It's About Power

Authority, leadership and respect in 7.19 Empty Places

Yet another not-an-essay by Plin

Empty spaces what are we living for?
Abandoned places I guess we know the score
On and on, does anybody know what we are looking for...
Another hero, another mindless crime
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime
Hold the line, does anybody want to take it anymore?
The show must go on
The show must go on, yeah
Inside my heart is breaking
My make-up may be flaking
But my smile still stays on

Buffy is all about sucking it up, always has been. Her boyfriend turns evil or has decided to leave her for her own good, her friends turn against her again and again (although they end up helping out when things get rough, because of that "we'll see it through, it's what we're always here to do" sense of duty and loyalty), her mother dies, her sister-who isn't really her sister but is still an innocent-is threatened by a hellgod, she has been brought back from the pleasant release of death by friends who expect her to be grateful and continue to protect them… yet she still manages to keep fighting, make sure the show still goes on, even when she's only "going through the motions."

Now, however, her make-up is definitely flaking through her smile. Her overwhelming guilt is evident as she tries to be cheerful around Xander, and she runs away before there is any risk of getting emotional (something she can only do in private… until Caleb shows up). She reassures Kennedy that she's not offended at being called useless, and feigns chirpy quippiness with Giles after her cartoon-birdies-inducing encounter with Caleb ("I feel rested!"). The strain is showing, though, and as she feels the pressure increase she tightens her grasp on the trappings of authority. Buffy is the archetypical overprotective parent who is unwilling to let the kids grow up. She is driven by fear, not so much for her own safety but for that of the people who have been placed in her charge, even though she never asked for it. She is the last guardian of the Hellmouth, and by god she wants to protect everyone for as long as she can. Despite the fact that she, like Clem, doesn't believe that she can really save them in the end.

Buffy has lost sight of the big picture, because she's let herself be painted into a corner. Back in Bring On The Night, Buffy said:

From now on, we won't just face our worst fears, we will seek them out. We will find them, and cut out their hearts one by one, until The First shows itself for what it really is. And I'll kill it myself. There is only one thing on this earth more powerful than evil, and that's us. Any questions?

But her fears have been relentlessly piling up, and she's been worn down. There have been casualties and horrific injuries, and she feels responsible for each and every one of them. The show isn't going on, it's struggling, because the heroine has let her fears tie her to the railroad tracks.

So, what is the big picture? Yeah, it's about power, who's got it, and who's willing to use it. But what is power, exactly? Are there different kinds of power? When everyone talks about power, are they all saying the same thing?

See, there's authority, and there's leadership. There's physical strength and inner strength. And there's respect, the respect of others and self-respect alike. All about power, sure, but who's really got the power? And who's willing to use it? To what end?

Authority

Yes, I know it's lame to quote the dictionary, but I didn't feel like poring over journal articles for a sexier citation, okay? Anyway, here's what the American Heritage Dictionary has to say about authority:

1. The power to enforce laws, exact obedience, command, determine, or judge.
2. Power assigned to another; authorization

Authority is an externally granted kind of power, often based on a title or office, or mere seniority. By being chosen, a Slayer is automatically given authority to protect the world from demons. She also has to decide how to act on that authority:

BUFFY It is always different! It's always complicated. And at some point, someone has to draw the line and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off but in the end the Slayer is always cut off. There's no mystical guidebook. No all-knowing council. Human rules don't apply. There's only me. I am the law.

(7.05 Selfless)

Buffy, as Faith wryly puts it, thinks she's a cop.

There is a lot of authority in this episode, and most of it is shown being abused. Willow and Giles have to fake their authority by magically posing as Interpol agents to get information from the police. But empty authority is a difficult illusion to maintain, as Willow discovers when the officer repeatedly asks, "Who are you, again?" Authority alone is not real power, just the vestment power sometimes wears.

In light of the bit from Selfless quoted above, it's no surprise that the clearest example of authority (and its abuse) in this episode is the police: by virtue of their role, they have authority, which they can then use as they see fit-including wrongly, when they're "hellmouthed." They are the law, after all, and have the physical strength and weapons (making them feel all manly) with which to enforce it. Authority, indeed, is a kind of power that can easily corrupt, as it's not necessarily earned or bestowed by those over whom the authority is exercised. "We are itchin' to hand out some justice," the cops say, and Faith offers them the perfect excuse.

