Books of My Life: Buffy Goes Dark

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I became a fan of the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its fifth and final year on the WB. I was unable to follow Buffy to UPN in its sixth and seventh seasons, however, the seasons that the writers of Buffy have described as centred and focused on "oh grow up", in the case of season six, and "back to the beginning", in the case of season seven. I wasn't, as a result, able to see Buffy resurrected in season six, all the Scoobies, including Buffy, Willow, Xander, Anya, and Spike, struggle in a world which Buffy thought might be hell, or the extended Scooby gang struggle against and finally triumph against the First Evil, until I got the DVD's and was able to watch seasons six and seven in reruns. Like many others I noticed that tone wise there was something different about season six to previous seasons, I eventually realised, however, that season six was all about the loss of innocence and the traumas that accompany growing up, something that was not absent in earlier seasons, in, for example, the first season episode "Nightmares", several intense episodes during season two including "Surprise"/"Innocence", "Passion", "I Only Have Eyes for You", and "Becoming", and in the episode "The Body", episodes all that reach the levels of emotional intensity and adult traumas of any Ingmar Bergman film, The emotional traumas associated with growing up, however, seemed to be much more prominent and central in season six.

Buffy Goes Dark, edited by Lynne Edwards, Elizabeth Rambo, and James South (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2009), by and large, explores various aspects of seasons six and seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Essays in the collection explore what two of Buffy's writers, Marti Noxon (David Perry) and Jane Espenson (David Kociemba) brought to Buffy, in Noxon's case, according to Perry, echoing Buffy creator, writer, and director Joss Whedon, some sado-masochism. Other essays explore Buffy characters Willow and Tara (Alissa Wilts and Brandy Ryan) and Andrew (Ira and Anne Shull and South). Still others explore a variety of aspects and the narrative threads of season six and seven (Michael Adams, Rhonda Wilcox, Gregory Erickson and Jennifer Lemberg, Elizabeth Rambo, Paul Hawkins, Agnes Curry and Josef Velazquez) engaging the question of whether season six, in particular, is different from earlier seasons of the show.

As with any anthology with a variety of essays grounded in a variety of perspectives there were some essays in Buffy Goes Dark that I found more compelling than others. I found the narrative focused essays by Wilcox, Erickson and Lemberg, and Rambo fascinating explorations of the symbology, existentialism, and structure of season. On the other hand, I found the essays by Wilts and Curry and Velazquez characterised by one of the three problematic traps of crystal ball textualism, specifically, the tendency of some to judge a text by the critics own political and ideological predilections, and hence more normative than descriptive analyses. Textual analysis as political and ideological social ethical activism! Wilts essay, it seems to me, misread the Willow and Tara relationship in ways noted in the essay by Ryan. Wilts wanted the Willow and Tara relationship to conform to what she wanted it to be and was less interested in what it, textually speaking, actually was. Curry's and Velazquez's contention that Buffy is anti-liberal, that it is manichean, proto-fascist if not fascist, and militarist, misses several textual facts. Curry and Velazquez miss that in the Buffy text evil is, while not entirely manichean, real rather than a social and cultural construct, that fighting this evil, according to the text, requires a leader (Buffy has charismatic and traditional authority as Max Weber defines them) and that the mission and strategy of the Scoobies, according to the text, at least until season seven, is reactive or defensive and essential though not triumphal. Like Wilts, Curry and Velazquez read their ideology and politics, in Curry's and Velazquez's case a self-proclaimed liberalism, into the Buffy text. I suppose in this context we should take a moment to recall the existence of many interventionist liberals in the pre-World War II years and during the Cold War era in the US.

I quite enjoyed reading the essays in Buffy Goes Dark. It was nice to see an anthology largely focused on the controversial season six and season seven. I learned a lot from several of them. Recommended to anyone interested in film, television, and literary criticism, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.