TAKING THE INITIATIVE

In season four of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy faces “an elite military special force, ‘The Initiative’, located beneath the university, is apprehending, studying and neutralizing the demons that plague Sunnydale.” (Frances Early, Staking Her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive Woman Warrior) Professor Walsh, Buffy’s psychology teacher in university, runs the Initiative. The commandos of this underground lab fight demons and vampires using scientific methods and once they capture them, they drug them and make scientific tests on them. The white, modern lab-labyrinth contains individual cells, surveillance in every cell and scientific-medical equipment. This article will claim that the center Initiative –considering the labs construction, the scientists and doctors attitude to demons and the experiments made on demons- represents the dark side of psychology, which is the prison-like mental hospital. This article explains the relationship between prison and mental hospital, and why the Initiative is a metaphor for mental hospital.

THE BOUNDRY BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL

Before just saying that the Initiative represents mental institutions, the demons part in that should be explained. Demons are considered by the Initiative as ‘sub-humans’ and nothing else. The Initiative categorizes them by their ‘kind’, they don’t value their individuality. They are not individual creatures with different minds and characteristics but ‘hostile sub terrestrials’. As Aimee Fifarek explains in her article “Mind and Heart with Spirit Joined: The Buffyverse as an Information System”, ‘The Initiative makes no effort to distinguish between the supernatural and its evil components. To them, demons, werewolves and vampires are nothing more than valuable lab rats.’ Also Rob Breton says in his article ‘Dissing the Age of MOO: Initiatives, Alternatives and Rationality’ that, “…the Initiative dehumanize and objectify their pray, rationalizing the demon hunt.” And “…rely on binary thinking to distinguish monster from human, the binary then does their thinking for them, mechanistically organizing good and evil without any need to consult the personal or the particular.”. In the episode ‘New Moon Rising’ Buffy says…

Buffy: You sounded like Mr. Initiative, demons bad, people good.
Riley: Something wrong with that theorem?
Buffy: There’s different degrees of…
Riley: Evil?

So, what does ‘evil’ represent?

Mental illness was once considered a disease of personal failing or a spiritual disease (the mentally ill patient was often considered possessed by evil spirits, thought to be under the spell of witchcraft, or influenced by the moon, from the origin of the term “lunacy”). The insane were seen incurable, subhuman creatures doomed to a life in shackles and chains at an almshouse (poorhouse) or in jail cells for the mad.

Ann Palmer, 20th Century History of the Treatment of Mental Illness: A Review

After decades that mentally ill is considered to be a demon, a demon became a metaphor for the mentally ill. Of course, demons and vampires can represent many different things but it is a fact that they refer to social problems. And mental illness IS a social problem. Demons, ‘others’ like mental patients are not ‘normal’ and usually considered a treat to society or themselves. As demons, vampires and werewolves have two faces, changing time to time like personalities and that can be considered also as a personality disorder, even as schizophrenia. As Martin Buinicki mentioned in his article ‘Buffy the Vampire Disciplinarian: Institutional Excess and the New Economy of Power’, “…vampires and demons –creatures without souls- represent figures who are truly marginalized by society and supposedly in need of discipline.” In the Initiative, different kind of mental illness is represented by different kind of demons such as vampires and werewolves, and there is only the ‘kind’ to be categorized, not individuals. The Initiative ignores their personalities. As William Wandless says in his article ‘Undead Letters: Searches and Researches in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ that “for Buffy and friends, demons and vampires are subjects of folklore and mythology, (…) for the soldiers of the Initiative, however, these monsters are scientific objects, a collection of facts and data to be analyzed and neutralized.

Considering the history of mental institutions, it is obvious that the treatment and attitude towards patients has improved –or maybe just became a different shape. Considering the first mental hospital ever build, the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London (1247) resembles the Initiative.

…due the poor understanding of mental illness at the time, patients at Bethlem were considered inhuman, and were treated accordingly: shackled, whipped, kept naked on beds of straw, and fed through the bars of their cages. (…) with no division between sexes or classes of illness.

