Buffy at Play - Loopy Language

Additionally, much of the language of the series centers around already-established concepts such as “The Big Bad” (which many associate with the wolf in The Three Little Pigs, therefore signifying the villain of a particular piece) and the “Scooby Gang” (a pop culture reference to the group of teenagers in the Scooby Doo cartoon series, and thus signifying a similar group intent on solving mysteries, in this case Buffy and the other three core characters, Giles, Willow, and Xander). Such references demonstrate the “disappearance of originary presence” and call into question the “source“ of such terms from even earlier than the days of Disney animation or the advent of Saturday morning children’s programming (Derrida 168).
The scripts also capitalize on the popularity of teen movies and television, from Clueless to Heathers to My So-Called Life, for the tenor of their witty banter. Much of the humor in Buffy relies on the “tracks with multiple meanings [and] ambiguity” which are inherent in both written and spoken language, trickster’s sphere of influence (Hyde 51). The way in which meaning in language can “infinitely promise and vanish” is explored over and over in many episodes (Derrida 128). For example, in the episode “Lie to Me”, Buffy’s best friends, Willow and Xander, engage in the following exchange after entering a club full of people who worship vampires:
WILLOW
Boy, we blend right in.
XANDER
In no way do we stick out like sore thumbs.
[…]
WILLOW
Okay, but do they really stick out?
XANDER
What?
WILLOW
Sore thumbs. Do they stick out? I mean, have you ever seen a thumb and gone, 'Wow! That baby is sore!'
XANDER
You have too many thoughts (Buffyology 7.2).
Such inquisition into the actual play of meaning in a phrase or word is common throughout the text. Another exchange in “Helpless”, between Buffy and her love interest, Angel, a vampire with a soul, is as follows:
ANGEL
I watched you and I saw you called. It was a bright afternoon out in front of your school. You walked down the steps... and I loved you.
BUFFY
Why?
ANGEL
Because I could see your heart. You held it before you for everyone to see. And I worried that it would be bruised or torn. And more than anything in my life, I wanted to keep it safe... to warm it with my own.
[…]
BUFFY
That's beautiful. (beat) Or taken literally, incredibly gross.
ANGEL
I was just thinking that, too. (Bufyology 3.12)
Two other instances involve Buffy in conversation with her British “Watcher“, Giles, who is responsible for teaching her about the “Slayer” history and the nature of her foes, and who moonlights as the high school librarian. In “What’s My Line, Part 1”, Buffy contemplates the phrase “the whole nine yards” asking “nine yards of what?”; similarly, in “No Place Like Home”, she reflects on the concept of making money “hand over fist”, waving her hand over her fist in puzzlement (Buffyology 2.9, 5.5). Numerous other cases abound, but these will suffice to show how the writers, via their characters, indulge in the play of meaning to which Derrida refers (168).
Yet Buffy is not content to toy with well-used idioms or story lines for play. Drawing upon the extensive resources of its intertexuality, from plot to phrase levels, it engages in the trickster’s art of bricolage to create something completely new (Hynes 42). As Michael Adams explains, “the show does more than merely capture current teen slang [or past Hollywood history]; rather, it is endlessly, if unevenly, inventive” (Slang I 3). Playing with meanings running even more deeply than that of common expressions, Buffy begins to expand the vocabulary of it’s characters by creating new words and word usage. Experimentation with prefixes such as un- and suffixes such as -y are just two common examples. Such expressions as “You seem bad mood-y” and “Don’t get all twelve step-y” have meanings that are comprehensible but not exactly standard English (Buffy 3.17, 6.7). Adams explains that when Willow once says of Giles that he was “unmad”, or Buffy refers to Angel as an “undead American”, such constructions “reflect meaning inadequately conveyed in the standard lexicon (Buffy 2.6, 2.1). “When one is unmad, one certainly isn’t angry, but there is no reason to assume that one is happy, either.” In so doing, “the word mediates two common emotional states, and thus identifies a third” (Slang II 3). While the term undead is not new, it likewise reflects a state which is neither dead nor alive. Duly, in such cases the text acts not only as bricoleur, but also as mediator and deconstructor of oppositions (Hynes 40, Derrida 85).
Two other constructions which are seen often in the show are the use of over- as a prefix (“He‘s not exactly one to overshare”) , and the uses of -free and -age as suffixes (“I want to be fester-free,” and “the whole post-slayage nap thing”) (Buffyology 2.6, 3.15, 3.20). The various uses of the word thing alone could occupy much of this paper, probably more. In just a couple of examples, it stands in alternately as a signifier for “an event or appointment”, as when Willow says, “I have a thing; there’s this Wicca group on campus,” or “a problematic issue”, as Willow again indicates when she apprehensively tells a potential love interest, Kennedy, “I have a thing.” (Buffyology 4.6, 7.13). Another possible interpretation is expressed by the vampire Spike, who tells Willow’s girlfriend Tara of a mysterious leg cramp, “What! It’s a thing,” meaning “a legitimate occurrence” (Buffyology 7.14). The variations are many, but the meaning is always clear within the context.
Similarly, the Buffy texts extensively experiment with what Adams calls “clipping”. Adams says that the teens (and later young adults) on the show are one step ahead of slang dictionaries, taking terms like flake out, wig out, and bail out, as well as messed up, team up, and deal with, and reducing them to flake, wig, bail, messed, team, and deal. (Slang II 4). Another practice which “reinvigorates common items from the standard lexicon” is the shifting of adjectives, especially emotional ones, to nouns. The character Xander often uses this construction, when he says things like “After everything that happened, I leaned towards the postal,” and “I want to know, ’cause it gives me a happy” (Slang II 5, Buffyology 3.7, 2.7). In such interpretation, we see the trickster as linguist and translator operating throughout Buffy’s text (Hyde 299).