#btvs analysis

The American military and the American nuclear family demonstrate a shared power structure, something which is highlighted within Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The nuclear family is a familial system consisting of one father, one mother, and at least one child—individuals under it are expected to adhere to strict gender ideals. Within this structure, parents control the freedoms, rights, actions, and quality of life of their children and their children's lives. Members of the US military sign ownership of their bodies to the government until they either complete their enlistment or die. It is viewed as a betrayal to depart from either system, and individuals who do so are punished. Xander and Riley exemplify these systems.  

The military itself is regarded as a representation of masculinity, glorified as exhibiting all of the masculine ideals, such as bravery, strength, perseverance, and resolve. The narrative highlights this through various scenes and details, such as the Initiative consisting primarily of male soldiers. The typical American nuclear family is itself a World War II construct, created to forge soldiers for the war. Within this structure, the ideal soldier was not created to be the ideal man; the ideal man was created to be the ideal soldier. 

 Xander’s insecurities lead him to romanticize this ideal, often attempting to embody it. Xander’s glorification of the military is first seen in 2x06, where he chooses to become a soldier for Halloween.

He dons the costume of masculine idealism and ultimately becomes a projection of it through Ethan Rayne’s spell. This idolization is seen once more in 4x22, where Xander chooses Apocalypse Now for his movie night with Buffy, Willow, and Giles. The spell which exhausted them in 4x21 used Xander as a metaphorical heart, and within 4x22, the First Slayer attempts to rip his heart out in vengeance. This draws not only a parallel to Riley’s heart surgery, but to the aforementioned film. Notably, Apocalypse Now is inspired by the novel Heart of Darkness and the documentary following the creation of the film is titled Hearts of Darkness. These connections function to signal Xander’s connection and attitudes towards the military, and masculinity overall. 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer purposefully emphasizes the military’s symbolism and the similarities between these structures to criticize them and the ideals which they uphold. 

The soldiers of the Initiative are military property and share a sense of familial kinship. Riley, for instance, is both a child of Walsh and a soldier under her. In 4x14, Adam claims that "[Riley] and [he] were [Walsh’s] favourite children.” Adam then claims this makes them brothers, the same term that Riley had previously used to refer to his fellow soldiers. 

It is repeatedly highlighted that Walsh shaped Riley to her own ideals—this is both a representation of this power structure and an illustration of how masculinity within the nuclear family functions. The child is defined by their parents, by what is asked of them rather than by what they are. Adam explains in 4x14 that Walsh is Riley’s mother because she "shaped his basic operating system.” In this, he refers to Riley’s behaviours, desires, thoughts, feelings, and actions. Riley is made into a mirror of his metaphorical mother’s desire, rather than of his own desires. He is shaped by his parent; he is the perfect obedient child. Crucially, he does not possess desires of his own, since the ideals of masculinity and soldiership programmed into him have become entwined with his own sense of self. Riley states that he is, “how they trained [him],” and that, “All [his] life, it’s what [he’d] been groomed to do.” 

Not only is he partially aware of his own programming, despite denying it to Adam, but he also directly acknowledges the predatory nature of the Initiative in referring to their behaviour as grooming. Spike notes the same factors, saying in 5x01 that "You can take the boy out of the Initiative, but you can’t take the Initiative out of the boy.” In this, it is acknowledged that even outside of the environment that programmed him, the desires and ideals which it gave him cannot be removed. These desires are a form of parasite, and this implanted drive to masculinity can be seen both explicitly through his behaviours, and implicitly through certain dialogues and allegories.

