Rules of Engagement: Violence and Hyperreality in the Buffyverse
rebcake recently posted a poll regarding the onset of Buffy and Spike's sexual relationship in the BtVS episode "Smashed." I answered "neither" and began to post a comment to explain, but it started to get long-ish, so I thought I'd just do a long-ish blog post instead. What I wrote turned out to be somewhat off-topic in terms of her poll, and more generally related to a recent fandom dust-up about the episode's final scene.
At the climax of the scene in question, Buffy initiates sex with Spike after what she perceives to be a major boundary between them has been shattered -- or "smashed," if you will. I think the violent nature of this boundary (due to Buffy's resurrection and a technical shortcoming of his chip, Spike can now physically hurt her) is probably what drives so many people to lash out at this episode, and at the fraught onscreen relationship of these two characters in general.
But I also think there's a basic map-versus-territory problem at work here, where the show's self-contained, ultra-violent hyperreality is being conflated with reality itself. In a shoebox universe where violent stabbings, rocket launchings, chainsawings and acrobatic kung-fu fights are a staple of our heroes' everyday lives, I find it strange that this one brawl between Buffy and Spike (and not their first; not by a longshot) would cause such a ruckus.
The usual answer I'll hear is some variant of the saying "No means no" -- suggesting that Spike's pursuit of Buffy and his instigation of their fight was a violation of her consent. According to this reading, Spike and Buffy cease to be characters for a little while; their individual motivations, personal histories and series-long dramatic arcs are set aside. For the sake of the argument, they are converted into mere props for a polemic about sexual predation and violation, in which Spike assumes the role of the generic predator and Buffy that of the timeless victim. The same kung-fu theatrics that were exciting, mythic abstractions in prior battles are now considered to be direct analogs, meant to describe real-world intimidation and assault. For this reading to make sense, the interior rules of Sunnydale must be forgotten for the duration of the scene. They are momentarily swapped out for the rules of our reality, only to be swapped back in again whenever it is personally or politically convenient to the reader.
This postmodernist approach to the series -- and to art in general -- has always deeply bugged me. It's as though someone has handed me a connect-the-dots puzzle, then commands me to throw away my pencil and derive the picture's meaning by contemplating a single dot, or perhaps to ignore the numbers and just connect them in whichever way I want, to make the picture that I'd most like to see. After all, if everyone's answer to the puzzle has equal merit, then what's the point in following the clues?
But the search for the big picture has always interested me far more, and in the case of BTVS, that picture isn't so much drawn in pencil as it is etched in blood...
WARNING: Spoilers below the cut.
HERE'S THE FIRST SPOILER:
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
is an extremely fucking violent show.
*Above: Some scenes of peaceful dialoguing from everyone's favorite show, "Buffy the Peaceful Dialoguer."
I've read many blog posts and threads that discuss the violent or coercive nature of key relationships on the show. However, very rarely have I seen anyone attempt to compare these smaller battles to the vast ocean of Capital-V Violence that underlies the Buffyverse as a whole. In fact, like many classical mythologies and folklores before it, the self-contained universe of "Buffy" is one that is utterly drenched in violence and desperate mortal conflict.
Physical combat isn't just incidental to the series, as it might be in a typical action/adventure or drama. Instead, the circuitry of violence within the Buffyverse is more reminiscent of a war movie -- the villains are violent, the heroes are violent and nearly every resolution of every plot point in every episode requires the application of (often deadly) force. In Sunnydale, the sorts of ghoulish murders and killing sprees that garner national media attention in our real world are commonplace to the point of being blasé. Bodies are regularly chopped and hacked by swords and axes, bazookas demolish malevolent golems, high schools explode in fiery balls of destruction, and stakes are unceremoniously rammed into countless undead hearts, usually with our Athena-like protagonist leading the charge.
I am sometimes amazed at how little the fundamental violence of the show is explored in various fandom discussions, and especially ones about episodes like "Smashed", "Dead Things" and "Grave", where our soul-weary heroes are wailing the bejeezus out of each other. Sunnydale's inherently violent nature sometimes feels like the biggest, fattest elephant crammed into the tiniest, phone booth of a room.
