dead things makes me see red
There’s a lot to say about DT. It’s a layered, fascinating episode. I’m a Spike fan, I’m a sometime S/B fan, I love the later seasons, and I don’t think anyone is a bad person or a fake feminist or whatever else if they disagree. Most of you probably do, and I get it, I do.
But I hate that balcony scene. I can’t get past it. It bothers me more than Seeing Red. I don’t expect anyone else to feel this way, but for me as a viewer, I can handle just about any level of darkness and interpersonal violence and gender inequality, as long as it’s clearly shown as wrong. But that murky “gray” area which reinforces misogyny without actually engaging in the brutal reality of it is what makes me fume. I’ll watch Man on the Street a hundred times before I’ll read one chapter of Twilight. (No, seriously. I’ve been in chapter 1 for three months now.) I’ll root for Dexter before I’ll root for Ted the Geek. I have probably watched every episode of the first eight seasons of L&O: SVU, but I CANNOT STAND trivialization of sexual consent. And therein lies my problem with Dead Things.
Buffy: Don’t.
Spike: Stop me.
Allow me to paraphrase. Buffy: No. Spike: I’ve decided you mean yes, and it’s your job to fight me off. If this was presented as the disgusting violation of Buffy’s clearly expressed sexual boundaries that it is, then that’d be one thing. But it’s presented as hot sex. I’m not okay with eroticizing non-consent, or watching someone take advantage of someone else’s mental illness.
Spike knows that Buffy can physically fight him off at any time. It doesn’t matter if he has the chip. He couldn’t forcibly rape her - and in fact when he tries, this’ll be borne out. But Spike is a predator; Spike is an exceptionally good predator, who is famous for being able to suss out the psychological Achilles’ heels of warriors and in particular Slayers. (Spike: Every Slayer has a death wish…I’m gonna slip in and have myself a real good day. FFL)
It’s exceptionally disgusting because Spike is her confidante. She’s placed a lot of trust in him. He’s the one she turns to in Afterlife with the news that she was in heaven. He knows what she’s gone through. It’s a serious ethical and often legal violation for shrinks to sleep with their patients, and this is why. It isn’t a fiduciary or financial thing. It’s because you can’t have that kind of psychological power differential and trust that consent is actual enthusiastic consent. It’s not just about fear of reveal - though Spike does hold that over her head - but that he’s taking advantage of her mental illness and his particular position of importance in her recovery.
I know he’s a soulless demon. I don’t care. Spike does know better than that, first of all, soul or no soul, but then there’s also the larger show issue. The next Buffy/Spike scene we see is Buffy walking over to the door of Spike’s crypt, and the two of them leaning face-to-face for a moment. Should be really beautiful - Buffy in the cold (do people even have gloves in SoCal? Like, actually for the cold?) and dark; Spike in the crackling warmth he doesn’t even need. But it therefore gives the impression that what happened before is part of a love story; that Buffy is going back for more, that it’s excused because, hey, why else would she go out with him again?
I have a huge problem with how this is the episode that Buffy/Spike kink - as opposed to just Buffy/Spike rough sex - is presented. (Spike: Do you trust me? *dangles handcuffs* Buffy: *sad face* Never.) And I don’t, at all, understand fandom perspective that Buffy is some kind of ubertop dominatrix this season. Based on the dream sequence, maybe? Buffy talks to Tara about the things she “let[s] him do to [her]” and how she “keep[s] letting him in.” She later blanches when Willow suggests that she’s “been all tied up [emphasis mine].” That’s passive language. That’s someone else doing something to her. Basically all of Spike’s sexual history is rooted in his relationship with Dru, who is a huge masochist. I kind of read them as switch, in it for the power games rather than a particular…orientation, I suppose, for lack of a better word, but at least at the beginning of the kink exploration, it reads fairly clearly to me that Buffy is submitting.
