Buffy vs. Evil

The long awaited sixth issue of Watcher Junior is here!

Ensley Guffey, in "We Just Declared War": Buffy as General", examines the eight seasons through the lens of Military Studies. The most famous use of Military Studies to look at BtVS is Anthony H. Cordesman’s “Biological Warfare and the ‘Buffy Paradigm’” (Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2002). That article uses BtVS as a lens to examine U.S. Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) policies and preparedness, rather than military science being used to examine Buffy. There's been other articles examining the series, whether it be through the literary inheritance of Beowulf, the traditions of the just female warrior, or simply a look at the weaponry on display in the series. But Ensley's paper uses John Keegan's The Mask of Command to critique the strengths and weaknesses of Buffy's leadership style, from her continual presence amongst her troops to her puzzling decision to have the Slayer Army forgo their powers. If you wanted a nuanced look at the pros and cons of Buffy's leadership style, this article's the place to begin.

Faith Parke, meanwhile, takes a look at her namesake in “I Hope Evil Takes MasterCard”: Faith the Vampire Slayer and the Image of the Bad Girl in Society". She regards the character as an example of second wave feminism from which the show's female protagonists distance themselves.

Jared Rose takes on similar issues, as he looks at how the series represents the masquerade of femininity by Buffy, Darla and others through the prism of the feminist debates about the legitimacy of sex-workers in his “You Know, I'm Extremely Youthful. And Peppy!”: Buffy, Playing Girl, and Popular Culture Representation of Sex-Worker Feminism". Here, he finds Buffy's status as an open, complex symbol requiring thoughtful investigation more important than whether Buffy is a good girl or a bad girl.

The Mr. Pointy Award Winners!

We are extremely pleased to announce the winners of the 2010 Whedon Studies Association awards for excellence in scholarship:

Short Mr. Pointy Winner

Buckman, Alyson R. "'Go Ahead, Run Away! Say it was Horrible!': Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog as Resistant Text." Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association 8.1 (2010): n. pag. Web.

Long Mr. Pointy Winner

Attinello, Paul, Janet K. Halfyard, and Vanessa Knights, eds. Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Print.

Congratulations to the winners--and all of the nominees! The quality of scholarship the jury had to select from demonstrates the clear and continued growth of Whedon Studies.

The other finalists this year were:


Short Mr. Pointy finalists:

Buckman, Alyson R. “Triangulated Desire in Angel and Buffy.” Sexual Rhetoric in the Works of Joss Whedon: New Essays. Ed. Erin B. Waggoner. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 48-92. Print.

Frohard-Dourlent, Hélène. "'Lez-faux' Representations: How Buffy Season Eight Navigates the Politics of Female Heteroflexibility." Sexual Rhetoric in the Works of Joss Whedon: New Essays. Ed. Erin B. Waggoner. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 31-47. Print.

Kociemba, David. “To Spoil or Not to Spoil: Teaching Television’s Narrative Complexity.” Buffy in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching with the Vampire Slayer. Eds. Jodie A. Kreider and Meghan K. Winchell. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. 7-21. Print.

Masson, Cynthea. “Who Painted the Lion?—A Gloss on Dollhouse’s ‘Belle Chose.’” Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association 8.2-3 (2010): n. pag. Special Issue: Fantasy Is Not Their Purpose: Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. Eds. Cynthea Masson and Rhonda V. Wilcox. Web.

Long Mr. Pointy finalists

Comeford, Amijo and Tamy Burnett, eds. The Literary Angel: Essays on Influences and Traditions Reflected in the Joss Whedon Series. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.

Kreider, Jodie A., and Meghan K. Winchell, eds. Buffy in the Classroom: Essays on Teaching with the Vampire Slayer . Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.

Waggoner, Erin B, ed. Sexual Rhetoric in the Works of Joss Whedon: New Essays. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. Print.

How do I slay thee? Let me count the ways!

Found this Call for Submissions in my inbox today. Thought I'd share. It's for anyone, not just the previously published or those in academia. So get those in!

"CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

I am seeking submissions for Buffy Verse, an anthology of quality poetry inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I am looking for lively verse that engages with the Buffy mythos. For example, you may choose to revisit a certain episode, examine the intersection of some aspect of Buffy and real life, or simply write a poem with a relevant Buffy epigraph.