After all, this is a show whose very title and branding evoke violence. Our hero's job description is "Slayer." Her name looks like it's been scrawled in fucking blood, for Pete's sake.
*Not pictured "Buffy the Hostage Negotiator" or "Buffy the Bunny Snuggler."
It's true that we live in very violent times, media-wise. Even during the 90's, back when Buffy was still in early development, our emerging 24-hour news cycle sensationalized and obsessed over acts of genuine violence in order to beef up ratings and fill up all their dead air. And since then, the rise of social media has opened the floodgates for a new, nonstop stream of hyper-violent content, and is increasingly serving as source of inspiration or the violence itself.
In the the realm of entertainment, popular American films, TV and video games are also packed with violent imagery. There continues to be a lot of debate about the degree to which our fictionalized violence either reflects or spawns real acts of bloodshed, but something that usually seems to be missing from that debate is the context of the violence being shown, and the recognition that two very similar violent images can mean very different things depending upon that context. Instead, most media critics seem content to dwell on the textual minutae of the fictional violence (How many screen deaths? What kinds of weapons were used? What was the age/sex/race/identity of those killing/being killed?) rather than trying to grapple with its meaning within the broader context of the story being told. Again, we are told the dots are more meaningful than the picture they form.
Basically, the current intellectual vogue measures violence as though it were a generic ingredient external to the story, like salt in a recipe for stew. But there are different kinds of violence, because the context of a story shapes the meaning of every element within it. For instance, even in typical, blood-soaked gangster dramas of the Martin Scorsese variety, horrific and brutal acts of violence are usually presented within a larger context of familial tensions, greed and vanity, the yearning for identity, etc. In that sense, "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer" is more intrinsically violent than something like "Goodfellas". In the latter, violence is mostly a practical consequence of running an illegal business, whereas in "Buffy", violence is the animating force behind everything we see, baked into the narrative's bones. Moment-to-moment, the story may shift its focus to a budding romance, a thorny moral dilemma or a bittersweet lesson about betrayal, but it all occurs within the context of a bloody, protean war in which our heroes serve on the front lines. In some ways, you might say that violence itself is the context of BtVS. It is the mythic thread from which the bildungsroman of the Buffyverse is spun.
And while Sunnydale's on-screen violence isn't necessarily as graphic or as luridly portrayed as it is in some of its genre counterparts, it's also not exactly cartoonish, and it's rarely played for a joke. Despite all the snark and gallows humor, violent deeds in the Buffyverse have real, often permanent consequences for its characters and plot. Yet ironically, the show's violence is so omnipresent that its most common form -- fistfights and eye-dazzling kung-fu -- actually loses some of its bite. Whether Buffy is duking it out with nameless mooks, sparring with college boyfriends, or having a knockdown, drag-out brawl with a B.F.F. who has crossed over to the dark side, it's almost as if their acrobatic slugfests are analogs to our world's less direct conflicts, more akin to bickering, arguing and debating than to literal punching and kicking. Meanwhile, the series' much more sinister meta-violence usually arrives in more recognizably deadly forms (the knife that Buffy uses to stab Faith, the sword she uses to skewer Angel, Drusilla's "claw" at Kendra's throat, Andrew's dagger in Jonathan's belly, Warren's bullet in Tara's heart, etc).
I learned early on to embrace the ultra-violent context of Sunnydale, and accept the rules of its universe as an abstraction of our own. I sincerely doubt I could have become a fan if I didn't accept the show's violence as figurative. A more literal show that featured a woman being constantly punched in the face would sicken and disturb me. But within the Buffyverse's established context of fantasy violence and destruction, individual violent acts like the "Smashed" brawl between Spike and Buffy don't seem nearly as important as what's actually going with these people intellectually and emotionally. "Smashed" after all, is far from the first knockdown, drag-out battle we've seen between these two characters -- Buffy and Spike have squared off many times before. The difference this time around doesn't have to do with the punches and kicks they are throwing, but with how they've changed as people and how badly they are coping with those changes. For instance, what they are doing in the abandoned house scene isn't important. Physical combat is part of their nature; it comes as naturally to them as taking in air, and there's nothing unusual about it within the violent hyperreality of Sunnydale. What's important in this scene is what they're saying:
SPIKE: Oh, poor little lost girl. She doesn't fit in anywhere. She's got no one to love.
