Horribly bored – so I’m entertaining myself with yet another monstrous post about my favorite shows. Beware this post unlike my other ones – is truly monstrous in every possible meaning of the word and is not for the easily offended or faint at heart.
(Masq – thanks for your indulgence!)
WARNING – spoilers through Season 6 of BTvs and Season 3 Ats. Very long involved, at times scholarly, essay about sado-masochism. Not a pro-ship post! If you find sado-masochism or skewering ships in any way offensive you might want to skip it. I’m not sure how appropriate it is for the board, but after seeing the 1000th thread on AR scene and the trolls, I figure what the hell. This by the way is NOT about the AR scene. Mature readers only, please. Not posting this essay to any other boards. If you want to – ask first!
Btvs and Ats quotes from Psyche Transcripts
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INTRODUCTION
I intended to make this essay about Guilt. But something else keeps erupting from my brain. Disturbing me. Not letting me alone. Like some hazy dream that you have in the early hours of the morning just before waking. “How can anyone dream or fantasize about a murderer in a sexual way? That is just sick.” Oh lord the dark things that hide within our minds. “How can anyone get off on torture? Bondage? Pain?”
So I rolled up my sleeves and did a little research on the internet.
1. SEXUAL FANTASIES & FANFIC
We are odd creatures. At times strait-laced and puritanical in our tastes and other times? Somewhat uninhibited, with odd animalistic, even primal desires. Like our forebears. Last night flipping channels – I caught a brief documentary on the History channel about cannibalism in folklore and mythology and how possibly in our collective consciousness we share a common fear or desire for this. The examples they used ranged from fairy tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel & Gretel to legends of ancient tribes who ate people. If that’s true…maybe there’s a common repressed desire for other things as well? Did you know that several of our fairy tales were erotic stories filled with S & M motifs? In the earlier versions of Sleeping Beauty – she was not awakened by true love’s kiss, she was awakened by the birth of a child. The Victorians were the ones who cleaned up the tales for kids, but if you look closely you can see some of the earlier more risqué images remain. The Vampire has always been a sexual metaphor and a violent one at that. As has the werewolf. Both creatures created as metaphors for our more primal, darker urges.
Many people on the boards cannot understand the erotic appeal of Buffy/Spike relationship. That is sick, they say. Is it? Or is it merely human nature – to be intrigued and attracted by something raw and dangerous? In the books Secret Garden and Forbidden Flowers, Nancy Friday, a licensed psychoanalyst, collects and analyses sexual fantasies from her patients and female correspondents.
Here is a quote from her book, Forbidden Flowers, p. 6: “all women have sexual fantasies, though sometimes they won’t admit it, even to themselves. Fantasies are make-believe states used to enhance reality. Her fantasy provides a safe way to explore the erotic possibilities of a situation that might be very threatening or guilt-producing if she acted it out. A fantasy can give a woman an added sense of life and all its possibilities. It is the unexamined corners of the mind that breed neurosis and fear – not the portions of ourselves that we know, recognize and accept.” She states that the most important thing to remember about fantasies is that “they are not facts, deeds, they are NOT acting out.”
When we watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer and fantasize about Angel or Spike or Drusilla – it is just that a fantasy. Spike is not real to us. As Nancy Friday states – “summoning up an image in our imagination does not mean we want to bring it into reality”. The fanfic you’ve read, be it slash, straight, S&M, whatever, is just that – someone’s fantasy. It says very little about the personal and private practices of the writer or their beliefs. Any more than a Stephen King or Thomas Harris novel says anything about the homicidal tendencies of those writers. All they are doing is sharing their opinions and fantasies of the characters with you. You get to make the choice whether or not to read them.
I think many people in our society have troubles with this idea. They believe that if you fantasize about something you will make it real – you will hunt it in your every day life. I can tell you from personal experience this is NOT always the case. Very few of us do.
So why do people online feel this desire to declare almost defensively that they would never want Spike in their house? Last time I checked Spike was a fictional character who was portrayed by a delightful actor on a TV show. Hate to tell you this – but he ain’t coming to your house, he does NOT exist. Now if you said you didn’t want someone like Charles Manson in your house or a lion from the zoo or a senile police dog – I’d agree. Me neither. Why are we condemning people for their fantasies? Or ourselves for our own? Are we afraid of looking at that dark sister or brother self that hides inside?
