Buffy.pdf

Article

Abstract This article presents a phenomenological, Sartrean

analysis of sexual relationships as portrayed in the cult TV series

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS). I argue that, through an

examination of the differences between vampire and human

characters in relationship, we gain an appreciation of the

ambiguity of human sexuality as it is experienced. Through the

narrative device of sexual relationships between human and

vampire characters, BtVS offers a representation that potentially

subverts current ideologies of love and sexuality. In addition,

BtVS makes visible, although does not explicitly endorse, sado-

masochistic sexual practices.

Keywords Buffy, sadomasochism, Sartre, sexuality, vampire

Vivien Burr

University of Huddersﬁeld, UK

Ambiguity and Sexuality in Buffy the

Vampire Slayer :A Sartrean Analysis

Introduction

Themes of violence, sexuality and desire in vampire mythology and

ﬁctional literature have variously been examined from the perspectives of

psychoanalysis (e.g. Copjec, 2000; Dougherty, 1998; Moretti, 2000),

feminism (e.g. Wisker, 1998), queer theory (e.g. Case, 2000) and inter-

national politics (Dougherty, 1998). The cult TV programme Buffy the

Vampire Slayer (BtVS) has also recently begun to be the subject of such

academic analyses (Kaveney, 2002; Parks and Levine, in press; Wilcox and

Lavery, 2002), including an online journal ( Slayage: The Online Inter-

national Journal of Buffy Studies ). On UK television (BBC 2) it is targeted

at a 16–24, principally female, age group, but actually attracts a wider

cross-section of viewers (Hill and Calcutt, 2001). Targeted at a primarily

youthful audience, one of its central themes is romantic and sexual

relationships. As in other vampire ﬁction, there is also a strong violent

theme, which is intimately related to the romantic and sexual themes.

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Sexualities 6(3–4)

However, its handling of human and vampire characteristics is not

thoroughly traditional and it therefore offers opportunities for the explo-

ration of new meanings, for both the audience and the social scientist.

The barriers to openly discussing, let alone validating, non-normative

sexual choices, particularly those of women, are well known. For example,

Pleasure and Danger (Vance, 1992) is a response to current, particularly

feminist, attitudes to women’s sexuality. In particular it challenges the ways

in which feminist arguments and campaigns against pornography and so-

called ‘perverted’ sexual practices may in fact have undermined women’s

attempts to achieve sexual liberation. There also appears to have been a

virtual reversal in the value and legitimation accorded to lesbian as

opposed to heterosexual sexuality, such that heterosexuality is seen as

universally oppressive for women. But, far from relaxing sexual taboos, this

‘policing’ of women’s sexuality has led to a profound silence from women.

The result has been a reluctance of women to explore their own sexuality

or to challenge the new ‘normality’ by engaging with and discussing the

actual diversity of sexual desires and practices of real women. It may be

argued, therefore, that TV shows that attempt to go some way towards

exploring aspects of sexuality that may be seen by society as less desirable

deserve our attention. Saxey (2002) notes that BtVS makes reference to a

whole range of non-normative sexual practices, some of which (for

example the lesbian relationship between the characters Willow and Tara)

are explored in depth.

I will argue that the manner in which human sexual relationships are

portrayed in BtVS, like many shows deemed appropriate for a young

audience, appears to validate a widely culturally available vision of (ideal)

human relationships as uncomplicatedly loving and conﬂict-free. However

the possibility of human/vampire couples provides an opportunity for

representations that are, paradoxically, nearer to human reality. In

addition, they invite alternative analyses to the more commonly adopted

psychoanalytic and feminist approaches. Accordingly, I shall use Sartre’s

existential phenomenology as set out in Being and Nothingness

(2000[1943]) to make this argument. Here, Sartre argues that human

relations in the ‘lived world’ are inherently conﬂictual and ambiguous,

always containing within them the seeds of love, desire, sadism, masochism

and hatred. I shall therefore argue that the vampire–human relationships

portrayed on BtVS offer a more recognizable experience of sexual relation-

ships as they are actually lived, and that this is an important factor in their

obvious appeal to the audience. BtVS is therefore able to offer an alterna-

tive and experientially more valid representation of human relationships

than is often available to audiences.

