BtVS and Consent Issues: Episode 2.05 – “Reptile Boy”

[Note: I’ve decided to begin a series about consent issues in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I will post a new entry in this series every other Tuesday – or perhaps on a weekly basis, if I have the time. In this series, I will look at an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer that deals with rape, sexual assault, or consent issues as a main plot point or as a featured event of the episode. I will examine these episodes in chronological order. If, in my writing of this series, you feel that I have skipped an episode that should be a part of this series, feel free to submit a guest post, and I will consider publishing it.]

EPISODE: “Reptile Boy”
INCIDENT: Attempted human sacrifice of young girls
PERPETRATOR: Delta Zeta Kappa fraternity
VICTIM: Buffy Summers, Cordelia Chase, Callie, previous girls

The specifics: Members of the Delta Zeta Kappa fraternity sacrifice a group of girls to a demon named Machida every year. In exchange for this human sacrifice, the fraternity members are blessed with good luck, receiving power, money – everything they ever wanted. They specifically choose high school girls for this sacrifice. The girl at the beginning of the episode, Callie, seems to have been kidnapped, but Buffy and Cordelia were invited to a party. At the party, they drank spiked drinks.

The mind of the perpetrator: Very simply, the guys want power and money and they don’t mind having to sacrifice girls to a large penis-shaped monster in order to do it. They see women as disposable objects and they get angry when women try to fight back or speak directly to the monster.

The victim’s perspective: The three girls in the dungeon – Callie, Buffy, and Cordelia – all seem to react to their imprisonment differently. Callie is broken and bitter, not expecting any of them to escape. Buffy feels personally betrayed by the guy she thought was nice, but already planning an escape route. Cordelia is scared and angry.

What does this episode say about misogyny and rape culture?

I almost skipped this episode because the consent violations aren’t as obvious as they are in, say, “The Pack” or “Seeing Red,” but there’s too much in here about rape culture to not write about.

There’s a scene in the middle of the episode where Buffy, under the influence of a spiked drink, crawls into a room and passes out on a bed. Richard, Cordelia’s date to the party, walks into the room. He leans over to touch Buffy’s body, and it’s clear that he intends to rape her when she’s sleeping. He’s interrupted by Tom, Buffy’s date to the party, and the following conversation ensues:

“Tom: Get away from her!

Richard: I wasn’t doing anything!

Tom: I saw what you were doing.

Richard: I was just having a little fun.

Tom: Well, she’s not here for your fun, you pervert. She’s here for the pleasure of the one we serve.

Richard: In his name.

Tom: And that goes for the other one, too.

[The camera pans to show Cordelia unconscious on the floor.]”

Even before this scene, we knew that Richard was a bad guy and that the Delta Zeta Kappa guys were up to no good, but we were also lead to believe that Buffy’s date, Tom, was the nice guy of the group. We think he’s the only good one of a group of potential rapists, and when he pulls Richard off of Buffy’s unconscious body, our initial inference is confirmed – until we see that Tom is just as bad as the rest, if not worst of all. He was only pretending to be nice to make Buffy trust him. The message is clear: even guys who pretend to be nice and unassuming can be dangerous, and you can’t assume that a self-deprecating “nice” guy is actually a good guy.

Still, I wonder why Tom interferes and stops Richard from molesting Buffy in her sleep. The episode is never clear about the details of the sacrifice, but virgin sacrifices are a pretty common trope in fiction. Does he stop Richard because the demon requires virgins, or does he not want Buffy “spoiled” so close to the ritual?

I think the demon did require a virgin sacrifice, and that’s one reason why the frat brothers went after high school girls instead of any women at their college. It also occurs to me that the show never was explicit about whether or not Cordelia was a virgin. We saw when and how Buffy, Xander, and Willow each had sex for the first time, and there were hints that Cordelia was sexually active, but we don’t know for sure. Whether she’s had sex or not, Cordelia doesn’t seem like a person who would underplay her sexual history to impress a college boy – or would she? What would a high school girl think that a college boy would want from her?

This episode also contains a hazing scene where Xander, punished for crashing a frat party, is forced to dress as a woman and dance in front of everyone else. This is Misogyny 101 right here – the frat boys who sacrifice girls to gain power will also humiliate other men by having them dress as women – because the most humiliating thing in the world is to be a girl. (I also wonder if they choose to humiliate Xander because he seems to be making a good impression on the college women at the party – the women seem amused by him, at least.) We also see later on that this kind of humiliation is not new for Xander, and that this experience has tapped into all of his deep-seated masculinity issues:

“That’s for the wig! That’s for the bra! That’s for the makeup! And that’s for the last sixteen and a half years!”

Meanwhile, Giles and Angel are annoyed that Buffy attended the party in the first place, leaving Willow to tell them both off:

“Well… Well, why do you think she went to that party? Because you gave her the brush-off! (to Giles) And you never let her do anything except work and patrol! And I know she’s the Chosen One, but you’re killing her with the pressure! I mean, she’s sixteen going on forty! (to Angel) And you! I mean, you’re gonna live forever! You don’t have time for a cup of coffee?!”

Buffy is at the end of her rope with the two men in her life: her father figure is forcing a bunch of adult pressures onto her and not giving her enough room to breathe and be a kid, and her boyfriend is treating her too much like a kid and not respecting her as an adult. In both situations, the man is assuming that he knows what’s best for Buffy’s well-being and taking her choices away from her. It seems fitting that Buffy’s best girl friend is the one to clue them in on how unfairly they’re treating her. Appropriately enough, Giles apologizes for pushing too hard, and Angel asks her for that cup of coffee at the end of the episode.

On a final note, can I express how much I loathe Angel in this episode, with his condescending eye-rolling in that scene with Buffy in the cemetery?

“ANGEL: What are you sayin’, you wanna have a date?

BUFFY: No.

ANGEL: You don’t wanna have a date?

BUFFY: Who said ‘date’? I-I-I never said ‘date’.

ANGEL: Right. You just wanna have coffee or somethin’.

BUFFY: (hopefully) Coffee?

ANGEL: I knew this was gonna happen.”

He “knew this was going to happen.” He says this patronizingly, as though Buffy is a silly little girl with unrealistic romantic expectations. Yes, Angel, how silly for Buffy to think that making out with her, following her around, and having a jealous snitty shit-fit over Xander, of all people, was a sign of interest on your part! Is there any wonder why Buffy was attracted to nice, boring Tom who seemed consistent in his interest in her?

I brought this up not just to complain about Angel (although I do enjoy complaining about Angel), but to point out a sad irony about Buffy’s life and romantic expectations. At the end of this episode, Angel seems a good alternative to the Toms of the world, and for the most part, he is – but by the end of the season, Angel will hurt her emotionally far, far worse than Tom ever did.

Finally, I want to comment on the last bit of dialogue in that Buffy/Angel scene in the cemetery:

“ANGEL: This isn’t some fairy tale. When I kiss you, you don’t wake up from a deep sleep and live happily ever after.

BUFFY: No. When you kiss me I wanna die.”

I want to comment on it. I’m sure there’s something to be said about unhealthy expectations of love and how dramatic, painful relationships are romanticized. But someone else is going to have to say it, because I still have no fucking clue what Buffy means. Does she want to die so she and Angel can both be vampires? Is she acknowledging that she knows the relationship is bad for her but still feels that romantic pull? Does Angel have really bad halitosis? WHAT DOES THIS LINE EVEN MEAN?!