As Faith would say – “What are you afraid of B? Afraid you might like it?”
In BTVs and Ats the writers wickedly bring our fantasies to life and twist them into nightmares. None of the love relationships on this show are healthy or beautiful. All have some dark negative aspect to them. Some are hidden beneath layers of metaphor, others almost too real. But before we get to Btvs and Ats – a little historical perspective on S&M and what it means psychologically.
2. SADOMASOCHISM – A HISTORICAL & PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
In the 19th century, psychologist Krafft-Ebing named a deviant sexual disorder he’d discovered - sadimasochism after Sade and von Sacher-Masoch. He identified it as two distinct but related sexual anomalies in his Psychopathia Sexualis of 1885:
Sadism “is 'the experience of sexual pleasurable sensations (including orgasm) produced by acts of cruelty, bodily punishment inflicted on one's own person or when witnessed by others, be they animals or human beings...It may also consist of an innate desire to humiliate, hurt, wound or even destroy others in order thereby to create sexual pleasure in oneself.” Sadism refers to the Marquis de Sade, a novelist of the late 18th century. Sade was pre-Victorian. 120 Days of Sodom – his major work was published in 1785. He lived from 1740-1817. His novels Justine and Juliette were as much for social satire and philosophical parable as they were comments on sexual depravity and violence.
The Marquis de Sade was institutionalized for daring to write about such a topic and daring to do it in an erotic manner. Ironically, after his death, his wardens made money off of his writings. His name now is used to describe the very things he wrote about. For more information on Marquis de Sade – see the dark film Quills with Geoffrey Rush.
Masochism “was where someone 'is controlled by the idea of being completely and unconditionally subject to the will of a person of the opposite sex; of being treated by this person as by a master, humiliated and abused. This idea is coloured by lustful feeling; the masochist lives in fantasies, in which he creates situations of this kind and often attempts to realise them'.” Masochism refers to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, (1836-1895) a 19th century novelist of Venus in Furs. (This was a semi-autobiography describing the Mistress – slave relationship. The woman is the mistress, the man her sex slave – often allowing her to beat him and handcuff him, etc.) It was published in 1869. His works dealt more with flagellation, being beaten up by cruel lovers than the sexual genitalia acts described by Sade. This seemed to be the trend for pornography in the Victorian age.
Source: “Deviants Dictionary, a project that aims eventually to provide a comprehensive and interactive on-line encyclopaedic dictionary of BDSM-related terms, an 'encyclopervia' of the Net.”
Remember the dates that these two ideas were introduced. Sadism in 18th century – 1785. Masochism in the 19th century – 1880s. Also a little hint on where I’m going with this – when were our two vamps turned??? Angel in 1753 and Spike in 1880.
Freud is the psychologist who decided Sadism and Masochism were more closely linked not two separate anomalies. 'He who experiences pleasure by causing pain to others is also capable of experiencing pain in sexual relations as pleasure. A sadist is simultaneously a masochist, though either the active or the passive side of the perversion may be more strongly developed in him. ' Sigmund Freud 1938, The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, translated and edited by A A Brill, New York: Modern Library
Havelock Ellis, another psychologist, in 1940s, theorized that 'The masochist desires to experience pain, but he generally desires that it should be inflicted in love; the sadist desires to inflict pain, but in some cases, if not in most, he desires that it should be felt as love'. 'The sadist by no means wishes to exclude the victim's pleasure, and may even regard that pleasure as essential to his own satisfaction' 'Sadism and masochism may be regarded as complementary emotional states; they can not be regarded as opposed states.' Havelock Ellis 1942, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, New York: Random House.
A sadist can’t exist without the masochist and the masochist cannot exist without the sadist according to Ellis.
In Btvs and Ats – I would argue that the relationships and characters often break down along these lines. One character tends to dominate while another takes a lesser role. This often leads to what Havelock Ellis would call the S&M relationship. In Btvs/Ats this relationship is depicted as unhealthy. It is also largely depicted as unhealthy in most fan-fiction.
