Bronwen
Calvert
Going Through the Motions:
Reading Simulacra in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
[1] Throughout the seven seasons of Buffy, supernatural monsters have become commonplace, and the supernatural explanation for particular events has come to be expected. Technological monsters have been less common. There have been a few examples of robot or cyborg villains: the computer-dwelling demon Moloch in “I Robot You Jane” (1008), and the robot Ted (2011) made brief appearances; the cyborg Adam was an effective adversary for much of Season 4, and, arguably, Spike can be added to this list, once he was “chipped” by the Initiative (Season 4 onwards). Here, however, I intend to focus on the female robots of seasons 5 and 6, which present various versions of female bodies and behaviour. These artificial bodies are not villainous, but can be read as monstrous; their embodiment invites comparison with other bodies, while their evident construction invites readings which follow feminist theories of performative corporeality.
[2] These artificial bodies disrupt notions that embodiment is somehow “natural” and unconstructed. Just as robots and cyborgs are read as constructed surfaces, as bodies overwritten by technology, so bodies also become “texts” which expose the constructions of gender and embodiment. Donna Haraway describes the cyborg as “a creature of social reality as well as science fiction” which is made up of “both imagination and material reality” (191), and these descriptions also apply to readings of the robotic body. Haraway’s “cyborg politics” also makes use of this artificial embodiment to posit new connections between hitherto unconnectable dichotomies, using “affinity” and “coalition” to bridge the gaps (180). Reading the artificial body – cyborg or robot – thus challenges, disrupts and deconstructs binary oppositions, in particular those of male/female, culture/nature, technology/body, and virtual/real. These readings question the positioning of some bodies as “unconstructed” or “natural” or as somehow representations of “reality” – which are all subject to forms of construction. This is especially ironic in view of the positioning of artificially embodied characters within fictional narratives that emphasise their contrast to the “natural” and “real” individuals around them.
[3] In his essay “The Uncanny” Freud noted that the feeling of the uncanny is present in instances of the “doubling, dividing, and interchanging of the self”, and he discussed E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman”, with its deceptive doll-woman, as an example of the uncanny double (Standard Edition 17:219-56). The robot as double is an integration of the monstrous with the machine, and the female robot is often a complex construction of both female-as-Other and female-as-Ideal, as with the two Marias, angel and devil, in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis (1926). The female robot, then, can also be seen as a construction of female perfection, the fulfillment of a fantasy image. Jean Baudrillard also investigates the doubling effects of representations of reality in Simulacra and Simulations. Here he considers the “question of substituting signs of the real for the real itself”, and formulates the idea of the “simulation”, a copy without an original (169). Baudrillard’s “successive phases of the image” explores the degrees of separation between versions of “reality”, from the first “phase”, which “is the reflection of a basic reality” through to the fourth “phase, which “bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum” (173).
[4] In Buffy, the robots April and the Buffybot are artificial bodies which, in Haraway’s terms, disrupt the boundaries between hitherto unconnectable dichotomies; notably those between “natural” and “artificial”, but also “mind and body, animal and human, organism and machine…nature and culture, men and women…” (“Manifesto” 187). The assumption of a “true” or “natural” embodiment is also contested by critics like Elizabeth Grosz and Judith Butler, who draw attention to aspects of “performance” and “inscription” at work on and in particular bodies. Grosz’s work on “corporeal feminism” rethinks “the” body as “particular kinds of bodies” (“Notes” 5; emphasis original) which are individual, yet have the experience of embodiment in common. The textualised or inscribed body that Grosz envisions (Space, Time 35) can be connected to Butler’s notion of the body as a performative space. For example, Grosz sees gender as “an open materiality, a set of (possibly infinite) tendencies and potentialities which may be developed” within or upon bodies that are, nevertheless, “neither ‘blank’ nor programmed” (Volatile Bodies 191, 190). Butler describes gender in similar terms as “an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts” (Gender Trouble 140; emphasis original). These notions of embodiment as performance have much to offer readings of fictional artificial embodiment in which the constructed “other” frequently stands in opposition to a supposed “natural” self; these theories offer ways to think of bodies as always engaged in some form of performance, and therefore actively involved in their representation.
