Essay -- My Love Is Everywhere: Anatomizing The Body Jasmine
My Love Is Everywhere:
Anatomizing The Body Jasmine
by eleusis_walks
First of all, if you haven't read my earlier piece on Cordelia Chase -- "And When The Sky Was Opened: The Passion of Cordelia Chase" -- you really should, because otherwise this post isn't going to make a whole lot of sense. On some level this is an extension of that essay, because in that essay I elected to gloss over Jasmine as much as possible; I didn't think that she should take up a lot of space in an essay about Cordelia, because that just underlines what the show did to Cordelia. But there's a lot to be said about Jasmine, and in the long run the Jasmine arc is deeply relevant to Cordelia's, so I suggest you read my thoughts on Cordy's arc before we dive in here.
Okay. Assuming you've already read "And When The Sky...", let's begin with 4.17 "Inside Out". This episode marks the final appearance of Jasmine in the form of "Cordelia", and frankly that is the most welcome thing in the entire season. Honestly, one reason I like Jasmine a lot when she's in her own body is that once she appears it is such a relief. Oh, okay, that wasn't Cordy. Thank God.
But it is in her last episode in Cordelia's body that Jasmine really comes into her own as a villain, and as a character distinct from Cordelia. Part of this owes to Charisma Carpenter -- who was and still is very vocal about how much she hated this plotline -- clearly deciding to just go with it. She really lets go for the first time in the whole season, and the performance comes across as way more honest and effective than she's been since 4.06 "Spin The Bottle".
"Inside Out" is a title with two facets. Obviously the first point is that what is inside Cordelia's body -- i.e. Jasmine -- comes out. But the more important point is that "Inside Out" is an episode in which absolutely nothing we take for granted on AtS is allowed to stay upright. Everything gets reversed. Most obviously is Skip proclaiming that the events of the entire show have been prearranged, which violates the entire "screw destiny" precept of the show in earlier seasons. Some people think of this as a goof or as bad writing, but I think Skip is meant to be provably wrong in this circumstance. Not only do some of his claims seem overly grandiose, but Jasmine, obviously, does not in fact succeed in taking over the world. Some destiny.
It's the other inversions that are most interesting to me: Angel finds himself in Buffy's place circa BtVS 2.22 "Becoming", forced to slay the evil form of the woman he loves as Buffy was forced to slay Angelus, and then...
And then. Man. Okay, so the sequence with "Darla" and "Cordelia" as Connor's salvation and damnation is one of the most brilliant scenes in the entire show. Whatever reservations Carpenter quite reasonably had about this arc, she puts in a great performance, and Benz is also stellar in a character completely distinct from the Darla she has played previously. After the last interaction between Cordy and Darla -- in the third season birthing arc, wherein Darla was a black-clad mother of mayhem and Cordy was the divine prophet detecting the child's innocence -- this scene, with its sacred Darla in white and murderous Cordelia in black, is the most profound 'inside out' of all.
What's interesting about this scene is that neither one of the characters is actually herself. "Cordelia" is of course merely the mouthpiece for Jasmine, and "Darla" is implied to be a messenger entity of some kind granted Darla's memories and emotions, rather than a true manifestation of Darla's soul -- this kind of "do memories and emotions make up a person?" theme is something Joss Whedon is very interested in; qv Dawn on Buffy, the memory wipe in AtS S5, Illyria-Fred as a unified or disparate entity, and, well, the entirety of Dollhouse.
This is the point at which it becomes clear that Connor has never known the real Cordelia, because he accepts at face value the idea that Cordelia would adopt a Nietzschean framework with good and evil as vague concepts in an inherently meaningless universe, while Darla of all people would have to speak to the mission and the inherent power of man choosing to be good. By separating Cordelia's actual worldview and projecting it onto Darla -- previously Cordy's opposite number, the wicked genetrix to Cordelia's benevolent foster mother -- the series makes it clear that whatever this nameless being is who has invaded Cordelia's form, it is something entirely separate and distinct from her. This is an important point to make, and a welcome one after weeks of character assassination by proxy.
In fact, the entire sequence of the virgin sacrifice reads almost as a reference to 2.08 "The Shroud of Rahmon", in which Wesley opines that virgins are sacrificed for purity and Cordelia protests -- in one of her most feminist moments -- by arguing that it is in fact all about patriarchal control of female sexuality. And yet here "Cordelia" buys into the sacrificed purity conceit completely. This isn't just "evil Cordelia", it's the anti-Cordelia.
Now, in "And When The Sky Was Opened" I argued that Cordelia assumes the mythic role of a sainted martyr. She is, in a specific sense, the narrative's central Christ figure. How exactly does that work if she spends an entire season being used as a deceptive facade for a being entirely opposed to the basic tenets of the mission? Because I believe in 4.18 "Shiny Happy People" through 4.21 "Peace Out" it becomes clear that Jasmine is the narrative's Antichrist.