BTVS & ATS S&M RELATIONSHIPS & OTHER DARK SEXUAL METAPHORS
Part I: Vampires as the perfect Sadomasochists
Vampires as a group make the perfect metaphor for sadomasochism. The very act of biting a human or getting bit yourself and turned = sadomasochism. It also has that cannibalistic urge behind it – alluded to in the History Channel documentary I saw the other night. But I’m not sure I even have the stomach to analyze that one.
Bram Stoker created the dark twisted vision of the vampire as a metaphor for the repressed sexuality of his fellow Victorians. Stoker did not let his vampire become reflected in a mirror – the view was since the Victorians couldn’t handle the reflection of their dark sexual urges, the vampire, which was the epitome of those urges, should not have a reflection. Stoker’s Dracula was a sensual creation, the definition of evil, he floated into the woman’s bedchamber and seduced her with an erotic bite on the neck. In Buffy vs. Dracula – Dracula floats into Buffy’s room and enthralls her, leaving a “love bite” which she delicately hides from her human boyfriend with a scarf. This is very similar to the behavior of Stoker’s heroine Mina who similarly hides her “love bites” with scarves. In some fan-fic the vampire’s bite is on the thigh or genitalia, but the effect remains the same. In Ats – Angelus bites the gypsy girl Darla gives him on the thigh, and then bites Darla on the neck, a favor she returns as they begin to have sex. (Dear Boy).
1. BUFFY & ANGEL – Star-crossed lovers? Or Twist on Lolita?
Lolita is a book by Vladmir Nabokov, it was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick in the 1960s. The book is about a professor who becomes obsessed with his landlady’s daughter, a 14 year old named Lolita. In the movie, he first sees her sitting, with long blond pigtails, sucking a lollipop. In Becoming Part I of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Angel first sees Buffy who has just turned 15 sitting on the stairs, with long blond pigtails, sucking a lollipop. He falls in love and pursues her all the way to Sunnydale. Determined to help her. Is Lolita’s protagonist sadistic? No. He does however portray an unhealthy desire for teenagers as does Angel.
Unfortunately, helping is not enough for Angel. He also sleeps with the girl – which is the act that robs him of his soul. The metaphor is a tricky one. I sleep with the guy and he turns all evil. The ultimate nightmare. But it’s an extended metaphor – works on multiple levels and they are very clever with it – because the last thing they want to do is alienate all those teenage fans. Yet at the same time isn’t the story also the guy’s ultimate nightmare? The girl you have a crush on – prefers the older hunky college kid, senior, or teacher? You know he’s evil. So why doesn’t she? Why doesn’t she notice you? And they don’t stop there, they turn the knife one more time – Why don’t you see the pretty redhead who adores you but does have a bit of a Crush on the mysterious school librarian?
The Dark Fantasy of lusting after the teenage girl and the teenage girl lusting after the older guy is played out in Buffy/Angel. There’s nothing wrong with this fantasy. How many people have had a crush on someone older than them? David Boreanze was at least 26-27 years of age when he played the role. Yet all these teenage girls were in love with him. He was playing a 245 year old vampire. I remember having a Crush on Shawn Cassidy, Peter O’Toole, Scean Connery and Harrison Ford –with the exception of Shawn Cassidy they were my mother’s age. Buffy had a similar crush on Angel, puppy, school girl , romantic love with dire consequences.
