Article paru dans le "Vampire Special" (février 2002) du magazine britannique SFX. Spoilers BtVS S5-6, Angel S2-3
Annexes :
Buffy and Angel aren't really shows about vampires and monsters. They're about sex. Yup, SEX! Didn't you know? Jayne Dearsley gets down to business...
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I COULD RIDE YOU AT A GALLOP UNTIL your legs buckled and your eyes rolled up. I've got muscles you've never even dreamed of. I could squeeze you until you popped like warm champagne and you'd beg me to hurt you just a little bit more."
If you had to guess which popular American series this quote came from, which show would you go for: Sex And The City... or Buffy The Vampire Slayer? It might surprise some people to know that, minus the odd swear word, the talk in Buffy is just as frank, just as smutty, and just as lewd as anything you'd hear from Sarah Jessica Parker or Kim Cattrall.
Buffy and Angel are obsessed with nookie, in all its shapes and forms. Since when did anyone on Sex And The City almost boink themselves to death, a la Buffy and Riley? Or, like Spike, build themselves their very own "sexbot", with programmes including "kissing" and "positions"?
It's a well known fact that when Buffy and her pals were at Sunnydale High their adventures were metaphors for the struggle of growing up. They fought monsters, battled evil and sat their exams at the same time, and their love lives were as tangled as any teenager's could possibly become. Now that they're adults the characters have become more adventurous, and sex plays an even larger role than it did before. Just watch season six for proof. How about Tara singing that she's "spread beneath my Willow tree" in "Once More, With Feeling"? Or her very naughty play on words as she trills, "You make me come... plete"? Dawn's been trying out the world of dating, and we won't even mention all the action that Buffy and Spike have been getting up to recently. The show has become a virtual sex education video, but far more fun than the ones we were forced to watch in school.
There have been episodes of both Buffy and Angel that have focused almost solely on - as Spike would put it - "shaggin". Buffy has "Surprise", "Where The Wild Things Are", "Harsh Light Of Day": and, just recently, "Wrecked", "Smashed", "Gone" (we told you season six was pretty horny). Angel contains all the episodes which featured Darla trying to seduce Angel, as well as "Reprise", which had its own very special consequence in the form of a wee little baby. These are programmes in which sex isn't kept under the covers or merely hinted at; they recognise that diddling is a fact of life, and so they diddle away, just for our pleasure.
So, what are the show's writers trying to tell us, as they deluge their audience with all this wanton lust? First and foremost, that our actions have consequences. Not in a preachy, "We're trying to show you guys that sex is bad" manner, but in more of a "Sex can be fantastic, but it does change things" kind of way. Whenever characters canoodle, you can guarantee that we won't forget what they've just done. Let's look at the evidence:
We all know that Buffy loved Angel, and that when they did the deed he lost his soul and became the boyfriend from, quite literally, Hell. Not content with murdering Jenny Calendar, he tried to bring about the end of the world, and was stopped only when Buffy sent him to Hell. The shock was so severe that it took Buffy half a season to recover; and then, once he returned and they realised that they couldn't ever be together again, Angel took off and founded his own series. All because of sex.
Next, to hammer our point home (if you pardon the double entendre), Buffy had a fling with Parker that shamed and humilated her, whilst her next boyfriend, Riley, turned out to be an asshole. The organisation he belonged to was also responsible for creating the Big Bad of season four, Adam, so she could thank him for that, too.
In the current season, as Buffy tries to deal with the fact that she was pulled out of heaven and brought back to life against her will, it seems that Spike is the only person who can help her. By having sex, obviously. We've yet to discover the consequences this time round, although they're bound to be severe.
It isn't just Buffy who propels the storyline forward every time she does a naked lambada; the consequences of sex affect all the other characters, too. Faith used sex as a weapon, first by boffing Xander in "The Zeppo", then when she tried to kill him in "Consequences"; and finally when she bedded Riley whilst inhabiting Buffy's body in "Who Are you?" She also flirted outrageously with Angel and drove Buffy nuts.
