The Books of My Life: The Psychology of Joss Whedon

As the study of popular culture, popular film, and popular television became more and more prominent in the late 20th century a species of books also became more prominent in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, books exploring the relationship between academic subjects and popular culture, popular film, and popular television. In recent years we have seen, for instance, books on Star Trek and physics, the X-Files and science, and Buffy and philosophy, to note just a few. Joy Davidson's edited collection, The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly (Dallas: Benbella, Psychology of Popular Culture series, 2007) takes readers into the realm of the biology--neuroscience--and the social science of Joss Whedon's television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly.

 In her introduction to the collection Davidson argues that Whedon's television shows show us the human condition in its most glorious and in its most depraved forms. Whedon's teleision shows, Davidson maintains, explore the remotest corners of human emotions, the corners of human capriciousness, and the corners of human morality, and interrogate the meanings of human existence all the while reflecting all of these back at us, the viewers. In Davidson's collection essays by a variety of psychologists coming from a variety of different perspectives apply evolutionary psychology, terror management psychology, existential psychology, feminist psychology, personality disorder psychology, therapeutic psychology, and neuroscience to the Buffyverse, Angelverse, and Firefly verse.

The Psychology of Joss Whedon, like many other books in the television and genre, feels like a hybrid mashup thanks to its formulaic here is the psychology and here is how psychology applies to Buffy, Angel, and Firefly. This paint a television show by its what we are comparing it to or contexting it within numbers approach doesn't always make for easy reading. And while the essays do make a somewhat compelling case for the proposition that, in this instance, psychology, can profitably be applied to popular television shows like Buffy, Angel, and Firefly, so can (and have) almost any academic discipline making one wonder, given the general avoidance in the essays of historical and archival work, whether the television shows are being fitted into little psychology boxes rather than the other way around. This doesn't mean that I wasn't enlightened and that I did not enjoy several of the essays, in the Davidson collection. Editor Davidson's essay on Angel and Darla, for instance, was very enlightening and very well argued.