Rape! OR It Happens

I have to ask, what possible necessity drove the writers of BtVS to ruin Spike’s character and the audience’s love for him by turning him into a rapist. The fact that Buffy was able to fight him off doesn’t negate his attempt. According to Webster’s College Dictionary, the denotation of the word “rape” is the crime of using force to have sexual intercourse with somebody; that is what Spike did. Whether he succeeded in achieving the end result or not does not matter; it is his abuse and violation of trust, Buffy’s and ours, that has us horrified.

However, “Rape” can also mean the violent, destructive, or abusive treatment of someone or something. This is what happened to Willow, Buffy, and Tara in the other two episodes covered in this blog. There is not some big, bad evil trying to bring about the next apocalypse. It’s a much more present evil this time. A member of the Trio has raped each of the above characters in some way. That is all, yet it is more terrible than anything we have seen so far in the series.

What the Trio did to Buffy with their demon’s poison in “Normal Again” goes beyond the normal evil magic we have seen; it was a rape of her mind. They violently destroyed her sense of sanity and self, abused her reason, until she no longer knew what was real and what was fantasy.

What Warren did to Willow and Tara also constitutes as violent and destructive treatment. In “Seeing Red,” he murdered an innocent bystander right in front of her lover. He violated her sense of security. As we learn in “Villains,” this is something she cannot get past. It’s not a spell or a demonic power. It’s just man; it’s life.

Part of what bothers us so much about these scenes is that they were normal. It’s not a demonic force or some inhuman evil that’s attacking these girls. What Spike and Warren did are things that happen everyday in normal life; it’s not fantasy anymore.

The writers of Buffy the Vampire Slayer are using date rape and drive by shooting to show us that evil is not just fantasy. It’s real, and it happens everyday in the very world in which we all live. I think “Normal Again” really helps to show the writers’ intent: you don’t need to live in Sunnydale to see evil; bad things do happen in real life.