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Date Posted: 18:32:41 10/17/05 Mon
Author: Darby
Subject: The Central Metaphor for Evil

One could make a case for the Whedon shows having unifying metaphors for the protagonists - individual power / feminist power, redemption, independence - that carry through the seasons and incarnations. And in each arc, those metaphors are challenged in some form by their antagonists. Sometimes the antagonists are classic and larger-than-life, such as the Master, or Adam, and sometimes the antagonists are more personal, in the form of Angelus, the Los Angeles of early Angel, or the Trio (although it's unclear whether that arc's true antagonist might have been Buffy). I am proposing that the non-personal Enemies following a particular metaphoric thread, one that culminates in Season Seven Buffy but continues to resonate even beyond.

It's no secret that Joss is not a fan of organized religion, especially in the form it currently takes in the world. I believe that religion, in various guises roughly matching the development and history of generalized world religious movements, underlies the antagonists presented on the shows (and even in Serenity. This is primarily a metaphor in overview; it's to be expected that all of the details of execution may not necessarily support the idea at every turn. I'm going to treat this is the order that they appear:


EARLY STAGE: Demons and their ilk. The Age of Nature Spirits.

The connection is the weakest here. I'm not sure that any kind of underlying metaphor had really developed at this point, but what we get in the first couple of seasons of Buffy parallels the earliest development of human religions, based upon a world on natural wonders and dangers that can barely be resisted. This was the age of the Nature Spirits, elements of the world that hold some level of sentience and purpose beyond what is obvious. The demons and evils of early Buffy, we are told, are holdovers from a great prehistoric ecosystem. They are not invaders from beyond; in fact, they look on humans as the aliens that forced them from their unhappy home. These enemies are animalistic or elemental, and although they often have very grandiose plans for getting their world back, they are generally defeated through very physical means, occasionally combined with primitive rituals. This feeds from the original purpose of the Slayer, so it makes sense that she deals with essentially primitive evils.



TURNING POINT: The Initiative and Adam. Technology and control over the environment.

There came a point in human civilization that lessened the power that Nature had over us. We began building our own mountains and rivers, and we roamed the world, putting more and more under our dominion. As Nature lost its power over us, our relationships with it altered, and we began our course, still in progress, of bending it to our will, even if what we were dealing with was well beyond our understanding. This is the approach of the Initiative (and Maggie Walsh, who was supposed to be much more the antagonist than was realized), and another concept that dates well back in time, hubris, resulted in Adam. This result of controlled-Nature-gone-bad could not be defeated by Buffy's physical prowess alone; to regain control, she needed to be more than human, to become temporarily godlike herself. That moment of hubris brought its own repercussions in Restless.


DEISTIC STAGE: Glory. Gods with human flaws.

The development of human technology altered our relationships with the world, and our deities reflected that. Spirits embedded in natural phenomena gave way to gods that appeared, wholly or mostly, human, who dealt with the world in very human ways. These Gods represented those aspects of the world that humans could not control, such as storms, or death, or the oceans, even war, and gradually added deities connected with more abstract concepts, such as love, even debauchery. These were people like us, but with more power, and presented an acceptable version of how the world worked. It removed the purposelessness of natural events and replaced it with a bit of petulance and moodiness, as we saw ourselves in the timing of floods or the placement of a lightning strike. It was becoming more and more our world, and the gods reflected that, with a distinctly human slant. If you wanted things to go well, best to be on their good sides. This was the world of Glories, and Glorificus represents the very human side of religion, a god that is very recognizably human, very recognizably corrupted with a god's power, demanding absolute subservience in her acolytes. In many ways, she is a magnification of Buffy, the way ancient gods were a magnification of their worshipers.

Arrayed against Glory are the Knights of Byzantium, an ancient order that rejects gods like Glory and is determined to remove all who serve them, even if they are innocent pawns like Dawn. We have leapfrogged the timeline a bit, unless you see the Knights as Christian in name only, with an approach that dates back to an earlier, grittier time. Certainly the Crusaders upon which they are obviously based can be interpreted that way, hacking nonbelievers with unsophisticated fervor.

