Essay: Why Watchers, 6890 words
Dec. 2nd, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethWhy, if there were no Watcher's Council, it would be necessary to invent one.
The function of the Watcher's Council is two fold- to inform and educate the Slayer, and to regulate the Slayer. Both these functions can only be carried out by those with access to one privileged piece of information, the one above all that must be kept secret in order for the Slayer to be effective. This knowledge is simply the name and nature of the Slayer- that she exists, and that a particular girl holds the power.
When a Slayer comes into her power she is immediately, through simple ignorance, a danger to herself and others.
The Potential Slayer is already different from other girls. She has had dreams all her life, dreams of vampires and demons, running and hunting. She dreams of having strength, speed and a mission, but the moment she is Chosen is still an unexpected surprise. For the first time in her waking life a Slayer has superhuman abilities. She goes in one moment from being able to lift bags of potatoes to being able to lift tractors. And she doesn't know she has changed. That makes her dangerous. Suddenly her every move becomes so much more effective that she can hurt people without really trying.
In the series we have seen incidents where a Slayer, in full knowledge of her strength but distracted by magic or strong emotion, has accidentally hurt people. Sometimes when she hugs people she forgets she can crush them. One time, in The Witch, Buffy threw someone across the room. A Slayer who did not even know she had been called would not know she needed to regulate her strength. In the movie when the Slayer is first informed of her destiny she throws a punch at her Watcher for the first time in her life. He is knocked across the room. Realistically she could easily have killed him with that one punch. She would not have intended to do so, but not knowing her own strength she could have done it in ignorance.
Training a Potential Slayer from early in their life would give them some preparation for the idea of becoming a Slayer, but this would only reduce the danger from a newly Chosen Slayer, not eliminate it. The transition to superhuman abilities would still be sudden and unexpected. If it happened in the middle of the day, or the middle of a training session, things could go very bad very fast. We have no available data on how common training accidents are, but even when a Slayer and her Watcher both know her strength and have been training together for a while the Watcher can end up injured. There were times when Giles got knocked down by his Slayer, or had to call off training because his arms had gone numb from repeated impacts. A new Slayer, or one that was deliberately trying to hurt her Watcher, could do a lot more damage.
Still, it makes sense to train a Potential Slayer and prepare them for the day they are Chosen. That would keep accidents to a minimum. If I designed the training I would start every day with some measure of the Potential Slayer's strength and speed, so any sudden increase would be noticed right away. Running and lifting also make good training, and could be used in accomplishing necessary chores.
If training is not possible, a new Slayer needs to be informed of her new status as quickly as possible. If you can suddenly hug hard enough to crack ribs you really need to know that fast before damaging those you care about.
Once a Slayer knows what she can do, she starts to make choices about how to use her power. A lot of negative things have been said about how the Watchers try to direct those choices. It seems obvious a Slayer should have the opportunity to live a normal life of whatever sort she wishes.
From the available evidence, it seems possible that what a Slayer might wish could be very far from normal, and quite possibly dangerous to those around her.
In the 7 seasons of Buffy and 5 seasons of Angel we have seen 7 Slayers in action. There were more on screen with Andrew at one point, and all the Potentials from season 7 became Slayers, but we haven't seen enough of their lives as Slayers to know what they are like, what kind of choices they make.
We know Dana, Faith, Kendra, Buffy, Nikki Wood, the Chinese Slayer in the Boxer Rebellion, and the First Slayer. Four out of seven have at least attempted murder in the time we observed them.
Dana was insane and killed indiscriminately. Her Slayer dreams interacted badly with her trauma to make her into a vessel for all the primal impulses of the Slayer. Like the First Slayer, she did not confine her violence to demons. She killed humans who got in her way or somehow offended her.
Is that the true essence of the Slayer, something she gets along with the powers? Is a Slayer a killer?
The First Slayer has only been encountered in visions, but in those visions she tried to kill three humans who had been helping the current Slayer, apparently because they got too close. The First Slayer had no friends and lived only for the hunt. The spirit encountered later is probably not the ghost of an individual girl, the particular girl who was turned into the first Slayer. She has instead become a representation of an archetype, the essence of the Slayer. Violent and dark.
Both Dana and the First Slayer could be considered anomalous cases. Of the other five, all we know about the Slayer from the Boxer Rebellion is that Spike killed her. Nikki Wood had a son, and tried to combine looking after him with her duties as a Slayer. Spike killed her too. We have no data on how they lived their lives, if they were violent towards humans or not.
Faith became a murderer. We know that she killed the first time by accident, but later she killed deliberately, because she was ordered to or because she wanted to. She used violence as recreation and did a lot of damage to a lot of people.
Buffy initially was tempted to be more like Faith, but after the first death she realised that wasn't a good idea. But eventually she set out to murder Faith. She chose to kill her in order to save the life of another, but this was not an instance of self-defence. She hunted Faith down in order to use her for medicine. Premeditated murder. Of course, Faith survived the attempt. Buffy was never disciplined for it, and nothing but her own nightmares suggested it had been a wrong thing to do.
Buffy had previously believed that she had killed a human being by misuse of her Slayer strength. Her mother was dating a man that was sweet to her but abusive to her daughter. When that abuse went from verbal to physical, Buffy retaliated with much greater force, knocking the man down the stairs and apparently killing him. That incident led to a police interview but she was never arrested. It turned out the 'human' was actually a serial killer robot. Only on the Hellmouth. The important point however is that, while it is possible her specialised Slayer instincts were aware that there was something supernaturally wrong with the man, Buffy’s conscious knowledge told her that he was simply human. That she had killed a human. Possibly not murder, but misuse of Slayer powers.
At other times Buffy responds violently to normal students. In the film she throws a boy for grabbing her. In the series she pushes around a bully. She demonstrates a tendency to use her physical strength in confrontations even if they lack a supernatural element. Her response is usually appropriate, but there are times it might appear a little excessive.
Given how much of a Slayer's life is violent then responding as if she is being attacked is often reasonable. But reacting as a Slayer when with humans can result in far more injury and death than the sane Slayer would want. Slayers ride a very thin edge. That might be because of the essence of the power in them, or because of their lives, or because of their dreams. Likely it is a little of each. However it is caused, it means Slayers are more likely than a regular girl to react in ways that put people in hospital.
The more a Slayer interacts with regular people, the more her tendency to react violently puts them at risk.
From watching Buffy we might conclude that her ability to protect them by knowing more about their lives hugely outweighs any risk they might be in from her.
But not all Slayers are as well integrated or sane as Buffy, and even Buffy reacts with misdirected violence sometimes.
Someone, at some point, seems to have decided that the risk in fact outweighs the benefits. It became policy to keep the Slayer isolated. If the Watcher is part of the community they can direct the Slayer to apply her powers as needed. If they keep the Slayer away from innocents then innocents can't get slain. It makes a certain sense, and arguing that it is inhuman or mistreatment of the girls in question relies on the assumption that those girls would respond to normal treatment in a normal way. Buffy was the most normal of any of the Slayers we saw, but she still reacted in worrying ways.
Sometimes her actions seem prompted mostly by emotion. Buffy tells Kendra that emotions give her strength, including anger. When it is directed at the bad guys, it helps them win the fight. Yet when misdirected it still lends power to a Slayer, but turns it on the wrong targets. As Faith amply demonstrated. Buffy also used violence on the wrong target to express herself emotionally. When she trained with Xander while he was wearing the puffy suit, she forgot he was in there and really pounded on it because she was upset. Luckily that didn't cause any major damage. But when Spike was present for her emotional breakdown in Dead Things he didn't have any such armour. Buffy beat him severely, leaving him unable to stand, much less defend himself. Being a vampire he survived and healed. It is probable that his being a vampire made him an exception to her rules against violence. But he was at the time her boyfriend. A Slayer that can use her strength to beat up her boyfriend is not a Slayer operating in an ethical way.
