translates from Latin as “result of torture”. Quentin Travers – making his first appearance here as the Head of the Watcher’s Council – defends the practice as a necessary rite of passage, meant to make a Slayer stronger, but this reasoning falls apart under scrutiny The scenario is so heavily weighted against the Slayer, robbing her not only of her powers but the knowledge that she is being robbed at all, that it makes more sense to view the Cruciamentum not as a test, but as a method of control, designed to kill off Slayers that reach adulthood and so gain more independence from the Council. At the very least, it demonstrates the Council’s control over the Slayer, holding the implicit threat of taking away her powers again over her head for the rest of her life. As is the case with many unjust systems, the cruelty is the point.

The Cruciamentum is the Council’s most clear and obvious cruelty, but it is not by any means their only one. Cruelty is their origin story, as we see in Get It Done how they forcibly created the first Slayer through metaphorical rape. It is baked into the central idea of One Girl In All The World – a system which relies on the deaths of an infinite chain of young women. Its current setup, with one Watcher in the field and apparently dozens sitting safely away in England, leads to an inevitable cruelty of indifference that Giles calls out in this episode. There are cruelties of incompetence – failing to alert the field about the firing of Gwendolyn Post, sending the underqualified Wesley to Sunnydale. But perhaps their most impactful cruelty is also their most subtle. It came the moment that Buffy Summers, sitting outside her school in 1997, was called to be a Slayer. This act not only changed Buffy’s life, but caused an irreparable crack in her psyche. It splits her perceived self into two component parts – The Girl and The Slayer – twin selves that she spends seven seasons trying to reconcile.

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[herinsectreflection]

You Don't Get It - You Killed A Man (Ted)

This episode opens with the gang lamenting how quiet the town has been since the apparent deaths of Spike and Drusilla, and Buffy enjoying her brief reprise from the trials of the supernatural. Of course, this is Buffy, so no reprise can last longer than an opening scene. Buffy arrives home to find the door unlatched and ajar, and hears a sound from the kitchen. Our genre-savvy senses tingle, as do Buffy’s, and we expect some horrible monster to be lurking in the kitchen, waiting to attack. Unfortunately, Buffy opens the door and finds it’s much worse than that. Her mother has a new boyfriend.

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[herinsectreflection]

I Hate It When They Drown Me (Go Fish)

“Beautiful. Isn't it? Eternal. A true mother, giving birth to new life and devouring old. Always adaptable and nurturing... yet... constant... and merciless.” - Cameron Walker, 2x20 Go Fish, speaking about the ocean.

Vampires are creatures of eternal life - living forever and never ageing. They possess a dark beauty and allure to our main character - indeed the most prominent vampire in the story so far was apparently named for his beauty. He was named by his sire - his “mother”, as Drusilla might say. Vampires constantly birth new (un)life by feeding and siring other vampires. In most cases - such as with Darla and Angel, they will “nurture” and shape their progeny, guiding them to kill and hunt and survive.

They are ever adaptable - surviving on a planet whose sun will burst them into flames by hiding away in sewers and abandoned houses and other cracks and crevices of society. And yet, they are constant - unchanging, un-ageing, and unlike our protagonist, unable to grow up, unable to make choices, unable to change. But they are, above else, without mercy. Without a soul, mercy means nothing to them. It is not something they would ever offer, for it requires some level of empathy, kindness, and sacrifice.

The ocean… is vampires.

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[herinsectreflection]

This Is Just My Outfit (Halloween)

Part 18 of the Insect Reflection, a series of essays covering every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

“Do you love my insides? The parts you can’t see?”

Drusilla asks Spike this question early in the episode, and it lays out the theme pretty clearly. This is an episode about hidden selves, about duality. It’s about taking a look at the characters’ Inner Selves – the parts we can’t see – and comparing them to their outward presentations – the parts we can. We are invited to consider whether the Inner Self is something that should be loved and celebrated, or hidden away for the good of others. And we should compare that to the image that these characters present to the world – the costumes that they wear.

The costume, in this case, is the Outer Self – the version of ourselves we present to the world. This can be a reflection of the Inner Self, or a means to hide it – or somewhere in between. One of the most basic questions about humanity is which of these Selves is the “true” self? Are we what we do? Are we the person others see? Or are we what we are inside? These are questions far too big and esoteric for a Buffy the Vampire Slayer blog to answer, but Halloween does scratch at their surfaces in some interesting ways.

In two very specific ways, I think. First, through the idea of costumes as concealing a hidden sef, and secondly the idea of costume as gender performance. Two different ways of interacting with and expressing the Inner Self, and two lenses through which we will look at this episode.

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[herinsectreflection]

Is This A Penis Metaphor? (Reptile Boy)

You know how it goes. Girl meets Boy. He’s older and more experienced - but seems nice, kind, thoughtful. Girl falls for Boy. They get close; maybe they sleep together. And then, when she wakes up, he’s changed. He’s cruel, mean, even evil. It turns out he just wanted to use her, and never really cared about her at all.

That is the basic story at the heart of season two. The grand, gothic, star-crossed love story of a redeemed sinner and an anointed hero, constructed around a simple story of a teen girl whose first boyfriend turns out to just be a real dick.

It’s also the story in this episode - the slightly less grand story of Buffy and Tom the Frat Guy.

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[herinsectreflection]

All Men Are Beasts (The Pack)

This is the Insect Reflection - a series of essays looking at every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

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The Pack starts off as a simple episode about bullying and social cliques. It shows us a group of bullies (never seen before and never to be seen again), and another newbie that they pick on – the nerdy and shy Lance. They get infected with a hyena spirit (as you do), and Xander joins in on their animal possession/bully clique. The eponymous Pack is a metaphor for social in-groups, the infection is a metaphor for how people can easily slip into bullying behaviour. It’s a pretty standard High School Buffy monster-as-metaphor episode. But behind that, this is also a story about gender, and a battle for dominance between three predators – Xander, the Hyena, and Buffy.

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