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Old but great article about Buffy. Just fyi, Rhonda Wilcox, mentioned in the article is a member of MY Buffy, Angel and Firefly Group:
Why She Slays Us
Fans and academics alike argue that Buffy the Vampire Slayer has depths of symbolic meaning rarely seen on television, writes GAYLE MacDONALD
By GAYLE MACDONALD
Tuesday, January 22, 2002 – Print Edition, Page R1
Rhonda Wilcox is sitting in her office at Georgia's Gordon College mulling the finer points of her latest scholarly paper: the mythic power and moral self-consciousness of Buffy.
Yep, you heard right. As in The Vampire Slayer. The occult show on UPN that features Sarah Michelle Gellar, a sleek-haired blonde who kickboxes demons and other ghouls into oblivion -- in heels and adorable matching outfits.
Wilcox, a 49-year-old English professor at the red-brick campus, 90 kilometres south of Atlanta, is a veteran on the pop-culture speaking circuit and has authored numerous essays on "symbolic television." A term for shows -- such as Star Trek or, say, Twin Peaks -- that actually have something important to say.
And in this academic's mind, Buffy the Vampire Slayer -- the goofy title aside -- is damn near epochal. "There is no question," Wilcox says, "that this paper is among the most important works I have published.
"Most people stare at me strangely when I talk about Buffy. The title invites simplification," Wilcox explains adroitly. "But Buffy is the exact opposite of simple. It has extraordinary writing and extraordinary acting. It recognizes the complexity of art and life. It has a wonderful balance of mythic power and postmodern self-consciousness.
"It is art. Pure and simple. Like Shakespeare. Like Dickens," she declares with enthusiasm. "Buffy is an example of a bildungsroman,a German term for a novel of growth."
Implausible as it may seem, there are legions of Buffyphiles out there -- young and old, teenie-boppers and scholars, vampire lovers and just-plain Sarah Michelle Gellar freaks -- who believe this cult teen drama is the least-watched great show on TV. Unconvinced? Check out the intellectual debate that rages on any of the more than 500 Buffy-themed Web sites, the plethora of Buffy books, theses and dissertations from scholars around the world.
Wilcox has co-edited a new book, Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer?, due out next month, that features 20 essays on topics such as a queer reading of Buffy, the patterns of mortality in Buffy; the postmodern politics of the show, the female empowerment contained therein, the show's use of language as penultimate weapon, its spirituality, its mythologies, its archetypes, even how Buffy might be considered as Gidget for the fin-de-siècle.
"I think Joss Whedon is one of the first people to truly utilize television as a medium in the right way," insists Wilcox, who is coming to Toronto in mid-March to speak on the postfeminist significance of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at a conference on popular culture. "He has the depth of social symbolism."
At its core, the show is twisted, dark, brutally honest and irreverent. Take this exchange in an episode called The Freshman where Buffy, wearing a crucifix given her by her one-time boyfriend Angel, is asked: "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal saviour?" To which she answers, in typical Buffy fashion: "You know I meant to, and I just got really busy."
Right-wing Christian groups are not amused. They say the show is gross sacrilege. But John Pungente, a Jesuit priest in Toronto, says the hot-headed theologians are missing the point.
Pungente argues that Buffy tackles issues, such as modern-day complacency about religion, with raw, unmerciful wit. And he admires the role model that the main character presents to teenage girls. "It's been a long time since I've seen a TV show that has so many positive values to offer to people, provided you don't take it in the literal sense," says Pungente, who is also head of the Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations, and expounds regularly on the importance of Buffy in courses he teaches on media literacy.
"Buffy's smart," he says. "She's willing to learn about herself. She's a type-A personality, but an entirely credible teenager. I think Buffy is the closest we're going to get to the realities of teenage life. Even though we get a weekly dose of vampire and monsters, they're the point. Because metaphorically speaking, that's teenage reality.
"The reason so many people like Buffy is because it functions on so many levels. For some, it's just a fun show about monsters. For others, it's about what it means to grow up as a woman today. And for others, it's the humour, the wit, the inside jokes."