It may be relevant that by that point Buffy had been without a Watcher for some time.
The point of mentioning these incidents is not to judge these individuals as good or bad people, it is to illustrate that Slayers have demonstrated some very worrying violent tendencies that were not exclusively aimed at their enemies. Dana, Faith, Buffy, and the First Slayer all used their powers to harm humans outside the context of self-defence. Kendra, Nikki Wood, and the Chinese Slayer in the Boxer Rebellion all appeared to use their power appropriately. We know only a couple of minutes of the lives of the two Slayers Spike killed. We only saw Kendra for a few days. It is possible that they behaved in worrying ways in the time we have no data for. But it is also noteworthy that the only Council raised and trained Slayer we know of is also one who did not inappropriately use her power.
More than half the Slayers we know about attempted murder. If we decide that Dana and the First Slayer shouldn't be counted because their situations are unusual, that leaves Faith and Buffy. If we decide that Buffy's actions are always righteous- seeing as she is after all the hero- then Faith is the only murderer in the bunch. Which still makes it one fifth of all known Slayers, 20%.
With stats like that it seems that Slayers really need Watching.
Of course seven is not a large enough sample to be statistically valid to generalise from. At what point would it become fair or logical to treat the Slayer like a regular person? When the murderer rate is the same as among regular people?
The Slayer has strength, speed and fighting abilities far in excess of a normal person. She represents a greater danger even if her tendency to go dark side is the same as any girl's.
When Faith becomes a killer, she becomes a criminal both locally and in the eyes of the Council. Therefore it is time to arrest her. The local police have already tried once, and failed messily. Not knowing what they are dealing with they find themselves entirely inadequate to the task. The Slayers are handcuffed and in the back of a police car, yet what would be adequate restraint on a normal human is not even close to enough for a Slayer. They kick their way free, and police are injured in the process.
Only those who know of the abilities of the Slayer could make a plan that can account for them. Even if the existence of the Slayer is known, unless you are going to treat every single girl you arrest as if they were a super strong and fast trained martial artist, you need to know the identity of the current Slayer in order to apply the plan correctly. Letting the whole world know the name and face of the Slayer, or even just all local law enforcement officers, will vastly reduce her life expectancy. Even if every cop was decent, honest, and resistant to torture, one little drink of vampire blood would change all that and the hunter would become the hunted.
Once a Slayer is known on sight her usefulness as bait is gone. The element of surprise is lost, and every demon and vampire out there will know what they are dealing with and the measures necessary to stop her. They wont walk into dark alleys one by one any more, they'll send their strongest after her in a group like the Master did with the Three, or hire assassins like Spike hired the order of Taraka. So, the Slayer's name must stay secret as long as possible to keep her life expectancy up.
That means the local law must never have enough information to properly regulate the Slayer. Only a person who knows her name can plan to do that, and a single person has very little chance of enforcing the plan, especially if the goal is to capture not kill. There needs to be a group, preferably with relevant training and resources that can enforce the law if the Slayer decides to ignore it. There need to be Watchers.
It is tempting to say that the Council does not have the right to act in such a manner. They do not carry badges or wear uniforms. There are no obvious trappings of modern law enforcement. But when Wesley arrests Faith he does so in the name of the Council. “By the order of the Watcher's Council of Britain I am exercising my authority and removing you to England, where you will accept the judgment of the disciplinary committee.” Wesley seems to believe that the authority the Council gives him is adequate to the situation. He is certainly not acting as a lone vigilante, or as Faith's only judge. By that standard it was Giles who acted inappropriately in deciding on his own that the proper authorities need not be involved.
But in the current age law enforcement is carried out by individuals given power by governments, which are in democratic countries chosen by the people. In order to have proper authority by this standard the Council must be sanctioned by some government.
It is the Watcher's Council of Britain. It seems possible that Britain gives them this government sanction. That would explain why Watchers tend to be British. It would not explain directly why they exercise their authority all over the world, but rights can be extended by treaty. Unfortunately we simply do not have enough data to know if such a thing applies to the Watchers in the Buffyverse. What we do know is that Watchers are very good at paperwork- including but not limited to powers over Giles' immigration status in the USA. To me that suggests they would have legally established themselves by whatever paper would make their lives easier. Getting some legal authority from the British government would certainly smooth the way in a lot of situations.
Whether or not the Council has such authority, they may well believe that their knowledge and their ability to use that knowledge gives them a duty to do so. If they know that the Slayer is dangerous, they know how to stop her, and they do not do so, then they are accomplices to her acts. If they have trained and assisted her and she then uses that to help her hurt others, they bear some responsibility in that. So even if no government tells them they are permitted, they may feel duty bound to act.
Buffy comes to the conclusion that the Council is useless without the active, voluntary participation of the Slayer. She believes the Council exists in order to turn the Slayer into their weapon. No Slayer, no weapon, no point. However if one of the primary functions of the Council is to police the Slayer, to enforce relevant laws and protect the public should she go rogue, then a Council without the cooperation of the Slayer simply becomes useless to the Slayer. They still have their function, but she gets no benefit from them.
But all these possibilities and duties are only logically implied by the situations we saw in the series. What was actually shown was that the Watcher trains and guides the Slayer and tries to make her better able to do her job, and to survive.
In order to do this well the Watcher needs rather more specialised knowledge. While knowledge of the basics of vampire slaying and the nature of the slayer allows the initial usefulness of the Watcher, in order to support the more varied activities of a Slayer their knowledge base must be very wide. It must cover areas called occult, that is knowledge that is hidden and obscure. Languages are a basic necessity, both those local to the areas the Slayer will operate in and those used in occult texts. A Watcher who has no grasp of Latin or Greek has no access to thousands of years worth of knowledge. Since the Watchers also function as one unified organisation but operate in areas all around the world they also need one language to communicate in. It seems like that a council based in Britain would use English as that language, especially since the Academy is in England. Of course there could be more than one Academy, but we have no evidence on that.
The Academy is the start of the process that makes a Watcher. We have very little information about it but it seems likely to be a standard British high school, starting at age 11. Watchers attend university in a less specialised educational environment, for instance Oxford, but concurrent with their regular studies they study the occult at night. They write theses about particular vampires. This suggests a process of qualification roughly equivalent to the usual university degrees, but carried out in addition to rather than instead of those studies. Later Watchers, even after they've been fired, publish papers on specific areas of occult interest. There seems to be an academic community focusing on such matters, even though the wider world is still completely ignorant of their existence.
As well as all the academic study, a Watcher must be qualified to teach a range of martial arts. As well as unarmed combat they have been shown teaching quarterstaff, crossbow and sword. While Giles did not use Japanese terms when teaching Buffy, this was considered a weakness when she was being tested by the Council. So, add another language the truly competent Watcher should know.
It is difficult to say precisely how long it takes to make a Watcher, but at the very least it takes ten years of formal study, from ages 11 to 21. Most Watchers we have seen in the field were considerably older than this.
To make a Slayer takes one instant- the moment when the power passes to her.
The Slayer slays, the Watcher watches. That might sound callous or even cowardly, but consider- even with that as the basic rule, Watchers are still killed. Both Buffy and Faith lost their first Watcher. Kendra's Watcher did not travel with her, and survived. Nikki Wood's Watcher survived to raise her son. That makes six Watchers we have data on who were Watcher to an active Slayer, and two died. Not a good rate. Especially since the two who died did so in the first six months after their Slayer was called. If it takes ten years to make a Watcher and they only last six months, that's a bit difficult to sustain. If a Watcher were intended to actively participate in Slaying then, without the special powers a Slayer has, it seems likely that they would die much more often than the Slayer. That would mean there would have to be more Watchers, with at least ten years training each, than there are Slayers. That is a vast investment of resources for a small added payoff. It is far more efficient for a Watcher to concentrate on the work they are trained for and a Slayer to do the field work she is born for.
