In this series so far, whenever I have written Cordelia’s name, it has almost always been immediately followed with “, as Buffy’s Shadow Self,”. She has existed up until now as purely a reflection of Buffy. That is her narrative function, the purpose she was designed for. She continues to fulfil this role through to season three, when a certain slayer takes hold of the reins. But this is the point in which she stops being just Buffy’s Shadow Self, and becomes a full character, part of the show in her own right.
Cordelia is someone who could’ve been a very shallow character, with not much to her. She’s the classic Mean Girl, the bully, the popular cheerleader who exists to make our Outcast heroes’ life more difficult. Most of the material she is given in the bulk of season one is in this vein. But instead, she ends up as one of the most popular and complex characters in the Buffyverse, who plays a major part in three seasons before going off to be the second-most important character in the spin-off. She wildly exceeds the original brief. Part of that is down to Charisma Carpenter’s magnetic performance, but part of it is also down to the work done, in this episode particularly, to make her worth our time.
This is done by equalising the plight of the popular kids and the outcasts. There is often a tendency in stories that focus on young underdog heroes to assume that being unpopular is somehow equivalent to being a good person, and conversely being popular is equivalent to being a villain. It’s a sense you get that some writers never completely got over the false dichotomy of High School, that believes that the world can be separated into Cool Kids and Uncool Kids, and somehow that is a thing that actually matters. Growing up, as this first season is largely about for Buffy, means leaving behind that childish dichotomy, and realising that all people are just people, all capable of good and evil regardless of their social standing. We must realise that Xander’s bitchiness towards Cordy, and Willow’s suggestion in Welcome to the Hellmouth that Buffy can’t “legally” be friends with both Cordelia and Willow, represent an immature mindset that Buffy must leave behind.
We see this a few times throughout the episode. In an early scene, Cordelia refuses to give Buffy a chocolate that she is handing out to everyone else, dismissing her as part of the “loony fringe”, which is obviously unkind. In that same scene though, Xander and Willow – the loony fringe themselves – turn up, and instantly start sharing inside jokes that make Buffy feel alienated. She is on the fringes of both the popular and the unpopular. Later, we see that Cordelia was dismissive towards Marcie, yes, but also that Xander and Willow both had several classes with Marcie and never even knew she existed. Neither “group” was much of a help to Marcie at all. Both are perfectly capable of hurting others. Season six will show us the dangers of how entitled outcasts can become villains with The Trio, but here in season one we see the reverse, how popular High School bullies can also be heroes.
The big turn for Cordy’s character, and a moment that is often cited by fans as one of her best, comes in her speech to Buffy. At first, Buffy still doesn’t see Cordelia as a real person, just as a walking Mean Girl trope who doesn’t know anything about loneliness. Cordy’s speech tells us how wrong that is.
“You think I’m never lonely because I’m so cute and popular? I can be surrounded by people and be completely alone. It’s not like any of them really know me. I don’t even know if they like me half the time. People just want to be in a popular zone. Sometimes when I talk, everyone’s so busy agreeing with me, they don’t hear a word I say.”
Cordelia Chase, 1×11 Out of Mind Out of Sight
This episode is about stripping away these surface-level assumptions we might make about someone like Cordelia, and presenting her as a whole layered person. We see this in the opening scene, where her friends barely listen to her and her boyfriend doesn’t know her eye colour. We see this in the follow-up scene in the classroom, where Cordelia’s seemingly misguided and self-centred view on The Merchant of Venice is followed by a conversation between her and the teacher, which establishes that Cordelia actually has done the reading, and wants to improve her work. Cordelia is smart, and academically skilled as Band Candy will establish. She is more than a trope.
“Actually, I’m looking forward to it. I do well on standardized tests. … What? I can’t have layers?”
Cordelia Chase, 3×06 Band Candy
The classroom scene is interesting. They are discussing The Merchant of Venice, which the teacher specifically says is about the plight of the outcast. Allegorically, they are talking about Marcie – the outcast of High School society, and the villain of this episode. There is no doubting that Marcie has suffered, just as there is no doubting that Shylock suffers oppression and structural violence as a Jewish person in 16th-century Venice. In Buffy though, suffering is never allowed as an excuse for causing harm against others. Harm done to yourself does not justify harm to others. I think the show wants us to take Cordelia’s side when considering Shylock, and when considering Marcie, and when considering Ford, and Faith, and Ben, and the Trio, and Willow, and all the other future villains that will use their suffering to justify the perpetuation of violence unto others.
