She’s uncomfortable with certain concepts

[hazelk]

One Slayer dies, another is called. It sounds like the hereditary principle. The King is dead, long live the King. The mother gives birth to herself.* Discomforting when you think about it, this necessary linkage of sacrifice and death and motherhood. However, according to the Joss penned comic ‘Tales of the Slayers,’ this mechanism for perpetuating the line is not the natural way of things but a device of the original Watchers, with the interesting side effect that any Slayer who passes her expiration date will be instantly replaced by a younger, less troublesome incarnation. From this perspective the whole Watcher/Slayer relationship begins to resemble an incestuous version of “Bluebeard,’ a deeply dysfunctional father/daughter pairing in which the daughter must never be allowed to grow up.


Bluebeard’s Daughter

Perrault’s story of Bluebeard, the serial killer husband, has many antecedents in folklore. Some versions of the tale focus on the dangers of simple curiosity, as in the Greek myth of ‘Cupid and Psyche,’ but many have a specifically sexual subtext. In the German story “Fitcher's Bird” the Bluebeard figure gives his victims an egg to carry with them at all times. Their transgressive use of a forbidden key (a phallic symbol) causes the egg (a non-phallic symbol) to become stained with blood. Early twentieth century folklorists were particularly keen on seeing the blood stained key in Perrault’s story as symbolising an act of infidelity. In an old Breton tale, on which Bluebeard may have been based, Cunmar the Accursed beheads a succession of wives one after the other when they became pregnant i.e. sexually active. Thinking about it, however, who in a young woman’s life is actually most likely to feel a Bluebeard’s need to set limits on sexual curiosity? Maybe his actions allude not so much to a husband’s response to a wife but a father’s to a daughter.



This is the way women and men have behaved since the beginning...

Speaking of metaphors for sexuality the whole ‘Demonic Origin of Slayer Power‘ idea introduced in S5 seems Freudian in the extreme. Young women being possessed of a dark amoral force that needs to be regulated and controlled by an ancient patriarchal quasi-religious system? I think one of my favourite moments in the series is when Buffy’s coming back wrong turns out to be no more than a bad case of cellular sunburn.

However, a good part of the justification for the Watcher/Slayer system is this pernicious idea of the Slayer having a dual nature. Part helpless girl who will always need protection, part fearsome demonic entity to be controlled and neither part autonomous adult woman. If Buffy and Faith’s arcs on the series follow their progress towards becoming such women, those of Giles and Wesley are about learning to accept that this is so. Giles takes the father’s part and struggles with letting Buffy the girl finally grow up, while Wesley does battle with the perceived monstrous aspect of the Slayer.


GILES: Wish I could play the father. And take you by the hand.

Giles doesn’t immediately take to the role of father. I’m not sure that he’s ever entirely comfortable with the part, although by mid S2, if not before his “father’s love for the girl” is clearly present. And it’s the girl that I think he really relates to, while simultaneously feeling that he shouldn’t. In Spiral when he believes he might be uttering his final words, the thing he claims to be proudest of is her heart.

Giles is very aware post-graduation that the time may come when Buffy will no longer need him as a guide or a father and his response is interesting. He leaves. Abortively at the beginning of S5, belatedly (realizing what a Watcher’s job entails) at the beginning of S6 and again after the musical, although I get the sense that he never fully came back. Then one final time after his brief save-the-day visit in Grave. He’s no Bluebeard, I think he accepts that Buffy must grow up. But he doesn’t seem to want to be there when it happens.

The crisis point arrives in S7 when torn between his duty as a Watcher and his feelings towards her as a father figure he takes on the worst features of both and goes behind her back in the plot to kill Spike. Unlike his previous betrayal in Helpless he doesn’t apologise for this. And there’s no Wesley equivalent to arrive in the next episode and act as a buffer between them. From the time he arrived with a gaggle of potentials in Bring on the Night Giles has been acting like a man who’s lost faith in his surrogate daughter. Who believes that the coming apocalypse is a crisis that no mere girlish heart can overcome. It’s going to take intellect, a quality that’s traditionally belonged to the Watcher not the Slayer. But his has failed at this test. So it makes sense that when Buffy shows her intellectual mettle in coming up with a truly radical solution to the problem in Chosen, Giles is finally able to accept her as an equal. As an adult.