To make a Slayer takes absolutely no effort on the part of any Watcher. Yet the Council takes in Potential Slayers at an early age and invests perhaps as much as ten years in their training too. It isn't a basic requirement of becoming a Slayer, but it is still done. Why?
First and foremost, because Watchers are not heartless. The Council remains, the Slayers change, but that does not mean they perceive the Slayer as an interchangeable thing. They could sit back and only find her once she has the power. It would take a great deal less effort on their part. Yet instead they invest years of work to make her the best Slayer she can be, so she can live as long as possible.
Yes, the training makes her better at her work, a more effective weapon. And yes, the habits of obedience early training instil make it much easier to control a Slayer. But it is always easier to eliminate rather than control. A new Slayer is called, the work continues. So why do they instead go to every effort to keep the Slayer alive? Because Watchers are human beings, and therefore care.
In that case, why do certain training methods put the Slayer through extra pain and risk once she has been called? Specifically, why Cruciamentum?
That is the single most difficult practice of the current Watcher's Council to explain.
A Slayer's strength, speed and accuracy are reduced to normal or even less than normal, 'girly' levels. She is then sent to a location previously prepared so that she can be sealed in with a single vampire. A Slayer that survives is a Slayer that knows that even without her super strength she can survive. But the Slayer is the one girl in all the world with the strength to fight the vampires. It is only through her special abilities that she comes to be fighting vampires at all. Sending her against one without these things puts her back in the realm of those she usually defends. It seems utterly illogical.
It is possible we lack the data that would support the practice. Perhaps every Slayer who goes through Cruciamentum survives. If that has always been the case then the practice is a lot easier to defend. It would be scary, but they would survive, and be better able to rely on their own inner strengths. Unfortunately it seems very unlikely that there are zero casualties. So what the test actually does is risk calling a completely untried Slayer by giving the current Slayer something that relies for it's benefit on the idea that experience is of great importance. This is difficult to defend.
It seems likely that Cruciamentum is not solely about the stated goals.
When we saw Buffy's Cruciamentum she came out of it knowing that she could survive by brains alone. But she is also a Slayer who knows that the Council can take her powers away. At age 18, the age at which our culture acknowledges an individual as an adult, the Slayer is put through an experience that emphasises the power of the Council and the weakness of the Slayer. It is the answer to the question, “And you’ll be stopping me, how?” The first answer for a Watcher, reason, should be enough. The ultimate answer, going after a Slayer with deadly force, is demonstrated here, and at the same time it is shown that her Watcher can take away her ability to fight back. It is the reinforcement of Council power.
However this interpretation is also problematic. The very aspect of the test that makes the Slayer come out stronger- the fact that she survives without her enhanced strength- makes it an inefficient threat. And it is not clear from Buffy's experience if a Slayer would ever know that she had been put to the test. If she were told, then that would lead to the thing that nearly crippled the relationship between Buffy and Giles- an immediate and extreme loss of trust due to the betrayal by a previously benevolent figure. It would undermine a Watcher's position with his Slayer and make her less inclined to follow orders, if she has a brain in her head at all. However if she is never aware that the Council brings about the loss of her powers then the disciplinary threat is entirely lost.
The only one in this situation who we know would be completely informed is the Watcher. And we also know that the Cruciamentum is a test for the Watcher as well.
By the time of Cruciamentum the Watcher has been in daily contact with his Slayer for some time, probably years. It is possible they have raised their Slayer from childhood, as Kendra's Watcher did. It seems likely that they have formed a strong emotional bond with the Slayer. Yet they are there to keep on sending her out to her eventual death. Cruciamentum tests a Watcher's ability to do that.
But so does every night of the Slayer's life, and the Watcher's. So, why Cruciamentum?
It tests the Watcher's ability to do something bloody stupid solely on the word of the Watcher's Council, and if they refuse it gives the Council grounds to fire them.
Cruciamentum uses the Slayer as a tool to keep the Watcher to the active Slayer firmly under the control of the Council.
Because apparently the part where they've trained them since childhood and pay them isn't enough.
That seems rather encouraging. If there is something this extreme to try and keep them in line, it suggests a lot more of them step out of line than the Council is comfortable with.
Cruciamentum is not something that follows logically from the idea of the Watcher. It is not part of the logical necessities of Watchers. It is only part of how the particular Council we have seen in action operates. It is difficult to defend because it does not, in fact, make any kind of sense. It exists only as a result of an ideology that must have grown up to defend the Council as the specific and inherently best people to Watch the Slayer, rather than simply the ones with the knowledge to do so.
Is it actually necessary to have a Council of Watchers?
The Slayer becomes dangerous at first through ignorance, and later perhaps from inclination. Watchers know of the existence and nature of the Slayer, and can use this knowledge to keep an eye on her. When she first gains her strength they can warn her about it. If it becomes necessary they can restrain the Slayer and deliver her to due process of law.
The Slayer's powers include some instinctual knowledge of how to fight demons, but this instinct is not sufficient to carry out a Slayer's full duties. A Watcher knows a lot about the dangers the Slayer combats, more than the Slayer dreams and instincts pass on, so they can use this knowledge to assist her.
Those things can be done by a single Watcher, who would find and guide the one girl in all the world.
To get the knowledge they need takes a lot of training, a lot of time, a lot of knowledge from someone else. That could be the Watcher before them. There would then be a Watcher line, teacher to apprentice.
But it takes a lot of years to fully train a new Watcher. And Watchers to the Slayer tend to die a lot. To make sure the line of knowledge remains unbroken, each would have to be a student, then a teacher, and only then a Watcher. Even then, it would mean that every active Watcher would have to survive the full ten years before the teacher could be spared to take up the duties.
So, an Academy full of students, a lot of teachers, and one active Watcher.
But then you get a different problem- every year you get a lot of students graduating, but maybe one or two Watchers dying, if they only last six months. So what to do with all the spare Watchers?
Well, wouldn't it be more efficient to teach the Slayer some of this stuff before people start trying to kill her?
So you end up with a lot of Watchers teaching a lot of Slayers. Still not a Council yet, but a collection of people who all need the same knowledge and probably have been taught it at the same source. To make sure knowledge gets passed on instead of lost all these Watchers have been through an academic process involving exams and assessments. Older Watchers have made decisions about them, about their fitness to do their duties, their right to call themselves Watchers. There starts to be a hierarchy. But it is not simply that the oldest is in charge, because every class of graduates would be about the same age. A group of more or less equals. A Council.
Do they then have an absolute right to say who should help the Slayer and how? Well, put it this way- does a medical council has an absolute right to say who should practice medicine? They are the only people with enough knowledge to evaluate the competence of individuals practicing in a specialised area. They are the only ones who know the Slayer, and know the occult world she moves in. They have the authority by virtue of having the expertise.
They also, at some point, came to have all the money. Giles has a day job, which presumably pays him, but Wesley was only employed by the Council, and the Council also paid Giles (backdated, when he was reinstated).
Examining the economics of Slaying brings up a whole different set of problems. There are not actually very many people in the present age who would be willing to pay for the services of the Slayer, for the simple reason that very few people currently believe in the things a Slayer slays. That leaves the Slayer with no means of support if she devotes her life to slaying.
A Watcher has a similar problem, compounded by the fact that they have to spend a very long time in education before they are even competent to start as a Watcher. Education means paying the teachers and supporting oneself. This gets difficult.
Wherever the Council gets their money from, they use it to support their Watchers in the field. They do not, apparently, use it to pay their Slayer. This seems like an odd omission.
