Is it Joyce who keeps Buffy grounded in humanity?

[tkts]

I just quoted part of this exchange in another thread:

Joyce: She needs to know that she's still a part of this family and that we love her.
Buffy: It's not that simple! We're not gonna be able to fix this with a hug and a kiss and a bowl of soup! Dawn needs to know where she came from; she needs real answers.
Joyce: What she needs is her sister, Buffy, not the Slayer.
Buffy: The Slayer is the only thing standing between Dawn and this god from the Bitch Dimension that wants to shove her in some kind of lock and give her a good twirl.

It made me wonder, is it any coincidence that Buffy's sense of isolation from other people, and the extent to which she buries herself in being the slayer, seems to increase after Joyce's death?

Of course, in some ways it's natural for her sense of isolation to increase after her mother dies. She's thrust into a very lonely position, that of suddenly being a single parent to her 14-year-old sister and having no one to share the responsibility with.

But could it also have come from the fact that Joyce, perhaps more so than anybody else, kept Buffy tied to the non-slayer world and her non-slayer ties and obligations?

It was Joyce who, right after discovering Buffy was the slayer, essentially said "Slayer or not, I'm your mother and you will take time to explain this to me." It was Joyce, albeit joined by Xander and Willow, who called her on the carpet in "Dead Man's Party." And it was Joyce who, in the scene quoted above, when Buffy wanted to get into full slayer mode, reminded her that Dawn needed her sister as well.

Nobody else really filled that role. Giles worked the opposite way for a while, reminding her of her slayer duties, sometimes at the expense of worldly ties. Willow and Xander joined her in the supernatural world of the slayer. But Joyce, even after she knew what was going on, stayed in the real world and reminded Buffy that there was more to her life than just being the slayer.

Then there's Buffy's line to Angel in "Forever," the night after Joyce's funeral: "I can stick wood in vampires, but Mom was the strong one in real life." Being the slayer is something Buffy knows; it's familiar and even comforting. But as the series goes on, she seems to become more comfortable with being the slayer and less comfortable with being Buffy Summers. Joyce was the one who kept pulling her back, and when Joyce died, maybe Buffy lost the strongest force keeping her from withdrawing completely into her job.

In "Touched," Buffy tells Spike: "I've always cut myself off, I've always ... being the Slayer made me different, but it's my fault I stayed that way. People are always trying to connect to me but I just ... slip away." Was Joyce the one who kept her connected, who kept her from slipping away?

[gumgnome]

I think that you're absolutely right about this. I think the key thing with Joyce is that she would never look at Buffy and see the Slayer before she saw her daughter. This isn't really true of anyone else, who naturally elevate her to the hero position because it's necessary for her to be so. Compared to other core characters Joyce is only rarely around Buffy when she has to slay, but rather carries on a very domestic relationship with her. It's such a bedrock of support for Buffy and I definitely agree with you that losing Joyce cuts her further away from simply living as a normal human being. However it's not a simple case of her losing Joyce when she dies. Joyce starts to slip away from her a little in S5, the instant Dawn turns up. Think of moments like "Why can't I be li'l pumpkin belly", where Buffy clearly on some level feels like she has less of Joyce than she used to. This is the season when she really starts to get serious as the Slayer and becomes more and more cut off from this point.

[midwesternwatcher]

A very perceptive post. Thank you.

A question though. If Joyce is the one who's strong in "real life," does that mean staking vampires is not real life? If not, then are vampires not real?

[buffyfan21]

I completely agree, tkts. I think it definitely was Joyce who kept Buffy grounded in humanity. As you pointed out, Joyce was the only figure in Buffy's life completely separate from the slaying. Giles, Willow, Xander, they were all wrapped up in it, but never Joyce. Even after she found out Buffy was the slayer she never treated her any differently. So yeah, it's certainly not a stretch to say that Joyce kept Buffy grounded in that sense of "normalcy." And when she died I think Buffy lost of that.

Great topic. Karma!

[kaan]

I think it was a massive part of it yeah. It's no coincidence that an episode entitled "Normal Again" is all to do with Buffy and her mum.

I also think its important that Joyce was the only person in Buffy's life that knew her before she was the Slayer. For Buffy that must feel like such a welcomed memory a lot of times: when her life was a complete clichéd bore, the only thing to worry about was boys and clothes. And Joyce was a living embodiment of that time in Buffy's life. She could look to her mum and go "yeah, she was there, mom remembers. My life was once that uncomplicated."

Buffy's death and resurrection was the tipping point for her spiral into depression, but I believe it all started by her mother's death. It is the key defining moment of Buffy's entire character and story.

[alex_krycek]

joyce was an amazing woman. and i feel that she is what kept buffy tied to humanity. and i think taht is why things were so rough when joyce died. buffy had to switch gears and realize that her sister was now part of humanity. and that the scoobies were also part of that humanity.

in season six, buffy not only had to cope with coming back from the dead, but she could have been with her mother in heaven. to have to say goodbye to her twice must have been painful. or perhaps she didn't even get a second chance to say goodbye.

since the end of season six though, i think buffy has reconnected w/ humanity through her sister and the scoobies. but i think we should never forget that without joyce, buffy probably could never have learned to love her friends and sister the ways that she does.

joyce = awesome!

[tkts]

May 6, 2010 9:37:46 GMT -5 midwesternwatcher said:

A very perceptive post. Thank you.

A question though. If Joyce is the one who's strong in "real life," does that mean staking vampires is not real life? If not, then are vampires not real?

I don't think the implication is that they're unreal, but they're part of her "work world," which has become an increasingly large part of her entire world.