Pungente got hooked on Buffy while he was channel-surfing one night, and happened to hear Buffy's pal Xander warn the Slayer, who was going out to fight the Undead: "Don't play chess with the man. I hear he's a real good player." The priest immediately recognized the line from Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film, The Seventh Seal, in which a knight plays chess with Death. "As soon as I heard that I stopped in my tracks," he remembers. "In the middle of a teen program you get Bergman? And I thought, 'This man is onto something.' "
Buffyites know the language of the show is a combination of real teenage slang and an original Buffy dialect that Whedon invents weekly. Entertainment Weekly even gave the show's language a special name, Slayerspeak.
Some critics have concluded that the "great linguistic divide" between how the adults and kids talk in Buffy really represents the lack of communication between generations. That may -- or may not be -- Whedon's motivation. (The man could just be having some fun.)
Regardless, folks like Pungente and Wilcox delight in the figurative language, rife with double-entendres. One of the Georgia-based prof's favourites was in the episode at the end of last season, where Buffy died. (She has since clawed her way out of her grave). Before going to battle the bad guys, Buffy gave her so-called Scooby gang a little pep talk. Afterwards, one of the group commented wryly: "That wasn't exactly the St. Crispin's Day speech" (the reference is to the motivational talk that William Shakespeare's Henry V delivered before he led his army to war).
Wilcox says many Buffy viewers would miss the literary reference. "But we have fun with it," she says with a giggle. "There are all sorts of little jokes and levels of playfulness in the series."
Wilcox's colleague at Gordon College, Mary Alice Money, agrees Buffy has raised the bar in intelligent, metaphorically astute TV.
"Let's be blatant and crass," says Money, the 60-year-old chair of the college's humanities division. "It does have plenty of violence and sex. And it's got one of the all-time best titles in the world of television that appeals to my sense of irony.
"Buffy appeals to anyone with intelligence and wit," she insists. "It reveals the horrors of high school and ordinary life, concealed under this veneer of demons, ghouls and such. It's a deeply symbolic show disguised with vampires, cute little blondes and lots of martial-arts battles. It is the best thing that's happened to television in a long, long time."
On the face of it, Buffy seems rather daft. Based on Whedon's 1992 movie of the same name, the TV show began with 16-year-old Buffy Summers (Gellar), a high-school junior, who moved from Los Angeles to the small town of Sunnydale, Calif., with her divorced mother after she was expelled from her previous school. She shuns the social queen Cordelia Chase, chooses friends who are brains (Willow Rosenberg) and geeks (Xander Harris), and finds out from the school librarian, her mentor Giles, that she is "the Slayer" -- the one girl born in each generation chosen to fight the powers of darkness.
In every episode, Buffy peers into the mouth of hell (turns out her high school sits, literally, on top of the devil's lair), where the monsters (allegorically) represent real teen terror and trauma, things like alcoholism, AIDS, drink-spiking frat boys, predatory teachers, Internet stalkers and date rape.
"Underlying the various threats facing Buffy and her gang," says Money, "there is the repeated one: The horror of becoming a vampire often correlates with the dread of becoming an adult, of growing up, or of growing old."
But not just teens are watching. "Word of mouth has brought other demographics into it," says Jennifer Hale, a 28-year-old editor at the Toronto publishing house ECW Press who is updating her Buffy-show guidebook, Bite Me,for a September release. "It's not just geared to teens. The scripts deal with inherent emotions that happen to everyone. Sure, there are times you want to slap Buffy on the side of the head," this author admits. "She may be a hero, but she can be incredibly self-centred. She drops her friends in a heartbeat once she starts dating a guy. But she's a strong female character -- someone we all admire." (Hale's first version of Bite Me,which she wrote under the pen name Nikki Stafford, sold 25,000 copies -- one of ECW's top sellers.)
In September, 1998, George Magazine listed Sarah Michelle Gellar's Buffy second on its list of the "20 Most Fascinating Women in Politics," behind Elizabeth Dole (Gellar got the bigger picture).
In other words, she's a confident, strong woman, with great fashion sense.
Andrew Sparling, a native of Calgary who is now doing his PhD in history at Duke University in North Carolina, says Buffy attracts people who are "very particular" about the shows they watch. He says Whedon has steadily built up a cult following for Buffy, and its spinoff program Angel (starring David Boreanaz) on WB, because he refuses to be straightjacketed into a "type" of television.