"Antichrist" comes from the Greek antikhristos, meaning "opposite or in place of the anointed one." In Christian eschatology, the Antichrist is the dark messiah whose appearance on Earth will predicate the End Times. He resembles Christ closely enough to deceive those around him, but will only offer superficial aid; he cannot offer salvation, and is not the true Second Coming. The war between the forces of the actual risen Christ and the Antichrist are what bring about the events of the Apocalypse of John (the Book of Revelation); different scholars variously identify the Antichrist with the False Prophet of that book, or with other Revelation characters such as the Whore of Babylon, the Great Beast, and the Dragon (Satan).
So we have our stigmatic Christ figure, Cordelia, ascend into heaven where she will do great works. Our heroes pray for her eventual return, and she does come to them... but it is actually not Cordelia at all, and rather a pretender who resembles her superficially and works against the faithful under the pretenses of continued good works. This is pretty textbook allusion here.
And really, the Jasmine arc is the series' greatest statement on Christianity. In "And When The Sky..." I argued that AtS is placed from its very first episode into a Judeo-Christian salvatory context distinct from the secular humanist context of BtVS. For three seasons this Christian framework goes unchallenged; Season Four is about complicating that.
For while Jasmine is a false savior, she is presented as the true messiah in the Biblical sense. The Biblical Antichrist is aligned with Satan (in AtS cosmology the Old Ones), while Jasmine is decidedly a creature of the heavenly sort. She is God come to Earth, and yet she is anything but human salvation. It is clear that she is the being prophesied in the Nyazian scrolls (qv much of Season 3), the product of the Tro-Clon, a confluence of events that brings about either the "purification" or "ruination" of mankind. Much like the shanshu prophecy in the Scroll of Aberjian, wherein "shanshu" means both "live" and "die", I think that the word Wesley and Fred fail to translate means both purification and ruination. For Jasmine purifies mankind of all its hate and avarice with her mere presence, but in doing so removes the free will that -- especially in the context of AtS -- is the most important thing about human existence.
Indeed, Jasmine's mind control aura is referred to as her "love" -- the same word used to describe the salvatory power of Jesus Christ -- and this love enables her to not only turn normal people into ravening fundamentalist hordes, but also to psychically merge with them into a unified entity called the Body Jasmine. It's not unlike the Eucharist, really; there's a little Jasmine in all of us, once she's through. Jasmine also takes on characteristics of countless figures from the Revelation story: she is the Beast, the Devourer. She is the Woman Clothed in the Sun. She is the Whore of Babylon -- in that this figure represents mankind as a collective sinner, and Jasmine creates a collective by her presence. So there's a lot going on here.
What is the twist, then? Jasmine is a megalomaniac and a liar. Where this arc becomes most disturbing is when the viewer realizes that the insect demons who have worshiped Jasmine for eons are, on some level, a symbolic representation of the Christian faith (as well as those schools of Judaism and Islam with similar messianic beliefs). They have waited millennia for the Second Coming, for their messiah to return as she promised... and she has no intention of following through. They were a game; a test to feed her ego, and when she found a more impressive world to set her sights on, she never thought about them again. This is the horrible truth of salvation through the divine: the divine is self-interested, and you the mortal worshiper are like an insignificant grain of sand before its infinite and ineffable nature.
When Connor slays Jasmine in "Peace Out", it is because he has completely accepted the nihilistic worldview that she herself espoused as "Cordelia" in "Inside Out". It is also because the only thing Connor has left in the world is the power of choice. He has learned the meaning of his life -- something no one has ever known or should ever learn -- and knows that he was created purely to trigger the advent of Jasmine. It's the ultimate "screw destiny": in erasing her, he effectively erases himself, while also creating the potential for a new meaning. Unfortunately, the shock of killing the last thing he believed in is what pushes him completely over the edge into suicidal psychosis, but it is in his act of profound self-determination -- killing the prophesied messiah -- that Connor makes a choice. I think that if he hadn't made that choice, his second life as Connor Reilly wouldn't have been enough to help him maintain -- after 5.18 "Origin" and the restoration of his memories -- a well-adjusted and optimistic worldview.
If Jasmine were the last word on divine salvation in AtS, then the series would read as an incredibly pessimistic and anti-religious/spiritual work overall. It brilliantly subverts this, however, with "You're Welcome". Because this is where it becomes clear that Jasmine wasn't Christ, she was the Antichrist. Cordelia reclaims her agency as a Christ figure and ascends into the heavens as a legitimate higher being -- and why is there a seat empty at the Powers' table? Because Jasmine fell.
So in the end, where AtS challenges Christian dogma is in taking a very humanist bent to messianic eschatology: it is Cordelia, the mortal, who is the true savior. It is she who returns from death to deliver salvation to our hero and, by extension, to the human race. Jasmine, the promised divine being from on high -- the god made mortal, as Jesus is portrayed in scripture -- is the impostor.
In the end, it is Cordelia who is worthy to ascend, to lead; worthier than any divine being could be. But we need to know Jasmine in order to grasp the full ramifications of that idea.