BtVS and Consent Issues: Episode 2.16 – “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”

[Note: I’m writing 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: “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”
INCIDENT: Love spell
PERPETRATOR: Xander Harris
INTENDED VICTIM: Cordelia Chase
ACTUAL VICTIMS: every woman in Sunnydale except Cordelia Chase

The specifics: Cordelia breaks up with Xander on Valentine’s Day right after he gives her a locket and tells her how he felt about their relationship. Humiliated and angry, Xander seeks out Amy the witch, wanting her to put a love spell on Cordelia. He wants her to make Cordelia to want him so that he could break up with her. Amy performs the spell, but it backfires, affecting every woman in town except Cordelia. Buffy, Willow, Amy herself, Jenny Calendar, Joyce Summers, Harmony, Drusilla, and other women offer themselves to Xander, but he turns them down, and they grow increasingly violent, deciding to kill him, all having the “If I can’t have you, no one can!” mentality. Giles manages to get through to Amy and they work together to undo the spell. The women in town are released from the spell, all retaining memories of their emotions. Cordelia, moved by the fact that Xander intended the love spell for her, ditches her popular friends and gets back together with him.

The mind of the perpetrator: Xander’s intention is revenge. He’s heartbroken and angry and he wants Cordelia to suffer his pain. When the spell doesn’t seem to work on Cordelia, he gives it up as a lost cause and seems eager that Buffy is interested in him. The moment he realizes that Buffy is under the influence of a spell, and that this spell is affecting every woman around him, his first instinct is to run and hide. He also refuses to take advantage of Buffy when she offers herself to him wearing nothing but a trench coat. All of this indicates to me that Xander has no interest in violating a person’s physical consent, even when he’s attracted to that person. I also wonder if his memory of attacking Buffy during “The Pack” is influencing his decision at all.

Obviously, the spell is a violation of emotional and mental consent, something that Xander doesn’t really consider. I don’t believe he ever intended to use this spell to take physical advantage of Cordelia, or that he wanted to sleep with her and then ditch her. I think he wanted her to publicly declare her love for him so he could then break her heart – the reversal of what happened when he gave her the Valentine’s Day present. The idea of violating someone’s body clearly horrifies him, but the implications of toying with someone’s emotions is lost on him, even though he was once under the influence of a spell that affected HIS emotions.

The victims’ perspectives: The women affected by the spell all go through the same process. They fall for Xander, offer themselves to him, and when he rejects them, they feel angry, hurt, and betrayed, and decide to kill him. Their methods of seduction are a little different, though, depending on their personalities – Willow hides in Xander’s bed, Buffy shows up in a trench coat, Amy turns Buffy into a rat, Joyce acts motherly and then seductive, and Drusilla offers to turn him into a vampire.

Cordelia, the intended victim, reacts differently. She’s insulted, angry, and worried for her life when all the other women in town go crazy. When she realizes that Xander intended the spell for her, however, she softens and seems moved by his actions. At the end of the episode, she decides that being with the boy she loves is more important then impressing a group of frenemies she doesn’t actually like, and walks off arm-in-arm with Xander.

What does this episode say about misogyny and rape culture?

I’m putting this behind a cut because I have SO much to say about this episode. A gendered love spell? “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” is a complex and problematic episode, and also one of my all-time favorites. My dad has also cited this as his favorite, saying that’s almost Shakespearean and comparing it to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Like the classic Shakespeare comedy, “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” emphasizes the dangerous nature of love spells. Giles delivers the thesis statement of the episode when he describes the danger of love spells:

“GILES: Do you have any idea how serious this is? People under a love spell, Xander, are deadly. They lose all capacity for reason. And if what you say is true and the entire female population is affected, I…”

Interesting quote, yes? Giles says that people, not women, under a love spell are dangerous. Even if women are the only ones affected by this particular spell, he would expect the same dangerous reaction from men affected by a love spell.

At the same time, I wonder if the portrayal of women in this episode could unintentionally contribute to the “hysterical woman” stereotype, showing that women who fall in love will all lose their minds and threaten to kill their competitors AND the men they love if they don’t get what they want. Giles might say “people,” but we see only women acting violent and irrational.