Spike became so obsessively jealous of Angel and Drusilla's relationship that he betrayed them both to Buffy, whilst Oz had a fling with another werewolf and sent a depressed Willow into the arms of Tara. And that relationship has had its consequences, too: a mere two episodes after Willow gave Tara something to sing about (hovering above her bed, if you don't mind) they had a big barney about Willow using too much magic and went their separate ways. If they'd just stuck to snogging maybe it wouldn't have happened, eh?
And where there's sex in Buffy, there are vampires (this is a Vampire Special, after all). We've come a long way since Bela Lugosi played the Count with so much olde worlde charisma in 1931's Dracula; the vampires of the Buffyverse are just like you and me. They don't wear capes or have funny accents, and more often than not, they're bloody good looking. When Bram Stoker wrote Dracula he told of the vampire sneaking into young womens' bedrooms night after night - in Sunnydale they prefer to flirt with their victims at the Bronze before indulging their appetites. These vamps are indistinguishable from everybody else (Angel and Spike even manage to move around in daylight if they're careful), and that makes them all the more dangerous.
Not, however, that that stops them from becoming important romantic leads, whether they're good or bad. It's part of what makes Buffy and Angel special. The usual stereotypes have been twisted and manipulated into something brand new. These vampires aren't just one-sided killers. Angel's a big, soppy, lovelorn fool who's both a hero and a villain at the same time, whilst Spike is a total bastard with a great talent for one-liners who's now joined the good side of the Force. Despite their otherworldly natures, these vampires are people you can identify with, because they don't just kill. They live lives like the rest of us, except with an iron-rich diet. Spike in particular has emerged as one of the greatest characters on television.
Danger comes from many things in the Buffyverse, but you can bet your life that most of the time it's masculine. The audience's point of view is female simply because Buffy is the main character: the show is skewed to a woman's perspective of the world. Because of this, men are often the most threatening things in it. When was the last time that you saw the Slayer face a female vampire (and Harmony doesn't count, because she's a rubbish baddie)? The Mayor turned into a giant snake - that's a snake, folks, in case the phallic imagery was lost on anyone out there. Adam killed people using a big spike that shot out from a part of his body (fnar!). Even Glory was a fella half the time, and we're all pretty convinced that the tower Buffy leapt off during "The Gift" was some sort of naughty signifier (but we won't delve too deeply on that one in case you think we're pushing it). If that wasn't enough, Willow paired up with a boy who became a raging killer during every full moon... and did we mention stakes being just a little bit suggestive?
Get the idea? Buffy. It's a sea of subliminal, anti-bloke propaganda. No wonder Willow shacked up with Tara. Herein lies yet another example of Buffy's open-minded approach to the world: this has to be the first American series to depict a real, solid, believeable lesbian couple. There are no ratings-grabbing "I'm a lesbian this week!" smooches in Buffy, like there were on Ally McBeal or ER; oh, no. When Willow and Tara had their first kiss it was buried within the tear-jerking seriousness of "The Body", and up until then their growing closeness was depicted with a touching lack of sensationalism. We really got the sense that the two women weren't just heading towards sex, which is how most cinematic or televisual romances play out; they were, in fact, falling in love. Real, proper, no-holds-barred love, so strong that we didn't need to see them do a horizontal foxtrot to understand where they were coming from.
The Willow/Tara romance has been complemented on the internet by a huge outpouring of slash fiction. Yep - as if there wasn't enough sex on the telly, now you can do a quick search on your computer and find a bucketful of written hormonal cookery. Viewers who aren't content with the groinal action they've witnessed onscreen have sat down, en masse, and concocted a smorgasboard of pornography to put things right. Their works aren't just confined to female heroines, either. There are factions out there who feel strongly that Angel and Spike should be lovers, or Xander and Giles, or Wesley and Gunn... in fact, every combination you could possibly imagine has been explored, poked and prodded to life, many of them set in alternate universes in which the characters live fully-formed homosexual existences. Even Doyle has been resurrected (or, to be more exact, didn't die at all) in order to live a harmonious life with Angel. Not since The X-Files, or the little-seen-in-Britain sci-fi show The Sentinel, has there been such an outpouring of fan fiction.