 (Notably, in regard to Riley’s desires, the ball is used as a motif representing masculinity on at least two occasions. In various episodes, a poster can be seen on his wall with pictures of various sports balls; under it is the caption "Balls. Too bad there’s only two that matter.” Within their universe, this is likely a simple joke about testicles. However, balls are viewed as a symbol of bravery and strength—if a man is cowardly, he is told he needs to “grow some balls.” They are an undoubtedly masculine symbol. To the audience, this asserts that to Riley, masculinity is all that matters. In one particular scene in 4x11, Riley fails to throw a ball into the net above his door, just as Buffy comes in. Again, later in 5x01, a ball “fails” in Buffy’s presence, when she throws one to him so hard it deflates—representing his emasculation. The ball’s “failure” is his own perceived failure. Additionally, the “failure” of Buffy to conform to the nuclear family’s ideals of feminine weakness is the ultimate block in their relationship and the ultimate cause of Riley’s dissatisfaction. The ball is a symbol of masculinity, and it cannot survive the presence of a strong woman.)

As previously mentioned, within the nuclear family, gender ideals are carved into children from birth. Both children and soldiers are conditioned to obey unconditionally. This programming is inherently a violation of the individual's body and mind—something heavily emphasized through Xander and Riley’s military training. In 2x06, Xander is forcibly transformed into his Halloween costume, making him a soldier (a “real man”) against his will. In Xander’s nightmare in 4x22, he runs from his father knocking at the basement door. Riley explicitly states that he was groomed into his behaviour from birth.

To both of them, the most fearful and powerful thing is a parent. They are programmed to fear. Later, Riley is revealed to have a behaviour modification chip implanted within him, extending the concept of his programming from metaphorical to literal. Through their stories, the hypocrisy of masculinity can clearly be seen. To be masculine is to be strong, yet, to be masculine is also to be violated internally by society. 

However, while Riley possesses partial awareness of his own programming, he still denies its existence. In response to Adam’s assertion about his programming, he responds, “I cannot be programmed, I’m a man.” While in the context of Adam’s monster, human, and technological lineage, it may seem that Riley simply refers to his own humanity, this can also be interpreted as a claim about masculinity. In it, he says that it is because he is a man that he cannot be programmed. This asserts that masculinity is inalterable, unchanging. There lies another paradox of masculinity—it is both programmed and unyielding. It is meant to be strong, but it stems from the weakness of being carved into the ideal of someone other than yourself.

Masculine ideals are enforced not only through military ideals and familial power structures but also through society, the self, and the subconscious. The idea of self-objectification and self-voyeurism  is represented in Xander’s story through his dream in 4x22. Within it, one scene features two Xanders—Xander at the playground, talking and moving, and Xander at the ice cream truck, watching himself. The Xander within the ice cream truck does not move until the other Xander leaves, because the one within the truck represents ‘the self’ as a passive observer. Xander watches over himself within his own mind, forcing himself consciously and unconsciously to conform to societal ideals of masculinity.

(Riley is also observed, not by himself, but by society—as represented by the camera Walsh hid within his room. This camera additionally functions as another symbol of the child’s lack of autonomy under the nuclear family, just like the absence of a lock on Xander’s basement door.)

This performance of gendered ideals is emphasized once more in the dream, when Xander reenacts the film Apocalypse Now as the soldier. In this section of the dream, Snyder insists to him that he is not a soldier. The performance signifies both the performance of masculinity and the falseness of that act, connecting thematically to his Halloween costume in 2x06. Like many men, Xander imitates the ideal he cannot reach. 

Riley is a perfect representation of the nuclear family and the American dream. His backstory emphasizes this—born and raised in Iowa, living in a rural setting, visiting his grandparents' farm every Thanksgiving. The vision of his childhood is purposefully idealistic, Riley himself likening it to a “Grant Wood painting.”

(Notably, the painter Grant Wood participated in various art movements, including the American Regionalist movement, which arose as a response to the Great Depression. The movement has been described as conservative and traditionalist, similar to the ideals of masculinity derived from the nuclear family.)

This comparison is not the only time in which the idealistic nature of his past is intentionally emphasized within the narrative. Upon discovering his employment at the Initiative, Buffy asks if anything he told her about his past was even “real.” Within their universe, she refers to the prospect of him living under a false identity. However, on a meta level, this refers to the unreal nature of the masculine ideal. If Riley represents an impossible ideal, he himself cannot be possible.