Also let’s not forget - *cough * daddy issues * cough* - Buffy has major unresolved issues with her father. She keeps trying to resolve them by going after older men. Older men that inadvertently hurt her. If you think about it every guy she’s been sexually involved with has been older than her and they all without exception have left or rejected her. A psychologist might argue that she seeks this out, replaying subconsciously her father’s rejection over and over again until she can somehow come to terms with it. Her sexual relationship with Angel while appearing nice and puppyish on the surface is actually rather dark – they can’t consummate their love without him turning evil. When they do consummate it in Surprise, he turns nasty and literally insults her performance and degrades her. For a while in Season 3, they go back to the puppy platonic romance, but this is equally painful and at times sadistic – In Enemies, he pretends to beat her up and brutally kisses Faith to lure Faith into giving herself away. In Prom – he agrees to go to the prom, then turns her down, breaks up with her, then shows up again. When he becomes human and they consummate their love in I Will Always Remember You – Angel takes off the next morning, leaving Buffy alone in bed to fight the big evil alone. Ignoring the fact that she is actually more physically equipped to do it. When he discovers he cannot fight the big evil without being fatally injured, he nobly decides to turn back time, effectively erasing their time together from everyone’s memories but his. Once again “daddy” is making the decision to leave for “Buffy’s” own good, she does not get a voice in the decision. This behavior continues until Buffy and Angel part ways for good – a scene that occurs off stage in Season 6.
As Angelus – Angel plays the role of sadist with Buffy. He tells Dru and Spike in Innocence that he wants some time with the slayer – he doesn’t just want to kill her, he wants to torture her. Emotionally. Mentally. And Physically. Dru hisses that he wants to do to Buffy what he once did to her. In later episodes, we see Angelus attempting to accomplish this task. He stalks her, leaves little gifts for her. Dark gifts. He threatens her friends. Kills her favorite teacher – Jenny Calendar. (Passion) Attempts to kill her friends. Attempts to torture or kill her. Engages in nasty word play contests with her. (IOHEFY, Killed BY Death, Becoming Part I) Captures her mentor, Giles, and tortures him. (Becoming Part II) Spike doesn’t understand this. Why not just kill her? Spike as is made clear in What’s My Line Part II – isn’t really much for the pre-show. Sadism doesn’t appear to be his thing. Dru on the other hand totally gets it – Drusilla prefers to torture things and to receive torture.
2. ANGELUS & DARLA AND DRU, & SPIKE –The Sadomasochist Family
If any metaphor screams S & M it is the vampire. Think about it for a minute. A sadist gets pleasure from causing pain. A masochist gets pleasure from enduring pain. The vampire gets pleasure from all the things we aren’t supposed to like, the unhealthy, repressed, demon part of our psyche. I remember a friend of mine got into an email discussion about S&M and finally backed off – stating fairly clearly that she sooo did not want to go there. Most (not all) sadomasochistic relationships end badly. These aren’t healthy relationships and can quickly devolve into something real reminiscent of what happened in Reprise in Ats, Seeing Red, or even Crush. As Drusilla states about vampires – Btvs & Ats’s metaphor for sadomasochists or sexual deviants – “we can love quite well just not very wisely.” (Crush Season 5, Btvs).
(Brief aside: The problem with S&M in our society – a problem that Ann Rice hints at in her Interview with the Vampire series – is it is often, inaccurately, identified with homosexuality. Hate to break this to you but Heterosexuals do S&M as often as homosexuals do. Nor are most homosexuals or gay couples into this practice. Unfortunately media has given us a negative impression of S&M and identified it with homosexuality. I recently got into a heated argument with a friend of mine regarding this issue and was unable to convince her that I knew for a fact that homosexuals often had long-lasting healthy relationships that did not involve S&M. Just as there were healthy long-lasting relationships that did involve it. Judging what others do in the privacy of their bedroom is never a good thing. What I admire about Whedon’s exploration of this topic is that he did not give it the cliché homosexual vampire slant. He avoided it. Even though the slash fiction writers go there all the time. Most of the slash writers by the way are woman writing about men, not unlike Ann Rice. Their fiction often details practices that they are unfamiliar with and are nothing more than fantasies. Remember what Nancy Friday said – having a fantasy does not make it real. While Whedon has no trouble exploring S&M’s dark side, he does not do it through homosexual relationships, say what you will about Tara and Willow – their relationship was not sadomasochistic. Unhealthy? Yes. But not in that way. Just as not all S&M is unhealthy, not all unhealthy relationships are S&M.)
Angel was heavy into S&M. We see it first in What’s My Line Part II where Dru gets off on torturing Angel and Angel taunts Spike with their erotic fun. Spike isn’t really into torture, unless of course he’s being the one tortured. Spike isn’t a sadist as much as a masochist from what I’ve seen on the show. Not that it matters. Vampires by their very nature are a little bit of both.