“Well, how about color me totally self-involved? … With Shylock it’s whine, whine, whine, like the whole world is about him. He acts like it’s justice, him getting a pound of Antonio’s flesh. It’s not justice, it’s yicky. … Shylock should get over himself. People who think their problems are so huge craze me. Like this time I sort of ran over this girl on her bike. It was the most traumatizing event of my life, and she’s trying to make it about her leg! Like my pain meant nothing.”
Cordelia Chase, 1×11 Out of Mind Out of Sight
We talked in the Nightmares essay about Buffy’s “superiority complex”, and how she felt insecure about her perceived self-centredness. Cordelia represented that insecurity there, and that carries over into this episode. She explicitly criticises self-involved people, and yet also exhibits that same behaviour. Buffy is continuing to feel guilty about the flaws in her own shadow.
As we said in that piece though, it’s hard to accuse someone of Main Character Syndrome when they are the main character. And it’s the same in this episode. When Cordelia comes to the Scoobies, she declares that “it’s all about me. Me, me me!” The narcissism there is palpable, but as Xander immediately points out, she’s not wrong. What’s happening is all about her. Marcie is obsessed with her. She is not wrong to recognise this fact, just as Buffy is not wrong to centre herself in a world that does revolve around her. She is the Slayer, and she is the protagonist.
Yet, the fact that Buffy is the main character of this show would not give her carte blanche to lord it over everyone else, to always center herself and dismiss the views of others. To do that would be to become Cordelia, to become the shadow and lose the heroic part of herself. Buffy might be the main character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but the characters in the story don’t know that. Just as we are all the protagonists of our own existence, every character is the protagonist of their own story. Willow isn’t a side-kick in Buffy’s story, she’s the lead of Willow the Teenage Witch. Cordelia stars in Cordelia the Cheerleader. Marcie takes centre stage in Marcie the Invisible Girl.
This is the key quality of the show that makes it as engaging as it is. It’s true that every character in this show is in some way an extension of Buffy. They are her Heart, her Spirit, her Shadow. Buffy is built around Buffy. But when this show is at its best, it never forgets that they are also the heroes of their own stories, with their own agenda and own emotions. We are merely seeing a fractured view of them through Buffy’s lens. We as viewers must keep this in mind, and so must Buffy, if she is to be a hero. Consider the lesson that we see in flashback, when Marcie first turns invisible.
Cordelia: “Well, just because the story’s about him, doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the hero, right?”
1×11 Out of Mind Out of Sight
Ms. Miller: “Exactly. So, what do we call him? Willow?”
Willow: “Well, the protagonist.”
Ms. Miller: “Xander?”
Xander: “Why can’t he be both? I mean, he did do some things that are pretty heroic.”
The show is spelling it out for us. Buffy is the protagonist by designation, by virtue of the show being named after her. That doesn’t automatically make her the hero. You can also see this as a comment on the difference between being a Slayer and being a Hero. One is designated, thrust upon a person, and makes them the centre of the underworld. But it does not make them a hero. They become that through their actions and choices afterwards. As we barrel towards the finale, where Buffy will finally embrace her role as Slayer, she is learning the correct lessons on how to be not just a protagonist, not just a slayer, but a hero.
There is a part of Buffy that wants to avoid becoming the Slayer. That wants to be the protagonist of a different story, one where she is Buffy the May Queen, centre of attention and head of the school. That is the part of her that looks longingly through the window at Cordelia getting dressed, looking the very image of a Princess, attended to by her ladies-in-waiting, the main character of the universe. Part of her wants to be Cordelia, because Cordelia is a part of her – her Shadow Self. In order to be a hero, she has to manage and control this Shadow. She has to be empathetic , and selfless, and put the needs of others before herself.
So what’s the key to all this empathy? When we are so inherently centred in our own existence, our own stories, how do we remember to consider the feelings of everyone else. The answer was actually given to us in Nightmares, but Giles and Marcie are kind enough to remind us in this episode too.
Willow: “We’re doing active listening today.”
– 1×10 Nightmares
Xander: “Cool! What’s active listening?”
Buffy: “Chapter five? Active listening? Where you put on your big ears and really focus on the other person?”
“You may have to work on listening to people.“
Rupert Giles, 1×11 Out of Mind Out of Sight
Look. Listen. Learn. That is the message that Marcie leaves for us. We must take notice of the people around us, recognise their existence and acknowledge their struggles. We must listen to each other, hear what they say and understand their point of view. And we must learn from each other, think about different viewpoints and take other people into account in our actions. If we do not, then people will fall through the cracks, like Marcie. They will fade into non-existence, like background characters in their own lives. Marcie makes some bad decisions and does some awful things in this episode, but what happened to her is still tragic, and not a fate that should be wished on anyone.