Submissions should be sent either as a Word document or pasted in the body of an email to me at erinlyndalmartin [at sign] gmail. No cover letter or bio is necessary at this time. Please put "submission" somewhere in your subject line.

I will be reading submissions until August 1, 2011.

I have already sent a proposal for this book to several agents and presses, but if any of you are involved in publishing and would like to discuss this project, please feel free to contact me.

I'm looking forward to reading your work!

---Erin Martin"

"Nobody Messes with My Boyfriend!"

Pop Matters seems to have its comments turned off on its Whedon articles. I wonder why? So, this is my commentary on the article, Women Who Hate Women: Female Competition in 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' by Faye Murray & Holly Golding.

First, interesting article on this issue. Right now, they've got Willow-Buffy and Tara-everybody as positive models of female solidarity, contrasted with Buffy-Faith, Cordelia-everybody and Anya-everybody. For additional models of female friendships unmarked by male competition, we also have Echo-Sierra (Dollhouse) and Kaylee-Inara (Firefly). While their article is on the Buffyverse, the site's series is on Whedon, so I think a mention of that might have been appropriate. I think I agree with their last paragraph more than an earlier declaration that "Buffy presents us with a world where female friendship can only exist where women aren’t competing for men."

Second, the Sharon Ross article looks like a good article to pick up. Good find!

Third, while the prevalence of such commentary is ultimately subjective, I can at least indicate a few additional quotes dealing with this issue: "Buffy’s taunts to male villains revolve around their impending defeat, inadequacies as villains and relative lack of strength ... rather than personal observations about their attractiveness."

Buffy remarks on the Master's "fruit punch mouth" in her final battle with him in "Prophecy Girl." In the pilot, during her first combat with vampires, she remarks "Okay, first of all, what's with the outfit? Live in the now, okay? You look like DeBarge!" In "Something Blue," Buffy mocks Spike by calling him "flaccid." She also does a lot of work with her facial expressions with Adam and the Trio.

As for being bitchy about appearances, Spike takes the cake. (Although Anya and Cordelia have incisive comments on attire as well.) There's an excellent article on camp and Spike in Slayage: Cynthea Masson and Marni Stanley, “Queer Eye of that Vampire Guy: Spike and the Aesthetics of Camp."

Not only is Spike moved to attempt suicide after being given clown pants to wear, he also has this narration in the third episode of Angel: (falsetto)"How can I thank you, you mysterious, black-clad hunk of a night thing? (low voice) No need, little lady, your tears of gratitude are enough for me. You see, I was once a badass vampire, but love and a pesky curse defanged me. Now I'm just a big, fluffy puppy with bad teeth. (Rachel steps closer to Angel, and Angel steps back warding her off with his hands) No, not the hair! Never the hair! (high voice) But there must be someway I can show my appreciation. (low voice) No, helping those in need's my job, - and working up a load of sexual tension, and prancing away like a magnificent poof is truly thanks enough! (high voice) I understand. I have a nephew who is gay, so... (low voice) Say no more. Evil's still afoot! And I'm almost out of that Nancy-boy hair-gel that I like so much. Quickly, to the Angel-mobile, away!"

Fourth, "Once again, this ability to maintain friendships with the other women on the show can be attributed to her sexuality; as a lesbian she poses no sexual threat to the heterosexual female characters and therefore presents no competition when it comes to dating and attracting male attention." Can you tell me why this has nothing to do with Tara's personality? Otherwise, I think you run the risk of assuming what you need to prove, here.

Ultimately, letting a text be open to interpretation rather explicitly contesting every problematic element activates viewers to perform active readings of media products. Such texts teach the tools of media criticism essential to feminism and thus promote progressive politics by encouraging viewers to read against the grain. That's to be preferred, to my mind, to works whose explicitness teach readers to follow along with the text. What a text does should not be forgotten in the face of what it depicts. The balancing act referenced in the last paragraph is the best choice on artistic and social grounds, I'd argue.

