Buffy the Vampire Slayer was predicated on a simple metaphor – high school is hell.  This translated literally into Sunnydale High resting upon the Hellmouth, a mystical convergence that attracted all genres of demons and monsters that, “One girl in all the world, a chosen one,” must stand against (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”).  Wilcox states that Buffy, “repudiates those television series which aim for redeeming social value by focusing episodes on unmediated presentations of social topics such as AIDS or alcoholism,” and instead, “In Buffy’s world, by contrast, the problems teenagers face become literal monsters.”  Not only do episodes, when taken separately, address certain social issues in the guise of a monster-of-the-week, but each season of Buffy holds an arching theme with a critical social context.  For the purpose of this paper, Season Six will be examined, viewing Buffy’s resurrection as a metaphor for rape.

Through assessments of Buffy scripts, Slayage: The On-Line International Journal of Buffy Studies, various Buffy texts, testimonies from sexual assault survivors and academic literature on sexual assault statistics and studies, Buffy’s resurrection and subsequent disappointment in merely being alive are clearly representative of her rape survivor status.  Her disorientation following her resurrection can easily be paralleled with post-traumatic stress disorder, common for women recovering from a sexual assault.  In addition, the concepts of rape and force are thematically interwoven throughout the season such as in the instance of Warren’s sexual abuse and murder of his ex-girlfriend Katrina (“Dead Things”) and Spike’s attempted rape of Buffy on her bathroom floor (“Seeing Red”).

Willow’s role as “perpetrator” must also be explored, as it is through her need to prove her power that Buffy is resurrected and consequently removed from Heaven (“Bargaining 1”).  Buffy’s feeling of betrayal by Willow, and the remaining members of the Scooby Gang, is obvious once she realizes that it was her fiends who brought her back.  While speaking with Spike about her joyful experience in Heaven she states, “I was torn out of there, pulled out – by my friends” (“After Life”).  The final topic to be examined will be how Buffy’s character changed and was viewed by the audience during Season Six.  She was not the same brazen, fearless heroine the audience had known, but a darker, fragmented character that changed the scope and depth of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.