BUFFY: Me? I'm lost? Look at you, you idiot! Poor Spikey. Can't be a human, can't be a vampire. Where the hell do you fit in? Your job is to kill the slayer. But all you can do is follow me around making moon eyes.
SPIKE: I'm in love with you.
BUFFY: You're in love with pain. Admit it. You like me because you enjoy getting beat down. So really, who's screwed up?
SPIKE: Hello! Vampire! I'm supposed to be treading on the dark side. What's your excuse?
---
SPIKE: I wasn't planning on hurting you. Much.
BUFFY: You haven't even come close to hurting me.
SPIKE: Afraid to give me the chance? Afraid I'm gonna... (She kisses him)
***
SPIKE: I wasn't planning on hurting you. Much.
BUFFY: You haven't even come close to hurting me.
SPIKE: Afraid to give me the chance?
SPIKE: You afraid I'm gonna- (she kisses him)
Stripped of all the punching, kicking, chandelier-swinging and swashbuckling, this turns out to a very short and simple scene. The collateral violence and destruction that surrounds it would probably make a newcomer cringe, since they aren't used to the Sunnydale context. But imagine for a moment that this scene took place in a more mundane, non-violent setting, with two potential lovebirds merely shouting a less slayer-y, vampire-y version of the lines at one another?
Or for that matter, imagine it took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
LEIA: Han!
HAN: Yes, your Highness-ness.
LEIA: I thought you had decided to stay.
HAN: Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind.
LEIA: Han, we need you!
HAN: 'We' need? Oh, what about you need?
LEIA: 'I' need? I don't know what you're talking about.
HAN: You probably don't.
LEIA: And what precisely am I supposed to know?
HAN: Come on! You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me.
LEIA: Yes. You're a great help to us. You're a natural leader...
HAN: No! That's not it. Come on. Aahhh - uh huh! Come on.
LEIA: You're imagining things.
HAN: Am I? Then why are you following me? Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?
LEIA: I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee.
HAN: I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!
It's not a perfect analogy, sure, but many of the seeds are in there: the chase and the rebuke; the denial of feelings; the hurled barbs; the well-known buttons pressed. I chose "Star Wars" because I am such a big nerd, but the truth is I could have used a "Sex in the City" scene between Carrie and Big, or a "Cheers" scene between Sam and Diane, or a "Moonlighting" scene between David and Maddie, or a "Blade Runner" scene between Rachael and Deckard, or a "Muppet Show" scene between Miss Piggy and Kermit D. Frog, or any of a million other scenes to illustrate the dramatic similarities. These scenes of romantic conflict are commonplace across many different genres, tones and settings. They usually involve one party who is ready to admit their feelings, and another party who is afraid to do so for a certain reason that the audience may or may not know.
In this case, we know the reason very well. Buffy's series-long arc is one of a hero who fears she is losing her humanity. She's worried she can't feel either pain or love like other people do, and that her job is "turning her into stone" ("Intervention"). To be fully human she needs to be able to feel both (collectively, the "fire"), because invincible people are too hard on the inside to experience love. What's thematically important about Spike's discovery in this episode is that he learns that he can hurt her, thereby breaking down a very important wall between them.