[5] In the examples of embodiment offered by the robots April and the Buffybot, versions of female behaviour, performance and simulation are apparent which can be read in light of the “corporeal feminism” outlined by Grosz and Butler. Baudrillard’s categories of simulacra give a loose framework through which to explore the varying degrees of success in simulation undergone by these female robots in Seasons 5 and 6, and also by Buffy herself in seasons 5 to 7; though it must be noted that in many ways the stages of simulation represented by April and the Buffybot are the reverse of Baudrillard’s “phases”. These “simulacra” move from poor impersonation to effective replacement throughout Season 5, and continue to complicate notions of “the real” in Season 6 and 7. The two robots embody masculinist fantasies of perfection, and the Buffybot in particular demonstrates both the transgressive nature of the simulacrum, and the uncanny effect of the double. The duplication of Buffy in the mechanical body of the Buffybot reveals assumptions about “real” and “ideal” bodies, and highlights elements of performance and masquerade. Additionally, both mechanical and organic bodies are subject to various forms of programming, which is as relevant for Buffy as for April and the Buffybot, and which is of particular interest in the final episodes of the series.
[6] In “I Was Made to Love You” (5015) Warren Mears constructs a robot girlfriend called “April” whose “reality” is immediately called into question. With her repeated questions to all and sundry about the whereabouts of “Warren”, her mechanical ear-to-ear grin and her pretty pink outfit, April seems unthreatening until her monstrous physical strength is revealed. April’s creator clearly believes that he has made a thoroughly convincing illusion, since when Buffy goes to see Warren, he confides the great secret of April’s manufacture to her, believing that this is information she “couldn’t possibly know”. However, Warren’s belief in his creation is undercut by the Scoobies’ assessment of April: within a very short time the group are unanimous that she is “a robot” (and further, “a sexbot”). April’s performance is simply unconvincing.
[7] April is created by Warren as a representation of something “real”; as he insists, she is not “a toy” but “a girlfriend”. Her embodiment, however, merely serves to underline Warren’s warped view of reality. The fact that he thinks April is such a plausible simulacrum that nobody could guess the truth, in the face of the immediate reaction of every other character to April’s presence, demonstrates his perverse view of what a girlfriend – and a woman – actually is. In terms of Baudrillard’s schema, it might be possible to see April as an example of the first phase of the simulacrum, one that “reflects a basic reality”, but only if we accept Warren’s notion of a reality in which girlfriends exist, like Stepford wives, only to please and serve. April’s embodiment can thus be read as ironic commentary on a masculinist fantasy of female subservience. That April is immediately identified as a robot within the narrative is perhaps a heartening note, indicating how far apart Warren’s “reality” is from that of most individuals in the Buffyverse.
[8] April’s raison d’être is announced in the episode title; as Warren says, “I made her to love me” and following her rejection April echoes this when she says, “I’m only supposed to love him. If I can’t love him what am I for? What do I exist for?” The view of April as a supremely compliant girlfriend, who believes that tears are “blackmail”, and who exists to “please”, overturns Warren’s insistence that she is “not a toy”. She is the personification of Warren’s notion of an ideal femininity, one without selfhood, completely without agency; in Lorna Jowett’s description she is “the ultimate dependent female” (“Good Girls” 4). Her existential crisis, provoked by Warren’s rejection, is never really solved, for as her batteries run down and she nears “death”, April returns to her programming, saying, “He’s going to take me home and things will be all right again”. However it has been argued that her deactivation appears to inspire Buffy to reject the idea of refashioning herself in order to appeal to men. This refusal of “reconstruction” follows the pattern of feminist ethics that, as Jessica Prata Miller puts it,“requires rejecting the feminine stereotype of the selfless giver” (40).
[9] In this episode there is also a tension between ideal April and flesh-and-blood Katrina, Warren’s current girlfriend. April, created to be perfect, is as Warren discovers, “too easy and predictable...she got boring”. However Warren is attracted to Katrina precisely because of her unpredictability. Incidentally, it takes Katrina precisely one second to recognise April’s true nature and to declare, “that’s a robot”. Things appear to have been tidied up at the end of this episode, but in the Season 6 episode “Dead Things” (6008), Katrina briefly takes April’s place as Warren’s ideal girl. The fact that she is enslaved by a spell, forced to follow Warren’s commands – “made to love” him as though she were April – and ultimately murdered, brings into focus the abusive and misogynistic undercurrents of “I Was Made To Love You”.