The Slayer is always a woman, and usually a young woman. The Watcher takes in and trains a Potential Slayer, presumably supported by Council money. Then that Slayer is Chosen, gains the powers, and starts to carry out the duties of a Slayer. It seems likely that in the usual way of things, historically, a Slayer has continued to live with their Watcher. Therefore the money the Council pays to a Watcher automatically goes to support the Slayer. In societies where a woman was expected to be supported by others rather than own any property in her own right, that is in most societies through history up to very recent times, this arrangement would be the only logical one. Even in the current era, it is not usual for someone to live alone, own things, or get paid, until they reach adult age. Most Slayers simply do not live that long. So for two reasons paying a Slayer would have seemed like a strange idea- children are not paid, and neither are women. If this was the underlying assumption for the usual actions of Watchers they might keep on acting the same way even after conditions start changing in some parts of the world. If it was a sufficiently 'common sense' idea it might not have been written down. It might not even be noticed. So Watchers who do not live entirely by the handbook might ignore the idea that the Slayer should live with them without thinking through that the Slayer would then have to support themselves.
The question then becomes not just 'Why doesn't the Council pay the Slayer' but 'Why didn't Giles pay Buffy or Faith her share of his Council money?'
Either way, the assumptions and rules have to be changed to suit the conditions found in the real world and the handbook updated to reflect this.
One other question arises that is especially relevant when dealing not with Slayers but with Potential Slayers.
Does the Council have the right to change the lives of these girls in such a fundamental way?
With the Slayer it is not the Council but whatever force decides a particular girl is Chosen that changes her life. While the first Slayer was Chosen by the Shadowmen, the means by which subsequent Slayers are selected remains unknown. Once she has the power, she needs to be made aware of that for reasons already outlined. She is dangerous, and she is in danger from those who want to kill the Slayer to further their own plans. So the Watcher and their specialist knowledge can help her. They do not change her life, they simply help her deal with the changes.
Is that the case with Potential Slayers too? What is it, exactly, that makes a girl a Potential? What is it about them that is different? We have two hints. One is from the movie, which says that even before she is called a Slayer has Slayer dreams. The other is from the episode Potential, where Dawn assumes (apparently correctly) that simply being a Potential Slayer will give a girl instincts appropriate to fighting vampires. If these girls dream of the lives of former Slayers and have these fighting instincts inside them, then the knowledge the Council brings simply helps them with their already existing differences.
The early training also helps them should they become the Slayer.
If they do not become Slayers, then what?
We have not actually seen that. However, we know that the Watcher Academy is an all male school, yet there are female Watchers. One possibility is that the Potentials who are never Chosen use their training to be Watchers. Of course, another is that the Council drops them as soon as they prove useless, but that seems like a huge waste of all the training already invested in them. They have roughly the same training as a Watcher, so it seems logical to put them to work as Watchers.
Of course if they were never found by the Council they could grow up to live in whatever way is usual for a woman in their time and place, albeit a woman with very strange dreams.
That would leave them ignorant of the true state of the world, and much less able to defend themselves against the very real dangers. Is ignorance bliss, or is it better to teach a child as much as possible about the dangers of the world? A very broad question, but I will note here only that Watchers seem to choose to educate their own children as thoroughly as possible, by giving them Watcher training. Either they believe knowledge is better, or they sacrifice the innocence of their own children to better secure the safety of the world.
That leaves only the question of what happens should someone not wish to use his or her knowledge or abilities to defend the world.
Watchers seem free to quit without being hunted down. Giles did when he was young. Nikki Wood's Watcher did so to raise her son.
Slayers might be a different case, but we do not actually have any evidence.
Faith did not just quit, she started killing people. The Council first tried to arrest her, then to kill her, but when she got herself arrested they stopped trying to kill her. If their approach with her is standard then it seems they don't mind a Slayer being inactive for extended periods of time.
Unfortunately for our analysis, Faith was not a standard example. There was still an active Slayer no matter what Faith did. We still have no data about what would happen were the one and only Slayer to choose not to Slay.
This is an important point. If the Watcher's Council treats the Slayer as an end in herself, if they treat her as a free willed individual, then she has the right to choose not to slay. If instead they treat her solely as a means to an end, a weapon, then they would take steps to ensure that the Slayer carries out her function. That could mean anything from leaflets through the letterbox to killing a useless Slayer to make way for a useful one.
The only slightly relevant bit of data we have is from when Buffy quit, after killing Angel. Giles kept on trying to find her. Giles has been shown to care about Buffy for her own sake, so it seems very unlikely he was chasing her to kill her. But he might well have had a speech about duty had she continued to not slay, just as he had a speech for her the first time they met. Yet we still do not know what the Council approved approach would be, because Giles ignored the handbook.
If we see it as either respecting a young woman as an individual or using her as a thing, the choice seems clear in one way. But if instead we see it as protecting one individual or protecting the whole world, the choice becomes clear with completely the opposite answer. Given the choices we have seen individual Watchers make, good Watchers like Wesley and Giles, I think the Council would choose to sacrifice one girl to protect the world. It is, after all, what the Slayer always does. Whether she likes it or not. Yes, killing the Slayer just to get a new one called would be an evil act- but as we have seen sometimes a Watcher does the thing they believe is evil because they also believe it is necessary.
So is the Council, as a whole, necessary?
For the Slayer, or for the good of the world? Or are those things one and the same, since a Slayer exists in order to protect the world?
The Watcher's Council we see working to try and control Buffy has made some decisions arising from the information they have available as filtered through the ideology of their organisation. They have weighed certain factors such as individual freedom versus risk to the world, and made choices that seemed appropriate to them. Some of those choices came down on the side of safety when the current western worldview would have chosen freedom. Other choices at some point decided to shore up the power of the Council rather than actually attend to their stated goal. So there are a lot of areas where the specific conduct of the council could be modified by a different philosophy.
The basic idea behind the existence of the Watcher's Council- that those with specialised knowledge can use it to help the Slayer save the world- is still a good one. So good, so useful, that if there were no Watcher's Council, it would be necessary to invent one.
The function of the Watcher's Council is two fold- to inform and educate the Slayer, and to regulate the Slayer. Both these functions can only be carried out by those with access to one privileged piece of information, the one above all that must be kept secret in order for the Slayer to be effective. This knowledge is simply the name and nature of the Slayer- that she exists, and that a particular girl holds the power.
When a Slayer comes into her power she is immediately, through simple ignorance, a danger to herself and others.
The Potential Slayer is already different from other girls. She has had dreams all her life, dreams of vampires and demons, running and hunting. She dreams of having strength, speed and a mission, but the moment she is Chosen is still an unexpected surprise. For the first time in her waking life a Slayer has superhuman abilities. She goes in one moment from being able to lift bags of potatoes to being able to lift tractors. And she doesn't know she has changed. That makes her dangerous. Suddenly her every move becomes so much more effective that she can hurt people without really trying.
In the series we have seen incidents where a Slayer, in full knowledge of her strength but distracted by magic or strong emotion, has accidentally hurt people. Sometimes when she hugs people she forgets she can crush them. One time, in The Witch, Buffy threw someone across the room. A Slayer who did not even know she had been called would not know she needed to regulate her strength. In the movie when the Slayer is first informed of her destiny she throws a punch at her Watcher for the first time in her life. He is knocked across the room. Realistically she could easily have killed him with that one punch. She would not have intended to do so, but not knowing her own strength she could have done it in ignorance.
Training a Potential Slayer from early in their life would give them some preparation for the idea of becoming a Slayer, but this would only reduce the danger from a newly Chosen Slayer, not eliminate it. The transition to superhuman abilities would still be sudden and unexpected. If it happened in the middle of the day, or the middle of a training session, things could go very bad very fast. We have no available data on how common training accidents are, but even when a Slayer and her Watcher both know her strength and have been training together for a while the Watcher can end up injured. There were times when Giles got knocked down by his Slayer, or had to call off training because his arms had gone numb from repeated impacts. A new Slayer, or one that was deliberately trying to hurt her Watcher, could do a lot more damage.