After he reveals this to Buffy, he tries to demonstrate it, which leads Buffy to respond in kind. Amidst the sideshow of typical Sunnydale violence, they exchange half-true insights about each other, and reveal that each of them is in a bit of denial. It's true that Spike enjoys the fact that Buffy can hurt him, because it makes him feel a little more human. It's true that Buffy feels like an outsider, and that she fears she is incapable of love, because trusting lovers has burned her in the past. What lies beyond these surface truths will be explored more deeply over the course of this season and the next, but for now what we know is that Buffy is afraid of what a relationship with Spike would mean, and whether it would make her feel more human or less. As in "OMWF" and "Tabula Rasa", she temporarily resolves this question (or delays it, depending on your point of view) with a romantic overture, first kissing Spike, then making love to him . In the absence of answers, she gravitates toward feeling and fire. This is because the physical violence on display in this scene is a metaphor for how they can hurt each others feelings, not a polemic about the evils of stalking.
There are many violent encounters between various Scoobies this season, all of which have notably more sinister overtones than the sex-fight of "Smashed." Buffy's one-sided beating of Spike in the alley of "Dead Things" make's Glory's handiwork look wimpy by comparison. Spike's later assault on Buffy in the bathroom of "Seeing Red" is infinitely more disturbing than their dust-up in the abandoned house, without a single punch being thrown by either party. Giles and Willow memorably draw each other's blood in the Magic Box, after Buffy and Willow duked it out like pro-wrestlers moments before. Willow's brief, climactic confrontation with Xander leaves him more torn and bloody after a few blows than a hundred hours of an "Enter the Dragon"-style karate-fest with Villain X ever would have. In a world where violence is omnipresent, these acts of meta-violence stand out not so much because of their passing resemblance to social issues, but because of the way these fights shape the arcs of the characters involved and lead us into the show's overarching theme.
Throughout the series, the Scoobies are surrounded by the Hellmouth's unrelenting darkness. Over the course of the sixth season, the border between them and this darkness becomes more porous than ever before, and it begins to seep in. The story of their various falls from grace reflects truths about our own, less karate-oriented world -- in particular the way that losses and harsh environments can twist the way we view ourselves and each other, and bring our worst instincts to the surface. For Buffy, it is an emotional deep freeze that leaves her distant from others and apathetic about life. For Willow, it is a bullied underdog's thirst for power and control. For Xander it is an intense mistrust and loathing of himself that ends up destroying someone he loves. For Spike, it is an obsession that blinds him to how deep the rivers of his own inner darkness really run. For Giles, it is a cold-blooded pragmatism that gives us (yet another) preview of his seventh season darkness to come. For Anya, it is a backslide into her old furious, disproportional and vengeful ways. For Dawn, it is the kind of delinquency born from loneliness and despair.
Only Tara truly escapes the all-consuming inner darkness this season, and she lies murdered by its end. For the rest, their darkest moments don't involve flashy kicks and stuntmen flying into toothpick furniture. That sort of theatrical violence is the background noise of the Hellmouth -- the context within which the bildungsroman story about learning to live in an imperfect world is told.
NOW FOR MY RANT:
Does all this mean that the countless fight scenes in the Buffyverse aren't important? No. Any individual fight scene can be important, either as plot device or a thematic bridge, or to reveal something new about a character or relationship. But they are still fantasy battles, and aren't anything like the fights in our world. Frankly, I think comparing something like the battle of "Smashed" to the kinds of physical and psychological abuse we see in reality does a HUGE disservice to victims of the latter.
In reality, most victims of abuse aren't even close to a physical match for their abusers. Many of them will suffer multiple hospitalizations on the way to an early grave. Worse, they often suffer in plain sight because their abusers are people whom everyone "knows" and "likes", making it that much harder to break the cycle. The reason Buffy doesn't tell her friends about Spike isn't because she's ashamed of being a victim, or thinks that no one will believe her, or is scared of losing her financial security or social safety net, or is terrified of what he might do to her if she leaves him, or any of the other REAL reasons that REAL abuse victims stay in REAL life-threatening situations, where the ability to fight back -- both physically and legally -- is often sadly limited.
To say that Buffy and Spike have an "unorthodox" relationship in season six would be a massive understatement. But they don't fit so neatly into the roles and patterns of abuse that their most strident detractors often ascribe. Any review of "Smashed" which promotes the idea that "Spike is beating Buffy" not only ignores the interior logic of the show, it shamefully glosses over the realities of true abuse, and hands the abusers a convenient fig leaf that they don't deserve.