Spotlight on Joss Whedon

Pop Matters is doing a special on Joss Whedon this week, with pieces on the movie, his "unproduced" Alien: Resurrection script, the biblical studies perspective, and a general defense of the body of work. Take a look! The link is in the blog post title.

Rewatching Buffy

As most people who read this blog know, there's a great Buffy Rewatch happening in the Whedon fan (and "aca-fan") community.  Nikki Stafford is heading up a Buffy Rewatch segment on her blog which features (and will be featuring) some awesome guest bloggers, many of whom come from the Slayage conference 'verse (including David, who's first post went up yesterday, and myself).  We're working our way through Season 2 right now and I've been having some wicked flashbacks to watching the show while it was in broadcast.

When Buffy began airing in March of 1997, I was a sophomore in high school who had transferred in part-way through the previous semester.  Pair that with the fact that I had watched the 1992 movie an embarrassing number of times since its VHS release and you can see how I quickly identified with the our heroine and became a fan of the show.  So while I'm watching Buffy again, from the very first episode to the very last, I'm not only flashing back on fashion and pop culture, but on being 16 itself.  It's incredibly weird to look at this as a 30 year old and remember just how much I empathized with Buffy when I was that age — the same age being portrayed in the series throughout its run.

For example, 30 year old me is somewhat creeped out by the Buffy & Angel thing.  16 year old me was all "ZOMG ROMANCE!" (if "ZOMG" was something the kids would say in 1997... which it wasn't).  I guess now that I'm watching it all over again, I'm getting back in touch with my angsty, hormonal, super-emotional teenage self.  This show really is a melodrama!  No wonder we all loved it in the late-90s (and early aughts).  It's totally formative years stuff.  Also, it helps that all these flashbacks are underscored by my high school playlist (wait... we didn't have "playlists" back then — we had mix tapes, on actual tape cassettes).  This experience is very weird.

Buffy Tries a Little Tenderness

14. It is important to be loving [affectionate, tender]



Summary:

There’s a rough consensus in the numbers above, but the lack of comments indicate an even greater consensus. It’s either that, or people started realizing at this point how long this survey is! The one area where there was some disagreement was on the qualifying terms of tenderness and affection, where some asked if friendship qualified and others talked about the varying expressions of love from rough to tender.

Your Comments:

Although, a little tough love is important to snap people out of their funks that may be holding the entire group back and leading them into possible danger.

What better example is there of this, than the love between the main characters, which stays through, though tested hard at several turns during the series.

it all comes down to love. the choices they make, the places they go, the things they do.

This isn't a huge subject on the show, but I think that the best relationship on the show is Willow and Tara, because they truly love each other, and can be very affectionate.

Absolutely. Buffy's last night in Sunnydale was about feeling the physical presence of Spike's love. Countless times, a hug has been shown as a true sign of warm affection, its importance never in doubt. Buffy and Giles hug when he returns to defeat Dark Willow. Giles hugs Willow when he learns she's still alive in "Doppelgangland." Ultimately, affectionate, tender love is what Xander used to save the world at the end of season six.

Especially, Buffy, Dawn, Willow, Tara, to some degree, Giles.

Whether it's spoken or it's shown non-verbally, there is never any doubt as to the scoobies feelings for one another. Their devotion to each other and the cause show how to make connections and good relationships last.

Again, I think this is often hard for some characters, but it is the glue that holds them together.

tended to be tender within the group, less so to others

Love is what keeps Buffy alive, mostly, and even motivates her self sacrifice.

In this series, there's no glory in death. There's only how you spend your time alive. Everyone in this series only appears happy when they feel loved.

Yes. Loving and showing it are seen as crucial in the Buffy world.

This value is also seen consistently throughout the series. Perhaps the best example would be during the course of season 5 where Buffy feels like she is losing her humanity, her ability to love - and without that she feels like she'll be nothing, an empty shell of a human being. At the end of the season she is then able to make the ultimate sacrifice due to her great love for her sister, her friends, and the world.

is friendship enough of love?

yes, despite the dangers of love——but the risk is central to the value

See above; the characters struggled to find a balance between logic and emotion.

Yep

I don't believe this was a huge theme. There was a mix of tender and rough.

Thats how Xander saved the world.

Many different types of love were portrayed.