Spike the masochist. I do not know how much research the writers did on the Victorian era, but from what I’ve read – Victorians favorite form of sexual deviance was “masochism”. They were somewhat repressed sexually. The male as redcat describes in a very good post several archives back, neurasthenic male rather – was portrayed as weak in the 19th century. Loving poetry. The Mama’s boy. In the pornography of the era, masochism was in. In fact Masochism takes its name from the 19th century writer -Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
People have argued that Spike is more like the Marquis de Sade. I beg to differ. The show provides us a massive amount of evidence showing Spike to be more like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. In Smashed – Buffy accuses Spike of being in love with her because he is “in love with pain.” “You only love me, because you like to be beaten down. Whose the sick one in this relationship?” She screams this at him between punches. To which he smartly replies: “Hello Vampire! I’m supposed to be treading on the dark side.” In their relationship – Buffy is the Mistress of Pain and Spike the Sex Slave. (More on the twists and turns of this baby later.) Earlier in What’s My Line – we’re told that Spike isn’t much into torture but it is Drusilla’s thing. Angel even suggests that this may be the problem Spike has with Drusilla. He can’t keep her satisfied like the sadist Angelus could. We see much later how true this is in Innocence through Becoming Part II.
Later in Lover’s Walk – Spike claims Dru left him because he wasn’t evil enough for her. And maybe she’ll take him back if he chains her up and tortures her. People read this as evidence that Spike was a sadistic fiend, well yeah – but he’s talking about Drusilla.
Drusilla clearly wasn’t happy with anything less. In What’s My Line – she mentions missing the branding iron Spike had in Prague. In Lie to Me – she misses leeches.
Drusilla is a true sadomasochist. She likes inflicting pain and enduring it. Spike seems less into it for some reason. Something the writers capitalize on in later episodes showing the eventual rift between Spike and Dru. I’m not saying he isn’t sadomasochistic in his own right, he is. Just leans more to the masochistic side than the sadistic.
Angelus is the poster child for sadism. When Spike in FFL’s flashbacks suggests fists and fangs, Angelus would prefer artistry, slow torture. In Dear Boy and other ATS flashbacks, we see Angelus slowly torturing Drusilla. When Darla asks when he plans on killing her, Angelus mentions that he’d rather turn her, killing her would just end her torment. In the background we see an insane human Dru struggling to deal with the two vampires in front of her. Later, when Darla brings Angelus the gypsey girl, Angelus and Darla bite each other while having sex – clearly enjoying the pain and pleasure. Finally in Revelations – Giles tells Buffy that Angelus tortured him for hours for his own pleasure, a scene we watched a portion of in Becoming Part II. And in Ats Sleep Tight as well as a few other interesting episodes, Angel states that he can keep someone alive indefinitely with blood transfusions – an eternity of torture. He threatens Lilah with this type of torture in Sleep Tight and with another type of torture in Blood Money.
Darla is also a sadist. She enjoys torturing her victims. In her relationship with Lindsey in ATS – we see an insane now human Darla come onto the human lawyer Lindsey, he’s turned on until she bites him. Even human, part of Darla gets off on inflicting pain. As a vampire she enjoys being on the receiving end. Angelus appears to prefer inflicting pain to enduring it. Both as ensouled and without a soul. We see him get off on torturing Linwood in The Price (Season 3) and enjoy burning Darla and Drusilla (Season 2 Ats). Not that he minds enduring the torture that much. When captured by Holtz in one of the flashbacks, he pretty much states – “torturing me isn’t all that effective, vampire.”
When we see flashbacks of these characters – we are made increasingly aware of their dark sexual activities, their deviant ways. The vampire, Btvs and Ats tells us is a twisted version of the human. Therefore, the vampire will enjoy sex in a deviant twisted manner.
3. SPIKE & BUFFY: The MISTRESS & SERVANT Relationship
The Spuffy relationship reminds me of the description of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s novel Venus in Furs. When Spike first states that he is in love with Buffy, no one can quite believe it. What does he see in her? All she does is beat him up. Well, duh.