At the climax of the scene in question, Buffy initiates sex with Spike after what she perceives to be a major boundary between them has been shattered -- or "smashed," if you will. I think the violent nature of this boundary (due to Buffy's resurrection and a technical shortcoming of his chip, Spike can now physically hurt her) is probably what drives so many people to lash out at this episode, and at the fraught onscreen relationship of these two characters in general.
But I also think there's a basic map-versus-territory problem at work here, where the show's self-contained, ultra-violent hyperreality is being conflated with reality itself. In a shoebox universe where violent stabbings, rocket launchings, chainsawings and acrobatic kung-fu fights are a staple of our heroes' everyday lives, I find it strange that this one brawl between Buffy and Spike (and not their first; not by a longshot) would cause such a ruckus.
The usual answer I'll hear is some variant of the saying "No means no" -- suggesting that Spike's pursuit of Buffy and his instigation of their fight was a violation of her consent. According to this reading, Spike and Buffy cease to be characters for a little while; their individual motivations, personal histories and series-long dramatic arcs are set aside. For the sake of the argument, they are converted into mere props for a polemic about sexual predation and violation, in which Spike assumes the role of the generic predator and Buffy that of the timeless victim. The same kung-fu theatrics that were exciting, mythic abstractions in prior battles are now considered to be direct analogs, meant to describe real-world intimidation and assault. For this reading to make sense, the interior rules of Sunnydale must be forgotten for the duration of the scene. They are momentarily swapped out for the rules of our reality, only to be swapped back in again whenever it is personally or politically convenient to the reader.
This postmodernist approach to the series -- and to art in general -- has always deeply bugged me. It's as though someone has handed me a connect-the-dots puzzle, then commands me to throw away my pencil and derive the picture's meaning by contemplating a single dot, or perhaps to ignore the numbers and just connect them in whichever way I want, to make the picture that I'd most like to see. After all, if everyone's answer to the puzzle has equal merit, then what's the point in following the clues?
But the search for the big picture has always interested me far more, and in the case of BTVS, that picture isn't so much drawn in pencil as it is etched in blood...
WARNING: Spoilers below the cut.
HERE'S THE FIRST SPOILER:
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
is an extremely fucking violent show.
*Above: Some scenes of peaceful dialoguing from everyone's favorite show, "Buffy the Peaceful Dialoguer."
I've read many blog posts and threads that discuss the violent or coercive nature of key relationships on the show. However, very rarely have I seen anyone attempt to compare these smaller battles to the vast ocean of Capital-V Violence that underlies the Buffyverse as a whole. In fact, like many classical mythologies and folklores before it, the self-contained universe of "Buffy" is one that is utterly drenched in violence and desperate mortal conflict.
Physical combat isn't just incidental to the series, as it might be in a typical action/adventure or drama. Instead, the circuitry of violence within the Buffyverse is more reminiscent of a war movie -- the villains are violent, the heroes are violent and nearly every resolution of every plot point in every episode requires the application of (often deadly) force. In Sunnydale, the sorts of ghoulish murders and killing sprees that garner national media attention in our real world are commonplace to the point of being blasé. Bodies are regularly chopped and hacked by swords and axes, bazookas demolish malevolent golems, high schools explode in fiery balls of destruction, and stakes are unceremoniously rammed into countless undead hearts, usually with our Athena-like protagonist leading the charge.
I am sometimes amazed at how little the fundamental violence of the show is explored in various fandom discussions, and especially ones about episodes like "Smashed", "Dead Things" and "Grave", where our soul-weary heroes are wailing the bejeezus out of each other. Sunnydale's inherently violent nature sometimes feels like the biggest, fattest elephant crammed into the tiniest, phone booth of a room.
After all, this is a show whose very title and branding evoke violence. Our hero's job description is "Slayer." Her name looks like it's been scrawled in fucking blood, for Pete's sake.