Faith doesn't recognize the authority of the police. She's got an Apocalypse to deal with, and she's a Slayer, so she has no qualms about fighting back. The girls challenge authority along with her--to the rifle-wielding cop's surprise and chagrin--because Faith has earned their loyalty by showing them respect.

Respect

Since I'm apparently in a musical kind of mood, here's another song:

What you want, baby I got
What you need, you know I got it
All I'm askin' is for a little respect
when you come home (just a little bit)
Hey, baby (just a little bit)
When you get home (just a little bit)
Hey, mister (just a little bit)

I ain't gonna do you wrong while you gone
I ain't gonna do you wrong, 'cause I don't wanna
All I askin' is for a little respect
When you come home, baby.
When you come home, respect

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care - TCB

Hmm, respect. Let's see:

ANDREW
(talking about Faith's heinous theft of his Hot Pocket)

...it's just the fundamental lack of respect.

GILES Shut up and pay attention.

That's a pretty clear indication, I think, that respect is the theme, and lack thereof will be our bad cop for the evening. Giles shows respect for Dawn, consulting her opinion on the very important matter at hand, and dismissing Andrew's concerns as irrelevant (which, of course, they are, but that's beside the point). It's true that Andrew craves respect while doing nothing to earn it, but the funny thing about respect is that it--like knowledge, and love--actually increases and spreads the more it is shared. Respect someone, and they will often rise to the occasion. Spike and Buffy share a bond of respect that has grown over the season precisely because they have nurtured it and allowed it to blossom over the past few months. Faith respects the potentials, doesn't treat them as children, and in return they rally around her when she is down and, later, when they overthrow Buffy as their leader.

Lack of respect also feeds on itself, and I think is largely what lies at the root of the downward spiral that eventually culminates in Buffy's exclusion from the house. For example, after Giles' betrayal in Lies, Buffy disregards his (valid, it turns out) advice in DG, and continues to distrust him about Spike. When you trust someone, you know they "ain't gonna do you wrong, while you're gone": Buffy no longer has that trust in Giles. He showed a lack of respect for her judgment, and now she's returning the favor:

GILES Decisions have to be made in your absence. BUFFY Yeah, well, those are the ones that've been scaring me.

Vice-versa, Giles has never apologized for his actions and has clearly lost all faith in Buffy's judgment, not confined to the topic of Spike alone. Giles sends Spike on the mission (to the mission) because he acknowledges the vampire's physical strength, but he has no respect for his role within the group. We've already seen that he doesn't respect Andrew, either, and it's no coincidence that he sends them both away.

Giles is only the most egregious example of lack of respect in this episode, however: Buffy wants to keep everyone safe, but she doesn't respect their right or ability to make decisions. Vice-versa, and as a regretful yet inevitable consequence thereof, Buffy is treated disrespectfully by virtually everyone in the house.

Leadership

Faith is shown to be the best communicator in the true sense of the word, someone who knows how and when to listen, who picks up on nonverbal cues, who "reads people," as well as understanding what needs to be said and saying it as non-confrontationally as possible. We can really see how she's grown, this way. Not surprisingly, then, the Power of the Word comes to her aid, and she earns the respect of the others. She shows qualities of leadership, which isn't just about giving orders and talking strategy, but also about learning people's names and letting them blow off a little steam. Leadership is what legitimates authority and turns it into power.

Buffy is not a born leader. She's always been "ornery," as she tells Caleb, and prefers to do things her own way. Ever since Welcome to the Hellmouth she has tried to keep her friends safe, even though she has often allowed them to help her over the years. Despite these collaborative efforts, the fact that the Slayer, in the end, perceives herself to be alone in her responsibility has been emphasized over and over again this season, from Selfless to CWDP to Lies My Parents Told Me. Buffy's friends have repeatedly chosen to help her and have gained skills and power, yet she still sees herself as isolated in her role as the Chosen One.

