Buffy The Vampire Slayer

None of you will be surprised to learn that I think that "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel" are, quite simply, the two best television shows today. Period. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a wide range of television shows (I am an admitted television junkie), but in terms of emotional depth, intelligent writing, challenging storylines, and innovative and realistic characters, Joss Whedon’s children are unparalleled.

Turns out I’m not the only one who thinks that the metaphors and metaphysics of the Buffyverse (to blatantly steal from Shaun Narine) are worth analyzing. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, professors and students of philosophy tackle the key events, issues, and characters in the Buffyverse in a number of highly entertaining, engaging, and thought-provoking essays.

The Buffyverse has more than a few key events, issues, and characters that deserve serious debate: Buffy’s role as a Slayer and her relationship to society; Faith’s dalliance with good and evil; Angel’s path to redemption; Buffy’s self-destructive relationship with Spike; Willow’s transformation from mousy teenager to Big Bad; and the metaphor which is the basis for all of it. Each of these topics are addressed by multiple authors, from different philosophical perspectives, in Fear and Trembling.

Fear and Trembling is divided into five parts with three to five articles in each section:

Part 1 - The burden of slayerness: Buffy, Faith, and Feminism

Part 2 - Don’t speak Latin in front of the books: Knowledge, Rationality, and Science in the Buffyverse

Part 3 - Sacred duty, yadda, yadda, yadda: Buffy and Ethics

Part 4 - That’s the kind of wooly-headed thinking that leads to getting eaten: Religion and Politics in the Buffyverse

Part 5 - You’re all slaves to television: Watching Buffy

Given the timing of my review (i.e. at the end of Faith’s Season Four arc on "Angel"), my mind was already on Faith, so the chapters which dealt with her were particularly fascinating to me. Is Faith’s amoral pursuit of pleasure best explained by Plato or Nietzche? This book doesn’t provide answers - it provides a framework for the reader/viewer to analyze and grapple with the issues themselves. And isn’t that why "Buffy" is so attractive to us in the first place?

I wish that Fear and Trembling had been in print while I was in college. It might have helped defeat my dismissive prejudice against philosophy as irrelevant and out of touch. That’s the beauty part of Fear and Trembling - it will serve both to give "Buffy" credibility in the minds of those few academics/intellectuals who are not already ardent fans and will give "Buffy" fans a gateway into the realm of philosophy.

I found a few chapters of Fear and Trembling particularly thought-provoking. In "Buffy in the Buff: A Slayer’s Solution to Aristotle’s Love Paradox," Sharon Kaye and Melissa Milavec discuss Buffy’s three major sexual relationships (Angel, Riley, and Spike) in the context of Aristotle’s concepts of utility friendship, pleasure friendship, and complete friendship.

Buffy/Angel shippers will be pleased by the authors’ conclusion that the duo represent the ideal complete friendship in which two people (or a person and a vampire) value each other not for what they receive in the relationship, but for the love itself. But because their article stops at the end of Season Six (as does the entire book), I wonder how Spike’s soul and path to redemption may change their analysis, if at all. Do Buffy and Spike have too much baggage for a complete friendship?

The authors did not attempt to classify Buffy’s relationships with Xander, Willow, and Giles as utility, pleasure, and complete friendships (presuming that the categories do not apply merely to relationships with a sexual component). I’ll have to think about that one.

Again, the chapters on Faith were of particular interest to me. I found it interesting that several authors seized on the exchange between Joyce and Faith (in Buffy’s body) from "Who Are You."

Joyce: Why do you think [Faith’s] like that? Faith: You know. She’s a nut job. Joyce: I just don’t understand what could drive a person to that kind of behavior. Faith: Well, how do you know she got drove? I mean, maybe she likes being that way. Joyce: I’ll never believe that. I think she’s horribly unhappy.

A lot has been written in the Internet community regarding Faith’s unhappiness as an explanation for her behavior. (Check out Shaun Narine’s new article about Faith and Willow.) Rewatching "Faith, Hope, and Trick" the other day, I was struck by how rude and uninviting Buffy was to Faith when she first arrived in Sunnydale. Sure, Faith stormed in with a series of wild stories of nude alligator wrestling and flirted with Buffy’s closeted not-boyfriend, but Buffy was defensive from moment one. Buffy’s superiority/inferiority complex as Slayer was threatened by Faith and she never really gave her a chance. In the next few episodes, Buffy got friendlier and, by the end of Season Four, appears to have convinced herself that she had reached out to Faith. In "Sanctuary," Buffy tells Faith: "I gave you every chance! I tried so hard to help you, and you spat on me. My life was just something for you to play with. Angel - Riley - anything that you could take from me - you took. I’ve lost battles before - but nobody else has ever made me a victim." I think that’s a little melodramatic and overstates Buffy’s real attempt to be friends with Faith.

In my view, Buffy is the one who destroyed her relationship with Faith before it even began by lying about Angel’s return. Choosing Angel over Faith when Faith was convinced that he was evil wasn’t exactly a trust-builder. My imaginary backstory on Faith (and maybe this has a basis in the show that I can’t quite recall) is that she had an abusive and troubled childhood and as a result can’t open up and trust people. She came to Sunnydale looking for something. Clearly, Faith’s acceptance of a pseudo-familial relationship with the Mayor suggests that she could have had that kind of relationship with the Scoobies if they’d just given her a real chance. As I’ve said on many occasions, I am sorely disappointed that Eliza chose to do another project next year because I think that Faith adds a unique and rich dimension to the Buffyverse.

The third broad topic addressed in Fear and Trembling that I’d like to draw attention to is the political/legal framework of the Buffyverse. (Check out: "Brown Skirts: Fascism, Christianity, and the Eternal Demon" by Neal King and "Justifying the Means: Punishment in the Buffyverse" by Jacob Held.) These articles speak to something I’ve long thought about: how does the concept of the Slayer as the sole arbiter of good and evil mesh with the American conceptions of justice and due process? While some demons, etc., are clearly drawn as evil and beyond redemption (the Master, Glory, Adam, the Mayor), what do we do about the cases at the margins?

The Slayer stands alone against the forces of darkness. Who shall help her decide who will live and who will die? Is Buffy’s ad hoc approach satisfying? Clearly, not all Slayers share her approach - Kendra and Faith both wanted to kill Angel, even after learning that he had a soul. Imagine their response to Spike, defanged but soulless. Is it conceivable that they would allow a helpless but unrepentant vampire, responsible for the deaths of two Slayers, to live? Doubtful. (For that matter, would Angel have let him live? Again, doubtful.) And yet Spike has been, for the most part, quite helpful in the battle against evil since the middle of Season Five.

See - I have the text ("Buffy" and "Angel"), I have questions, and I have some insights. What I lack, for the most part, is the framework to analyze all of the random issues that pop into my head after watching an episode. Fear and Trembling provides an introduction to one possible framework, philosophy, and presents thought-provoking essays in a straight-forward, non-intimidating manner. I hope that someday they will publish a second volume that includes "Angel" and Season Seven of "Buffy."

Fear and Trembling is one of a series published by Open Court Books including The Simpsons and Philosophy, Seinfeld and Philosophy, and the forthcoming The Lord of the Rings and Philosophy. Presuming that they are as engaging and well-written as Fear and Trembling, I can’t wait to get my hands on the rest of the series.