*Not pictured "Buffy the Hostage Negotiator" or "Buffy the Bunny Snuggler."
It's true that we live in very violent times, media-wise. Even during the 90's, back when Buffy was still in early development, our emerging 24-hour news cycle sensationalized and obsessed over acts of genuine violence in order to beef up ratings and fill up all their dead air. And since then, the rise of social media has opened the floodgates for a new, nonstop stream of hyper-violent content, and is increasingly serving as source of inspiration or the violence itself.
In the the realm of entertainment, popular American films, TV and video games are also packed with violent imagery. There continues to be a lot of debate about the degree to which our fictionalized violence either reflects or spawns real acts of bloodshed, but something that usually seems to be missing from that debate is the context of the violence being shown, and the recognition that two very similar violent images can mean very different things depending upon that context. Instead, most media critics seem content to dwell on the textual minutae of the fictional violence (How many screen deaths? What kinds of weapons were used? What was the age/sex/race/identity of those killing/being killed?) rather than trying to grapple with its meaning within the broader context of the story being told. Again, we are told the dots are more meaningful than the picture they form.
Basically, the current intellectual vogue measures violence as though it were a generic ingredient external to the story, like salt in a recipe for stew. But there are different kinds of violence, because the context of a story shapes the meaning of every element within it. For instance, even in typical, blood-soaked gangster dramas of the Martin Scorsese variety, horrific and brutal acts of violence are usually presented within a larger context of familial tensions, greed and vanity, the yearning for identity, etc. In that sense, "Buffy: the Vampire Slayer" is more intrinsically violent than something like "Goodfellas". In the latter, violence is mostly a practical consequence of running an illegal business, whereas in "Buffy", violence is the animating force behind everything we see, baked into the narrative's bones. Moment-to-moment, the story may shift its focus to a budding romance, a thorny moral dilemma or a bittersweet lesson about betrayal, but it all occurs within the context of a bloody, protean war in which our heroes serve on the front lines. In some ways, you might say that violence itself is the context of BtVS. It is the mythic thread from which the bildungsroman of the Buffyverse is spun.
And while Sunnydale's on-screen violence isn't necessarily as graphic or as luridly portrayed as it is in some of its genre counterparts, it's also not exactly cartoonish, and it's rarely played for a joke. Despite all the snark and gallows humor, violent deeds in the Buffyverse have real, often permanent consequences for its characters and plot. Yet ironically, the show's violence is so omnipresent that its most common form -- fistfights and eye-dazzling kung-fu -- actually loses some of its bite. Whether Buffy is duking it out with nameless mooks, sparring with college boyfriends, or having a knockdown, drag-out brawl with a B.F.F. who has crossed over to the dark side, it's almost as if their acrobatic slugfests are analogs to our world's less direct conflicts, more akin to bickering, arguing and debating than to literal punching and kicking. Meanwhile, the series' much more sinister meta-violence usually arrives in more recognizably deadly forms (the knife that Buffy uses to stab Faith, the sword she uses to skewer Angel, Drusilla's "claw" at Kendra's throat, Andrew's dagger in Jonathan's belly, Warren's bullet in Tara's heart, etc).
I learned early on to embrace the ultra-violent context of Sunnydale, and accept the rules of its universe as an abstraction of our own. I sincerely doubt I could have become a fan if I didn't accept the show's violence as figurative. A more literal show that featured a woman being constantly punched in the face would sicken and disturb me. But within the Buffyverse's established context of fantasy violence and destruction, individual violent acts like the "Smashed" brawl between Spike and Buffy don't seem nearly as important as what's actually going with these people intellectually and emotionally. "Smashed" after all, is far from the first knockdown, drag-out battle we've seen between these two characters -- Buffy and Spike have squared off many times before. The difference this time around doesn't have to do with the punches and kicks they are throwing, but with how they've changed as people and how badly they are coping with those changes. For instance, what they are doing in the abandoned house scene isn't important. Physical combat is part of their nature; it comes as naturally to them as taking in air, and there's nothing unusual about it within the violent hyperreality of Sunnydale. What's important in this scene is what they're saying:
SPIKE: Oh, poor little lost girl. She doesn't fit in anywhere. She's got no one to love.