Now, though, she's been entrusted with the care of a group of girls, also chosen but as yet without any special powers. Despite the lesson she learned in Help--that no matter how well you do your job, you can't save everyone--she is torn by a deep conflict: she wants to protect them, believes in her heart that most of them will not survive, yet she knows she needs to train them and send them into battle. Because she feels every loss as a mark of personal failure against herself, Buffy can't bear to get to know the girls as individuals: the last time she called one by name, it was Chloe, in her Slayer dream. Chloe's end under the influence of the First taught her that lesson, too, that it's better not to get too close, to try to lessen the (seemingly) inevitable pain of loss.

While all of this makes perfect sense as a means of protecting herself, it does not make Buffy an effective leader. She comes across as cold and distant, and her "rousing speeches" ring false even to herself. As time goes on and there are more losses, and Xander's terrible maiming, she is left feeling increasingly incompetent and clutching desperately at the superficial trappings of authority to which she has tied her identity, her Slayerness. It's not unlike a parent who runs out of logical arguments, or knows that there are none, and tells a child to do something "because I say so." The title of Slayer is just another name, a label, devoid of meaning on its own. Yet it was the only thing Buffy felt she had left, and when she played it as her last card, she discovered it was just another empty place. She was trying to exercise authority without any real power behind it.

What Buffy is doing is exhibiting a response known as "threat rigidity." Researchers have identified that a strong threat often causes an organization or individual to adopt a defensive pose, causing it to self-limit its information gathering and processing capacity and narrow decision options as a means of reducing uncertainty. Buffy is backed into a corner, besieged with uncertainty due to a lack of self-confidence and the failing support of her followers, and she reacts by becoming increasingly rigid and refusing to consider other options. To adopt the oft-cited sight metaphor recurrent this season, she has developed tunnel vision.

When Buffy finally understands this, faced with the implacable mutiny of everyone in her household, she passes the torch of authority to Faith.

Buffy's friends, family, and charges no longer trust her judgment, and are questioning her authority. On the one hand, this is good: lack of questioning leads to Jasmine-like sheephood, and that's clearly a Bad Thing. What's wrong about it is the lack of respect demonstrated, on both sides. Faith is the one bridging the gap, interestingly enough: she's the only one in the house who treats Buffy respectfully, even while challenging her decisions.

It always comes down to power, of course

Back to the dictionary. What is power?

1. The ability or capacity to perform or act effectively.
2. A specific capacity, faculty, or aptitude.
3. Strength or force exerted or capable of being exerted; might.
4. The ability or official capacity to exercise control; authority.
5. Forcefulness; effectiveness.

American Heritage Dictionary, again

Power means skills, which may be strength or force or some other faculty. Power is not authority so much as the ability to exercise authority effectively, through leadership, which is gained by earning respect.

BUFFY

The bad guys always go where the power is. […]
And I say it's time we go in and take it away from them.

And I say, Buffy is probably right. Not about the method, no, but about where the power is and that it needs to be taken away. Her instincts rarely lead her astray, but where she's consistently failed this season has been when she has allowed herself to be goaded (by Giles and Wood, and even Caleb himself) into adopting a model of behavior that doesn't come naturally to her. She has tried to be a "general," tried to lead others, but that's not her style. She has to concentrate too hard, and that gets in the way of her true power, which lies deep in herself.

Problem is, Buffy's forgotten the lesson she tried to teach the early arrivals back in Potential:

BUFFY You have strength, speed, instinct… you just have to learn to trust yourself. […] Don't fight on his terms. If your gut's telling you to run, run. Regain the higher ground. Make the fight your own.

Buffy has been fighting on everyone else's terms but her own. She's tried to follow the advice offered by three men: Giles, Wood, and Caleb, with disastrous consequences. Caleb himself even chides her, "Fightin' back didn't do you much good last time, did it?" but she doesn't heed his words.

Now that she is free of the trappings of responsibility and authority--her first break from Slayerdom since Anne, really--I'm thinking she'll have a chance to regroup and find her inner strength once again. She'll also do some soul searching that will take her beyond her little graveyard therapy session in Conversations With Dead People, having finally realized that her superiority complex is based on an empty place. She will learn to respect the others who are helping her in this fight and truly work with them as equals, accepting the pain that comes with caring. Since, again, respect is a way of multiplying power by sharing it with others, this is (a big part of) how she'll get the job done in the end.