On another hand, let’s pretend the episode reverses genders and has, say, Willow perform a love spell on Xander only to have it backfire and affect every man in Sunnydale, with every man in town threatening to kill her if she didn’t love him. I couldn’t see such an episode getting made in the first place, but if it was made, there’s no way it would have been played for laughs. That episode would have been one of the series’ darkest.

I also think Giles would have reacted much differently in an episode where Willow or Buffy had made the spell (pretending for a moment that Giles himself would be unaffected). This is what he says to Xander:

“GILES: I cannot believe that you are fool enough to do something like this!

XANDER: Oh, no, I’m twice the fool it takes to do something like this.”

He immediately condemns Xander’s actions with anger – an entirely appropriate reaction, considering the violation of consent and the inherent danger. Had it been Willow or Buffy or even Cordelia who accidentally brainwashed the men in town, I think Giles would have been half as angry, but mostly concerned about getting Willow/Buffy/Cordelia to safety. This reaction would have been reasonable, considering the rates of male-on-female violence as opposed to female-on-male violence, but also indicative of Giles’s favoritism. (On a a side note, Xander’s “twice the fool” comment makes me love him forever.)

Love spells and intentions. Giles states that the reason the spell backfired is because Amy performed it improperly. Two other explanations are heavily implied in the episode, though. One potential reason is that Cordelia didn’t respond to the spell because she already loved Xander. The other reason is that Xander’s intentions behind the spell weren’t “pure.”

Let’s look at that conversation between Xander and Amy when he asks her to do the spell.

“AMY: A love spell?

XANDER: Yeah. You know, just the basic can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t breathe anything but little old moi.

AMY: Well, that kind of thing is the hardest! I mean, to make someone love you for all eternity?

XANDER: Whoa! Whoa, back up. Who said anything about eternity? A man can only talk self-tanning lotion for so long before his head explodes.

AMY: Well, then I don’t get it. If you don’t want to be with her forever, then what’s the point?

XANDER: The point is I want her to want me. Desperately. So I can break up with *her* and subject her to the same hell she’s been putting *me* through.

AMY: Oh, I don’t know, Xander. Intent has to be pure with love spells.

XANDER: Right. I intend revenge. Pure as the driven snow.”

Look at the way Amy reacts to Xander’s proposed plan. When she thinks Xander wants Cordelia to love him forever, she comments on the potential difficulty of the spell. When she realizes that Xander just wants to get revenge on Cordelia, she implies that his motives are impure.

Our first instincts are to agree with Amy. Xander wanting Cordelia back and resorting to any means necessary to win her heart – awww, that’s so romantic! Xander wanting revenge and toying with her emotions – ewww, Xander. That’s gross.

It is gross, but let’s look at the potential long-term consequences of those intentions at work. Xander temporarily making Cordelia fall in love with him just so he can break her heart is gross, cruel, and inexcusable (even though I do empathize with his hurt feelings). But imagine if he had wanted Cordelia to love him forever, if the love spell had worked and was permanent, that he slept with her, married her, spent his life with her, all while her feelings for him weren’t real.

A temporary love spell for the purpose of revenge is stupid and malicious, but a permanent love spell inspired by “pure” intentions is a much, much bigger violation of consent and autonomy. Yet the second of the two would be considered more “romantic” in our society.

After all, look at how Cordelia reacts to the news that Xander intended the love spell for her. I think, until she knows the spell was meant for her, Cordelia doubted that Xander really cared about her. Despite the lovely speech he gave her in the Bronze, she still remembered his nattering on about Buffy and Willow, and she saw him go after other girls right after she broke up with him. The news that he (seemingly) wanted her back confirmed that his feelings for her were real. I think it’s very in character for Cordelia to react this way, but it’s a little disturbing that she never learns why Xander had Amy cast the spell.

Oz respects women. In a refreshing contrast to all of the consent-violating that happens in this episode, Oz proves to be a stand-up guy, turning off his flashlight and immediately averting his eyes when confronted with a naked Buffy, and I truly believe he does this out of respect for Buffy’s privacy, not just out of respect for his relationship with Willow. Similarly, when Oz punches Xander earlier in the episode, he does it because he’s angry with Xander for hurting Willow’s feelings, not because he has a macho, possessive, “How dare you hit on MY girlfriend?” attitude.

