Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Adventures in Popular Culture: My BFF Buffy—That Is, the Vampire Slayer

"I don’t want to be the one," the young hero musters through tears ("Touched" 7.20). These poignant words come toward the finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s (1997-2003) seventh and final season on television.[2] Buffy Summers, her sister Dawn, and her group of friends—her chosen family of Willow, Xander, Giles—are facing the strongest foe they have ever faced, and she’s just not sure she can lead them as she always has, that they will survive the coming apocalypse.

"As long as there have been vampires," explains the slayer mythology, "there has been the Slayer. Into every generation, a Slayer is born. One girl in all the world, a Chosen One. One born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of evil."

Within her fantastic milieu, Buffy feels the weight of the world on her shoulders and desperately wishes to let, in Christological terms, "this cup" pass from her. My own tears spilled over as I watched Buffy wrestle with her calling. As an Adventist and a Christian, I fully identified with the sheer terror of chosen-ness: "But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation . . ." (I Peter 2:9, NIV). I understood Buffy and knew that, if we shared the same world, she would understand me, that we would be best friends forever.

Buffy and I weren’t always BFFs, though.

One night five years earlier, while my grad school apartment-mate was watching her favorite show, I sat next to her to fold laundry. Promptly, demons and vampires flashed across the screen. Slaying soon ensued. With a reproachful gasp, I cried, "Wwwhhhaaattt are you watching?" My friend eventually lost interest in the show, but I kept peeking through cracked fingers and listening with wide-open ears. Something about the fidelity, the emotional realism of Buffy’s life experiences, the smart and witty dialogue, and the profoundly philosophical questions addressed by the series attracted and secured my attention. Strangely enough, Buffy’s life resonated with mine.

In A Matrix of Meanings: Finding God in Pop Culture (Baker Academic, 2003), Craig Detweiler and Barry Taylor explain that for years we Christians have been writing books, articles, and blog posts about what popular novels, films, and TV shows we deem acceptable. Touched by an Angel (1994-2003) and 7th Heaven (1996-2007), for example, are praised by many people of faith and such conservative Christian media watch groups as Parents’ Television Council and Focus on the Family.

But until recently little had been said about finding God where we might least expect: in songs by Lady Gaga, in sitcoms such as The Simpsons, in films such as Crash (2004), or in teen horror/action/science fiction/fantasy/comedy/dramas with campy titles such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Detweiler and Taylor argue that Jesus himself set the precedence for "shaking things up" when he told his listeners, "For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it" (Luke 9:24, NIV). Jesus’ declaration that life is secured only by losing it "flipped the script on people’s understanding of power, life, and religion." (7-8).

And flipping the script is exactly what Detweiler and Taylor intend to do by claiming "God shines through even the most debased pop cultural products" (p.8). Many years ago, I was skeptical of their assertion, but as I have more fully realized what story it is I find myself in—this Great Controversy—I have taken their words more and more to heart.

When I began wondering if Jesus really manifested Himself in the least expected places, especially in the texts of contemporary culture, I thought first of similarities between C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and Joss Whedon’s Buffy, between the deaths of Aslan toward the end of the book and of Buffy in the finale of the fifth season episode "The Gift" (5.22). Particularly, I was reminded of Gilbert Meilaender’s comments in The Taste for the Other: The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis (Regent College, 2003):

Throughout his writings [including his fantasy novels] Lewis scatters references to the truth that "he who loses his life will save it." This is for him neither a prudential maxim nor a higher law. It is merely the truth of the universe on which all community must finally be based. Without such a willingness to give of self, the vicariousness needed for community could not arise. . . . Love, therefore, is "that mystical death which is the secret of life." Life requires that the self be not grasped but given up. Through self-giving we find our true selves; for it makes community possible, and we cannot be ourselves until we have left isolation and entered into fellowship. . . . Love as self-sacrifice is the incarnation of love as self-giving. (63)

Meilaender’s words echo in the closing scenes of "The Gift" as Buffy bounds up the rickety stairs of a makeshift tower to rescue her sister Dawn, stolen from the family to be used as a magical key to unlock the portal between human and demon dimensions. But Buffy will have none of that.

As she reaches the tower’s apex, high above the earth, Buffy suddenly understands the dreams she’s been having for months, dreams haunted by the prophecy, "Death is your gift." Though drops of Dawn’s blood have been used to open the rift and demons are now spilling out into her world, Buffy realizes that Dawn’s life will also seal it. Closing the portal requires a blood sacrifice. She knows what she must do. As family, she and Dawn share the same life-giving fluid. Buffy grasps her terrified and weeping sister’s arms, looks lovingly into Dawn’s face, and speaks words muted to the audience.

Viewers are forced to simply watch, overcome by the emotion of the musical score, as Buffy then turns in slow motion, runs to the edge of the tower, and gracefully—that is, full of grace—falls through the tear between dimensions, sealing it and saving the world. It is only later, when her friends and family gather at her side, her body ravaged of life, that viewers hear her last words in voiceover:

Dawn, listen to me. Listen. I love you. I will always love you. But this is the work that I have to do. Tell Giles . . . tell Giles I figured it out. And, and I’m okay. And give my love to my friends. You have to take care of them now. You have to take care of each other. You have to be strong. Dawn, the hardest thing in this world . . . is to live in it. Be brave. Live. For me.

If you haven’t already figured it out, Buffy doesn’t remain in the grave, because in the seventh season, she has returned to lead her friends into yet another battle against evil. Ever since her calling, she has struggled with the burden and loneliness of being chosen. But soon after she utters "I don’t want to be the one," she finally realizes what she has gradually been figuring out for a long time: she doesn’t have to be the only one; in fact, she can’t be "the one."

Shattering the "one-girl-in-all-the world" myth imprisoning her (and imprisoning the world), she asks her best friend Willow to magically empower all potential slayers all at once. Together, Buffy and her friends and the newly gifted slayers defeat their nemesis. Buffy understands the truth as she has never understood it before: we war alone and together.

From "The Gift," I recall the words on Buffy’s gravestone: "Beloved Sister, Devoted Friend, She Saved the World A Lot." To some it may sound peculiar to say so, but I have come to see, by way of my religious/spiritual/academic education, that God used a petite, blonde, impractical-shoe-loving, dangerous-boy-dating, savior-complex-sporting vampire slayer with a silly name to save me—a lot. And I’m a whole lot less scared about chosen-ness, realizing more than ever that all humans are God’s chosen ones. That was Jesus’ gift.

As a wise woman once said of true education, "whatever line of investigation we pursue, with a sincere purpose to arrive at truth, we are brought in touch with the unseen, mighty Intelligence that is working in and through all" (White 14).

Where in the popular texts of our day have you discovered "the unseen, mighty Intelligence"? I hope you’ll share.

Next time on Adventures in Popular Culture: what Christians can learn from Star Trek fans. Until then . . . beaming up.