Sam wk10

(unforgivably late)

Questions answered;

How does Buffy deconstruct traditional literary notions of good and evil?

In what way is Buffy influenced by the romantic gothic tradition? Yet how does Buffy also provide a contemporary critique of this tradition?

Rose (2002) cites season four’s “Frankenstein” parallel as an exemplar of Buffy’s awareness and refashioning of ‘Romantic’ literature and the canon’s ensuing ideologies. However, the ever present romantic-hero figure is obviously not exclusive to that season (or text) appearing in various guises throughout, most notably recurring in Whedon’s luscious, eponymous heroine Buffy Somers. Far from recycling the familiarity of successful narratives though, Rose’s cited season-four examples argue, rather, that Whedon and team present the proverbial formula and subsequent elements for purposes of modern revision (2002). That Buffy’s efforts to prove antiquated the reality posited by romantic ideologies in a modern-context casts vampires, demons and alleged super-heroes as it’s working populace, may seem ironic (if no less ‘romantic’). And yet despite (or because) of it’s fantastic elements, the innovation is a relevant one, as it spot-lights the techno-fear inspiring Shelley to pen ‘Frankenstein’ in the first, updating its settings to prove the twenty-first century threat of technology usurping its human creators, as prevalent (or more so) as that haunting the early-twentieth, which saw the advent of industrialization.

It does this by having its monster ‘Adam’ slay his creator Maggie Walsh, ruling out the unfolding possibility of an existential dialogue between the two, the very tension driving most of Shelley’s original narrative. Instead, Adam knows full well his purposes for being made, Walsh having programmed these into him, and he quickly acts accordingly; however, these purposes are distorted by Adam in the absence of his human creator, and he believes that in spawning an army of human-demon hybrids he is doing her work. Thus does Buffy caution against the conceit of science as it marches under ideals and wields powers it fervently believes god-given and god-sent without a single mitigating word from ‘god’, preaching the virtues of progress to justify it’s leaps that should be unanimous as it’s decisions more often than not effect the lives of the masses. With no collective to check it, science (the individual or elite) veers considerably from social reality into amoral terrain and is capable of ‘evil’ despite initial nobility of intent, and in doing so undermines essential democracy so that it is reduced to mere visage of democracy.

Buffy’s critique of the solitary-nature of these ‘romantic ideals’ goes further, musing the only effective means of ensuring technology doesn’t steer us into the post-human, is the collective; not only as preventive measure, but (should the situation reach critical) as offensive resistance. Though she is the slayer, it soon becomes clear that the technological forces of which Adam is representative out-match her individual stand, and requires the full coordinated strength of the ‘Scooby Gang’.

Buffy also re-imagines age-old concepts of good and evil, and their equally ancient gender expressions. Braum (2000) cites the 1998 “X- Files” movie as embedding ‘evil’ in the ‘feminine mystique’, the primal dark of the vaginal passage as the gateway to void and non-being, also paradoxically the canal of new life through which we pass in birth. These associations can be traced back to the Bible and the book of Genesis in which Eve ate of the fruit, vilifying woman forever as the herald of original sin. Classical depictions of Eve include the fruit, the snake, and a naked woman; she is everything fecund and of the earth, whose sexuality is considered “monstrous” in as much as it is branded ‘evil’ or ‘other’. Buffy on the other hand holds up male-sexuality as the threatening and decidedly ‘evil’ force. Angel, (ironically named) is initially charming and sweet natured. It is only after seducing Buffy, and a consummate sex act, that her returns to his former tyrant-demon self in a betrayal of the slayers vested romantic interest. Braum (2000) presents a psychoanalytic reading of the relationship as one paralleling the mother/child and the child’s inability to cope with the mother’s ‘shadow’, so that perceptions of the mother inadvertently ‘split’. Another reading however sees the notions of evil theologically heaped onto the feminine, thrown back onto the masculine in a demystifying feminist upheaval combating the negation of female-sexuality in a consistently patriarchal system. Angel is that system, delighting in tormenting Buffy as the system has in it’s demonization of woman at large.

Though Buffy’s solution to the problem might be a tad unrealistic (hurl the patriarchy into the Hell-Mouth?), the intent of Whedon and team is morally sound.