The 'Buffy Paradigm' Revisited: A Superhero and the War on Terror
Phillips, Maxine
IT WAS A hard sell to my colleagues when I tried to convince them that the teen social satire show Buffy the Vampire Slayer was mocking the War on Terror. What else could one think when, in...
...What Is the Buffy Paradigm...
...Nothing substitutes for information-gathering, field research, and understanding the enemy...
...The forces of the state should be arrayed against the forces of evil, but the state often benefits from actions by evildoers in order to enrich or bring glory to its leaders...
...Although Cordesman noted that Buffy deals with existential questions, his main point about the Buffy Paradigm is that the vampire slayer "lives in a world of unpredictable threats where each series of crises only becomes predictable when it is over and is followed by a new and unfamiliar one...
...If you're over twenty-five, or don't have teenagers in the house, or missed the stories in the right, left, and mainstream press about this series, you might not know that Buffy is the "chosen one," the person in this generation who will save the world from a terrible axis of evil that operates from a "Hellmouth" under Sunnydale High School in southern California...
...MAXINE PHILLIPS iS a Buffy fan...
...The importance of any given threat changes constantly, past threat behavior does not predict future behavior, and methods of delivery keep changing...
...Then there was the season during which the mayor of Sunnydale, who had sold his soul for eternal life, tried to gain world dominance...
...Cross moral boundaries at great peril...
...In an uncertain world, Buffy and friends cling to certain beliefs...
...This show takes moral issues seriously...
...On the Web at www.thedoormagazine...
...Power corrupts...
...Buffy the Vampire Slayer Defines Terrorism: How the plucky TV teen's war on terror mimics the real world," posted at www.about.com under "government information...
...This may not seem like a big deal, but in a show where half the cast are either the soul-less undead or demons, it is...
...In fact, Adam almost succeeded in uniting the terrorists for a combined assault on humanity before Buffy did him in...
...DISSENT / Spring 2003 n 8 LESSONS FROM A SUPERHERO • All efforts at planning a coherent strategy collapse in the face of tactical necessity and the need to deal with unexpected facts on the ground...
...No success, no matter how important at the time, ever eliminates the risk of future problems.* Living with this level of uncertainty (which many reviewers have noted applies to teenage existence), how do the characters respond...
...High-tech solutions never work...
...The mainstream press loves the smart writing, character development, and satire of teen angst...
...These beliefs lead me "Biological Warfare and the 'Buffy Paradigm, — by Anthony H. Cordesman...
...Being a superhero isn't easy...
...Season after season, she and her friends stave off the Apocalypse, slaying armies of vampires and demons that threaten to obliterate them and all of civilization...
...IT WAS A hard sell to my colleagues when I tried to convince them that the teen social satire show Buffy the Vampire Slayer was mocking the War on Terror...
...the right deplores the sex and violence, the lesbian subplot, and the heavy emphasis on the occult...
...Although Buffy is always tempted to go it alone because she's the chosen one with superpowers, she only succeeds with the help of her allies...
...Whenever a sympathetic character kills a human being, he or she pays, no matter how "justifiable" the killing may appear to be...
...Only the writers know whether this year, one in which primal evil (as opposed to plain old evil) has been unleashed, the Apocalypse will finally happen...
...Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, September 29, 2001...
...Don't Let Your Kids Watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, But you can tape it and watch after they go to bed," Todd Hertz...
...I wondered, though, whether he, who clearly was not a dedicated fan, hadn't missed some deeper lessons, hadn't dug deep enough for a viable terror-fighting paradigm...
...She knows that she carries a great responsibility, and though there are many, many times when she would rather give it up and go shopping, she loves being the center of attention...
...joint chiefs . . " A Different Interpretation Cordesman, who was, after all, writing a chilling paper on our country's unpreparedness for biological warfare, not a review of Buffy, did not mention that one of the wild cards for Buffy often is the government...
...But the biggest experiment was the head scientist's attempt to create a perfect fighting machine, named Adam, who turned into a brilliant killer wreaking havoc far surpassing any done by supernatural beings...
...After all, Buffy may not have won her war on terrorism, but she hadn't lost it, either...
...Cordesman, a former director of intelligence assessment in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and author of more than twenty books dealing with war, terrorism, and defense, provided an analysis that was mostly on target...
...the left thrills to all of the above, plus the strong feminism and critique of consumer capitalism (one particularly gripping episode has Buffy rallying fellow slave laborers with a plea for solidarity, then using a hammer and sickle to free all the teenagers trapped in a factory in a hell dimension...
...christianitytoday com/ct/2002/136/31.0.html...
...No matter how effective immoral means can be (usually over-the-top witchcraft), they always backfire...
...Little did I know that in real life anti-terrorism strategists were pointing to Buffy as an example of what not to do...
...Some other elements of the paradigm are • What expertise there is consists largely of bad or uncertain advice and old, flawed, and confusing technical data...
...com/archives/buffy.html...
...Christianity Today, September 16, 2002...
...It's not only about fighting evil, it's about how to fight evil and hold on to your humanity...
...2002...
...Because of her calling, her relationships with friends and family suffer and her finances are a mess...
...The Door Theologian of the Year," by Skippy R. The Door, No...
...Everyone's motives are suspect...
...It is never clear whether the threat is internal, from an individual, or from an outside organization...
...The balance between external defense, homeland defense, and response changes constantly...
...There was a whole season, pre-9/11, in which Buffy had to fight on two fronts: against the terror of vampires and demons and against the multimillion dollar, government-sponsored Initiative created to neutralize vampire populations...
...In Cordesman's view, they are stymied by the "Buffy Syndrome," in which they "never really face the level of uncertainty they must deal with," in fact, in which they behave as if they could create and live with the kind of strategy and doctrine that is typically developed by the U.S...
...On the Web at WWW...
...While Buffy and her friends were staking dozens of vamps in the time-honored way, the Initiative had captured a few to conduct experiments...
...Available at www.csis.org . 82 n DISSENT / Spring 2003 to suggest a different Buffy Paradigm: • Stick with your friends...
...Buffy is now in its seventh, perhaps final, season...
...The corollary "syndrome" is that all of the characters, especially Buffy, feel "called" to their work...
...Just three weeks after 9/11, a forty-two-page report by Anthony H. Cordesman on "Biological Warfare and the `Buffy Paradigm' was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C...
...The Bush administration, al-Qaeda, Saddam Hussein, and a cast of millions, working with much less competent script writers, wonder about the same thing...
...In 2002, the show was hailed in Christianity Today as "one of TV's most socially relevant and well-crafted hours," and Buffy was named "Theologian of the Year" by the Christian satirical magazine The Door...
...And it is in the moral arena that Cordesman could have offered the government even better advice than he did...
...183, Sept./Oct...
...Buffy struggles constantly with feelings of superiority as savior of the world...
...What else could one think when, in a recent episode, command central in London is blown up right after the chief of staff assures a nervous subordinate, "We are the masters of our fate, the captains of our souls...
Vol. 50 • April 2003 • No. 2
