Losing Touch with the Symbolic Order in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Essay

Losing Touch with the Symbolic Order in Buffy the Vampire Slayer In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fortune The Body, the audience is forced to face the Real every time the director makes a shock cut to Joyces dead body after each technical break. Joyces body reminds viewers of the materiality of the human condition as we see her zipped into a body bag, then examined by a mortician, and finally covered with a white sheet. By exposing viewers to Joyces body, the creators of Buffy are treating the audience as an new(prenominal) member of the Buffy diegesis. Like Buffy, Dawn, and Giles, we recognize the Real because the camera constantly returns us to the bodily presence of her corpse. We understand how Buffy experiences the abject because we, too, experience the shock of seeing Joyces dead body. One question that remains, however, is how do people deal with the abject when they know in that location is death but do not see the corpse. In The Body, there is a sequence tha t explores this question. It is a scene where we see Buffys closest friends deal with the spillage of a mother figure, without seeing her corpse. Because they are not exposed the body, they try to hang on to the typic order through language and action. However, the abject is of all time present in their minds. Willow faces what Julia Kristeva calls a narcissistic crisis as she struggles to appear as a collected, supportive figure for Buffy. Xander practices transference as he looks for psyche to blame for Joyces death. Anya experiences her own breakdown of reality as she recognizes her own mortality. Through language and action, these characters try to cover their own fears of the Real without success. Like many of the other scenes in this e... ...d language however, the Real and the abject cannot be repressed. Willow gives into the abject by crying out against Anyas tactlessness. Xander faces the abject by looking down at his bloody hand and realizing there is not hing left to blame. Anya recognizes her own mortality by comparing Joyces physical condition with her own. For these characters, the loss of Joyce, a mother figure, causes them to go steady their own human condition. Symbolic order and language, at times, fails because thinking about Joyces death forces the Real to permeate in their minds. The desire to hold on to the symbolic order remains, however, in order to help them get through the loss of their loved one and to continue living. Sources Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York capital of South Carolina UP. 1982.