The parallels drawn between Xander and Riley highlight their differences in relation to the masculine ideal—Xander is an imitation of the unattainable ideal, and Riley is a representation of that. In Xander’s dream (4x22), he pictures himself as the soldier from Apocalypse Now, a thing that becomes more relevant in 5x10 when Riley is dispatched to the jungle, much like the soldier from that film. Xander does not simply envy Riley; he wants to become him—because Riley is both more than and less than a person or a character. He is an ideal; to Xander, Riley is the dream that he cannot obtain. He takes Buffy’s criticism of Riley in 5x10 as personal criticism, because it questions his own desires and values. To criticize Riley is to criticize him, his ideals, and all that he has been taught. To criticize Riley is to criticize the construct of the ideal man. He projects onto this ideal and glorifies it to the greatest degree—despite knowing that he has not become, and cannot become, the embodiment of it. While Xander is a false soldier, taught the military way by Ethan’s spell, Riley is a real soldier, programmed by his ‘mother.’ If the ideal is not satisfactory, how can he, who is not ideal, be deemed satisfactory? 

Riley’s status as a representation of masculinity entails that he cannot stay within the narrative longterm. In a way, he is not a “true” character. Regardless of his changing morals and brief dreams of anarchism, Riley returns to that which he has lived in, falling back to his military patterns and masculine ideals when his relationship with Buffy deteriorates. He cannot escape his conditioning, and thus, he cannot escape the ideal he embodies. His departure in 5x10 is necessitated by his return to comfort. His brief visit in 6x15 demonstrates the continuation of this false ideal; he obtains a beautiful wife, and he continues his career in the military.

His and his wife’s exit in 6x15 is fast and almost fantastical, as they climb the ladder to their helicopter together. His return is brief, only necessary to showcase a quick vision of an impossible dream. Xander showcases the reality of that dream, suffering what can only be described as a “nuclear meltdown” when a demon forces him to confront his hidden fears the day of his wedding. Riley represents the unattainable masculine ideal, and Xander represents those who chase it—both characters functioning to tell the audience of the impossibility of the nuclear family's ideals. 

There have already been numerous instances, before Restless aired, wherein the show has deliberately drawn several parallels between Buffy (The Slayer) and Christ (The Savior). Buffy actively fights against the forces of Evil - vampires and demons which, under strict religious lens, could be interpreted as the embodiments of Sin, conceived as a kind of plague capable of multiplying and corrupting the Earth. She does that by wielding tools and objects whose conceptual implications frequently refer to Christian iconography or tradition (wooden or silver crosses, holy water, etc.). Under this framework of analysis, Buffy is exceptional as The Chosen One whose explicit role lies in eradicating Sin, or preventing it from spreading all over the world and conquering it. This state of affairs puts her above all the other human beings because of a string of specific characteristics which steam from that role (in her case, superpowers) in a not-so-different way than how all of this works for Christ Himself who, according to the Bible, descended on Earth with the specific intent to purify the planet and, as The Chosen One (The Son Of God), can likewise claim a wide range of characteristics other people don't possess - specifically, immunity from the Original Sin.

The religious allegory comes under intense narrative focus particularly during Prophecy Girl (S1E12). The Master, who is confined underground, symbolizes the Original Sin. The Anointed One, who is destined to lead the Slayer (Savior) towards the Original Sin, embodies the Serpent whose corruptive action condemns humanity as a whole to be excluded from Eden. In this circumstance, Buffy is wearing a white dress whose purpose is to suggest both her state of purity (defined as the absence of Sin) and her preparatory phase of pre-baptismal existence. White is also the color of God's Lamb, which is a direct reference to Christ. The moment when the Master bites Buffy and a solitary tear runs down her left cheek explicitly conjures the image of both the specific salvific action aimed at absorbing the Original Sin (the tear as the emblematic representation of the experience of the world's evils) and the potential consequence of Eden being corrupted through the alteration of a condition of untouched purity (picking the apple from the Forbidden Tree). The Master is therefore able to leave his underground prison and invade the outside world ("My world, my beautiful world!"), symbolizing the creation and spread of the Original Sin and the trasformation of Eden, which goes from being a terrestrial Paradise to a corrupted world where men and women are no longer "side by side with God", but have now to deal with Death and Sin.