[10] The Buffybot, Spike’s “commission”, comes to life three episodes after April’s appearance, in “Intervention”(5018). Once again, this robot is the embodiment of an ideal – though in Spike’s case a fairly perverse one – and in a comic aside it appears intended to be seen as an improvement on the Buffy doll Spike has put together over several previous episodes. The outward appearance of this “Buffy” bears distinct similarities to April; she wears a pink skirt and high heels, her hair is loose and she exhibits April’s near-permanent grin. Of interest here – among many other things – is the difference between the Scoobies’ instant appraisal of April-as-robot and their failure to do so where the Buffybot is concerned. While I could suggest that this is because Warren’s robot-building skills have improved since his creation of April, there seems to be more to the peculiar blindness that the Scoobies show towards the Buffybot’s various eccentricities. They are all convinced that this is Buffy, even when they are having conversations full of non-sequiturs. They are also very easily convinced that Buffy has “gone insane” and is having sex with Spike. This problem of recognition occurs, I argue, because they seize on the notion that Buffy is finally “acting out” after Joyce’s death, and the need to “intervene” and “save” Buffy from Spike gives them all the chance to act – here, at last, is something they can do. It is not, therefore, that they, as Buffy accuses, “couldn’t tell me apart from a robot”, but that they are eager to accept a scenario that demands their active response.
[11] Here, the Buffybot can be seen as a version of the simulacrum that, in Baudrillard’s terms, “masks and perverts a basic reality”. This is the Buffy of Spike’s fantasies; a Buffy who, though she fears him, nevertheless is helpless to resist her sexual feelings. Echoing Freud’s “Uncanny”, Roz Kaveney describes this episode as a “doppelganger” plot (9), and it is true that the actions and words of the Buffybot can be seen to prefigure Buffy’s actions and words in various episodes of Season 6. In “Intervention”, the Buffybot calls Spike “evil” but confesses that this “excites me, it terrifies me. I try so hard to resist you, but I can’t”. It also insists that, “I can’t help myself”. This is a direct parallel of Buffy’s confession to Tara in “Dead Things”: “Why do I let Spike do these things to me? … He’s everything I hate. He’s everything that I’m supposed to be against. …Why can’t I stop?” Like her doppelganger, Buffy places herself as unwilling participant in Spike’s fantasy scenario. However, her situation in Season 6 is rather more ambiguous; she is not helpless, nor unwilling, as the evidence of encounters in “Wrecked” (6010) or “As You Were” (6015) demonstrates. If she takes refuge in language that echoes the Buffybot’s programming, it seems more to do with a reluctance to confront her own autonomous choices with regard to Spike.
[12] Artificial embodiment in the form of cyborg, robot or other “monstrous” incarnation marks tension between the “real” and the “artificial”, between truth and desire. In the case of the Buffybot, the tension is between the fantasy image of Buffy and the existing Slayer, and it is clear that the fantasy version is compelling. Spike accepts the Buffybot as “better than the real thing” even though at first he complains that “[s]he looks a little shiny”; he becomes caught up in the role play – or, in Butler’s terms, “performance” – that he has designed and is horrified when the Buffybot asks if it should “repeat this programme”, thus destroying his illusion. For her part, Buffy denies any possible connection between herself and the Buffybot, even questioning their likeness (as in this exchange towards the end of “Intervention”: Buffy: “At least it’s not a very good copy. I mean, look at it”; Willow: “Uh…yeah” [with a disbelieving look at Tara]). Yet Buffy also impersonates the Buffybot at the end of “Intervention” in order to get information from Spike. In this scene, both Spike and the audience are led to believe that this is the Buffybot, and this is reinforced by Buffy’s facial expressions, particularly her wide-open, innocent eyes, and by her higher-pitched vocal register. When Buffy assumes her own identity, her expression changes, and her voice drops in pitch. In this scene, while we may suspect that this is not the Buffybot, neither we nor Spike are perfectly certain until after they kiss; and so the unmasking takes place as a result of physical contact. It is also of note that immediately after this, the dialogue returns to the question of what is “real” and what is not, as Buffy makes the distinction between the artificial, “gross and obscene” Buffybot, and the “real” sacrifice Spike has made to protect Buffy and Dawn from Glory.