Buffy's arc in Seasons 4 and 5 is probably one that a lot of people who have demanding jobs can identify with. If your work is something that takes a lot of time and energy, and also something you care about, it's easy to forget to pursue a personal life, and it's easy to begin defining yourself solely in terms of the job.

The shift definitely started happening before Joyce's death. Some evidence:

An early sign comes during Buffy's short-lived relationship with Parker. He asks her about hobbies and interests, and she freezes: "Hobbies? ... Mostly I hang out. And ... do stuff." When she can't reveal her slayer identity to someone, she has trouble articulating what else she likes to do. The only reason this isn't a bigger issue in the beginning of her relationship with Riley is probably that he's too much of a gentleman to pry.

Another sign comes in "The Replacement." Buffy herself seems to recognize the growing divide between "Slayer Buffy" and "Buffy Buffy," asking Riley if he wished she'd been split in two by the ferula gemina instead of Xander. He insists that he loves the entire package, and he seems to be telling the truth. But as the season goes on, "Buffy Buffy" becomes harder to reach, and "Slayer Buffy" becomes more and more dominant.

So Joyce's death can't be entirely blamed for her withdrawal into her slayer role, but with Joyce gone, one of the strongest forces working against that change in Buffy's personality was gone as well.

[midwesternwatcher]

The work world is not real life?

Would you say this in another context? Suppose you went to a funeral for a woman with three sons, one a soldier, one a policeman, and one a fireman. Would you expect any one of them to say, "I do all right fighting wars/catching crooks/putting out fires, but my mother was the one who was good at real life"? Wouldn't that sound strange?

The best way to account for this is to allow that vampires are not real. Angel in particular is not a vampire. In his case, we know exactly what he is, because ...

Joss told us.

Remember?

[tkts]

May 6, 2010 19:20:20 GMT -5 midwesternwatcher said:

The work world is not real life?

Would you say this in another context? Suppose you went to a funeral for a woman with three sons, one a soldier, one a policeman, and one a fireman. Would you expect any one of them to say, "I do all right fighting wars/catching crooks/putting out fires, but my mother was the one who was good at real life"? Wouldn't that sound strange?

Maybe and maybe not. I don't know how else to interpret Buffy's statement, though, except to guess that she's using "real life" to mean the world outside her job. I don't think it's an implication that she believes the vampires and demons she kills aren't real.

[midwesternwatcher]

Think a little more. When would it NOT sound strange for a child to say that?

If the child were an actor or an athlete or a comic book artist or a game designer. If s/he were active in some make-believe world. Right?

Angel is not a vampire. You didn't respond to that.

In case you don't know, Joss is on record telling us exactly what Angel is, and he's not a vampire. He's a metaphorical portrait of a recovering alcoholic.

You could say that he's a recovering "something else," an ex drug addict, or a reformed criminal, for example. But there is one thing about which we really have no choice. He absolutely is a metaphorical portrait of something in real life. He cannot be understood as a "vampire with a soul."

If he is a "vampire with a soul," why in heaven's name should he feel guilty? It's as if somebody stole my car and ran over somebody with it. Am I responsible for the vehicular death, or for the theft, for that matter? Of course not.

Suppose you had a friend, in that situation, who insisted on feeling guilty. What would you tell him? Why don't you say that to Angel, then? Why don't you call him a "drama queen" and ten other kinds of fool and change the channel?

Somewhere in your mind, you know that he's not a vampire.

And Buffy isn't a vampire slayer, either.

[tkts]

I think I'm not completely getting what you're saying.

Are you saying that the line "Mom was the strong one in real life" indicates that the writers slipped out of the fictional universe for a minute and wrote that line from their own, real-life perspective of knowing vampires to be unreal? Or are you saying that even within the fictional construct of the Buffyverse, Angel isn't really a vampire?

(As an aside, the situation with calling someone 10 different kinds of fool is sort of what we see Whistler do in "Becoming" ...)

[Silver]

I always thought that the slayers life was a lonely one. Their Watchers, if Giles is anything to go by, keep them apart the the rest of the world (though we all know that in the case of Buffy Giles didn't quite succeed). It should be the job of the Watcher to keep the Slayer grounded. In the case of Joyce, I think she tried to keep Buffy grounded as a parent would. Up to the time that she knew that Buffy was the Slayer she forever went into deniel mode and then I don't think that she could quite accept what Buffy was.

[BlueJay]

On the show, Buffy and co. keeps the demons and vamps on the down-low. The rest of the world has to believe that demonic entities are not real and the Scoobies have to keep it that way when slaying. Buffy's comment that "Mom was the strong on in real life" means that in the non-demon world, Joyce had a lot on her plate. Joyce had to raise two daughters on her own and keep them safe and together, which Joyce had successfully done.

[Silver]

May 16, 2010 13:43:56 GMT -5 BlueJay said:

On the show, Buffy and co. keeps the demons and vamps on the down-low. The rest of the world has to believe that demonic entities are not real and the Scoobies have to keep it that way when slaying. Buffy's comment that "Mom was the strong on in real life" means that in the non-demon world, Joyce had a lot on her plate. Joyce had to raise two daughters on her own and keep them safe and together, which Joyce had successfully done.

Did Joyce really have to two daughters? Dawn was not a real daughter and any memory that Joyce had (and Buffy) of Dawn as a baby etc were implanted. And this is something that she discovers later but accepts her as her own. She did bring up Buffy but not totally on her own, Buffy's father did have a hand till they broke-up and he still kept contact.

I do agree that Buffy and the Gang kept the demonic world to the best of their abilities from the real world.