Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy edited by James B. South
Phillips, Maxine
HO ORDINARY GIRL Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy Fear and Trembling in Sunny dale Edited by fames B. South rlaxine Phillips In the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, our...
...I picked up echoes of the lay preacher in The Night of the Hunter, a movie that heavily influenced 1950s horror films...
...Faith is a tough, alienated teen who was called as a Slayer-in addition to Buffy- through a fluke, and who over the years moved from believing that her superpowers exempted her from standard morality to taking responsibility for her actions and making amends...
...Buffy was "unlike any other vampire fiction ever produced," claims Greg Forster in the first of the twenty-two essays in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy...
...and Big Issues (vocation, redemption, and bad-hair days...
...It quickly became an epic about the Big Questions (What is our purpose in life...
...Anderson traces the way religion becomes "secondary [to] the interpersonal relationships which lie at the heart" of Buffy...
...Just as Bujfy created space for cross-generational discussion-at least between my kids and me-Bujfy and Philosophy creates space for discussion about moral issues...
...If this sounds like over-interpretation, consider the enormous amount of online scholarship in the seventy-five or so sites devoted to the Slayer as well as annual conferences here and in Europe...
...HO ORDINARY GIRL Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy Fear and Trembling in Sunny dale Edited by fames B. South rlaxine Phillips In the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, our golden-haired heroine found herself facing one of the worst enemies she'd seen in the TV show's seven-year run: a minion of "The First" (the primeval evil) named Caleb- a fallen preacher, imbued with supernatural strength verging on invincibility...
...No, really...
...Where early vampire fiction portrayed a Christian worldview of good against evil and more recent fiction has favored a "nihilistic outlook with roots in the thought of Friedrich Nietzsche," the stories of Buffy owe much to Plato...
...For example, the demonic Caleb is an Elmer Gantry type...
...This was one of the two most explicitly Christian episodes in the series, explains Wendy Love Anderson ("Prophecy Girl and the Powers That Be: The Philosophy of Religion in the Buffyverse...
...Characters fight evil and strive to do good, often against their self-interest...
...Buffy "reflects the Platonic view that a just person is always happier than an unjust person...
...That sums it up...
...In one episode, the ghosts of Indians killed by an epidemic introduced by Europeans hang a modern-day priest in revenge, but for the most part, the Catholic Church fights evil-albeit ineffectually-and fundamentalist Protestantism embodies it...
...For instance, the reader can examine with Nietzsche the qualities of the Uber-mensch as they relate to the character Faith ("Also Sprach Faith: The Problem of the Happy Rogue Vampire Slayer...
...Lucky for her she stumbled upon a useful-looking scythe, and, King Arthur-style, pulled it from a stone...
...So does Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy...
...Is it time for someone to edit a volume called Bujfy and Socio-political Theory...
...Yes, really...
...and priests, monks, and nuns, who have guarded secrets for centuries, show up routinely...
...He built this story around a Valley Girl in Southern California who was called at age fifteen as the "chosen one" to fight "vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness...
...During the last few episodes of the series, he stalked Buffy and her friends, preaching woman-hating soliloquies, flaunting his smarmy sensuality...
...Only when I spoke with another fan my own age did I find agreement...
...Other essayists commend the way the show treats nonhumans as moral agents and speculate about Buffy as a potential leader of a future master race...
...What should we wear to the prom...
...This latter view is what makes the "Buffyverse" (how fans refer to the myth-world Buffy and her pals inhabit) different from other vampire fiction, for there are nonhumans in it who regain their souls and seek redemption, as well as the usual humans who lose or sell theirs and are eternally damned...
...The essayists don't dwell on how Christianity is presented in the series...
...Buffy began when its creator, Joss Whedon, wondered what would happen if the helpless blonde who always gets killed in horror films turned around and fought back...
...Whether the writers were making a comment about the fundamentalists in power in Washington and their ability to provoke Armageddon, or paying homage to past horror films, or, er, skewering traditional scenes in which one might have expected a man to save the damsel in distress-pick your own interpretation-audiences of all ages cheered...
...Buffy was stuck, lost on how to beat him...
...Christianity is also here, but none of the contributors sees the show as having exclusively Christian themes, although Gregory J. Sakal believes that Buffy and one of her sidekicks, Xander, "express two opposing views on the nature of redemption...that accurately reflect religious belief in contemporary life...
...They weren't buying it...
...When the weapon's creator revealed that it was meant for the prophesied savior of the world- otherwise known as the Slayer-she also asked the perky superhero her name...
...This is no small feat...
...In season 3 of Buffy, as I watched the Christmas show ("Amends") with my daughters-who are responsible for my interest-I exclaimed that, finally, the capital "G" God was at work...
...Socio-political Theory...
...How do we deal with suffering and loss...
...Buffy gets people thinking...
...By season 6, when Xander, who is a carpenter, offers unconditional love to another character about to destroy the world (thereby averting yet another apocalypse) and the episode ends with a voiceover singing the "Prayer of St...
...When Buffy split Caleb in two with her trusty scythe, she started at his crotch...
...In this respect, however, it is disappointing that the essayists almost never mention the show's racial and class biases...
...But Buffi/ relies heavily on Catholic equipment (crosses and holy water come in handy) for fighting vampires...
...Xander's is the "fundamentalist view that redemption is available only to a chosen group who subscribe to a particular set of beliefs," while Buffy seems to believe that "salvation is available freely to all...
...Francis," Anderson notes that "fan reaction...centered around character issues...rather than Xander's momentary imitation of Christ...
...Whether you see Buffy as a sympathetic satire of teenage life, a feminist adventure, a political parable, a postmodern bildungsroman, a semi-pornographic soap opera, or a morality tale, there are essays here to set you, well, philosophizing...
Vol. 130 • November 2003 • No. 19