Still, it makes sense to train a Potential Slayer and prepare them for the day they are Chosen. That would keep accidents to a minimum. If I designed the training I would start every day with some measure of the Potential Slayer's strength and speed, so any sudden increase would be noticed right away. Running and lifting also make good training, and could be used in accomplishing necessary chores.
If training is not possible, a new Slayer needs to be informed of her new status as quickly as possible. If you can suddenly hug hard enough to crack ribs you really need to know that fast before damaging those you care about.
Once a Slayer knows what she can do, she starts to make choices about how to use her power. A lot of negative things have been said about how the Watchers try to direct those choices. It seems obvious a Slayer should have the opportunity to live a normal life of whatever sort she wishes.
From the available evidence, it seems possible that what a Slayer might wish could be very far from normal, and quite possibly dangerous to those around her.
In the 7 seasons of Buffy and 5 seasons of Angel we have seen 7 Slayers in action. There were more on screen with Andrew at one point, and all the Potentials from season 7 became Slayers, but we haven't seen enough of their lives as Slayers to know what they are like, what kind of choices they make.
We know Dana, Faith, Kendra, Buffy, Nikki Wood, the Chinese Slayer in the Boxer Rebellion, and the First Slayer. Four out of seven have at least attempted murder in the time we observed them.
Dana was insane and killed indiscriminately. Her Slayer dreams interacted badly with her trauma to make her into a vessel for all the primal impulses of the Slayer. Like the First Slayer, she did not confine her violence to demons. She killed humans who got in her way or somehow offended her.
Is that the true essence of the Slayer, something she gets along with the powers? Is a Slayer a killer?
The First Slayer has only been encountered in visions, but in those visions she tried to kill three humans who had been helping the current Slayer, apparently because they got too close. The First Slayer had no friends and lived only for the hunt. The spirit encountered later is probably not the ghost of an individual girl, the particular girl who was turned into the first Slayer. She has instead become a representation of an archetype, the essence of the Slayer. Violent and dark.
Both Dana and the First Slayer could be considered anomalous cases. Of the other five, all we know about the Slayer from the Boxer Rebellion is that Spike killed her. Nikki Wood had a son, and tried to combine looking after him with her duties as a Slayer. Spike killed her too. We have no data on how they lived their lives, if they were violent towards humans or not.
Faith became a murderer. We know that she killed the first time by accident, but later she killed deliberately, because she was ordered to or because she wanted to. She used violence as recreation and did a lot of damage to a lot of people.
Buffy initially was tempted to be more like Faith, but after the first death she realised that wasn't a good idea. But eventually she set out to murder Faith. She chose to kill her in order to save the life of another, but this was not an instance of self-defence. She hunted Faith down in order to use her for medicine. Premeditated murder. Of course, Faith survived the attempt. Buffy was never disciplined for it, and nothing but her own nightmares suggested it had been a wrong thing to do.
Buffy had previously believed that she had killed a human being by misuse of her Slayer strength. Her mother was dating a man that was sweet to her but abusive to her daughter. When that abuse went from verbal to physical, Buffy retaliated with much greater force, knocking the man down the stairs and apparently killing him. That incident led to a police interview but she was never arrested. It turned out the 'human' was actually a serial killer robot. Only on the Hellmouth. The important point however is that, while it is possible her specialised Slayer instincts were aware that there was something supernaturally wrong with the man, Buffy’s conscious knowledge told her that he was simply human. That she had killed a human. Possibly not murder, but misuse of Slayer powers.
At other times Buffy responds violently to normal students. In the film she throws a boy for grabbing her. In the series she pushes around a bully. She demonstrates a tendency to use her physical strength in confrontations even if they lack a supernatural element. Her response is usually appropriate, but there are times it might appear a little excessive.
Given how much of a Slayer's life is violent then responding as if she is being attacked is often reasonable. But reacting as a Slayer when with humans can result in far more injury and death than the sane Slayer would want. Slayers ride a very thin edge. That might be because of the essence of the power in them, or because of their lives, or because of their dreams. Likely it is a little of each. However it is caused, it means Slayers are more likely than a regular girl to react in ways that put people in hospital.
The more a Slayer interacts with regular people, the more her tendency to react violently puts them at risk.
From watching Buffy we might conclude that her ability to protect them by knowing more about their lives hugely outweighs any risk they might be in from her.
But not all Slayers are as well integrated or sane as Buffy, and even Buffy reacts with misdirected violence sometimes.
Someone, at some point, seems to have decided that the risk in fact outweighs the benefits. It became policy to keep the Slayer isolated. If the Watcher is part of the community they can direct the Slayer to apply her powers as needed. If they keep the Slayer away from innocents then innocents can't get slain. It makes a certain sense, and arguing that it is inhuman or mistreatment of the girls in question relies on the assumption that those girls would respond to normal treatment in a normal way. Buffy was the most normal of any of the Slayers we saw, but she still reacted in worrying ways.
Sometimes her actions seem prompted mostly by emotion. Buffy tells Kendra that emotions give her strength, including anger. When it is directed at the bad guys, it helps them win the fight. Yet when misdirected it still lends power to a Slayer, but turns it on the wrong targets. As Faith amply demonstrated. Buffy also used violence on the wrong target to express herself emotionally. When she trained with Xander while he was wearing the puffy suit, she forgot he was in there and really pounded on it because she was upset. Luckily that didn't cause any major damage. But when Spike was present for her emotional breakdown in Dead Things he didn't have any such armour. Buffy beat him severely, leaving him unable to stand, much less defend himself. Being a vampire he survived and healed. It is probable that his being a vampire made him an exception to her rules against violence. But he was at the time her boyfriend. A Slayer that can use her strength to beat up her boyfriend is not a Slayer operating in an ethical way.
It may be relevant that by that point Buffy had been without a Watcher for some time.
The point of mentioning these incidents is not to judge these individuals as good or bad people, it is to illustrate that Slayers have demonstrated some very worrying violent tendencies that were not exclusively aimed at their enemies. Dana, Faith, Buffy, and the First Slayer all used their powers to harm humans outside the context of self-defence. Kendra, Nikki Wood, and the Chinese Slayer in the Boxer Rebellion all appeared to use their power appropriately. We know only a couple of minutes of the lives of the two Slayers Spike killed. We only saw Kendra for a few days. It is possible that they behaved in worrying ways in the time we have no data for. But it is also noteworthy that the only Council raised and trained Slayer we know of is also one who did not inappropriately use her power.
More than half the Slayers we know about attempted murder. If we decide that Dana and the First Slayer shouldn't be counted because their situations are unusual, that leaves Faith and Buffy. If we decide that Buffy's actions are always righteous- seeing as she is after all the hero- then Faith is the only murderer in the bunch. Which still makes it one fifth of all known Slayers, 20%.
With stats like that it seems that Slayers really need Watching.
Of course seven is not a large enough sample to be statistically valid to generalise from. At what point would it become fair or logical to treat the Slayer like a regular person? When the murderer rate is the same as among regular people?
The Slayer has strength, speed and fighting abilities far in excess of a normal person. She represents a greater danger even if her tendency to go dark side is the same as any girl's.
When Faith becomes a killer, she becomes a criminal both locally and in the eyes of the Council. Therefore it is time to arrest her. The local police have already tried once, and failed messily. Not knowing what they are dealing with they find themselves entirely inadequate to the task. The Slayers are handcuffed and in the back of a police car, yet what would be adequate restraint on a normal human is not even close to enough for a Slayer. They kick their way free, and police are injured in the process.