“Thank you for not raping me.” At the end of the episode, Buffy tells Xander that he invoked the “great roofie spirit,” and then thanks him for not taking advantage of her when she was in her drugged state. Xander’s response?

“XANDER: C’mon, Buffy, I couldn’t take advantage of you like that. Okay, for a minute, it was touch and go there…”

Essentially, Buffy is thanking him for not raping her. Xander gets cookies for basic human decency, not for doing something particularly noble. But Buffy seems to believe that most men in a similar situation would have taken advantage of her, and there are many, many people in our culture who would agree with her. Sadly, considering what Buffy has recently been through with Angel, her reasons for thinking this way make a lot of sense.

Just imagine that we lived in a culture where a man refusing to take advantage of a woman in a vulnerable state was considered normal behavior, not exceptional behavior, and a man choosing to take advantage of a woman was considered exceptionally bad behavior, not normal behavior.

Violence and manipulation wins you love. Sincerity wins you heartbreak. Xander and Cordelia have a relationship based on a lot of cute bickering, and sometimes mean-spirited bickering. This episode is the first time he honestly expresses his real feelings for Cordelia:

“XANDER: I’ve been thinking a lot about us lately… the why and the wherefore. You know, once, twice, a kissy here, a kissy there. And you can chalk it all up to hormones. And maybe that’s all we have here. Tawdry teen lust. But maybe not. Maybe something in you sees something special inside me. And vice versa. I mean, I think I do. See something.”

It’s a sweet speech, not particularly articulate, but honest and forthright. Then Xander gives her the present, and what does Cordelia say?

“CORDELIA: Xander… Thank you. It’s beautiful. I wanna break up.”

Obviously, Cordelia doesn’t really want to break up with Xander, but feels pressured to end the relationship because she doesn’t want to lose favor with her popular friends. She needs to continue to impress Harmony and the others, who don’t think she should be dating Xander. What kind of guys are Harmony attracted to? Well..

“HARMONY: Cody Weinberg called me at home last night.

CORDELIA: Cody Weinberg? The one with the 350sl?

HARMONY: The very one. Said he’s thinking of asking me to the pledge dance on Thursday.

CORDELIA: That’s so huge!

HARMONY: Yeah, there’s just two other girls he’s gonna ask first, and if they refuse, then I’ll…”

Harmony thinks Cordelia is pathetic for dating a “loser” like Xander, yet she’s the one excited to be the third choice of a rich douchebag who treats her badly. I wonder if, deep down, Harmony is jealous of Cordelia’s ability to shrug off societal expectations and date a boy she actually cares about, and teased her about Xander because she didn’t want to see someone else happy.

Xander, meanwhile, receives confirmation that even his most sincere, gentle efforts will end in rejection, that even if a girl likes him and he likes her back, she won’t like him *enough* to stand up to her friends. No wonder his feelings are hurt. At the end of the episode, though, after he does something damaging and colossally stupid, then Cordelia decides to get  back together with him. I’m not sure the lesson about violating consent really sinks in when the result is getting his girlfriend back.

He’s also not the only man who internalizes the message that sincerity will get you nowhere in the world of love. Spike gives Drusilla a lovely necklace for a Valentine’s Day, but she much prefers the heart that Angel ripped out of a “quaint little shopgirl.” He’ll have to watch Drusilla fawn over Angel in a sexual way for several more episodes after this one.

A feminist learning experience? In one scene, Xander (hilariously) walks down the school hallway in slow-motion to the tune of “Got the Love,” as the women in the hallway stop and ogle him. He’s objectified, and later on, violently objectified when the women affected by the spell treat him as a prize to be won instead of as a human being. This episode could reinforce the “hysterical woman” stereotype, but it has another potential effect – maybe this episode can make a man reconsider how it feels to be a woman who’s constantly objectified. Maybe looking at Xander, as he fears for his life and autonomy, can make someone step into a woman’s shoes.