What truly makes a difference, though, is that Buffy's decision to "pick the apple" doesn't originate from her insubordination against God's will (unlike that of Adam and Eve), but from her acceptance of God's own plan, once we take into account the Prophecy claiming that the Slayer will die while facing the Master as being metaphorically representative of God's Word. Buffy ultimately agrees on being guided to the Master's lair (and therefore, to the Original Sin) because that's what God intended for her, and it's precisely because of her acceptance of her own mortality and of the need to self-sacrifice that she's able to remain uncorrupted by Sin. Unlike Adam and Eve, she doesn't disobey God - she doesn't turn her back from her destiny, but she faces it head-on, knowing full well that her death, aimed at safeguarding the rest of humanity from Sin, is a salvific act on her part. Like Christ, she accepts to sacrifice herself for humanity as decreed by God's Word. She doesn't head towards the Original Sin because she's being seduced by her own curiosity, or because she possesses the kind of hubris or arrogance that can lead her to think that she might overpower the Master. She heads towards the Original Sin because of a deep-seated sense of duty, sacrifice and acceptance of what was prophesized about her. It's therefore not accidental that the Original Sin leads her to fall into a puddle of water. The idea of the puddle of water as a baptismal font is visually suggested by the scene, wherein a still pure and uncorrupted (white-dressed) Buffy undergoes a kind of baptism comparable to the one Christ received from John the Baptist.

While watching Restless we most definitely learn that Xander symbolically represents Buffy's Heart. This newly gained bit of knowledge allows us to retroactively interpret this scene as featuring a "resurrection" process that Buffy is able to go through specifically because of the purity of her Heart - which is not that different from what constitutes the reason behind Christ's own resurrection. At the same time, the scene also suggests the occurrence of a kind of Baptism: Buffy experiences a rebirth from the water and resurfaces stronger than before ("I feel strong. I feel different."). It's the purity of her Heart, which cannot be fazed or touched by the Original Sin, that allows her to re-emerge. The secondary presence of Angel in this scene (in its literal meaning of "angel" as in, God's emissary) implicitly recalls the fall of the Holy Spirit in front of The Christ right after his own baptism.

So, the show openly nurtures an allegorical interpretation that puts Buffy and Christ as comparable, parallel figures, and this same parallelism comes back in Restless, albeit in alternative ways.

In Willow's dream, wherein we definitely discover that she represents Buffy's Spirit (as in Pneuma, or the "vital breath" that animates the Body), this same parallelism is introduced once again by drawing an explicit link to S1. I know it's been talked at length about how Willow's role, specifically during S1, vastly lies in triggering Buffy's emotional catalysis. It's the circumstance of Willow suddenly finding herself in danger that ultimately leads Buffy to discard the idea of turning her back from her Call during Welcome To The Hellmouth (S1E1), and it's Willow's own trauma in Prophecy Girl (S1E12) that ultimately defines Buffy's choice to radically accept her destiny. Willow is the Spirit whose task is to vitalize Buffy-The-Entity and to set a specific course of action in motion for the Body to act and operate from. It's therefore not at all surprising that the first instance of comparison between Buffy and Christ steams from Willow herself in this episode. At first, we are led once again - following S3's footsteps - to view a feline (specifically, a cat) as a personification of The Slayer - Miss Kitty Fantastico, Willow and Tara's own pet, takes the symbolic role of The First Slayer in the first stage of the dream, stalking towards the camera with an explicit predatory vibe that makes the attitude of the cat look more like that of a panther, or a lion cub even. But it's only by the end of Willow's dream sequence that the religious allegory takes explicit form. Willow, wearing a carbon-copy of the dress we were introduced to her with during Welcome To The Hellmouth (S1E1), announces that she spent her summer reading C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe" (1950), and mentions that the novel deals with a lot of important themes. Of course, the most important theme lies in the Christian interpretation: Aslan - other than being a huge predatory feline (lion), also another representation of The Savior, tying the three characters (Buffy, Christ and Aslan) together in a thematically clear thread - sacrifices himself on a stone table in order to grant Edmund Pevensie atonement for his Sins, and comes back to life one day later, in a not-so-different dynamic than the one Buffy herself went through after confronting the Master. But the Willow we see now, coming right off the pilot of the show, is way too premature in presenting Buffy with this particular role: as proof of that, we see Xander (Buffy's Heart) channeling the same reticence and opposition that Buffy herself had towards her own Call during that same episode ("Who cares?!"), and Buffy herself is shown steadily holding a vacuous, detached expression while her own Spirit gets ferociously assaulted. Buffy is Aslan, but she's not ready to recognize it yet.

