Essay – And We Kind Of Won: Victory, Competence, and Patriarchy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

03 August 2017

And We Kind Of Won: Victory, Competence, and

Patriarchy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

The eponymous hero of Buffy the Vampire Slayer has fought a wide range of bad guys despite the rather narrow scope her title might suggest. She has fought werewolves, vengeance demons, mantis women, hellhounds, and town mayors, just to name a few. Each of them posed a slightly different challenge for Buffy to overcome, while representing the wide range of conflicts and issues one may face while growing up. But overcome she did, and there was much celebration on both sides of the screen. In the world of the show, the characters are happy the world didn’t end, while outside the show the satisfaction comes from seeing someone triumph over adversity by using friendship, teamwork, sarcasm, and so on. It is said that a hero is only as good as their villains, and Buffy on the whole has had some great villains who posed a dramatically appropriate level of challenge until they were defeated by an equal level of cleverness by the Scooby Gang. However, a number of the season spanning Big Bads who were meant to be menacing had their menace undercut by surprising incompetence which, in turn undercut the satisfaction when they are defeated by Buffy. As a result, this deflation of the villains also had the effect of minimizing the key issue the villain was meant to represent. The biggest perpetrators of this are the militaristic Initiative in season four and the stereotypical basement dwelling nerd Trio of season six. The poor handling of these villains is made more apparent when considering villains with more successful and intentional depictions such as Mayor Wilkins and The Master.

The most dramatic example of this deflation and poor handling is the clandestine Initiative featured in the fourth season. This is largely because of how capable the organization was presented to be and how much of that capability was immediately dismantled upon actual exploration. What is revealed about the Initiative during their gradual introduction is that the organization is funded by the government, it has been around for some time, and it has the resources to staff scores of researchers and military/security officers as well as a vast underground facility to secretly house them beneath Sunnydale’s university. This all suggests a certain level of competence and ability. The government connection, secret base, and amount of staff suggests they’re far reaching, as well as being indicative of a level of teamwork or professionalism to set everything up and for all the moving pieces to mesh together properly. However, in nearly any scene that shows the Initiative doing anything, it becomes rather evident that none of their resources were apparently spent on any proper training or preventative oversight. For example, when Spike first escapes the facility in “The Initiative” (S04E07), he does so with only minor additional effort. The scientists who arrive to collect him from his cell appear to be without combat training and the armed guards only arrive after he has broken containment. A similar incident happens in a later episode when a monster being escorted through the Initiative overpowers the single scientist holding him and is only saved because Riley happened to be nearby. These examples pale in comparison, however, to their monster in the basement. The patchwork monstrosity of Adam is arguably their greatest achievement as well as being emblematic of the carelessness they seem to exhibit while performing the dangerous endeavour of running a secret monster research facility. In Adam, the Initiative is shown to be capable and competent enough to assemble a chimerical abomination out of human, robot, and monster parts and have him become a living thing. At the same time, however, he manages to easily escape from the secure heart of the facility and wander into the woods without being noticed, despite his large and largely distinct appearance, all while he is effectively still a new born. As another oversight, his creators also neglect to install a kill switch or a tracking device during his assembly. Furthermore, had they installed an anti-violence chip as they did with Spike during his brief stay, or perhaps one that could be tuned to only target enemy combatants, many lives would have likely been saved. It is also later revealed that Adam partially operated from an additional secret laboratory in which he hid the reanimated corpses of Professor Walsh and the other doctor. This raises questions of why a secret government laboratory has within itself another secret government laboratory that is unlisted within its own construction plans (S04E21, “Primeval”). If the Initiative is meant to represent patriarchy in how it is connected to the idea of traditional gender roles and how the military is thought to be primarily a male endeavour, and if Buffy’s victory over them is done with the goal of having a woman overcome the beliefs and tactics of the patriarchal military industrial complex with help from her physically weak but emotionally strong friends, then hobbling the Initiative with plot conveniences that manifest as incompetence equally hobbles the value of Buffy’s success, and reduces the sense of empowerment it might have created. That is to say, if the symbol for the patriarchal war machine is shown to be so ready to collapse on its own, then having Buffy bring it down becomes much less of an accomplishment.