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Burr Ambiguity and Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Methodology

Erickson (2002) quotes Auerbach (1995), who points out that: ‘every age

embraces the vampire it needs’ and that ‘when properly understood,

[vampires] make us see that our lives are implicated in theirs and our times

are inescapable.’ (Erickson, 2002: 111). He goes on: ‘If one of the

purposes of monsters has been to help us deﬁne who we are, a show like

Buffy , where the categories and boundaries are constantly blurred, can

help us further understand the confusing and complicated stories we

continue to tell ourselves.’ (Erickson, 2002: 118).

My analysis is broadly phenomenological. Ihde (1986[1977]) suggests

that, through the exploration of variations and ﬁgure/ground reversals,

we can gain access to the structure of experience. He likens this to the

practice of artists, where, for example, a musician might perform silence

in order to draw attention to aspects of a performance. In the present case

the imaginative variation is performed for us. BtVS presents human sexual

activity but conducted by vampire characters. By comparing this to the

behaviour of the human characters, and also by asking ourselves how we

would experience the behaviour of the vampires if they were human char-

acters, the nature of human sexuality is thrown into sharp relief.

I have drawn primarily on extracts from seasons two through ﬁve of

BtVS. My reading of these is not intended to be objective, but reports my

interrogation of my own engagement with the material and the meanings

it evokes for me. Since my analysis is necessarily subjective, it is therefore

important for me to comment reﬂexively upon my position with respect

to the material in order that my reading can be properly contextualized.

As someone who is a regular viewer of the show and enjoys it I can claim

reasonable familiarity with the material, and more recent re-viewing of all

the episodes on video has since augmented this. My enjoyment as a viewer

also predisposes me to a sympathetic reading. As a heterosexual woman

who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, my own biography and experience

may inevitably inﬂuence my reading of the relationships in BtVS.

However, I have chosen not to include commentary upon this in my

analysis, and present these details here primarily in order to contextualize

it for the reader.

Sartre: sexuality and the Other

I will sketch out Sartre’s position here, before going on to show how this

can be used to analyse sexual relationships in BtVS. For Sartre, the human

condition is that we are ‘condemned to be free’ (Sartre, 1965: 41),

condemned to invent ourselves. But whatever we choose to be (the ‘in-

itself ’) is fragile because we can choose to be different at any moment. But

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Sexualities 6(3–4)

herein lies a paradox. The person is a freedom (the ‘for-itself ’) that strives

to become something. But the moment it becomes something it is no

longer a freedom; it has solidiﬁed into an object. It must wrench itself away

from this ﬁnality to regain its freedom, its subjectivity: ‘Thus the for-itself

is both a ﬂight and a pursuit; it ﬂees the in-itself and at the same time

pursues it.’ (Sartre 2000[1943]: 363). This is an impossible ideal.

This means that although we yearn to become something, to have an

identity and presence in the world, we are also terriﬁed of thereby losing

our freedom. We are made powerfully aware of the straitjacket of identity

at the moment we feel ourselves looked at by the Other: ‘The Other looks

at me and as such he [sic] holds the secret of my being, he knows what I

am. Thus the profound meaning of my being is outside of me, imprisoned

in an absence’ (Sartre, 2000[1943]: 363). We ﬁnd that the power to deﬁne

who we are lies with the Other.