Let’s look at the relationships that work for Spike – Drusilla, she was a tad sadistic, while we seldom saw it we can assume she enjoyed torturing and controlling him, playing dark mummy to her sweet dark knight.
Harmony on the other hand was a problem. Harmony is also a masochist. Two masochists aren’t really conducive to a relationship. It worked for a little while – Spike got to take out his fury towards losing Dru, being dumped, getting a chip, out on Harmony. Then he just got annoyed. There was no love in their interaction. The sadism as Havelock Ellis theorized isn’t really much more than cruelty without love attached. Most sadomasochists don’t get much out of torturing someone who doesn’t enjoy the torture. Spike was just cruel to her, not sadistic so much as plain mean. Saw her as an object. An annoying object. He actually had more affection for the Buffbot than Harmony.
In his relationship with Buffbot, it has been noted that he was practicing being with a human. Possibly. I think he wanted someone who would fight him, beat him down, then have sex. The Buffbot does fight him. Flings him across the room then pounces. Not unlike Buffy does in Smashed.
In interviews, Joss stated he wanted to explore Buffy’s dark side in Season 6. So Buffy was the sadist and Spike was the masochist in most of the scenes. What about the Bronze scene in Dead Things? Was that really sadomasochism? Not sure. It does appear they flipped roles there. Also what about the fact he handcuffs her in Dead Things? Again a flip? Perhaps they played both roles? Havelock Ellis and Freud both comment on how sadism and masochism isn’t easily separated. The people involved may in fact enjoy playing both roles. But from the episodes Smashed through Dead Things, I was under the impression that Buffy was the one in control here. In Normal Again, Spike even confesses that she has “turned him into her sodding sex slave.” In Gone, he barely is able to throw her out and only succeeds in doing so after she’s had her invisible way with him. And in AYW, she uses him for sex, beats him up, humiliates and breaks up with him – telling him that she is only using him. She seems to hold the reins and certainly is the one doing the bashing. It’s not until Seeing Red’s infamous attempted rape scene that we see Spike being violent back.
Seeing Red may be the writer’s attempt to comment on the negative repercussions of an S&M relationship. Or at least one writer’s personal experience of the repercussions of this type of relationship.( If so, it was an extraordinarily brave thing to do and as others have stated possibly a huge miscalculation. BTVS being a horror show – there was no other possible conclusion, he’d either bite her or try to force himself on her once she spurned him. I would have preferred the metaphorical biting for reasons stated in the archives, but it’s done, willing to see where they go with it.) In Seeing Red – Spike tells Buffy that he wants to make her feel it, like she did before. Their relationship has always been violent. They both get turned on by the violence. Buffy realized this long ago in Bad Girls with Faith. “Come on, don’t tell me you don’t get off on it?” Faith states. Then later in Where the Wild Things Are – the writers make an obvious parallel between Buffy and Riley fighting demons and having sex. Spike alludes to this tendency in Fool For Love and in OMWF – “We’ve always been dancing” in FFL and “You have thoughts you’ll misbehave, Be your willing slave” in OMWF. In fact Buffy herself questions her attraction to their violent sex in Dead Things : “Why do I feel this way? Why do I let Spike do these things to me?” “Why can Spike hurt me?” and “The only time I feel…anything is when I’m with him.” Unfortunately violent sex can lead to unsafe situations. While Buffy admits she can never fully trust Spike enough to love him, she must trust him a little or she would never have entered into an S&M relationship with him. S&M requires an element of trust.
Trust. The difference between healthy and unhealthy S&M relationships is just that trust and consent. If the couple has a group of safe words and does explicitly trust one another – than S&M can be a deviant but fairly healthy sexual practice. If however there is little to trust in the relationship – if it is a love/hate relationship based purely on sex, then S&M is not only unhealthy – it can be quite dangerous. This is the relationship Spike and Buffy are in. Spike trusts Buffy not to stake him, but should he? We are given reasons why he shouldn’t in both Dead Things – her dream sequence and the alley scene, and in AYW where she uses him for sex and does consider letting her ex kill him. Buffy trusts Spike not to hurt her or any of her friends, she believes she can control him and he’s too incompetent to hurt anyone with the chip in place. Should she? She doesn’t really know what he is or isn’t willing to do. In Smashed he tries to kill the girl, yeah he hesitated, but he still did it, the chip was the only thing that stopped him. In AYW he is dealing demon eggs, yeah the episode is poorly written but that was the intent. She realizes in AYW that trusting him is not a good idea. Spike on the other hand never gets the whole trust thing, which is partly why the attempted rape happens. In S&M it is imperative that both parties not only trust one another but understand what trust means and know when “no” means “no”. Because in S&M – there are situations where “no” may actually mean “yes” as well as one’s where it means “no”..
