Buffy vs. Dracula, + bonus post

I once read an article about the nature of literary monsters – I think it was on JSTOR somewhere – and I wish, wish, wish I remembered the name of it, or what text it was analyzing, because it was such a great essay. (If I find/remember it, I’ll absolutely post it.) Nonetheless, it contained a treatise on how to define of a literary monster – a definition I found so simple and yet so utterly truthful. The author explained that monsters are just entities that exist “in between” the cultural binaries that we too often take for granted. Therefore they serve to conflate those binaries: Monsters are not quite male and not quite female; or not quite alive and not quite dead; or not quite human and not quite nonhuman. You get the idea. The heroes battle the monsters in order to restore the sanctity of these dualities. To let live a being that breaks them down is to allow the continued disruption of our own fragile theories regarding who we are, and where we stand in the larger context of society and of nature. (Society vs. nature… another binary!)

I think that the better literary works out there carefully dissect their monsters without having to destroy them; killing something that ultimately threatens the “self” in the name of order and stability is the easy way out. Rather, we should accept that the very foundations of “self” and “other” (yet another binary!) are shaky at best. “Monsters” are just facets of ourselves that we keep, both consciously and unconsciously, separated: like peas and mashed potatoes on my dinner plate. Perhaps for merely a false peace of mind.

“Buffy vs. Dracula” (the title itself is the echo of a binary, no?) is a neat example of how good writers can utilize monsters in order to break down our concept of the “self” vs. the “other.” That is, there’s a lot of “You and I are not so different after all” going on in this episode. When Buffy and Dracula first meet, he explains to her that “your powers are rooted in darkness…” In so doing, he effectively begins to close the gap between Buffy, the “Heroine” and the “Force of Good”, and himself, the “Villain” and the “Force of Evil.” (Heavy quotation marks.) The episode continues to push the two closer and closer together: though Buffy is under the “thrall” (hypnosis?) of Dracula, the Count himself is nonetheless attracted to Buffy… and he eventually bites her, closing the distance between their physical bodies (and pushing toward some kind of sexual consummation, which is arguably the closest that two beings can ever get, physically and spiritually). Later in the episode, Buffy even licks the blood off his injured wrist, inverting the show’s primary duality and placing her in the position of a vampire. The writers seem to imply that apparently Buffy isn’t all that different from those entities that she stakes in the middle of the night; as a result, the viewer is a little unnerved. But she’s supposed to be the good guy! (er, girl!) What the hell is she doing?

That having been said, I was a little disappointed when Buffy suddenly comes to realize her innate Goodness at the end of the episode and chooses to fight against Dracula, who is again reinstated as the Big Baddie. I would have much preferred if she was forced to reevaluate herself and her “duty” in a meaningful way rather than reverting back into, well, a kickass heroine. I mean, that’s great and all, but it just reestablished the overarching binary that the episode had hitherto worked so hard to deconstruct. It felt like a step backward. Oh well!

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Now for a belated post about "Inca Mummy Girl", which I just realized I had never posted about. Better late than never, though...

I quite liked the “Inca Mummy Girl” episode; it reminded me of the old school Nickelodeon show Are You Afraid of the Dark? (which remains singularly creepy to this day, mind you) as well as certain episodes of The X-Files.

There was a nice flip-floppy gender dynamic that was sustained throughout the entire episode. Aside from the obvious one, in which the mummy girl only preys on men (at least until the very end, but more on that later), I thought it was quite interesting that she takes on the name Impata (spelling?), which is apparently the name of the would-be male exchange student. It nicely blurs the male/female duality as well as underscores the cultural cluelessness of the main characters, who are essentially all Whitey McWesterners.

It seems that, by very nature of being a mummy, one somewhat lacks a gender identity. She is the Inca Mummy Girl, yes, but as a mummified cadaver she’s been stripped of everything that would identify her such – she’s just paper and bone, really. The nature of Impata’s character beings less overtly disconcerting the more human (and, thus, identifiably womanly) she becomes. Though I guess that’s what she’s been longing for after all – the ability to become a part of Western society, and thus “fit in” with our cultural definition of femininity. I mean, she keeps magically getting more and more make-up applied to her face as she sucks the life-force out of her unfortunate victims.

Interesting: I almost just typed “unfortunate suitors” – but, of course, Impata doesn’t actually seduce or otherwise engage romantically with any of her three victims: the juvenile delinquent, the foreign-exchange student, and the bodyguard. The only person she feels romantically toward is Xander, and he’s the last person she wants to “drain.” In that respect, she’s somewhat different than Carmilla… in that she doesn’t have a sexual dynamic with her victims.