Losing Touch with the Symbolic Order in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Essay

Losing Touch with the Symbolic Order in Buffy the Vampire Slayer      Ã‚   In the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body," the audience is forced to face the Real every time the director makes a shock cut to Joyce's dead body after each commercial break. Joyce's body reminds viewers of the materiality of the human condition as we see her zipped into a body bag, then examined by a mortician, and finally covered with a white sheet. By exposing viewers to Joyce's body, the creators of Buffy are treating the audience as another member of the Buffy diegesis. Like Buffy, Dawn, and Giles, we recognize the Real because the camera constantly returns us to the physical presence of her corpse. We understand how Buffy experiences the abject because we, too, experience the shock of seeing Joyce's dead body. One question that remains, however, is how do people deal with the abject when they know there is death but do not see the corpse. In "The Body," there is a sequence that explores this question. It is a scene where we see Buffy's closest fri ends deal with the loss of a mother figure, without seeing her corpse. Because they are not exposed the body, they try to hang on to the symbolic order through language and action. However, the abject is always present in their minds. Willow faces what Julia Kristeva calls a narcissistic crisis as she struggles to appear as a collected, supportive figure for Buffy. Xander practices transference as he looks for someone to blame for Joyce's death. Anya experiences her own breakdown of reality as she recognizes her own mortality. Through language and action, these characters try to cover their own fears of the Real without success.    Like many of the other scenes in this e... ...d language; however, the Real and the abject cannot be repressed. Willow gives into the abject by crying out against Anya's tactlessness. Xander faces the abject by looking down at his bloody hand and realizing there is nothing left to blame. Anya recognizes her own mortality by comparing Joyce's physical condition with her own. For these characters, the loss of Joyce, a mother figure, causes them to realize their own human condition. Symbolic order and language, at times, fails because thinking about Joyce's death forces the Real to permeate in their minds. The desire to hold on to the symbolic order remains, however, in order to help them get through the loss of their loved one and to continue living.    Sources Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia UP. 1982.