The latest season of Buffy has been showing a naughtier side to the pairing of Willow and Tara, although not quite as naughty as anything you'd see on the net. And, amazingly, it's become less shocking to see Willow and Tara share a bed when, on the other hand, Buffy's having such violent sex with Spike. Which seems the most normal relationship of the two? Thought-provoking stuff.
Buffy's first waltz with William The Bloody has to have been one of the most violent copulations ever committed to television. Their first "encounter" was a ground-shaking slugfest worthy of anything you'd see in an WWF match, and the morning after was greeted by the words, "When did the house fall down?" Sex and violence have mingled so successfully on both Buffy and Angel that the two are virtually interchangeable. When Angel finally relented and had a night of passion with Darla he threw her through a glass door, and yet she seemed to enjoy it - one of the benefits of being a vampire, we're led to believe. Drusilla and Spike liked it rough, although we didn't actually see much of their lovemaking; and as for the scene in "Graduation Day Part 2" in which Angel bit Buffy... well, she might have been having her blood drained, but somehow she looked like something else was happening...
Obviously, much of the Buffyverse centres around fighting and killing bad creatures, so it's only to be expected that some of it should carryover into the character's private lives. It's been surprising, however, just how much violence we've seen, and how both shows have gotten away with it. True, scenes get trimmed when they air on British TV, but in the States they see it all: and their censors are even more jumpy than ours. So what's going on?
It's simple. People still don't believe that Buffy and Angel are shows for adults. You can tell them that both shows contain graphic sex, naughty language, near-the-knuckle violence and genuinely disturbing imagery, but they won't believe it. Call a show Sex And The City and you know exactly what you're in for; name it Buffy The Vampire Slayer and you'll throw the most dedicated moral guardian off the scent.
Thank goodness they didn't call the show Buffy The Vampire Layer... SFX
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Not including anything from season six
No spoilers here!
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If you were Buffy and you had to choose between Angel or Spike, how would you decide? Jayne Dearsley and Lorraine Brumpton have come up with the perfect solution: make a list
STUD, Final 62 score
DUD? Final 61 score
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Whenever somebody has sex in the Buffyverse there's hell to pay. Here are some examples of how making the beast with two backs led to tears before bedtime...
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Let's start with the most obvious: Angel and Buffy's first sexual liaison resulted in Angel losing his soul, turning into Angelus and killing half of Sunnydale ("Innocence/Surprise").
Angel and Buffy's second sexual liaison was followed by Angel having to give up his humanity and Buffy forgetting the whole thing (Angel - "I Will Remember You").
Buffy's next beau, Parker, dumped her unceremoniously after a night of passion, much to Spike's delight ("Harsh Light Of Day").
And if that wasn't enough, Buffy's next conquest - Riley - was a super-powered human fighting machine who developped an unhealthy interest in having his blood supped by female vampires ("Into the Woods").
"Where The Wild Things Are" hammered the "sex is sometimes bad, kids" message home as the Buffster and Riley almost died whilst doin'it.
Enough of Buffy! When Willow and Oz finally tangoed they were faced almost immediately afterwards by the Ascension and and a very large snake. Phallic imagery, anyone? ("Graduation Day").
When Tara - after spending time with Willow - bumped into Oz, he smelled his ex-girlfriend scent all over her. The result? The jealous fella turned into a wolf and tried to eat her. Of course! ("New Moon Rising")
Poor Giles only had to have a whiff of any action for things to turn bad. He was onto a promise with Jenny Calendar... but before anything could happen she was murdered by Angel. The bastard. ("Passion")
Xander was nearly killed by an out-of-control Faith after she threw him onto a bed and tried to strangle him... in a weird replay of their sexual shenanigans in the very same bed ("The Zeppo"/"Consequences").
Spike and Drusilla spent a lot of in bed. And look how evil they were.
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