What defeats Glory is not physical, however. What wins the day is the next step in deistic thinking: totally concept-based, and framed on love. Form a belief that may be logically iffy (that Buffy can die for Dawn and save the world), but the belief itself has enough power to bring about major change. The death and resurrection of Buffy has been compared to Christian imagery before, and it certainly fits into this framework.



IDEALISTIC STAGE: Jasmine. Unrealistic expectations.

History is full of ideas that work well on paper, but run into a major obstacle when applied to human beings: they are human. The next step of deism removes the deities from the world we know and elevates them to unknowable heights (often literally), imbuing them with a presence and power that most people believe is not achievable by humans without divine aid. These deities appeal to the "higher" aspects of humanity, such as love, forgiveness, and understanding. These deities may come to have human faces associated with them, but they are by nature conceptual.

They are also unattainable. Humans can grasp the advantages of peace and harmony, but it is contrary to our natures. We can do it if we work at it, but we're going to be lazy and self-centered enough of the time that these idealistic systems will collapse under the weight of individual ego in all of its guises. This is the world of Jasmine, the deity that everyone sees and hears differently, who appeals to the most positive aspects of our humanity, but those who have gotten beyond the scratched surface see as being flawed at its core. This is a deity who needs to subvert much of our human nature to bring about her perfect world, but even in Jasmine's world there is violence and punishment for those who don't toe the line. In this world, I believe, we have a second Christ figure in Connor. Connor, who says he has always seen Jasmine's true face, suggests that any human who develops such a system has to actually recognize its inherent flaws, but must persevere in the belief that those flaws will be overcome by the power, the logic of the ideals.


REALITY STAGE: The First Evil. Belief as justification.

In Amends, the First Evil, I believe, was a metaphor-of-the-week representing cultism (although I'm not sure that Joss much differentiates between small cults and mass-market religion). The issue of Angel's resurrection, the monk robes, the self-mutilation suggest some particularly fringe Christian cults, but it may be that Joss' strong antipathy to organized religion made him overstate the evils that he saw: taking credit for things that they had no role in, the reliance on guilt to change behaviors, the necessity of coming over to "their side" for redemption. I wonder if Joss had read one of those articles relating strong religious fervor with hallucinations, even schizophrenia, in forming the approach that the First would take in attacking Angel. At any rate, not much note was made of this particular metaphor; the return would dip more strongly into imagery to make the connection stronger.

When the First returns in Season Seven, its influence is subtle on our protagonists but, from what Willow feels, pervasive in the world. In Lessons, we get a hint of the approach that was taken with Angel. The victims (given physicality by the talisman, presumably worked by a Bringer - the design is similar to what Buffy found in the Bringers' cavern in Amends.) that Buffy failed to save work to repel her from the school, the center of the First's plan for ascendance. Spike, his new soulfulness somehow infected by the First, appears, as the member of the flock who will still persist in trying to do the right thing, even if it conflicts with what he has been told is the right thing.

The metaphor for modern versions of Christianity, with more exclusion than inclusion, follows with Beneath You, leading to a stronger exclusion of Anya, and Same Time, Same Place, with Willow (presumably affected by Amy) representing how folks can live side-by-side and still fail to really see each other, rather letting fear infect their perceptions. Spike is acting, weakly at this point, as a counterpoint to this - with every reason to isolate him, Buffy still includes him. Although we don't know it yet, this moves the First from the realm of working through creepy mutilated monks into that of using regular folk, even former friends, as agents.

Help and Selfless can be seen as an allegory for the idea that a life of self-reliance is at the mercy of cruel fate (Buffy can't save Cassie, Anya can't handle her power responsibly), an incentive for hooking up with a source of power and influence that is better able to control your life than you are. This is a classic image for organized religion, as is the anti-superficiality of Him, although the irony of that could only be dealt with farcically. This is, I think, a portrayal of the worst of modern American Christianity as Joss sees it, the evangelicals, as represented first by the Bringers. But to give it more power, to give it weight as the Baddest Big Bad, it has to affect the core group.