That's my theory, anyway, and I'm sticking to it until Joss wrenches it from my sweaty grasp.

Final tally

So, at the end of the episode, who's got the power? Let's take a census:

Faith: has leadership, authority, respect, power of Slayer might. She's definitely top dog at the moment. What remains to be seen is whether she'll be able to wield it effectively.
Buffy: has her Slayer powers, and the skills that come with experience. She's got seven years of slayerdom behind her, and that's worth something. Now, though, she's handed over her authority and has no leadership, and respect only from Spike (and Faith). It's going to be a hard road back up, if that's what she seeks.
Giles: has the authority that comes with being male in our society, older, a Watcher, but he does not display good leadership qualities when it comes to Buffy. However, his authority seems to have somehow remained intact in the eyes of everyone but Buffy (and perhaps Faith), so he still has the respect of the group.
Spike: he has--and finally truly owns--his vampire powers of strength and speed, but receives no respect from anyone but Buffy (and possibly Faith).
Willow: still has her magic, and finally seems willing to use it.
Anya: is seething with resentment at having (voluntarily) given up her demon powers. Her presentation of ubervamp information was too little, too late; combine that with her clear lack of knowledge about the potentials and typical Anya-esque oversharing about her sex life, and she doesn't have anyone's respect-and she knows it.
Xander: poor Xander is not much with the power at the moment.

To sum up:

Buffy is essentially in the same position she was in Becoming Part 2: no friends, no authority, no home, no family. What has she got? Herself, and her real power, which has nothing to do with the idea of being a general and leading the troops. What makes her special isn't being the Slayer, it's being Buffy. She's alone, but being alone will grant her perspective, and allow her to follow her instincts without being conditioned by others' expectations. (There's another parallel with Becoming II, of course: who's all she's got? With a radically different dynamic and motivation, Spike is going to help Buffy save the world, again. Last time he tried to leave town when he thought the world was about to be devoured by evil, things didn't work out so well. This time I'm pretty sure he's going to stick around.)

Meanwhile, Faith is chosen by the others as their leader. She's a Slayer, too, so she's got both the authority and the skills. She's even got Buffy's blessing, which is another form of recognition she's never had before (perhaps Buffy's even a bit relieved, despite the humiliation, to have a vacation from the crushing responsibility of leadership).

Interesting, this passing of the torch to the next generation, so to speak, something that has been foreshadowed ever since we first saw Buffy training Dawn back in Lessons. What else might it mean, I wonder?

CALEB

So now the big, strong Slayer goes back to those girls. She's just so ready to walk them right into it.

CUT TO

FAITH, dancing at the Bronze.

Is Faith going to save the day by taking over the reins, or has Caleb been gunning for her all along? I'm a tad suspicious, because Caleb has made a lot of noise about the "one, true, original, accept-no-substitutes Slayer." Yet we know he's aware of Faith, "Cain to her Abel," and even knows that she's in the car behind him when he tosses Shannon out onto the road leading into Sunnydale. I think he's been commenting heavily on the "unique" position of The Slayer specifically to highlight Buffy's own (falsely based) sense of specialness, and as misdirection. Both Caleb and the First have had a few chances to take out Buffy by now, and have never taken full advantage of it. Back in Sleeper, Spike/FE said "Slayer's not in order." What does that mean? Maybe that Faith is in order, and they've set her up to lead the lambs (and possibly herself) straight to the slaughter.

We'll see.

Various and miscellaneous (aka, bits that didn't fit anywhere else)

Spike doesn't let his distrust of Giles get in the way of the mission. Yet another sign of his personal growth, as he goes off on a task assigned by someone he (justifiably) dislikes, accompanied by someone he finds annoying, and about which Buffy knows nothing. He's clearly moved beyond the "all about Buffy" stage.

It is not for thee, it is for her alone to wield

(emphasis mine) The normal way of interpreting this would be that "she is the only one who can/has the right to wield it" (whatever "it" is). It's possible, though, that the inscription means that "she" can only wield it when/after having been left alone, which casts a whole new light on the situation. Just a thought.

 

 

Jossverse Home Brain Dumps