WESLEY: There is evil in that girl…

Wesley is initially assigned to be Faith’s Watcher. Trying to play things by the book he makes no attempt to relate to her as a girl and by the end of their torturous second encounter she’s moved from text book case to actual monster in his eyes.

A lot has happened by the time he remakes Faith’s acquaintance in AtS S4 and his attitude seems to have changed. They’re not close, he’s rather manipulative of her, but it’s her human qualities that he works on. So it seems that he now regards the former rogue Slayer as a seriously flawed human being like himself rather than a monster on a leash.

Finally, there’s the Fred-Illyria arc. Initially this has strong echoes of the ‘Bluebeard’ story as Fred suffers the ultimate punishment for female curiosity. Then Illyria is quite explicitly a monster inhabiting the body of a girl. She and Wesley make the oddest couple, the failed Watcher teaching the abandoned God how to adjust to an uncaring world. To paraphrase Spike, he treats her like a man, thus completing the long journey from seeing the demon in the girl to bringing out the humanity in the demon.


*yhlee has an essay that expresses this idea rather more cogently

Comments

[frelling-tralk.livejournal.com]

Very interesting.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[molly_may]

So it makes sense that when Buffy shows her intellectual mettle in coming up with a truly radical solution to the problem in Chosen, Giles is finally able to accept her as an equal. As an adult.

You just helped me come to terms with the S7 Giles/Buffy arc! I've always wished they had just a little more time together at the end of the season, to work out some of their differences. But I love the connection you've made here between how Giles's intellect has failed him when it comes to dealing with The First, and how he can finally see Buffy as an equal when she changes the rules of what a Slayer is.

this has strong echoes of the ‘Bluebeard’ story as Fred suffers the ultimate punishment for female curiosity.

Oh, wow. I had never thought of it in those terms before.

he treats her like a man, thus completing the long journey from seeing the demon in the girl to bringing out the humanity in the demon.

Interesting though that Wes, who has a tendency to see the women he's involved with in madonna/whore terms, never does really get much chance to learn to relate to an adult woman on equal footing. Faith in S4 of Angel is probably the closest he comes, but she's only around for a short time.

This was a fascinating essay!

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

The one thing I wish they'd done differently with Giles is not to show the Bringer about to chop off his head at the end of Sleeper. Four episodes wasted on debating whether he's gone to the bathroom while ASH was doing some of his best work acting the man in virtual shell shock.

Interesting though that Wes, who has a tendency to see the women he's involved with in madonna/whore terms, never does really get much chance to learn to relate to an adult woman on equal footing.

I liked the way Wes got on with Cordy before she got all saintly in S3 but I doubt they could have got Charisma back even if there had been a 6th season. Lilah too, he relates much better to women after they've broken up/died.

[meri-sefket.livejournal.com]

thus completing the long journey from seeing the demon in the girl to bringing out the humanity in the demon.

This is a beautiful point about their relationship. It really sums up a collection of ideas that have been swarming in my head for a long time now.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I loved that aspect of the Illyria arc.

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

Where does Tales of the Slayers say that the empowerment of a single Slayer at any one time was a Watcher imposition?

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

It's more ambiguous than I remembered, my memory has daddy issues. In the first story the village girl tells the first Slayer that the Shadowmen "chose only one" because they feared her and that when she dies another will be chosen and another for always.

[elisi]

Sorry I'm so late - just wanted to say that this was very interesting! I'm in a bit of a rush and anyway I don't think I have any clever thoughts. *sigh*

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Good to hear from you anyway!

[spacedoutlooney.livejournal.com]

Wonderful essay.

He’s no Bluebeard, I think he accepts that Buffy must grow up. But he doesn’t seem to want to be there when it happens.

This is an excellent way of describing his relationship with Buffy and the reasoning behind his behavior in the later seasons. Thanks.

[aycheb.livejournal.com]

Re-reading the beginning feels a little over the top. Unbritish even, but I'll stand by the Giles analysis. Thanks!