BUFFY: Me? I'm lost? Look at you, you idiot! Poor Spikey. Can't be a human, can't be a vampire. Where the hell do you fit in? Your job is to kill the slayer. But all you can do is follow me around making moon eyes.
SPIKE: I'm in love with you.
BUFFY: You're in love with pain. Admit it. You like me because you enjoy getting beat down. So really, who's screwed up?
SPIKE: Hello! Vampire! I'm supposed to be treading on the dark side. What's your excuse?
---
SPIKE: I wasn't planning on hurting you. Much.
BUFFY: You haven't even come close to hurting me.
SPIKE: Afraid to give me the chance? Afraid I'm gonna... (She kisses him)
***
SPIKE: I wasn't planning on hurting you. Much.
BUFFY: You haven't even come close to hurting me.
SPIKE: Afraid to give me the chance?
SPIKE: You afraid I'm gonna- (she kisses him)
Stripped of all the punching, kicking, chandelier-swinging and swashbuckling, this turns out to a very short and simple scene. The collateral violence and destruction that surrounds it would probably make a newcomer cringe, since they aren't used to the Sunnydale context. But imagine for a moment that this scene took place in a more mundane, non-violent setting, with two potential lovebirds merely shouting a less slayer-y, vampire-y version of the lines at one another?
Or for that matter, imagine it took place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...
LEIA: Han!
HAN: Yes, your Highness-ness.
LEIA: I thought you had decided to stay.
HAN: Well, the bounty hunter we ran into on Ord Mantell changed my mind.
LEIA: Han, we need you!
HAN: 'We' need? Oh, what about you need?
LEIA: 'I' need? I don't know what you're talking about.
HAN: You probably don't.
LEIA: And what precisely am I supposed to know?
HAN: Come on! You want me to stay because of the way you feel about me.
LEIA: Yes. You're a great help to us. You're a natural leader...
HAN: No! That's not it. Come on. Aahhh - uh huh! Come on.
LEIA: You're imagining things.
HAN: Am I? Then why are you following me? Afraid I was going to leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?
LEIA: I'd just as soon kiss a Wookiee.
HAN: I can arrange that. You could use a good kiss!
It's not a perfect analogy, sure, but many of the seeds are in there: the chase and the rebuke; the denial of feelings; the hurled barbs; the well-known buttons pressed. I chose "Star Wars" because I am such a big nerd, but the truth is I could have used a "Sex in the City" scene between Carrie and Big, or a "Cheers" scene between Sam and Diane, or a "Moonlighting" scene between David and Maddie, or a "Blade Runner" scene between Rachael and Deckard, or a "Muppet Show" scene between Miss Piggy and Kermit D. Frog, or any of a million other scenes to illustrate the dramatic similarities. These scenes of romantic conflict are commonplace across many different genres, tones and settings. They usually involve one party who is ready to admit their feelings, and another party who is afraid to do so for a certain reason that the audience may or may not know.
In this case, we know the reason very well. Buffy's series-long arc is one of a hero who fears she is losing her humanity. She's worried she can't feel either pain or love like other people do, and that her job is "turning her into stone" ("Intervention"). To be fully human she needs to be able to feel both (collectively, the "fire"), because invincible people are too hard on the inside to experience love. What's thematically important about Spike's discovery in this episode is that he learns that he can hurt her, thereby breaking down a very important wall between them.
After he reveals this to Buffy, he tries to demonstrate it, which leads Buffy to respond in kind. Amidst the sideshow of typical Sunnydale violence, they exchange half-true insights about each other, and reveal that each of them is in a bit of denial. It's true that Spike enjoys the fact that Buffy can hurt him, because it makes him feel a little more human. It's true that Buffy feels like an outsider, and that she fears she is incapable of love, because trusting lovers has burned her in the past. What lies beyond these surface truths will be explored more deeply over the course of this season and the next, but for now what we know is that Buffy is afraid of what a relationship with Spike would mean, and whether it would make her feel more human or less. As in "OMWF" and "Tabula Rasa", she temporarily resolves this question (or delays it, depending on your point of view) with a romantic overture, first kissing Spike, then making love to him . In the absence of answers, she gravitates toward feeling and fire. This is because the physical violence on display in this scene is a metaphor for how they can hurt each others feelings, not a polemic about the evils of stalking.