In Xander's dream - wherein, as I've already said, we learn that he represents Buffy's Heart - the parallelism between Buffy and Aslan is evoked once again during the scene when Principal Snyder appears. That scene is susceptible to different interpretations depending on how exactly we evaluate Xander in that moment - if we consider Xander as an independent character who's undergoing self-exploration in his own narrative, or if we take him as a symbolic embodiment of a specific role he plays in constituting Buffy-The-Entity. In the latter case, where Xander is the Heart, Principal Snyder represents the First Slayer. The parallelism becomes apparent as soon as Snyder refers to Xander as a "whipping boy, raised by mongrels and set on a sacrificial stone". Historically, a "whipping boy" is a (usually male) slave or individual without choice whose role involves undergoing corporal punishments on behalf of a prince or a nobleman he belongs to. Presently, the term is broadly used to refer to anyone who finds themselves having to pay or suffer consequences for the choices or actions of someone else, or anyone who is stuck in the position of having to sacrifice themselves on behalf of others. The explicit reference is to Buffy's own pre-acceptance phase, wherein her Heart has not yet come to terms with the fact that having to surrender her own life to save all humanity is the kind of sacrifice her role is bound to force on her (one that has already forced on her, and will force on her again). Her resentment at the injustice of her role filters through the use of the term "mongrels" to likely describe the Watchers (who raise the Slayers into accepting this role, in a way), while the explicit mention of the Sacrificial Stone recalls Aslan's own sacrifice in C.S. Lewis's aforementioned novel - which the Lion undergoes after being whipped, mocked and abused.

If in the first dream sequence we see that Buffy's Spirit (Willow) finds itself in complete disconnection with her Heart (Xander) and Body (Buffy), and in the second dream sequence we see that Buffy's Heart feels victimized ("whipping boy"), neglected ("raised by mongrels") and unfairly sacrificed ("set on a sacrificial stone"), then it's within the third dream sequence, Giles's (who represents Buffy's Mind), that we can successfully locate the ultimate acceptance of this self-sacrificial circumstance, and witness how that gets integrated into Buffy-The-Entity. If we go through Giles' entire dream under the presupposition that he's operating as Buffy's Mind, it follows, according to what we are precisely shown, that Buffy is still seeing herself as little more than a child who shouldn't be expected to undergo the same kind of sacrifice that Aslan (The Christ) faces, while simoultaneously being aware, on a purely rational standpoint, of it being a necessary component of the duty that it's her job to fulfill. The entire sequence is about the reconciliation, within Buffy's own Mind, of these two seemingly contradictory aspects. Almost absent-mindedly and with evident disregard, Giles recites the concept that Buffy needs to fully embrace ("The blood of the lamb and all that") suggesting reluctance at first, but he's put in front of the reality of things soon enough: after taking a final glance at a crying Olivia with a stroll turned upside down beside her (which substantially symbolizes Buffy's grief towards the loss of a condition of pre-acceptance and the loss of her own indulgence into the childish desire of having a normal life), Buffy's Mind ultimately focuses on Spike. The ultimate acceptance of the notion of sacrifice and of her role as Savior (Slayer) materializes in the exclamations of relief and bliss that the mass of photographers produce as soon as Spike, in a visibly liberating gesture, ends the shooting by posing in such a way as to recall the Biblical Crucifixion of Christ. This is, of course, all foreshadowing to The Gift (S5E22).