Instead, the show is part comedy, drama, horror, fantasy, sci-fi -- and stubbornly perverse. As Sparling notes, you don't bring expectations to Buffy because "you're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. You're continually surprised."
Buffy diehards love to tell the story of Whedon's reaction after a few scandalized viewers complained about Willow's lesbian relationship with Tara on the show. "I've made a mistake by trying to shove this lifestyle -- which is embraced by, maybe at most, 10 per cent of Americans -- down peoples' throats," Whedon said, tongue firmly in cheek. "So I'm going to take it back and from now on, Willow will no longer be a Jew."
Rex Brynen, a political scientist at McGill University and a Buffy convert, admits some may roll their eyes at the amount of brain wattage being directed at a program whose name rhymes with fluffy. But he argues the story arcs are often subtle, yet brilliant.
"I'm an avid fan, as are my wife, son and daughter," he says. "I prefer Buffy to The West Wing, and I'm a political scientist, for God's sake.
"Despite Buffy the Vampire Slayer's fantasy setting, it has enormously 'real' characters," says Brynen, 40. "The death of Buffy's mom, Joyce, was extraordinarily touching, while the relationship between Willow and Tara is, in my mind, perhaps the most sensitive portrayal of a loving same-sex relationship on TV."
Fans say Whedon deserves an Emmy Award, but argue that the show is just too unconventional to get one.
But Whedon's most unconventional episode, Hush -- which featured 28 minutes without dialogue -- was nominated in 2000 for an Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series.
In the meantime, the kingdom of Buffydom continues to grow. Buffy's one-time mentor, Giles (British actor Anthony Stewart Head), is getting his own show on the BBC. There's a Buffy comic book. And a Buffy Toon is now in the works for Fox Kids.
Some fans worry that the quality of writing in the sixth season has slipped, that the plots (getting a first job, coping with money, getting married) lack the oomph of the teenage Buffy years.
But Pungente, for one, disagrees. "At the beginning of the season, Buffy's friends brought her back from death, thinking they were doing her a favour," says the Jesuit priest. "It turns out she was in heaven, and she's hated coming back because it's hell.
"In many ways, that's very existential," Pungente adds. "Buffy's had to accept where she is, and live with it. That's an amazing lesson for anyone to learn: This is your lot in life. So put up with it."
-***
Buffy bon mots
Buffy to Spike after a great bout of sex: "When did the house fall down?" (recently dubbed by Salon the greatest postcoital line ever).
Buffy's tombstone: Buffy Anne Summers/She saved the world/
A lot.
Xander comments on a mark carved on a dead student's chest: "It's kind of like the CBS logo. Could this be the handiwork on one Mr. Morley Safer?"
Cordelia to another plain student: "Nice dress. Good to know you've seen the softer side of Sears."
Giles (when Cordelia goes blind): "Why would anyone want to harm Cordelia?" To which Willow replies: "Maybe, because they've met her."
Buffy on slaying Angel: "I told him that I loved him and I kissed him and I killed him."
Willow: "Makes me glad my mother doesn't know about my extracurricular activities. Or my curricular activities. Or the fact of my activiteness in general."
Angel: "It's not the demon in me that needs killing, Buffy. It's the man."
Cordelia to Xander: "It must be hard when all your friends have, like superpowers. Slayers, werewolves, witches, vampires, and you're like this little nothing. You must feel like Jimmy Olson."
Giles: "Demons after money? Whatever happened to the still beating heart of a virgin? No one has any standards any more."
Principal Snyder: "There are things I will not tolerate. Students loitering on campus after school. Horrible murders with hearts being removed. And also smoking."
Giles: "Buffy, I believe the subtext here is rapidly becoming text."
Buffy about Angel: "My boyfriend had a bicentennial."
Giles: "People have a tendency to forget what they can, and rationalize what they can't."
"Anyone else feel like we've been Keyser Soze'd?"
--
____________________________________
"I walk. I talk. I shop. I sneeze.
I'm gonna be a fireman when the
floods roll back.
There's trees in the desert since
you moved out,
And I don't sleep on a bed of bones."
Buffy ("Restless")
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
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