[13] It is notable that the Buffybot is, generally, only present when Buffy is not – it fills the gap left by the Slayer. This is first evident in “Intervention”, when Buffy and Giles are in the desert, performing a ritual to find out more about Buffy’s future as Slayer. The Buffybot’s appearance and participation in patrolling with the gang takes place during this absence. Here, the Buffybot is not just masquerading as, but is actually replacing Buffy. A similar sharing of space occurs in “The Gift” (5022), when the Buffybot is reactivated and used in the climactic fight against Glory. In this short scene, a reversal of the scene with Buffy and Spike at the end of “Intervention”, both Glory and the audience are under the impression that this is Buffy. The Buffybot wears the same clothes we saw Buffy wearing in the previous scene, and it demonstrates Buffy’s skills in both wordplay and fighting – that is until Glory knocks its head off, to her own astonishment. The “real” Buffy does not appear in this sequence until after the Buffybot has been destroyed. In this example, the artificial body is reclaimed and reinvented; the Buffybot appears in a second “version” reprogrammed by Willow and made part of the group in their climactic battle. This version may still be present to serve the needs of others, but it is not alone in this; each of the gang, in some way, demonstrate a willingness to put others before themselves in this particular situation. Willow’s reprogramming appears to lend conviction to the Buffybot’s impersonation, and it is evident from the fight with Glory that the Buffybot can successfully masquerade as Buffy, with a serious expression, ironic tone of voice, level stare, and effective fighting. Once again, the actions of the Buffybot prefigure Buffy’s own: both are killed in their confrontation with Glory and her spell.
[14] By Season 6, however, the Buffybot is playing Buffy in order to fool everyone. In the opening scene of “Bargaining” (6001-2), as the Scoobies race through the graveyard, the audience faces disorientation and confusion at Buffy’s unexpected presence. The confusion here can perhaps best be exemplified by the opening credits of Season 6, where, for the first time, the final shot is not Buffy, but the Buffybot masquerading in the fight with Glory. In the graveyard sequence that opens “Bargaining”, the camera provides the audience with teasing snapshots: a fist, then a shot of leather-clad legs, and finally a view of “Buffy” in full Slaying mode. Here again is a version of the Buffybot with Willow as programmer, and in the absence of the Slayer, the fact that Willow is in control of Buffy’s replacement also comments on the shifts in the power structure of the group after Buffy’s death.
[15] As well as taking her place as Slayer, the Buffybot is also required to stand in for Buffy in more everyday contexts, such as making an appearance at the parent-teacher day. Here, more clearly than ever, the Buffybot is filling the gap that Buffy has left – in Baudrillard’s terms, “masking” her “absence”. Keeping the robot running becomes a focus for the Scoobies, and for Willow in particular; while for Dawn the Buffybot is a focus of comfort, a parental replacement as well as a sibling one. We can see this in the scene where Dawn climbs into bed with the Buffybot; a scene in which the artificiality of the robot is foregrounded: its inner mechanism is exposed and it has red, flashing recharging devices plugged into its foot and stomach. For Dawn, however, the continued presence of the Buffybot creates a particular tension: for if, according to the illusion, Buffy is still alive, then there is no space for Dawn to grieve over her loss. This seems to be a problem for Giles too, as his attempts to teach the Buffybot about “chi” tell us that he is using it to continue the close emotional relationship he and Buffy have developed. In these cases, the Buffybot seems ever closer to April whose function is to love; here, the Buffybot is the focus of the love that Dawn and Giles, and the others, feel for Buffy; its function is to be loved, and to be compliant in fulfilling that function.