Spike was clearly out of line in SR, I’m sure he’d be the first to admit it, but by entering into a sadomasochistic relationship with a vampire who could hurt her – Buffy was setting herself up for a fall. As Spike states in Smashed: “Hello? Vampire. I’m supposed to be treading on the dark side. What’s your excuse?” It’s a bit like playing with fire – sooner or later, you will be burned. This in a nutshell is the danger of S&M. It could very likely lead to a situation you can’t get out of. Buffy is right when she tells him – “I should have stopped you long ago.” Actually Buff, you shouldn’t have let him in. You initiated things honey. Don’t believe me? Ask yourself who kissed who in OMWF, TR and Smashed. And who unzipped who’s zipper? (Do not misunderstand me I am not in any way condoning Spike’s actions – I’m just saying, get in a cage with a cheetah, even a muzzled one? Don’t be surprised if you get bit. And that in a nutshell is one of the many reasons why I HATE that scene.)
Not all S&M leads in this direction. If you’re dealing with someone who isn’t a demon or caged animal, it may actually not get all that dangerous. Control is very important. But do beware of the dangers involved particularly if the relationship outside of the sex is an unhealthy one and to quote James Marsters : “Can you really think of anything remotely healthy about that relationship for either character that you would wish on your best friend?” (see www.bloodyawfulpoet.com, Shore Leave Transcripts). Outside of the Incredible Sex? Think about it. They didn’t talk. She beat him up most of the time. He made snarky comments that embarrassed her. He couldn’t hang out with her friends. She couldn’t hang out with his. (They tried, Life Serial’s card game and OAFA’s birthday party. He ironically did a better job of it.) They hated what each other stood for and resented having to sink to each other’s level. In Tabula Rasa – he’s running from a loan shark and brings the loan shark down on Buffy and her friends. In Smashed, Buffy beats him up and calls him an evil soulless thing. When he discovers he can hit people he goes off to bite one and is horribly disappointed when he can’t. In Wrecked he smugly tells her that she will crave him. She tells him he’s disgusting and convienent. In Gone she invades his crypt and manhandles him before telling him who she is. In Dead Things, he seduces her on the platform in the Bronze and suggests she can only be happy in the darkness with him. Nothing healthy about it. OTOH of all of Buffy’s relationships – Spike actually seemed to understand her. He accepted her darkness even encouraged it. Quite the reverse of Angel and Riley. Wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t been a demon? If he had a soul? Would it have worked? Will never know.
4. RILEY and THE VAMP TRULLS = Feeling Needed
Riley is a lot like Spike in the sense that he truly is a masochist. In Season 5, part of Riley’s difficulty with Buffy is that once his super-powers are removed he can no longer keep up with her. She can as Spike would put it “bruise him”.
Buffy, worried about hurting Riley, apparently starts pulling back. In their sex scenes at the beginning of Season 5, The Real ME, OOMM, Riley is almost competing with her in bed, seeing who can keep going the longest. Then after the chip is removed, we start seeing her make comments like: “yes that was relaxing” before turning over on her side, away from him. She treats him a bit like a reliable puppy dog. Riley craves passion.
So Riley goes to the vamp trulls. The first of these he meets in Willy’s bar, while nursing a drink. He’s just heard from Dawn how upset and traumatized Angel always made Buffy feel, while Buffy feels comfortable and casual around him (Shadow). Feeling unneeded, he goes to the bar and Sandy, the vampire that VampWillow turns, comes on to him. He lets her bite him right before staking her. His comment – “sorry this will never work, I know you only want me for my body.” But as he later tells Buffy in Into The Woods – at least they want me.