An equally deflating treatment is done with the members of the Trio. In this case, however, the show seems to be fully aware of the villains being incompetent, yet makes no action towards increasing their ability. Whereas the Initiative was undercut unintentionally by plot holes and the like, the Trio is intentionally undercut multiple times at almost every opportunity. For example, they are repeatedly infantilized due to how preciously they care for their action figures (S06E09, “Smashed”) and how particular they are about the lore of a given science fiction franchise. These examples frequently come at the tail end of a dramatic scene of villainy, so any gravity they may have held in that scene is immediately deflated and destroyed. In fact, the two crimes they commit that actually impact the Scooby Gang, the murders of Katrina and Tara, were both accidental. Overall, the Trio is presented as being capable enough to be annoying but not capable enough to be dangerous on purpose. The show even explicitly acknowledges this in “Normal Again” (S06E17) when the asylum doctor of the other reality describes the Trio as a notable step down from what Buffy had faced in the past due to them being “Not gods or monsters. Just three pathetic little men who like to play with toys,” contrasting the Trio to villains of the past who were more capable, menacing, and mature. While the Initiative was meant to represent fascism, the Trio instead represents the harmful misogyny that appears in a lot of male oriented media, as well as in the real world with the so-called “Meninist” movement. With the Trio, everything from their ultimate goal of “chicks, chicks, chicks” to the creepy mind-control-rape plot that results in Katrina’s death is dripping with a sense of self superiority and imposing control on others. That is, they believe they are so above everyone else that they can and will reshape the world to their desires. And they are successful to some degree. But while the fact that they can build a freeze ray, or summon demons on command, or successfully cast a time-loop spell should cause a deal of actual concern, every time they do, they are again deflated by jokes about magic bones and the like. Considering what they are able to do with the resources they have, the Trio could be a legitimate threat at nearly the same scale as previous Big Bads if they had the been given the opportunity by the writers to live up to that role. They repeatedly refer to themselves in comparison to Bond Villains, but are never able to tonally reach that bar. By having one of the show’s purest and most direct depictions of misogyny be so uncoordinated, ineffectual, and repeatedly deflated, the show does the same to the issue of misogyny itself and sends a mixed message about how harmful the issue is.

One villain whose defeat was a notable accomplishment for Buffy and created a great deal satisfaction for the audience was her victory over Mayor Wilkins. The Mayor was both competent and prepared, and Buffy was the only one in any position to oppose him. He did oscillate between sinister demon worshiper and affably folksy backyard barbecue dad, but unlike the Trio’s repeated shifts between Bond Villain and basement dweller, the jarring contrast between the two normally unconnected personality types within the Mayor added to the his depth of character. This juxtaposition made him a deeper and more unique presence during his time on the show. Furthermore, it is made very clear that Buffy (with the help of her friends and classmates) was the only who could defeat him, and if she was not successful during their rather brief window of opportunity, that he would have succeeded in his evil plan and many lives would have been lost. That is to say, The Mayor was a worthy opponent and his defeat created a satisfying conclusion. If Mayor Wilkins is to represent The Man, and how even men who put forward a kind and affable exterior can hold sinister motives within, then Buffy’s victory is a satisfying toppling of that. He is a threat, therefore what he represents is a threat, and therefore Buffy’s victory is meaningful and empowering.

A similar case is seen with the Master. It is shown in the alternate reality that appears in “The Wish” (S03E09) that the Master would have succeeded in ruling Sunnydale, and reduced its citizens to living in fear, if Buffy and the Scoobies were not there to prevent it. In the primary reality of the show, the Master is shown to have on his side an ancient prophecy that dictates that he and Buffy will fight, that he will win, and that she will die. What the Master did not account for, and what allows Buffy the opportunity to defeat him, is that the prophecy was less complete than he thought, and did not include Buffy being revived through CPR. The Master, in this way, represents whatever destiny one may find imposed upon them, and Buffy’s victory argues that destinies can be expanded and changed.

While it is a given that all characters (villains included) ought to have flaws, and characters without flaws would result in a boring story, there must be some reasoning behind the flaws for them to maintain the suspension of disbelief in the eyes of the viewer. The flaws in the plans of the Mayor and the Master make sense within the laws and logic of the world. The Mayor briefly losing his invulnerability shortly after his transformation makes sense as a kind of side effect of the magical process. Admittedly it does not make sense in the strict, absolute sense of the phrase, but it is no more or less arbitrary than any of the other weird magical aspects depicted on the show. So it gets a pass. Similarly, it is believable that the Master, being old and supernatural and therefore more traditional compared to the modern sensibilities of the Scooby Gang, is not self aware enough to consider the possibility that the prophecy could be wrong or incomplete. Conversely, the flaws displayed by the Initiative run in stark contrast to the success they are implied to have had before they first show up on screen, and gives them the appearance of being destined for collapse. Finally, while the Trio has the potential to be a threat, they are arbitrarily deflated and undercut by nearly every character on the show. From a Doylist or non-diegetic perspective, if the show underscores the Trio as a joke, then the audience will similarly view them as a joke. While it is understandable that the writers may want to show their disapproval of topics like fascism and misogyny by having the villains who represent these concepts be shown in a bad light and therefore less deserving of victory, an excess of this reduces not only the villains themselves, but also what issues or problems they represent, causing any victory over them to ring a bit more hollow. For a show that is so often rather empowering, having these seasons end on such a hollow victory is considerably disappointing.