[16] The question of whether a simulacrum can in fact replace “the real” is, to a certain extent, answered in the interaction of various characters with the Buffybot. It seems clear that the Buffybot is never really a replacement for Buffy. After a short time, cracks appear in the performance. In the opening fight of “Bargaining”, even with the Buffybot’s participation it takes the entire gang (and Spike’s lighter) to slay just two vampires. Likewise, while the Buffybot seems to possess Buffy’s skill in wordplay, this is also faulty and becomes a series of, as Spike puts it, “dadaisms” (“Put that in your pie plate, bingo”). For the individuals who have known her, the identical appearance of the robot only serves to emphasise the fact that it is not Buffy. Spike has already discovered this in “Intervention”, when despite the perfection of the Buffybot’s appearance, it nevertheless falls short of the “real thing” and he has to insist, “No programs. Don’t use that word” (See also Milavec and Kaye, 176). The Buffybot’s only real social success is with Anya, who seems genuinely delighted when it enquires after her money (“Intervention”); and with the adults at Sunnydale High’s parent-teacher day who read additional meaning into the Buffybot’s platitudes (“Bargaining”). The Buffybot’s domestic behaviour is a display of “feminine” nurturing that is excessive, as in, for example, its sandwich making; once again, behaviour that is very close to April’s. The Buffybot’s presence emphasises absence; it fills the space with a corporeal representation, but cannot fulfill the emotional demands made upon it; and it denies the death of the “only really real” Buffy.
[17] The acknowledgement that “the only really real Buffy is really Buffy” (“Bargaining Part 1) is a confirmation of the Buffybot’s inability to act as a replacement, while the script’s repetition of “real” strongly emphasises the group’s belief in a “real” or “ideal” Buffy. At the beginning of this essay I noted that forms of artificial embodiment can work to disrupt the positioning of some bodies as “natural” or “real”, and indeed that the notion of “natural” embodiment is also subject to questioning, as in Grosz’s “corporeal feminism”. Yet the idea of a “really real” persists, even in Baudrillard’s description of simulacra which are posited in reference to a “basic reality”. What the artificial body can highlight, however, is that “reality” itself is another form of construction, subject to different interpretations. While the characters in and audience of Buffy wish for a return of their version of the Slayer, the possibilities for differing versions should not be forgotten – particularly in the reading of a television series in which the resurrection of the main character is dependent on the willingness of the actress who plays her to commit herself to another season. As Lisa K. Perdigao notes, “Without the ‘real’ Buffy, the plot falls apart” (7).
[18] Following the opposition of “real” and “fake” Buffy in the opening moments of “Bargaining” the Buffybot and Buffy enact another exchange in Part 2, as Willow resurrects Buffy, while the Buffybot is captured by biker demons and torn apart. There is a reminder here of April, who Warren described as “not a toy”, as the leader of the demons scoffs at the Buffybot and calls it “nothing but a toy, a pretty toy”. The vicious subtext of “I Was Made to Love You” and “Intervention” is here made overt: there are clear allusions to rape in the abduction and dismemberment of the Buffybot. Links between Buffy and the Buffybot persist throughout these scenes. The dismemberment of the Buffybot is almost contemporaneous with Buffy’s resurrection, during which the reconstruction of Buffy’s decaying physical body marks her return to “real” life, and the Buffybot’s “death” is viewed through Buffy’s blurred vision, so that it becomes part of the “hell” in which Buffy now believes herself to be.
“I say my power should be our power”: Rewriting the Programme
[19] The last connection to be made here is between notions of an “ideal” Slayer and the extent to which Buffy herself could be described as a kind of programmed, perfect embodiment. The Slayer is summed up in Mary Alice Money’s description as “an imperfect killing machine” (“Undemonization” 102); “built” or “constructed” to fulfill a specific purpose, and “called” to carry out her function, whether she wishes to do so or not. Zoe-Jane Playdon similarly notes that Buffy, in some theoretical lights, can mistakenly be read as “a woman who is objectified as a function -- ‘The Slayer’ -- and controlled to serve ends which are not her own. She is a constructed woman, a kind of ‘cyborg’” (121). We return to the disruptive artificial bodies of cyborgs and robots, of monsters.