For Riley – the pain is a demonstration of being wanted. He wants to feel something. In Season 5, Riley is depressed, he feels useless, every thing has become meaningless. His friends tell him that he has become nothing more than “true love’s mission”. “You used to have a mission, Riley. Now what are you? The mission’s true love?” (Season 5, Btvs)
Riley is a lot like Buffy in Season 6, craving something but uncertain what it is. Have you ever craved something? You try ice cream, you try television, you try everything, but nothing fulfills your need? That’s what happened to these two people. First with Riley in Season 5 then later with Buffy in Season 6. They both wanted to feel something other than just being numb of being a waste of space. So Riley goes to the vamp trulls. When they bite him, he feels their need, he feels that he has a purpose, that somehow he is sustaining someone. And the pain? It makes him feel alive. Bit like asking someone to pinch you.
The masochist may often need someone to pinch them. They desire pain to feel alive. To feel love. To feel needed. Some masochists can’t experience an orgasm without pain. In Btvs – this type of pain is shown as unhealthy. As Giles states – it is an ambiguous evil, the vamp trulls, and usually harmless, but it can get dangerous if one of the trulls loses control and takes more than they should. Riley is so far gone, he doesn’t care, begging the trull to bite harder. When Buffy finds him – he’s in what appears to be a dope den, surrounded by thin husks of vampires and their patrons. The vampires get off on the blood, the patrons on the sensation their sucking provides them. The perfect S&M metaphor. A consensual relationship with mutual needs met.
When Buffy confronts him on this – he tells her he just wanted to understand what the appeal was, why she preferred Angel, even possibly Dracula to him. She denies this. But he senses what Spike early states – she requires a bit more monster than he can give her. She requires the adrenaline of the danger, the sadist in her man. Oddly enough of the rejections Buffy has suffered – Riley’s is the most similar to her father’s. Riley appears to leave for the same reasons she feels her father left – because she couldn’t satisfy his needs, wasn’t what he wanted, was too “primal” for him.
5. VAMPWILLOW - The Sadist
While an argument can be made that Angelus, Spike and the other vampires are mostly sadomasochists, VampWillow is pure sadist. The sadist gets off on torturing others.
Vamp Willow is Willow’s vampire self. In Buffyverse the vampire is a twisted version of the human. The human’s deepest and darkest desires are reflected in the vampire’s persona. Willow clearly has a desire to inflict torture on those who once tortured her. We see this desire occasionally jump to the forefront of her mind. In Earshot, she gets off on her interrogation of Jonathan. And in some of the earlier episodes of Season 6, doped up on magic, she tortures the denizens of the Bronze. (Smashed, ALL THE WAY). What holds Willow back is her conscience, her soul. Guilt. The magic washes the guilt away when she becomes DarkWillow allowing her to torture Warren in Villains, Rack in Two to Go, and Giles in Grave.
Before we ever meet DarkWillow – we meet VampWillow – in The Wish and in Dopplegangerland. In The Wish, VampWillow gets a great deal of enjoyment out of torturing a chained up Angel, flinging burning matches on his chest. Later in Dopplegangerland we watch her break the Mayor’s minions fingers and bite poor Sandy in the Bronze. When she refers to her world – the Alternate Universe of the Wish – she says - “we could ride people like ponies”.
VampWillow does not require the other person to enjoy the torture she dishes out. Actually she seems to prefer it if they don’t. This is a sadistic personality. Very different than the sadomasochist, who gets off when they do enjoy it. In comparison Spike is more of a sadomasochist in Seasons 5 and 6. Not a sadist. VampWillow, however, is a sadist in the truest sense of the word.
Vampires in conclusion have been used effectively by BTVS and ATS to demonstrate the unhealthy aspects of sadomasochism. Of addictive love or self-centered immature love. When two people don’t so much love each other as crave one another. The type of love that is a fire in the blood. S&M often is the unhealthy result of that type of love at least in the troubled world of BTVS.
END OF PART I.
Looking forward to your comments as always.
;-) shadowkat
