Buffyverse Day 2005

( Quotes )

It's Bufferverse Day 2005. So. . . .

Why do I love the Buffyverse? ( Well, why do I? )

Buffy allows me to vicariously live out the adolescent fantasy without ever treating me like a child: it assumes that I'm culturally literate and can get a joke about Sartre or Arthur Miller, that I can follow a complex plotline drawn out over several years, that I'm interested in the depths of human emotion, and that I care about the characters as more than just fighters of evil. That I am prepared to face some of the darker sides of human nature. That I will notice the gender and racial politics at work within the show. That my desire for knowledge, my desire for power, and my sexual desire are all intertwined and that it is possible to engage them all at once.

Buffy is intelligent television.

The show isn't afraid to blur the line between hero and villain. Angel, Spike, Darla, Drusilla, Amy, Willow, Faith, Wesley, Giles, Anya, Lilah, Lindsey, Eve, Quentin, Roger, Illyria, and even Buffy herself challenge the clear and easy distinction between hero and villain and make it extremely clear that "normative" is not always the same as "good." In doing so, the show flirts with the fascination I and others feel for the villain, recognizing it as not essentially something belonging to the Other (the monstrous, the vampiric), but something which is essentially human. We empathize and identify with Faith and Willow as they go evil--and as we confront them on the screen, we confront ourselves.

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