Our response is to try to stop the Other from objectifying us, and we

attempt to do this either by seizing and capturing the Other’s subjectivity

or by turning our own look upon the Other, thereby rendering the Other

an object. However, Sartre argues that both of these possibilities are

equally doomed to failure, and that the failure of the ﬁrst precipitates us

into an attempt at the second, whose failure leads us back again to the ﬁrst

in an ‘inescapable and certainly vicious cycle’ (Howells, 2000: 86). The

strategies that we use to capture the subjectivity of the Other are, for

Sartre, love and masochism. The alternative strategy, to render the Other

an object for us, is given by desire and sadism. Hatred is the ﬁnal, desper-

ate but ultimately ineffective, attempt to escape this cycle.

Love and masochism

Love, for Sartre, is our attempt to take back control over our own being

by taking control of the Other’s subjectivity. Our goal is to be the lens

through which the Other must look in order to see any meaning in the

world. We ask that they choose us above all others as their loved one, and

we strive to become ‘the whole world’ to the Other:

I must no longer be seen on the ground of the world as a ‘this’ among other

‘thises’, but the world must be revealed in terms of me . . . I must be the one

whose function is to make trees and water exist, to make cities and ﬁelds and

other men exist, in order to give them later to the Other who arranges them

into the world . . . Thus I am reassured; the Other’s look no longer paralyzes

me with ﬁnitude. (Sartre 2000[1943]: 369)

However, our status as such a special object cannot last; the Other’s exis-

tential freedom to objectify us cannot be denied. At the heart of every

lover’s unease is the anxiety that the loved one might ‘awaken’ from the

spell under which they have consented to found the world upon their

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Burr Ambiguity and Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

lover, and render the lover a mere object once more. When love fails us

we seek recourse in its very opposite; to resolve the conﬂict by abandon-

ing our own subjectivity and becoming wholly an object for the Other, to

adopt a masochistic position, an instrument to be used. But this cannot

work either; the possibility of becoming nothing more than an object is

also an illusion. If we choose the masochistic position, we have thereby

simply given ourselves further evidence of our own freedom:

The more he tries to taste his objectivity, the more he will be submerged by the

consciousness of his subjectivity – hence his anguish. Even the masochist who

pays a woman to whip him is treating her as an instrument and by this very fact

posits himself in transcendence in relation to her. (Sartre 2000[1943]: 378–9)

Desire and sadism

The failure of this ﬁrst attitude propels us into adopting the second, to

capture the Other’s subjectivity through ﬁrst ‘trapping’ it in the body and

then possessing it through possession of the body:

So the Other’s for-itself must come to play on the surface of his body, and be

extended all through his body; and by touching this body I should ﬁnally touch

the Other’s free subjectivity. This is the true meaning of the word possession .

(Sartre, 2000 [1943]: 394. Italics in original)

Sartre absolutely rejects any psychological or philosophical arguments that

reduce sexual desire to physiology or instinct. He also separates desire

from any particular sexual practices, which vary with different social

groups and are socially acquired. So desire may become manifested in a

variety of ways, but at its core is the attempt to capture the subjectivity of

the Other by ﬁrst making it incarnate, by rendering it nothing but a body

through the ‘caress’. But there is a problem with this. The power of the

caress to draw the Other’s subjectivity onto the surface of the body can

only come from a subjectivity that is itself incarnate, from a mutual incar-

nation where bodies caress each other, where subject and object positions

are temporarily abandoned. The moment that the desiring consciousness

moves from caressing to seizing the body of the Other, it has once more

become an agent, a subject. The incarnation of the Other’s subjectivity

collapses at that moment, unsustainable without that reciprocal incarna-

tion. Thus desire fails to achieve its goal. This failure is the reason why

desire can never be satisﬁed. We should not confuse desire with satisfaction

through sexual pleasure in this respect. Although sexual pleasure may be

possible, desire remains unfulﬁlled (cf. Krimmer and Raval, 2002, who

note the conﬂation of death and desire, and the impossibility of the fulﬁl-

ment of desire and love in western literary tradition).

The failure of desire leads us into sadism. If we cannot capture the

Other’s subjectivity by incarnating it through desire, we attempt to do so

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