Concluding our Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Six posts is
another blog by Dana Alex, this time exploring 'Normal Again' and the
idea that Sunnydale and the Buffyverse is in fact a delusion of the very
normal Buffy Summers. You can read Dana's previous posts in this series
including her exploration of Jekyll and Hyde in Season Three (which you
can find here) and her exploration of Adam in Season Five (which you can find here). Don't forget to check out our other Season Six post by Mary Going discussing Buffy's final Halloween episode 'All the Way' (which you can find here), and don't forget to share these posts and your thoughts using the hashtag #BuffySlays20.
In this blog post I would like to shortly talk about the Season
Six episode ‘Normal Again.’ I must admit that I have a love-hate relationship
with this particular episode. It is one of those episodes that I love because
it demonstrates the multiplicity of layers within the Buffyverse perfectly, yet
I hate it because it is also an episode that I cannot forget as its plot
completely overthrows the way I look at the entire show.
A short summary: Buffy is patrolling and is attacked by a
demon – up until here, a normal day in the office for the Slayer. Yet, she
suddenly finds herself as a patient in a mental institution. The audience is
told that Buffy has been hallucinating for the past 6 years, constructed a
world (Sunnydale) in her mind and is now stuck in this place. Back in
Sunnydale, Buffy is asking herself whether Sunnydale is indeed only a made-up
place, as she remembers that, when she first became the Slayer and started talking
about vampires and demons, her parents sent her to a mental hospital until she
stopped mentioning these creatures. She fears that she has never actually left
the hospital and has ever since been trapped in her own illusion. Throughout
this episode it is up to her to decide which “reality” Buffy considers to be
real and in which universe she would like to live.
As a fan of the show, I do not want Sunnydale to be an
illusion of the main character. And I know that there are quite a few reasons
why it is not an illusion. But since this episode is one of the most
controversial ones, I want to at least consider the rather unpopular opinion
that Sunnydale is, in fact, only a made-up place in Buffy’s mind.
There are many reasons that indeed convince me that the
Buffy that we can find in the mental hospital is the real-Buffy and
Slayer-Buffy is simply the ideal version that she created of herself. In this
blog post, I will demonstrate those reasons that convinced me the most.
One reason is the fact that Buffy simply cannot die as she
is, after all, the protagonist of her own illusions. In Season One, Buffy dies
but manages to come back to live shortly after. At the end of Season Five,
however, Buffy dies a second time but for a much longer period, before her friends
bring her back into the world of the living. The latter is even addressed in
the episode ‘Normal Again’ as the doctor says that she was getting better a few
months ago before she got lost in her hallucinations again. In the episode ‘Once
More, With Feeling,’ Buffy sings about how her friends in Sunnydale took her
out of a heaven, a place where she felt happy and loved. This place is most
probably reality. Ever since she came back from ‘heaven,’ she constantly
mentions how difficult has been for her to be in Sunnydale. The fact that she
feels trapped in there could be understood as her being helpless and unable to
escape this place on her own terms. Buffy is imprisoned in her own mind and can
only leave the place she created temporarily.
In one
particular scene in the asylum, Joyce tells Buffy that the only way to go back
to reality is to get rid of her friends as they are the ones keeping her in
Sunnydale. As mentioned above, it is her friends that will not let Slayer-Buffy
die. But why is it that her imaginary friends will not let go of her? I have
been thinking about this and even though this might just be my personal
interpretation of it, I believe that it is the other way around: despite
complaining that her friends took her out of ‘heaven,’ Buffy cannot and does
not want to let go of them. I consider Buffy’s friends to be representing her
personal needs and desires that Buffy can only satisfy in Sunnydale. Let me
give you an example of what I mean: The
most obvious character to use as an example is Rupert Giles. As we know,
Buffy’s real father is … well, let’s just say that he will not get a ‘Best
Daddy in the World’-mug for Father’s Day. Thus, Buffy has created Rupert Giles,
who represents the father figure that she urgently needs. This man, a Watcher,
is literally taking care of her and is watching her actions at all times.
Leaving Sunnydale would mean to leave her much-needed father figure behind.
Each of her friends represent an aspect that is lacking in Buffy’s real life.
The doctor in ‘Normal Again’ even validates this thought when he talks about
the fact that Buffy only created Dawn to ‘to accommodate a need for a familial
bond’ (S06E17).
Another indicator for the fact that Buffy created this
illusionary place is that throughout the series, we only learn very little of
Buffy’s past. This might hint at the fact that she is desparately trying to
repress her past entirely and thus created an imaginary place where she can
seemingly leave this past behind her. Yet, a version of past-Buffy can still be
found within her constructed world: Cordelia Chase. In a process called
projection, Buffy has attributed her shallow cheerleader-self onto another
girl, in this case Cordelia. By doing that, Buffy is clearly distancing herself
from the girl she once was and does not want to be anymore.
As I have mentioned in the beginning, Buffy has created an
ideal version of herself, which gives her a significant power. It is a common
theory that The-Monsters-of-the-Week are merely metaphors that represent issues
that young girls face during their teenage years. Buffy is literally fighting
her demons that are embodiments of her personal fears. Her Slayer-self is able
to overcome these fears easily, which her normal-self could not do. By
incarcerating herself in her own imagination, she stays in denial of her
weaknesses in real life and thus wants to stick to being the Slayer.
The last reason that convinces me
that Sunnydale only exists in Buffy’s head is that in ‘Normal Again,’ she is
extremely aware of the fact that vampires, witches and demons should not exist
in reality. This awareness is missing throughout the rest of the show. I know
that many people have brought up this aspect over the years but it is indeed
interesting that nobody in Sunnydale is ever questioning the fact that dozens
of teenagers have died at Sunnydale High, that a candy bar turned every
grown-up into children and that basically hundreds of demons walk about
Sunnydale every single day. Sunnydale as Buffy’s illusion is therefore the only
reasonable explanation.
At the end of ‘Normal Again,’ Buffy has to decide whether
she wants to completely immerse herself in her hallucinations or whether she
wants to face the real world. In the end, we know that she will stay in resistance
towards any attempts to leave the world she has created in her mind and
therefore stays in Sunnydale. What we will never know is whether this decision
was the right one.
What do you think? Is Sunnydale only a made-up place in
Buffy’s mind? Or do you want to hold on to the thought that it all real?
You can use the hashtag #BuffySlays20, so that we can
discuss this controversial episode.
Dana Alex is a first-year PhD student at Kingston
University, London. She is interested in madness and asylums – may it be in
literature, film, television or video games. Other research interests include
vampires, postmodern Gothic, and she is a bit too interested in critical and
cultural theory (honestly, this cannot be healthy). Dana would like to
emphasize that she was certainly not using this blog as an excuse to re-watch
all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer again.
You know, it's not a critic of the article itself, or the writer, but I'm a bit tired of this "Sucker Punch" styled it-was-only-the-protagonist's-delusion thing. It came up with Buffy, with Alice, with Harry Potter, with Narnia, with basically every major IP consisting of supernatural elements and one (or a small group of) central heroes. I can understand, turning the whole story inside-out by saying "it was just in her mind" sounds interesting, thoughtful and deep, but at this point I'm just seeing it as attempts to kill the wonder in these stories.
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