Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I have now watched Episode 22 "Restless" of Series 4 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I cannot help feeling that I would have been better prepared had I followed the programme from the beginning. Clearly the main characters have already been created and interacted as Series 4 begins with Buffy's arrival at College on her first day. She is subject to all the fears and concerns that arise from her life experiences up to the point at which the series begins and so her behaviour as shown to us presumably is consistent with that shown/developed in Series 1 - 3. Not having seen any of these leaves the viewer struggling to understand why she is behaving as she is at this time. This comment is also true of the other main characters who we meet and have, in this episode, experience of their dreams. At times I felt that I was in a similar dream to Xander who is suddenly faced with his questions being answered in French, a language he does not understand, nor does he understand why the sudden switch to French has occurred.

The main component of the episode is the dreams the four main characters.  Following a very busy time slaying evil things they are tired but feel too 'wired' to sleep so they agree to spend the night watching videos but fall asleep anyway. I will assume that the readers of this blog will know who the characters are and the role they play. If not there is a great deal of information on the Internet both in Wikpaedia and more specifically at http://www.buffyguide.com.

Willow's dream opens with Tara lying semi-naked on a bed whilst Willow paints Hymn to Aphrodite on her back. As with all dreams there is no logical sequence to what we see and we next see Willow at College believing that she is about to attend the first lesson of her Drama class. Instead she finds herself on stage with her fellow students, who are all in costume, about to present a version of Death of a Salesman. Willow who sees herself as not dressed for the role (whatever it is) is told that everyone likes her costume although, to her, she is in her everyday clothes. To add to her anxiety Buffy tells her that all her family are out front looking forward to her appearance on stage. At one point she finds herself alone between two sets of red stage curtains unable to find her way out. We next find her in the classroom about to read a paper to the class. She is wearing the same clothes as in the theatre part of the dream but Buffy strips them off leaving Willow standing in front of the class in the same clothes she wore Episode 1 of the series [ Note - Of course I was unaware of this or how she saw herself at that time]. To add to her misery Oz, her former boyfriend, and Tara, her current girlfriend flirt with each other. The dream ends with Willow being attacked by the first slayer.

The opening scene suggests that Willow has sexual feelings for Tara but has to partially suppress them because of the probable response from her family and others or her own guilt about having such feelings. She resorts to the apparently more innocent pastime of painting a love poem on her back. Interestingly there is another scene in the dream of Xander where the sexual relationship is more explicit but in this case we have to take cognizance of the fact that it is part of Xander's fantasy. The scene in the theatre is a reflection of Willow's anxieties about her being at College and not being able to keep up with her fellow students nor receive their approval. It is important to her to be accepted by the 'others' and to show them that she is no longer the girl the viewers saw in the first episodes. Graphically this is portrayed in the scene when Buffy strips her clothes off to reveal the same costume worn in an earlier part of her life.

We are also offered a glimpse of her relationship with her family whom she cannot see but are the cause of some anxiety. There is one other element of the dream and that is the red curtains in which Willow is trapped. They can be interpreted as a comfort blanket that keeps her hidden from the judgemental looks she feels are always upon her. Equally they could be seen as a metaphor for the type of relationship she has/wants with Tara - to find herself buried in the most private parts of the woman she desires.

Xander's dream, again a series of disjointed scenes, begins with him apparently waking and then excusing himself to go to the bathroom. On the way he meets Willow's mother whose behaviour is suggestive of a wish for a sexual encounter with Xander. He passes up on the immediate opportunity but does indicate a desire to return once he has been to the bathroom. Once in the bathroom he is conscious that he is not alone and on looking round sees that he is being observed by a group in white coats ready to take notes. He excuses himself saying that he will find another bathroom but on going through a door into what he thought was a bathroom he finds himself in a playground where he sees Buffy, Giles and Spike. He is told by Giles that Spike is to be trained as a Watcher. Buffy is seen playing in a sandbox. We then switch to an ice-cream truck where Xander finds Anya, Willow and Tara. The latter two are heavily made up and in skimpy clothing and are in a suggestive embrace. They invite Xander to join them but on his way he finds himself in the basement in his house. The dream sequence then returns him to the University where he seeks advice from Giles about what is happening only to be answered in French a language he does not understand. Constantly throughout the dream sequences he finds himself in the basement of his house.