Only those who know of the abilities of the Slayer could make a plan that can account for them. Even if the existence of the Slayer is known, unless you are going to treat every single girl you arrest as if they were a super strong and fast trained martial artist, you need to know the identity of the current Slayer in order to apply the plan correctly. Letting the whole world know the name and face of the Slayer, or even just all local law enforcement officers, will vastly reduce her life expectancy. Even if every cop was decent, honest, and resistant to torture, one little drink of vampire blood would change all that and the hunter would become the hunted.
Once a Slayer is known on sight her usefulness as bait is gone. The element of surprise is lost, and every demon and vampire out there will know what they are dealing with and the measures necessary to stop her. They wont walk into dark alleys one by one any more, they'll send their strongest after her in a group like the Master did with the Three, or hire assassins like Spike hired the order of Taraka. So, the Slayer's name must stay secret as long as possible to keep her life expectancy up.
That means the local law must never have enough information to properly regulate the Slayer. Only a person who knows her name can plan to do that, and a single person has very little chance of enforcing the plan, especially if the goal is to capture not kill. There needs to be a group, preferably with relevant training and resources that can enforce the law if the Slayer decides to ignore it. There need to be Watchers.
It is tempting to say that the Council does not have the right to act in such a manner. They do not carry badges or wear uniforms. There are no obvious trappings of modern law enforcement. But when Wesley arrests Faith he does so in the name of the Council. “By the order of the Watcher's Council of Britain I am exercising my authority and removing you to England, where you will accept the judgment of the disciplinary committee.” Wesley seems to believe that the authority the Council gives him is adequate to the situation. He is certainly not acting as a lone vigilante, or as Faith's only judge. By that standard it was Giles who acted inappropriately in deciding on his own that the proper authorities need not be involved.
But in the current age law enforcement is carried out by individuals given power by governments, which are in democratic countries chosen by the people. In order to have proper authority by this standard the Council must be sanctioned by some government.
It is the Watcher's Council of Britain. It seems possible that Britain gives them this government sanction. That would explain why Watchers tend to be British. It would not explain directly why they exercise their authority all over the world, but rights can be extended by treaty. Unfortunately we simply do not have enough data to know if such a thing applies to the Watchers in the Buffyverse. What we do know is that Watchers are very good at paperwork- including but not limited to powers over Giles' immigration status in the USA. To me that suggests they would have legally established themselves by whatever paper would make their lives easier. Getting some legal authority from the British government would certainly smooth the way in a lot of situations.
Whether or not the Council has such authority, they may well believe that their knowledge and their ability to use that knowledge gives them a duty to do so. If they know that the Slayer is dangerous, they know how to stop her, and they do not do so, then they are accomplices to her acts. If they have trained and assisted her and she then uses that to help her hurt others, they bear some responsibility in that. So even if no government tells them they are permitted, they may feel duty bound to act.
Buffy comes to the conclusion that the Council is useless without the active, voluntary participation of the Slayer. She believes the Council exists in order to turn the Slayer into their weapon. No Slayer, no weapon, no point. However if one of the primary functions of the Council is to police the Slayer, to enforce relevant laws and protect the public should she go rogue, then a Council without the cooperation of the Slayer simply becomes useless to the Slayer. They still have their function, but she gets no benefit from them.
But all these possibilities and duties are only logically implied by the situations we saw in the series. What was actually shown was that the Watcher trains and guides the Slayer and tries to make her better able to do her job, and to survive.
In order to do this well the Watcher needs rather more specialised knowledge. While knowledge of the basics of vampire slaying and the nature of the slayer allows the initial usefulness of the Watcher, in order to support the more varied activities of a Slayer their knowledge base must be very wide. It must cover areas called occult, that is knowledge that is hidden and obscure. Languages are a basic necessity, both those local to the areas the Slayer will operate in and those used in occult texts. A Watcher who has no grasp of Latin or Greek has no access to thousands of years worth of knowledge. Since the Watchers also function as one unified organisation but operate in areas all around the world they also need one language to communicate in. It seems like that a council based in Britain would use English as that language, especially since the Academy is in England. Of course there could be more than one Academy, but we have no evidence on that.
The Academy is the start of the process that makes a Watcher. We have very little information about it but it seems likely to be a standard British high school, starting at age 11. Watchers attend university in a less specialised educational environment, for instance Oxford, but concurrent with their regular studies they study the occult at night. They write theses about particular vampires. This suggests a process of qualification roughly equivalent to the usual university degrees, but carried out in addition to rather than instead of those studies. Later Watchers, even after they've been fired, publish papers on specific areas of occult interest. There seems to be an academic community focusing on such matters, even though the wider world is still completely ignorant of their existence.
As well as all the academic study, a Watcher must be qualified to teach a range of martial arts. As well as unarmed combat they have been shown teaching quarterstaff, crossbow and sword. While Giles did not use Japanese terms when teaching Buffy, this was considered a weakness when she was being tested by the Council. So, add another language the truly competent Watcher should know.
It is difficult to say precisely how long it takes to make a Watcher, but at the very least it takes ten years of formal study, from ages 11 to 21. Most Watchers we have seen in the field were considerably older than this.
To make a Slayer takes one instant- the moment when the power passes to her.
The Slayer slays, the Watcher watches. That might sound callous or even cowardly, but consider- even with that as the basic rule, Watchers are still killed. Both Buffy and Faith lost their first Watcher. Kendra's Watcher did not travel with her, and survived. Nikki Wood's Watcher survived to raise her son. That makes six Watchers we have data on who were Watcher to an active Slayer, and two died. Not a good rate. Especially since the two who died did so in the first six months after their Slayer was called. If it takes ten years to make a Watcher and they only last six months, that's a bit difficult to sustain. If a Watcher were intended to actively participate in Slaying then, without the special powers a Slayer has, it seems likely that they would die much more often than the Slayer. That would mean there would have to be more Watchers, with at least ten years training each, than there are Slayers. That is a vast investment of resources for a small added payoff. It is far more efficient for a Watcher to concentrate on the work they are trained for and a Slayer to do the field work she is born for.
To make a Slayer takes absolutely no effort on the part of any Watcher. Yet the Council takes in Potential Slayers at an early age and invests perhaps as much as ten years in their training too. It isn't a basic requirement of becoming a Slayer, but it is still done. Why?
First and foremost, because Watchers are not heartless. The Council remains, the Slayers change, but that does not mean they perceive the Slayer as an interchangeable thing. They could sit back and only find her once she has the power. It would take a great deal less effort on their part. Yet instead they invest years of work to make her the best Slayer she can be, so she can live as long as possible.
Yes, the training makes her better at her work, a more effective weapon. And yes, the habits of obedience early training instil make it much easier to control a Slayer. But it is always easier to eliminate rather than control. A new Slayer is called, the work continues. So why do they instead go to every effort to keep the Slayer alive? Because Watchers are human beings, and therefore care.
In that case, why do certain training methods put the Slayer through extra pain and risk once she has been called? Specifically, why Cruciamentum?
That is the single most difficult practice of the current Watcher's Council to explain.
A Slayer's strength, speed and accuracy are reduced to normal or even less than normal, 'girly' levels. She is then sent to a location previously prepared so that she can be sealed in with a single vampire. A Slayer that survives is a Slayer that knows that even without her super strength she can survive. But the Slayer is the one girl in all the world with the strength to fight the vampires. It is only through her special abilities that she comes to be fighting vampires at all. Sending her against one without these things puts her back in the realm of those she usually defends. It seems utterly illogical.
It is possible we lack the data that would support the practice. Perhaps every Slayer who goes through Cruciamentum survives. If that has always been the case then the practice is a lot easier to defend. It would be scary, but they would survive, and be better able to rely on their own inner strengths. Unfortunately it seems very unlikely that there are zero casualties. So what the test actually does is risk calling a completely untried Slayer by giving the current Slayer something that relies for it's benefit on the idea that experience is of great importance. This is difficult to defend.
