Buffy The Vampire Slayer

My last season 8 meta talked about the concepts of power and consent in ’The Long Way Home’ and the show as a whole. While these are still important in ’The Chain’, I think the dominant themes this time are identity, choice and the nature of heroism. The story also, like the Firefly episode ’Objects In Space’, strongly expresses Joss’s Existentialist beliefs - perhaps too much so: unless you’re comfortable entertaining the notions that nothing has inherent meaning and all morality is relative, then you’re likely to have problems with this story.

On which note, it’s probably best to start with a brief discursion to explain how Existentialism works - especially if, like me before I started writing this, you’ve only the vaguest idea what it involves. If there are any trained philosophers out there who spot any mistakes in the following, please comment!

In the director’s commentary to ’Objects In Space’, Joss explains that much of his personal philosophy is based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialist theories. At the core of these is the idea that Existence precedes Essence. That is, the universe and the objects and people within it all have a real, concrete and independent existence. However, those objects’ identity - their meaning and their purpose - are not inherent to them; we as observers assign our own meanings to them.

Click on the link for more :

http://stormwreath.livejournal.com/21701.html