It does not take a genius to work out the sexual nature of the early part of his dream. The attempted seduction by Buffy's mother is taken to be a metaphor for his desire as a child to have sex with his mother, a la Freud, whilst the behaviour of Willow and Tara in the Ice Cream van serves to offer two fantasies that men find sexually arousing - the wish to see two women in the sexual act and to watch this in a place that should be free of all such behaviour. The latter fantasy is the 'innocence' of the ice cream van created by its link with the young. However his main anxiety  and probably the cause of the constant return to the basement of his house is his feelings of inferiority as he has not been as successful as his friends - for example he is not attending college. The French language sequence is a metaphor for his fear that he will no longer be able to understand his friends as they become more and more immersed in College life.

Giles dream revolves around his desire to continue to mentor Buffy and the contra-desire to let her make her own way as a Slayer. His feelings are further complicated by the presence of his girl friend who is first seen with an empty pushchair suggesting an unfulfilled desire to have children. It is not clear whether this is a desire felt by Giles. Buffy appears in his dream as a child, dressed as such and having pigtails. She is attempting to throw a ball at a mock vampire at a fairground but is unable to hit the vampire. Giles offers advice about keeping her arm straight ( there is obvious stereotyping in this part of the dream (it is usually more subtle) because there is a belief that females cannot throw a ball straight and that in some unspecified way it is a by product of being female) and she is successful. Through this sequence we can see evidence of Giles still wishing to guide Buffy We switch to a night club where Giles uses singing to explain why the group are being attacked - apparently he has always wanted to be a musician. The final sequence is him tracing the wiring from the sound system, that has failed, back stage only to find an unfathomable tangle of wires. As he looks in dismay at the task he faces the stalker catches and scalps him.

Giles dream is offered as evidence of the conflicts in his life and the difficulties of reconciling his feelings toward Buffy and his feelings towards his girlfriend. The appearance of Buffy as a child/adult figure exemplifies his ambiguous feelings towards her. His desire to protect is possibly a manifestation of his feelings about his own adequacies and the confirmation he receives from being seen as a father figure by Buffy whilst at the same time possibly avoiding a stable relationship with his girl friend.

Buffy's dream centres around her feelings about the cost of being a Slayer. The dream sequences are confusing with the dream starting with Buffy being woken by Anya in her room at College and then she is seen in her room at home with Tara whose message is not easy to understand. She is then at the University where she finds her mother living inside a wall. We switch to the next sequence where she meets Riley and Adam (now restored to human form) plotting domination on a world wide scale. The three come under attack from demons to which Riley and Adam respond by deciding to build a fort made of pillows. Buffy finds her weapons bag only to find it full of mud which she smears on her face mimicking the first slayer's appearance. We then find her in the desert facing the First Slayer and a fight ensues that continues back in Buffy's room where her friends lie dying. Buffy eventually works out that she can simply stop the fight by the simple act of ignoring the First Slayer who responds by disappearing. The dreams end when everyone wakes up none the worse for their experiences.

The underlying theme of Buffy's dream is her feelings of isolation (the desert scene) that she sees as an inevitable part of being a Slayer. Her encounter with Riley expresses her fears of the effect Riley's work with the military and the effect this will have on their relationship and her ability as a slayer. The sequence with her mother inside the wall is evidence of her feelings towards her mother and the barrier that is a constant part of their relationship. Her realisation about the way to defeat the first slayer is less easy to interpret and is something of an anti-climax. Presumably it leaves open the opportunity for another series on Television.

One element that is difficult to place is the man who constantly appears with cheese slices that he presents in a variety of ways. His most cryptic comment is "I wear the cheese it does not wear me". He has placed the slices around his body. The statement is never challenged although Lacan would probably have a field day with the argument asking how we decide whether in one sense the cheese is wearing the man. A similar incident occurs when Anya is attempting to be a stand up comic at the Club where Giles sings. She starts a tale, somewhat erratically, with talking about a man wearing a duck on his head. We are not offered the rest of the story line until we hear the punch line "Why is this man stuck to my ass?" We have moved from the man wearing the duck to the duck wearing the man. I have no idea what this means other than we make assumptions about appearances based on our experience and we may actually be interpreting it totally the wrong way round.