This paper offers a psychoanalytic critique of Buffy the Vampire Slayer via Lacanian theory as interpreted by Slavoj Zizek. I contend that Buffy’s explorations of what is otherwise inarticulable in the dominant discourses of social order share some similarities to Zizek’s explorations of the concept of the Real—an immanent and immaterial totality of Desire and Enjoyment, unable to be adequately, fully represented in material or symbolic form, and intuited only in glimpses of horror and/or trauma. Zizek argues that the intuited and intuitive Real can only intrude upon everyday life in horrific moments because the Real itself is horrific: for the Real is a void. It is a state of no-thing, in which the subject must accept that she desires the void; in the void of the Real, desire and enjoyment are sated beyond materiality and all material representation. Buffy Summers is arguably a Zizekian subject yearning to quench, or complete, her desire by experiencing the enjoyment that is inhibited by material limitations. Buffy must signify her self by establishing a position within those dominant discourses, all the while intuiting that this position makes her own enjoyment impossible and thus makes her cede her own desire. "Real-ly," she desires to escape this position so she can enjoy—be—no-thing. As Zizek notes, this anti-materiality of the Real is Death; more precisely, the desire for death, in which the subject accepts her "no-thingness."

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where the living dead—vampires—return, re-embracing their material existence in their staunch refusal of the truth of their "no-thingness," the Real invades the symbolic network of dominant discourse, thus staining it, "standing in" for that which the symbolic cannot contain or represent: that which exceeds convention, expectation, the rational. The vampire is the primary symbol of the excess that stains the symbolic network of the show’s "reality," bringing the Real too close for comfort. As Zizek says, "The return of the dead is a sign of a disturbance in the symbolic." [1] And Buffy is responsible for controlling the disturbing eruptions of the Real into the symbolic so that those around her will not be completely traumatized by the stain of excess. Buffy must guarantee that the symbolic universe that sustains the lives of those she loves is not irrevocably broken, that the symbolic does not fall apart. After all, as Zizek reminds us, the barrier is not meant to be broken; the dialectic between Real and symbolic must remain intact. As previous scholars like Buinicki and Enns have noted, the repair of the barrier requires Buffy to reinstate and thus uphold the discourses of the status quo. [2] However, muted as Buffy’s subversions of dominant discourse often may be, and despite Buffy’s non-subversive acts of reparation, the excess of the eruption still leaves a stain we must explore.

The sixth season of Buffy, though much maligned by many fans and television critics, is the most significant in that it illustrates the inevitable problematics that result from the stain of excess. Therefore, in this paper, I will discuss how the sixth season of Buffy, in particular, serves as a sort of "quilting point" at which the marginal space separating the Real from the symbolic, slowly but surely frayed throughout the previous five seasons, is ripped apart and must be re-sewn. Both the presence of the "Buffy-Bot" and Buffy’s resurrection represent not merely "the simple opposition between life and death, but the split of life itself into ‘normal’ life and horrifying ‘undead’ life, and the split of the dead into ‘ordinary’ dead and the ‘undead’ machine." [3] In addition, the resurrected Buffy explicitly connotes the excess of Death (the Real) which has always implicitly stained her. I will discuss how this implicit stain is figured in her sexual relationship with Angel, elaborating on Beth Braun’s evaluation of its "extremely traumatic results" [4] and the resurgence of this trauma in her similar relationship with Spike. I will relate this to how the stain is also figured in her inability to sustain a relationship with Riley; in her "first death" at the hands of the Master in season one; and especially in the Slayer-as-pure-Death-Drive she is/becomes in the alternate universe conjured by Willow and Anya in Season Three’s "The Wish."

Moreover, I will discuss how Buffy’s "second death"—her ostensibly messianic self-sacrifice in Season Five’s "The Gift"—can be read as a selfish act in which Buffy subconsciously decides to stop ceding her desire and gives in to the death drive. In short, she saves "reality" for others by fully "assum[ing] her nonexistence" [5] (a nonexistence which has been hinted at since the second season, as Buffy is confronted with successors, Kendra and Faith, whose calls to duty correlate with Buffy ceasing "to be"). Season six’s resurrected Buffy, a disturbing double of her robotic twin, is actually as much a vampiric Other as her vampire foes and lovers: she is an "uncanny, monstrous character," "the Other which is not our ‘fellow-creature,’" "someone with whom no relationship of empathy is possible." [6] She is an excessive abundance of the Real not able to be housed in her physical body, the empty shell signifying the symbolic she transcended and to which she no longer can identify. Finally, I will critique the "false solutions" offered in the final episodes of Season Six and seven. In "Two to Go"/ "Grave," I am specifically interested in the transference of Buffy’s Otherness onto "Evil Willow" and Buffy’s supposed identification with Dawn (whose "existence," mirroring Buffy’s, is also dubious). I believe Buffy’s repaired relationship with Dawn is meant to be read as Buffy renewing her identification with the symbolic network and expunging her mourning for the Real—a moment of reparation repeated in "Chosen," with Buffy’s supposed identification will all the potential slayers. But these should be read as purely formal gestures presenting themselves as "authentic contact." As Zizek would say, such a gesture "is stricto sensu empty, a self-referential assertion …, a hollow container open to a multitude of incompatible readings." [7] It appears to bring about a "happy ending" to both the individual seasons as well as the series at large. However, any resolution brought about by reparative acts "is no longer a question of restoring [symbolic] ‘reality’ but rather of producing it, performatively." [8] In sum, Buffy continues to anchor "reality" by paradoxically serving as symbol (place-holder) for the excesses of the Real as well as continuing to produce the gap that, by necessity, must prevent the Real from wholly infiltrating reality.

References

1. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Lacan through Popular Culture (Cambridge and London: MIT P, 1992) 23.

2. Martin Buinicki and Anthony Enns, "Buffy the Vampire Disciplinarian: Institutional Excess and the New Economy of Power," Popular Culture Review 13.2 (2002): 77-87. (Also featured in *Slayage.*)

3. Slavoj Zizek, The Plague of Fantasies (New York and London: Verso, 1997) 89.

4. Beth Braun, "The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Ambiguity of Evil in Supernatural Representations," Journal of Popular Film and Television 28.2 (2000): 88-94.

5. Looking Awry 65.

6. Slavoj Zizek, The Metastases of Enjoyment (New York and London: Verso, 1994) 90.

7. Plague of Fantasies 149.

8. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Lacan: The Absolute Master, Trans. Douglas Brick (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991) 156.