In Buffy's own dream, we witness a last initial attempt at resistance at this newly gained realization ("Buffy, you have to get up right away!" "I'm not really in charge of these things."), which quite rapidly turns into a spasmodic research of her friends. The Body alone isn't enough - it has to be reunited with the Spirit, Heart and Mind. Significant relevance, within this interpretation, lies in Buffy's dress during the dream - while still being fundamentally white (meaning absence of Sin, recalling her Prophecy Girl dress), this time it showcases a motif of cherries - fruit whose symbolic role is to represent the sacrifice of The Warrior, and which is also known as "The Fruit of Paradise". During the confrontation scene between the two Slayers, Sineya (The First) reminds Buffy that "The Slayer does not walk into this world" - what is being demanded of Buffy is that she recognizes her celestial (as in non-terrestrial, otherworldly) destiny and cuts herself off from the humanity she's expected to sacrifice for not only emotionally, but also physically. Buffy replies by underlining the importance of the Body ("I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze.") and thereby of the individual, while at the same time showcasing a definite acceptance at her own predestination provided by the cumulative integration of the previous dream sequences the other three elements constituting Buffy-The-Entity already experienced. The phrase "I'm gonna be a fireman when the floods roll back" is an explicit reference to The Bible and to two different apocalyptic scenarios. According to the Scriptures, the first "end of the world" kind of situation manifests itself through Water - Genesis' Flood, which God arranges in order to clean the Earth from corruption. By mentioning a return of the cataclysm, Buffy implicitly identifies herself with Noah's figure and role in building the Ark which granted him the ability to perform the salvific act of safeguarding humanity from total destruction. At the same time, though, she explicitly calls herself a "fireman", thereby also mentioning the second big "purification" - that of The Last Judgment, manifesting itself through Fire.

2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the Earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.​

With a single statement Buffy frames herself as The Savior of humanity in not one, but two apocalyptic circumstances. She is both the Ark that carries the remaining part of humanity to safety through the biblical floods, and the Fireman who is going to quench the fire during the final judgment.

The actual, definitive parallelism with Aslan's character (in itself an alternative, fictional personification of Christ), though, ultimately comes up when we take into consideration the events C.S. Lewis recounts in the final volume of The Chronicles Of Narnia, "The Last Battle" (1956). In that novel, Aslan himself brings about the Apocalypse. Dragons and giant lizards invade the Earth and destroy all vegetation with fire, the stars plummet down from the Sky and Aslan ultimately saves humanity allowing those "pure of heart" to enter the Real Narnia - which is an Eden-like Paradise whose appearance is indistinguishable from that of the Old Narnia (Earth), but that's also devoid of corruptibility and Original Sin. Those "impure of heart" perish in the imperfect copy of the actual world under the weight of the fire, leading Aslan to be accurately described through the very same expression Buffy uses here to identify herself: that of a Fireman - as in, someone who doesn't quench just the literal fire, thereby granting humanity safety and protection, but also the metaphorical representation of Sin itself.

Restless ends by letting us understand that within Buffy herself lies a dormant Aslan capable of doing that very same thing - of bringing forth a change so drastic and fundamental to not only save but also revolutionize humanity; of taking the entirety of Earth to a "higher level" wherein the Original Sin (that is, the very intrinstic nature of a broken, corruptible system) is finally eradicated; and of establishing a new kind of equilibrium in the co-existence of those pure and impure of heart. It's of particular importance, under this lens, to consider the fact that, as long as the Body (Buffy) is alone, she's vulnerable to the attack of that very system - the First Slayer has no problems striking effective blows against her in the middle of the desert, not so differently than how the Master was able to inflict an effective bite on her while she was alone in his lair. But as soon as the Body is reunited with the other parts and they get integrated within a singular, functional Entity, those same attacks cease to have any and all efficacy or effect - the Original Sin becomes insignificant, easily washed away by a baptism. In the desert, like in the sewers, Buffy is fragmented and exposed; within the walls of her home, or in the company of her friends, she's complete and invulnerable.