There are many violent encounters between various Scoobies this season, all of which have notably more sinister overtones than the sex-fight of "Smashed." Buffy's one-sided beating of Spike in the alley of "Dead Things" make's Glory's handiwork look wimpy by comparison. Spike's later assault on Buffy in the bathroom of "Seeing Red" is infinitely more disturbing than their dust-up in the abandoned house, without a single punch being thrown by either party. Giles and Willow memorably draw each other's blood in the Magic Box, after Buffy and Willow duked it out like pro-wrestlers moments before. Willow's brief, climactic confrontation with Xander leaves him more torn and bloody after a few blows than a hundred hours of an "Enter the Dragon"-style karate-fest with Villain X ever would have. In a world where violence is omnipresent, these acts of meta-violence stand out not so much because of their passing resemblance to social issues, but because of the way these fights shape the arcs of the characters involved and lead us into the show's overarching theme.
Throughout the series, the Scoobies are surrounded by the Hellmouth's unrelenting darkness. Over the course of the sixth season, the border between them and this darkness becomes more porous than ever before, and it begins to seep in. The story of their various falls from grace reflects truths about our own, less karate-oriented world -- in particular the way that losses and harsh environments can twist the way we view ourselves and each other, and bring our worst instincts to the surface. For Buffy, it is an emotional deep freeze that leaves her distant from others and apathetic about life. For Willow, it is a bullied underdog's thirst for power and control. For Xander it is an intense mistrust and loathing of himself that ends up destroying someone he loves. For Spike, it is an obsession that blinds him to how deep the rivers of his own inner darkness really run. For Giles, it is a cold-blooded pragmatism that gives us (yet another) preview of his seventh season darkness to come. For Anya, it is a backslide into her old furious, disproportional and vengeful ways. For Dawn, it is the kind of delinquency born from loneliness and despair.
Only Tara truly escapes the all-consuming inner darkness this season, and she lies murdered by its end. For the rest, their darkest moments don't involve flashy kicks and stuntmen flying into toothpick furniture. That sort of theatrical violence is the background noise of the Hellmouth -- the context within which the bildungsroman story about learning to live in an imperfect world is told.
NOW FOR MY RANT:
Does all this mean that the countless fight scenes in the Buffyverse aren't important? No. Any individual fight scene can be important, either as plot device or a thematic bridge, or to reveal something new about a character or relationship. But they are still fantasy battles, and aren't anything like the fights in our world. Frankly, I think comparing something like the battle of "Smashed" to the kinds of physical and psychological abuse we see in reality does a HUGE disservice to victims of the latter.
In reality, most victims of abuse aren't even close to a physical match for their abusers. Many of them will suffer multiple hospitalizations on the way to an early grave. Worse, they often suffer in plain sight because their abusers are people whom everyone "knows" and "likes", making it that much harder to break the cycle. The reason Buffy doesn't tell her friends about Spike isn't because she's ashamed of being a victim, or thinks that no one will believe her, or is scared of losing her financial security or social safety net, or is terrified of what he might do to her if she leaves him, or any of the other REAL reasons that REAL abuse victims stay in REAL life-threatening situations, where the ability to fight back -- both physically and legally -- is often sadly limited.
To say that Buffy and Spike have an "unorthodox" relationship in season six would be a massive understatement. But they don't fit so neatly into the roles and patterns of abuse that their most strident detractors often ascribe. Any review of "Smashed" which promotes the idea that "Spike is beating Buffy" not only ignores the interior logic of the show, it shamefully glosses over the realities of true abuse, and hands the abusers a convenient fig leaf that they don't deserve.