With Conversations With Dead People, we get a multiplicity of approaches that can bring different people to religion. With Buffy, it's a combination of onerous duty, guilt for behavior, and a desire to not be so separate from everybody else (and guilt for simultaneously wanting just that). Willow and Dawn both deal with the dead. With Willow it's Tara, and her guilt over what Tara's death drove her to do, looking for forgiveness and some form of absolution; Dawn is trying just to connect with a dead loved one, Joyce, afraid that maybe, because of her, her mother is suffering in the afterlife (this also confirms that Joyce was, indeed, a manifestation of the First). All three react strongly to this attempt to control them. Jonathan and Andrew have been affected in their dreams, but to different ends: Jonathan, like Angel before him, has come to terms with his own evil and is ready to pay for it, and therefore only useful as a sacrifice; Andrew, driven by influences that he never really understands, does evil without really considering the implications or ever feeling guilty about it. Spike, without conversation, is a witless pawn, carrying out the First's evil.

Things get a little dicey through the middle of the season, with the appearance of the Potentials (only hinted at up to this point) and the Turok-Han, with the war for Spike sprinkled in. The role of religion in war, a concept that may very well be, in Joss' mind, the First Evil, is represented by the "Neanderthal of vampires," creatures who start as almost impossibly powerful who will serve to convert the world to the power of the First, make it manifest, but whose power wanes as the heroes learn more about the power behind them, and come to respect that power less and less, finding eventually that the power resides in each person individually. In fact, the turning point is presented in Showtime with Buffy, relying just upon her own intrinsic abilities, defeats the First's super-soldier and begins the gradual diminishment of their power. The power of Evil in Season Seven is only superficially physical; it is indeed all about power, but spiritual power has superceded physical. The Buffy group really wins by force of will rather than violence.

And by Storyteller, the role of emotions and spiritual power becomes the focus of the battle. With the drop of Andrew's tear, the war is one of will rather than blood. Episodes deal with the clash of emotions, violence, and ideals: Lies My Parents Told Me is a perfect example.

And then there's Caleb. This clarifies one aspect of American Evangelicals that Joss didn't want to miss: the misogyny. It had been there, all through the season. The First, even embodying women, had a distinctly male aura to it. The Bringers, as far as I can remember, were exclusively male. Caleb brings the patriarchy of religion crashing down on our largely feminine (plus enlightened male) group, seeming to draw power from the women he kills (remember, it's implied that he'd been killing Potentials up-close-and-personal for a while). Buffy fails to triumph over him until she brings the symbol of female empowerment into the fray and clips his maleness from him (from the weapon and the unseen cut, possibly replaced the male with the superficially female). The Watchers have been dealt with, a female version that has been literally watching all along is introduced, and enlightenment is brought to bear on the First Evil.

And enlightenment, the next step that will overthrow the dated version of religion that currently holds sway in the country, is exactly what wins the day. And it's not just Buffy, not just an enlightenment of the power of the Female; Spike, inspired by his own inner spirituality to overcome his evil in a way no vampire has ever before, becomes the image of the enlightened male, the pure Light shed over the subterranean darkness of the First's Evil. He has, through the course of the season, had an epiphany but not been able to deal with the consequences, becoming a crazed pawn; returned to the scene of his most regretted crime and received some measure of forgiveness from the person against whom it was committed; resisted the pull of the First, even under torture, eventually throwing off the conditioning through the power of understanding the nature of the trigger. He becomes New Man to Buffy's New Woman. It needs to be Spike, it can't be Angel, because it's all about the journey, innit-?

The First Evil, in the end, is not defeated so much as disregarded. The only power it has is the power it is given. What seemed like an anticlimax is very much the message here.

Religious overtones continue into Firefly and Serenity, but that's maybe for a later addendum.

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