[20] Throughout Season 6, the notion of Buffy as construction is highlighted. Buffy does, in a sense, fulfill Baudrillard’s fourth phase of the image and becomes “[her] own pure simulacrum”. Buffy resurrected is and is not “Buffy”. Quite soon after her resurrection, she comes to recognise her own “programming” and the extent to which she is “going through the motions” of her own life – her recognition, in fact, of the performance of slaying (“Once More with Feeling” [6007]). For a large part of Season 6, Buffy is also masquerading as herself: she fulfills the expectations of her friends by acting the Buffy they expect; while her encounters with Spike reveal the gulf between Buffy before this death, and after. This crisis is not resolved until after her second resurrection at the end of Season 6, when she and Dawn climb out of a grave and walk through what appears to be a sunlit paradise garden (“Grave”[6022]).
[21] Both April and the Buffybot (in its original version) are robot women created by men in order to fulfill specific purposes or fantasies. Buffy’s own “creation” by men has been explored throughout the series. In earlier seasons there is a tension between Buffy’s heritage as Slayer and her knowledge or understanding of that heritage, which is, in J. P. Williams’ terms, “filtered through her father figure Giles” (62). The presence of Giles and of the Watcher’s Council lurking in the background is a reminder of the patriarchal laws underpinning the existence of the Slayer. As Williams notes, “Buffy cannot rely on the ‘matrilineal tradition’ of slaying to guide her. Most of what she knows about that tradition is male dominated, and what she learns firsthand makes her view herself as unique” (63). After Season 4, she rejects the patriarchal authority of the Watchers’ Council, as discussed by Frances Early (“Staking Her Claim”, para 26). Season 5 sees Buffy searching for a meaning for her existence, and wanting to know more about her origins as she explores her own personal Genesis story. In doing so she is drawn back to Sineya, the First Slayer, who first appeared in “Restless” (4022).
[22] In Season 7 another masculinist creation is revealed, as Buffy is drawn back to her “heritage” through Nikki Wood’s “emergency kit” and another vision of the First Slayer, Sineya, in “Get it Done” (7015). Buffy is confronted with her masculinist programming when she passes through a mystical doorway and comes face to face with the “shadow men” who created the first Slayer. Here is enacted another monstrous construction as they reveal that the Slayer came into being after Sineya was possessed, or raped, by a demon. Thus, Buffy’s “perfection” as Slayer, her skills at fighting and killing and her supernatural powers stem from this ancient coupling of woman and demon which has, in a sense, “given birth” to the Slayer (Buffy’s reference to being “knocked up” by a demon does seem accurate here). This revelation undoes Buffy’s insistence, emphasised throughout Season 6, that she is not a demon, for according to the shadow men, she has always been one. In this, Buffy is shown to have more in common with April and the Buffybot than anyone might have expected.
[23] Yet Buffy’s refusal of the additional power that embodying the demon could give her can be seen as an indication that she is also refusing the possibilities of construction or simulation. Indeed, following the revelation of Buffy’s “programming” or construction comes the empowering of the cohort of potential Slayers, a rewriting of the programming of the “body” of Slayers to come. As with the second version of the Buffybot, Willow takes on the role of programmer/creator, replacing the male creators who preceded her, and rewrites the history of the Slayer, using the “archaic matrilineal power of the scythe” (Pender 170). Buffy is now no longer unique, a representation of an ideal Slayer, but part of a community of similar individuals with an equal share in their “ancestral” demon power. It is perhaps tempting to use the series’ finale as evidence for a more overtly “feminist” agenda, as Patricia Pender notes in her reading of reworked racial and sexual politics in “Chosen” (170-2); nevertheless, this rewriting of the very fabric of the series opens the way for some more convincing feminist interpretations of Buffy in light of these final revelations. In line with the “cyborg” embodiment I have been reading here, the reprogramming of Slayer mythology chimes with the idea of the constructed cyborg body which has the ability to transgress and confuse boundaries, and to admit and include difference – as Playdon notes, “the solution of Buffy is inclusivity” (144). Recalling Haraway, the plural, empowered Slayers replace the lone fighter who, refusing the positioning imposed upon her, crosses the boundary that was hitherto impermeable, and creates for herself a new embodied future.
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