It seems likely that Cruciamentum is not solely about the stated goals.
When we saw Buffy's Cruciamentum she came out of it knowing that she could survive by brains alone. But she is also a Slayer who knows that the Council can take her powers away. At age 18, the age at which our culture acknowledges an individual as an adult, the Slayer is put through an experience that emphasises the power of the Council and the weakness of the Slayer. It is the answer to the question, “And you’ll be stopping me, how?” The first answer for a Watcher, reason, should be enough. The ultimate answer, going after a Slayer with deadly force, is demonstrated here, and at the same time it is shown that her Watcher can take away her ability to fight back. It is the reinforcement of Council power.
However this interpretation is also problematic. The very aspect of the test that makes the Slayer come out stronger- the fact that she survives without her enhanced strength- makes it an inefficient threat. And it is not clear from Buffy's experience if a Slayer would ever know that she had been put to the test. If she were told, then that would lead to the thing that nearly crippled the relationship between Buffy and Giles- an immediate and extreme loss of trust due to the betrayal by a previously benevolent figure. It would undermine a Watcher's position with his Slayer and make her less inclined to follow orders, if she has a brain in her head at all. However if she is never aware that the Council brings about the loss of her powers then the disciplinary threat is entirely lost.
The only one in this situation who we know would be completely informed is the Watcher. And we also know that the Cruciamentum is a test for the Watcher as well.
By the time of Cruciamentum the Watcher has been in daily contact with his Slayer for some time, probably years. It is possible they have raised their Slayer from childhood, as Kendra's Watcher did. It seems likely that they have formed a strong emotional bond with the Slayer. Yet they are there to keep on sending her out to her eventual death. Cruciamentum tests a Watcher's ability to do that.
But so does every night of the Slayer's life, and the Watcher's. So, why Cruciamentum?
It tests the Watcher's ability to do something bloody stupid solely on the word of the Watcher's Council, and if they refuse it gives the Council grounds to fire them.
Cruciamentum uses the Slayer as a tool to keep the Watcher to the active Slayer firmly under the control of the Council.
Because apparently the part where they've trained them since childhood and pay them isn't enough.
That seems rather encouraging. If there is something this extreme to try and keep them in line, it suggests a lot more of them step out of line than the Council is comfortable with.
Cruciamentum is not something that follows logically from the idea of the Watcher. It is not part of the logical necessities of Watchers. It is only part of how the particular Council we have seen in action operates. It is difficult to defend because it does not, in fact, make any kind of sense. It exists only as a result of an ideology that must have grown up to defend the Council as the specific and inherently best people to Watch the Slayer, rather than simply the ones with the knowledge to do so.
Is it actually necessary to have a Council of Watchers?
The Slayer becomes dangerous at first through ignorance, and later perhaps from inclination. Watchers know of the existence and nature of the Slayer, and can use this knowledge to keep an eye on her. When she first gains her strength they can warn her about it. If it becomes necessary they can restrain the Slayer and deliver her to due process of law.
The Slayer's powers include some instinctual knowledge of how to fight demons, but this instinct is not sufficient to carry out a Slayer's full duties. A Watcher knows a lot about the dangers the Slayer combats, more than the Slayer dreams and instincts pass on, so they can use this knowledge to assist her.
Those things can be done by a single Watcher, who would find and guide the one girl in all the world.
To get the knowledge they need takes a lot of training, a lot of time, a lot of knowledge from someone else. That could be the Watcher before them. There would then be a Watcher line, teacher to apprentice.
But it takes a lot of years to fully train a new Watcher. And Watchers to the Slayer tend to die a lot. To make sure the line of knowledge remains unbroken, each would have to be a student, then a teacher, and only then a Watcher. Even then, it would mean that every active Watcher would have to survive the full ten years before the teacher could be spared to take up the duties.
So, an Academy full of students, a lot of teachers, and one active Watcher.
But then you get a different problem- every year you get a lot of students graduating, but maybe one or two Watchers dying, if they only last six months. So what to do with all the spare Watchers?
Well, wouldn't it be more efficient to teach the Slayer some of this stuff before people start trying to kill her?
So you end up with a lot of Watchers teaching a lot of Slayers. Still not a Council yet, but a collection of people who all need the same knowledge and probably have been taught it at the same source. To make sure knowledge gets passed on instead of lost all these Watchers have been through an academic process involving exams and assessments. Older Watchers have made decisions about them, about their fitness to do their duties, their right to call themselves Watchers. There starts to be a hierarchy. But it is not simply that the oldest is in charge, because every class of graduates would be about the same age. A group of more or less equals. A Council.
Do they then have an absolute right to say who should help the Slayer and how? Well, put it this way- does a medical council has an absolute right to say who should practice medicine? They are the only people with enough knowledge to evaluate the competence of individuals practicing in a specialised area. They are the only ones who know the Slayer, and know the occult world she moves in. They have the authority by virtue of having the expertise.
They also, at some point, came to have all the money. Giles has a day job, which presumably pays him, but Wesley was only employed by the Council, and the Council also paid Giles (backdated, when he was reinstated).
Examining the economics of Slaying brings up a whole different set of problems. There are not actually very many people in the present age who would be willing to pay for the services of the Slayer, for the simple reason that very few people currently believe in the things a Slayer slays. That leaves the Slayer with no means of support if she devotes her life to slaying.
A Watcher has a similar problem, compounded by the fact that they have to spend a very long time in education before they are even competent to start as a Watcher. Education means paying the teachers and supporting oneself. This gets difficult.
Wherever the Council gets their money from, they use it to support their Watchers in the field. They do not, apparently, use it to pay their Slayer. This seems like an odd omission.
The Slayer is always a woman, and usually a young woman. The Watcher takes in and trains a Potential Slayer, presumably supported by Council money. Then that Slayer is Chosen, gains the powers, and starts to carry out the duties of a Slayer. It seems likely that in the usual way of things, historically, a Slayer has continued to live with their Watcher. Therefore the money the Council pays to a Watcher automatically goes to support the Slayer. In societies where a woman was expected to be supported by others rather than own any property in her own right, that is in most societies through history up to very recent times, this arrangement would be the only logical one. Even in the current era, it is not usual for someone to live alone, own things, or get paid, until they reach adult age. Most Slayers simply do not live that long. So for two reasons paying a Slayer would have seemed like a strange idea- children are not paid, and neither are women. If this was the underlying assumption for the usual actions of Watchers they might keep on acting the same way even after conditions start changing in some parts of the world. If it was a sufficiently 'common sense' idea it might not have been written down. It might not even be noticed. So Watchers who do not live entirely by the handbook might ignore the idea that the Slayer should live with them without thinking through that the Slayer would then have to support themselves.
The question then becomes not just 'Why doesn't the Council pay the Slayer' but 'Why didn't Giles pay Buffy or Faith her share of his Council money?'
Either way, the assumptions and rules have to be changed to suit the conditions found in the real world and the handbook updated to reflect this.
One other question arises that is especially relevant when dealing not with Slayers but with Potential Slayers.
Does the Council have the right to change the lives of these girls in such a fundamental way?
With the Slayer it is not the Council but whatever force decides a particular girl is Chosen that changes her life. While the first Slayer was Chosen by the Shadowmen, the means by which subsequent Slayers are selected remains unknown. Once she has the power, she needs to be made aware of that for reasons already outlined. She is dangerous, and she is in danger from those who want to kill the Slayer to further their own plans. So the Watcher and their specialist knowledge can help her. They do not change her life, they simply help her deal with the changes.