The solution to this is irritatingly simple. We must reach out to each other, and make connections. Buffy takes this step in Welcome to the Hellmouth, when she reaches out to Willow, stepping away from her Shadow and embracing the underdog. That was a kind and empathetic gesture – though on its own, it is not enough. Buffy can’t reject her Shadow completely. So in this episode, she must also accept Cordelia when she reaches out to them. She does, and that’s what allows her to be a complete person. All of these people are vital to her being so. Both worlds exist inside Buffy – the unpopular and the popular, the outcast and the May Queen, the Girl and the Slayer. She becomes whole through her connections with other people.
Unfortunately, Marcie does not learn this lesson. Buffy empathises with her, and tries to reach out to her in the music room. Marcie rejects her help, and explicitly she rejects it because she sees Buffy as “just like them”. She falls into the false dichotomy of the Evil Popular Kids and Good Outcasts, and groups Buffy in with the former. She refuses to accept that Cordelia does genuinely understand and empathises with Marcie. Ultimately, she fails to realise that Buffy fits into both those categories – she, and Cordelia, and everyone else, are complete human beings who contain multitudes.
“Yeah, I’ll bet you know how I feel. I’m sure you can just be with all your friends and feel so alone ’cause they don’t really know you. You’re just a typical, self-involved, spoiled little brat, and you think you can charm your way out of this, don’t you?!”
– Marcie Ross, 1×11 Out of Mind Out of Sight
We mentioned earlier that she had echoes of The Trio. More specifically, it’s Jonathan that she resonates with. Buffy’s conversation with him in Earshot echoes here. He does not realise that everyone else ignores him because they’re too busy with their own pain, and that it’s not a slight against him. Buffy does, and that’s how she is able to save him. Here, she accepts that Cordelia is a whole, complete person, and so she is able to save them both. The key is to always hear and recognise the full humanity of every other person you meet.
“Stop saying my name like we’re friends! We’re not friends! You all think I’m an idiot! A short idiot!”
– Jonathan Levinson and Buffy Summers, 3×18 Earshot
“I don’t. I don’t think about you much at all. Nobody here really does. Bugs you, doesn’t it. You have all this pain, and all these feelings and nobody’s really paying attention.”
“You think I just want attention?”
“No. I think you’re up in the clock tower with a high-powered rifle because you wanna blend in. Believe it or not, Jonathan, I understand about the pain.”
“Oh right. Cuz the burden of being beautiful and athletic, that’s a crippler.”
Cordelia herself isn’t quite there yet. At the end, she does not join the Scoobies, but dismisses them in order to continue hanging out with her old friends. She hasn’t totally left behind her own worst instincts. But she has become a little more open to the Scoobies, a little bit kinder. She has taken a step into the world of the supernatural, of the underdogs, and she can’t go back. From this point on in the show, she becomes an (occasionally reluctant) part of the team. She’s no longer on the outskirts, just there for comic relief and to reflect Buffy. She is a real part of the show now.
The second half of season one does a lot of work to put various pieces into place. Episode 7 fleshes out Angel, 1×08 introduces Jenny Calendar, 1×09 gives us Principal Snyder, and 1×11 brings Cordelia into the fold. The show as we recognise it is gradually coming together. But, like Cordelia, it’s not there yet. Two FBI agents in black enter to remind us of that.
They swoop in in the final act to take the villain away, and the episode ends on a cliffhanger – Marcie being brought into what seems to be a school for other invisible teens, who are now going to be trained as government assassins. This is a pretty major plot hook that is never seen or referenced again. There are some headcanons to be made that this is an early version of the Initiative, but that is never made explicit. It just disappears into the aether. It’s not the only episode this season to end this way – I unfortunately invite you to remember Teacher’s Pet. This is kind of a hallmark of the show in its primitive stages, to end on these big teasing cliffhangers that have no follow-up. It’s a charming reminder that we’re not quite out of the show’s awkward adolescence yet.
We are getting close though. Buffy has taken some big steps this season towards accepting her destiny, to making peace with her own flaws and learning to be a hero. She is on the precipice of adulthood, just as the show is on the precipice of greatness. All the major characters are in place, and Angel has arrived with the Pergamum Codex. Buffy has just one thing left to do.
She has to die.
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Insect Reflection 