MedHunters-A history of Mental Hospitals

As Don Weitz mentioned in his article ‘Notes on Psychiatric Fascism’, “Today’s witches, heretics and scapegoats are labeled mentally ill or schizophrenic.” And in Buffy’s world, mentally ill is represented by scapegoats again.

Suppose that instead of believing in mental illness, people today believe in evil spirit possession and explained weird or unacceptable behavior as the product of evil spirits.

Lawrence Stevens, Is Involuntary Commitment for “Mental Illness” a Violation of Substantive Due Process?”

What would happen is what we see in the Initiative. Demons, representatives for mental patients, are faced with an harsh ‘treatment’, categorized and kept in cages like patients in early asylums.

THE INITIATIVE AS A PSYCHO-PRISON

Considering locked doors, surveillance, underground labs and individual cells, the Initiative is pretty much like a mental hospital. To understand the forces of the Initiative and why the elements of this force represent the mental hospital, mental hospital shouldn’t be seeing apart and different from prison. On the surface, a mental institution exist to help and treat the mentally ill, even gain them back to society. However, the history of this institution and its methods so far is not different then prison. This is the dark side of psychiatry and the Initiative represents it.

There are voluntarily patients and involuntarily patients. Demons in the Initiative –captured by commandos and kept locked in cells- are clearly involuntarily patients who are forced to face fear and punishment. Just like in prison and just like in mental hospitals.

Hospital psychiatry with it’s emphasis on the control of inmate behavior through high risk behavior modification programs, biological ‘treatments’, physical and mechanical restraints, locked doors and wards, and seclusion-isolation rooms, have always exhibited several fascist elements. (…) Hospital psychiatry is very similar to the prison system. In the prison or correctional system psychiatrists have been used as consultants to design dangerous, unethical behavior modification programs and to conduct high risk drug experiments on prisoners. Both the psychiatric system and the prison system use fear, force and fraud for the purpose of social control and punishment.

Don Weitz, Notes on Psychiatric Fascism

Demons are captured and put in cells. The Initiative doesn’t question their characteristics. Being a demon is enough for them. This kind of understanding is not different from mental institutions:

Psychiatry gets authority and power to force, imprison, involuntarily commit and treat individuals against their will from the state. Mental health legislation gives psychiatrists and other physicians the power to involuntarily commit any person they ‘believe’, after only minutes of examination, to be dangerous to themselves or others.

Don Weitz, Notes on Psychiatric Fascism

Surveillance is also a common element of the forces belong mental hospitals and prison, which is seen in the Initiative. The Initiative has surveillance-camera system in every individual cell. Demons are watched but they cannot see who is watching them. This reminds of course the Bentham’s Panopticon, which is (according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, like Foucault said) “an ideal architectural model of modern disciplinary power, it is a design for prison, built so that each inmate is separated from and invisible to all the others (in separate cells) and each inmate is always visible to a monitor situated in a central tower. Monitors will not in fact always see each inmate, the point is that they could at any time.” Institutions like hospitals and prison use that control system based on the prison and so does the Initiative.

BtVS also seems to depict these institutions as Faucaultian models of discipline and punishment, emphasizing surveillance, categorization, and regulation of behavior. (…)The use of surveillance is most obvious in the Initiative.

Martin Buinicki, Buffy the Vampire Disciplinarian: Institutional Excess and the New Economy of Power.

The key word is ‘controlling’. Demons, like mental patients, should be under the control. They should be disciplined and examined. Bentham’s suggestion was surveillance, so does the Initiative. According the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Foucault argues that ‘the new mode of punishment becomes the model for control of an entire society, with factories, hospitals and schools modeled on the modern prison.’

The architectural design of the Initiative’s underground complex, which holds demons in individual cells with transparent walls facing a central hallway, seems to replicate Bentham’s Panopticon.

Martin Buinicki, Buffy the Vampire Disciplinarian: Institutional Excess and the New Economy of Power.