Is that the case with Potential Slayers too? What is it, exactly, that makes a girl a Potential? What is it about them that is different? We have two hints. One is from the movie, which says that even before she is called a Slayer has Slayer dreams. The other is from the episode Potential, where Dawn assumes (apparently correctly) that simply being a Potential Slayer will give a girl instincts appropriate to fighting vampires. If these girls dream of the lives of former Slayers and have these fighting instincts inside them, then the knowledge the Council brings simply helps them with their already existing differences.
The early training also helps them should they become the Slayer.
If they do not become Slayers, then what?
We have not actually seen that. However, we know that the Watcher Academy is an all male school, yet there are female Watchers. One possibility is that the Potentials who are never Chosen use their training to be Watchers. Of course, another is that the Council drops them as soon as they prove useless, but that seems like a huge waste of all the training already invested in them. They have roughly the same training as a Watcher, so it seems logical to put them to work as Watchers.
Of course if they were never found by the Council they could grow up to live in whatever way is usual for a woman in their time and place, albeit a woman with very strange dreams.
That would leave them ignorant of the true state of the world, and much less able to defend themselves against the very real dangers. Is ignorance bliss, or is it better to teach a child as much as possible about the dangers of the world? A very broad question, but I will note here only that Watchers seem to choose to educate their own children as thoroughly as possible, by giving them Watcher training. Either they believe knowledge is better, or they sacrifice the innocence of their own children to better secure the safety of the world.
That leaves only the question of what happens should someone not wish to use his or her knowledge or abilities to defend the world.
Watchers seem free to quit without being hunted down. Giles did when he was young. Nikki Wood's Watcher did so to raise her son.
Slayers might be a different case, but we do not actually have any evidence.
Faith did not just quit, she started killing people. The Council first tried to arrest her, then to kill her, but when she got herself arrested they stopped trying to kill her. If their approach with her is standard then it seems they don't mind a Slayer being inactive for extended periods of time.
Unfortunately for our analysis, Faith was not a standard example. There was still an active Slayer no matter what Faith did. We still have no data about what would happen were the one and only Slayer to choose not to Slay.
This is an important point. If the Watcher's Council treats the Slayer as an end in herself, if they treat her as a free willed individual, then she has the right to choose not to slay. If instead they treat her solely as a means to an end, a weapon, then they would take steps to ensure that the Slayer carries out her function. That could mean anything from leaflets through the letterbox to killing a useless Slayer to make way for a useful one.
The only slightly relevant bit of data we have is from when Buffy quit, after killing Angel. Giles kept on trying to find her. Giles has been shown to care about Buffy for her own sake, so it seems very unlikely he was chasing her to kill her. But he might well have had a speech about duty had she continued to not slay, just as he had a speech for her the first time they met. Yet we still do not know what the Council approved approach would be, because Giles ignored the handbook.
If we see it as either respecting a young woman as an individual or using her as a thing, the choice seems clear in one way. But if instead we see it as protecting one individual or protecting the whole world, the choice becomes clear with completely the opposite answer. Given the choices we have seen individual Watchers make, good Watchers like Wesley and Giles, I think the Council would choose to sacrifice one girl to protect the world. It is, after all, what the Slayer always does. Whether she likes it or not. Yes, killing the Slayer just to get a new one called would be an evil act- but as we have seen sometimes a Watcher does the thing they believe is evil because they also believe it is necessary.
So is the Council, as a whole, necessary?
For the Slayer, or for the good of the world? Or are those things one and the same, since a Slayer exists in order to protect the world?
The Watcher's Council we see working to try and control Buffy has made some decisions arising from the information they have available as filtered through the ideology of their organisation. They have weighed certain factors such as individual freedom versus risk to the world, and made choices that seemed appropriate to them. Some of those choices came down on the side of safety when the current western worldview would have chosen freedom. Other choices at some point decided to shore up the power of the Council rather than actually attend to their stated goal. So there are a lot of areas where the specific conduct of the council could be modified by a different philosophy.
The basic idea behind the existence of the Watcher's Council- that those with specialised knowledge can use it to help the Slayer save the world- is still a good one. So good, so useful, that if there were no Watcher's Council, it would be necessary to invent one.
Author's Note
Date: 2004-12-02 01:09 pm (UTC)The above essay only represents the opinions of the author while she was writing it in character. Or when she re-reads and gets persuaded again.
I realise this is a very lopsided view. I did not actually set out to say bad things about any particular character. Instead I was trying to write something that made being a Watcher plausible even for relatively sane, caring people. The Council get to play Patriarchy in the morality play that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and as such come out looking very bad. But a lot of different people over a very long time thought that the Council was necessary, and I didn't want to chalk it all up to brainwashing or them all being bastards. There had to be plausible logic behind the way they operate. So, this essay.
Lola visiting
Date: 2004-12-02 07:51 pm (UTC)The logical reasons for the existence of Watchers (or some similar role / organization) are definitely there. The ideas and the reasoning are so logical, in fact, that I can imagine various Watchers using them to explain their own necessity. I can also see in them the ways in which the COW have slanted that very logic and purpose towards their own (not always altruistic) ends. Those places where, as you said: "Other choices at some point decided to shore up the power of the Council rather than actually attend to their stated goal. So there are a lot of areas where the specific conduct of the council could be modified by a different philosophy."
The one example that sprang to mind is that we see no evidence that any of the training or education from the Watchers is specifically aimed at protecting human life from accidental or spur of the moment slayer violence. We see physical training (fighting, strength, weapons, etc.) and some elements of research, (enough demon knowledge to be able to kill them). There are discussions of duty and appropriate behavior, but this is still all focused on actual slaying. Humans are potential victims of vamps or other demons, and the slayer should protect them from evil. But no mention of protecting them from the slayer. How to kill the demon without putting the axe through the innocent victim in the way, but no lessons in how to deal with the slayer's inappropriate anger to a random person. No serious comments from Giles about smacking grabby handed boys. No mention that punching Willie for information might be crossing a line. Apparently, no preparation, no warning speeches to make sure Riley isn't punched across the room while sparring.
Lola
Re: Lola visiting part II
Date: 2004-12-02 07:53 pm (UTC)Granted, the main Watcher we see for long periods of time is Giles, someone who admits that he threw away the handbook when he trained Buffy. But we might get hints from Kendra, who was raised by a Watcher, or Faith, who at least had a few other Watchers, even if briefly. Kendra has obviously been trained to be obedient to her Watcher, to stay away from boys (could be seen as a safety measure), to focus on her duty. But she also seems to be solely focused on the fight, the hunt, the slay. Shaking down Willie for info doesn't seem to have been on her list of things to have a problem with either. Faith experiences several Watchers, the first one who was killed, the one who went bad, Wes. But we see little evidence that a primary objective was to teach her hurting other humans is bad. Considering how rough and tumble her life up to being called obviously was, and how violently she tended to go at all things, it is rather suspicious that no one from the Watchers seemed to particularly care about that aspect of her personality until she went completely over the line and, not only killed a human, but did so as part of a plan to rejecting the authority of the Watchers and her slayer duty. To "go into business for herself" as it were - partner up with the Mayor.
So, if the idea is to prevent slayer violence from being inappropriately used, but there appears to be no aspect of Watcher training that addresses that specifically with slayers, what does that mean? That the Watchers don't really care about incidental human lives - but only the ones they have decided are important or worth saving? Do they not directly discuss this with the slayers in their care because it doesn't fit with the staid, just obey me style of training? Because it might put ideas in a slayer's head? Or is it a core part of the training we just don't see on screen? As usual, I have no answers, just questions. ;-)
Well, I could keep on rambling, but my thoughts aren't very organized or anything. Just some initial ideas that popped into my head while reading. I really love how the Buffyverse has so many ideas to challenge me and make me think! Reading episode analysis or essays like this do my brain a world of good. Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts with the world, becca! :-)
Lola
Well, I went and babbled and took up all sorts of space in your journal. See what thinking will do to me! **grins, sort of sheepishly and sort of apologetically**