And that’s fine. There’s absolutely nothing wrong in any way with being a sub or trying it out. What there is something wrong with, is an experienced top taking advantage of an inexperienced submissive’s unhappiness, inexperience, or shame. The balcony scene is a D/s dynamic without any SSC/RACK conversation beforehand. Spike tells Buffy to open her eyes. He tells her where to look. He tells her how she feels (“tell me you don’t love getting away with this). AFTER SHE HAS TOLD HIM NO NOT AT ALL STOP. And that would be fine, if we had any indication that this was a negotiated scene. But it is clearly not.
I’m not sure how this is unclear in the particular context of Dead Things, where almost immediately afterwards the Trio are fighting over rape given the veneer of sex with the cerebral dampener. Is there a better cerebral dampener than depression? Katrina’s specifically dolled up in the French maid costume, sexual roleplaying clearly coded as submissive feminine. This is specifically non-consensual sex with the appearance of consent. I mean, no matter how blitzed Katrina is, no matter how fucked up her mind, Jonathan and Andrew have convinced themselves that it’s what she wants. Warren likes that she’s under his control, of course. That’s how he wants her. It’s the only way he can have her. Or, as Spike would put it:
You belong in the dark. With me.
And how does Warren keep Jonathan and Andrew in line after he kills Katrina? “We did this.” No, he did it. Sure, they made some bad decisions and are in way the hell over their heads, but Warren takes it much, much farther than they would have intended and does so while withholding crucial information. This is exactly what Spike will do to Buffy in the balcony scene.
Spike: What would they think of you if they knew the things you’ve done? If they knew what you really were?
We did this. This is bad. There’s gonna be trouble for you. Because of what we did. Might as well stay with me. That’s coercion. It’s grooming for further abuse. And Buffy feels terrible about it. Those tears with Tara aren’t just her depression coming through. It’s Buffy blaming herself for the shame she feels at the balcony scene in particular. She’s not that distracted when she calls Tara to the Doublemeat. She’s worried, for sure, but we never see anything as raw as the don’t forgive me breakdown. About what she “let” Spike do to her.
I don’t mean to even compare it to Seeing Red in a “which is worse” situation, because Buffy’s opinion is what matters and it’s fairly clear that she experiences SR as worse. The shot of Buffy on the floor struggling is visceral and brutal. But I want to look at viewer reactions in the context of rape myths. Buffy is drinking in DT (she in fact asks for frosty nectar twice in the few minutes preceding the scene, driving home the point that she’s drinking; far from drunk, but, like that matters to apologists) and sober in SR. She’s visibly physically injured in SR; in DT her wounds are far more debilitating but they’re emotional and invisible. In DT she’s dating Spike; in SR she’s not. She’s dressed fashionably in DT and in a fluffy bathrobe in SR. And of course, in SR she fights back. If I never hear “then why didn’t she fight back?” again, it will STILL be too soon. Even if it’s disguised as “she could have thrown him off of so she must have REALLY WANTED IT. Her lips said no, but the saucy hair on the back of her neck said yes” or whatever nonsense.
And yet SR is the cataclysmic relationship-ender that leads Spike to get a soul, and presumably precludes the functional relationship they could have had in S7, while DT is...a bad decision Buffy made. Spike maybe pushing too hard. But a catalyst for their relationship nonetheless. What the hell? Seriously, someone break it down for me, what the hell. That flies in the face of the point at the heart of anti-rape advocacy. It doesn’t matter how strong she is physically. She couldn’t throw him off, and Spike knew it, and that’s why he approached her on the balcony for sex. And the victim-blaming, my GOD. “They” didn’t set strong enough boundaries? No, Spike made it perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested in negotiating consent when boundaries were most sorely needed.
It isn’t that one scene is worse than the other, even, so much as it is that one scene is an attempted rape presented as an attempted rape. And one scene is date rape presented as hot sex. Recognizing that rape exists is distressing but not reprehensible; eroticizing explicit non-consent is shocking and immoral. RANT OVER.