November 28, 2005
Review Corner: Why Buffy Matters
I'm frequently accused of taking Buffy, The Vampire Slayer and Angel too seriously, but there is a growing body of scholarship on "The Buffyverse."
A good entry point to it would be Robin Wilcox's "Why Buffy Matters." Wilcox is a serious Dickensian scholar (she studied Charles; she isn't a hundred years old) and a more serious Buffy fan. She has promoted some of her college lectures to a book of literary criticism. She quotes from this growing body of work and makes quite a few associations and finds allusions that I would never have caught in a million viewings.
The language is academic and she brings her own biases. For instance she quotes some that hold the DoubleMeat Palace episodes reflect anti-globalism, though, to be fair, she doesn't quite line up for this. Every object that is not completely spherical is a phallic symbol to her (well, Ms. Wilcox, the network did not want guns on a teen show, they pretty much have to have some knives and swords...)
Anybody who can overlook some of that will enjoy it, I certainly did.