Demons are ‘treated’ and examined in the Initiative against their will. Lawrence Stevens says in his article ‘Is Involuntarily Commitment for Mental Illness a Violation of Substantive Due Process?’ that, mental hospitals are jails for all persons detained against their will. There is no boundry between prison and mental institution and the Initiative, prisoner and the mentally ill, and demons.

PSYCHOSURGERY AS A TREATMENT IN THE INITIATIVE

Psychosurgery is the surgical intervention to sever fibers connecting one part of the brain with another or to remove, destroy or stimulate brain tissue with the intent or modifying or altering disturbances of behavior, thought content, or mood for which no organic pathological cause can be demonstrated.

Lawrence Stevens, The Brain-Butchery Called Psychosurgery

Psychosurgery is also called ‘lobotomy’, which was very popular until sixties and is less popular nowadays, but still exists. Today, the operation of lobotomy is thought to belong to the ‘dark side of psychiatry’. In this chapter, the Initiative’s scientific examination methods such as the famous ‘chip’ they put in Spike’s brain will be discussed, and shown how this is very related to lobotomy itself.

As Aimee Fifarek said in her article ‘Mind and Heart with Spirit Joined: The Buffyverse as an Information system’ that the Initiative works with “anti-violence chips to neutralize the threat they (demons) pose to humans”. And after the chip operation, Spike cannot hurt humans but demons. Each time he tries to hurt a human being he suffers from a terrible headache, however, it doesn’t happen with other demons. So, Spike’s mind is controlled by the Initiative.

The chip and its function resembles lobotomy:

One type of lobotomy (…) involves drilling two holes in the “patient’s” skull on each side of the forehead at the top at about the hearline to allow access to the frontal lobes of the brain where intellectual mental functioning, thinking, and creation of emotion is believed to take place. In one version (…) a cylindrical shaped device that resembles an apple corer is inserted into both sides of brain and a cylindrical shaped peace of each frontal lobe is removed.

Lawrence Stevens, The Brain-Butchery Called Psychosurgery

However, it is not Spike’s emotions that are controlled. His desire for hurting or killing people still continues, but he is not able to do that anymore. As Anthony Bradley says in his article ‘Choosing Laws, Choosing Families: Images of Law, Love and Authority in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, Spike may not be capable of physically hurting humans but he is far from being harmless. He is not capable, like patients who survived lobotomy aren’t capable of doing things that they used to be and lost their all kinds of social skills, included the ones considered dangerous.

Demons are mental patients who are kept in cages against their will and who are examined and medically treated against their will. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the examination is a method of control that combines hierarchical observation with normative judgment and also the examination turns the individual into a ‘case’—in both senses of the term: a scientific case and an object of care, carrying is always also an opportunity for control.

Like Spike’s chip operation, almost all psychosurgeries are performed without considering the patients will. Usually, (in Spike’s case also) the patient does not even know what happened to her/him. Today, lobotomy is not the most popular treatment but the principles of lobotomy (control mechanism and force) is still the biggest element of psychiatric treatment. This treatment consists of not only surgeries and drugs, also all kinds of medical experiments performed by psychiatrists in mental hospitals. This situation is very related to the Initiative, because demons kept in Initiative are examined and ‘treated’ against their will and drugged (as experiment and tests) without their knowledge.

FORCES OF EVIL, FORCES OF DARKNESS, FORCES OF SCIENCE

‘Initiative’ is defined in the Dictionary as ‘the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do’ and also ‘an act or strategy intended to resolve a difficulty or improve a situation’. The Initiative in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer intends to solve the demon problem, which is a metaphor for mental illness. Their methods are based on the dark ages of psychiatry when mental patients were considered to be demons and the dark side of this science that still remains the same today. They use force and medical controlling devices, which are not so strange to the modern psychiatry. Patients today are still seeing as ‘others’ and considered dangerous, being demonized and categorized. As a big scientific lab, the Initiative is a perfect metaphor for prison-like mental hospital, in other words, like Don Weitz called them in ‘Notes on Psychiatric Fascism’, psycho-prisons.

Zeynep Alpaslan

(from an old paper for Tuna Erdem's course 'Space in Motion')