from the activist...
the buffy files

a biased view of selected episodes

People tend to write Buffy the Vampire Slayer off as another mushy teen drama from the WB's lineup with Dawsons Creek and Felicity. A second look might stir the suspicion that behind Buffy is very different concept. A small group of kids spend lunchtimes in the library to organize for the defense of their town from predatory bloodsuckers. That could describe a high school feminist or socialist club as well as it describes the "Scooby Gang" assembled on Buffy. Or is that the idea?

EPISODE: Welcome to the Hellmouth

PLOT: Buffy moves to Sunnydale and faces her duty to fight vampires who threaten the city. A master vampire trapped underground attempts to rise through the kills of other vampires.

SUBTEXT?: Buffy moves to Sunnydale and faces her responsibility to be an activist and fight the secret elite who threaten the city. A capitalist restrained by regulations tries to rise through the use of subcontracting.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "I missed class with Professor Chomsky yesterday."

EPISODE: The Witch

PLOT: Intense competition to get on the chearleading team turns deadly with the help of spontaneous combustion. Turns out to be the work of a cheerleader's mother, secretly a witch, who has stolen her body to relive her glory days.

SUBTEXT?: Intense competition between students is out of control, and parents often make things worse by trying to mold their children in their image.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: The creepy similarity between the whole episode and an actual situation that happened in Texas a few years ago.

EPISODE: Nightmares

PLOT: A child beaten into a coma for losing a little league game unleashes the fear of his attacker in the form of a real monster attacking Sunnydale youth, the effect spreading to make everyone's worst fears reality.

SUBTEXT?: Physical or emotional abuse of children unleashes patterns of violence and domination that darken our social environment, affecting us all.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: Xander's worst fear contains swastikas spraypainted on the walls.

EPISODE: Invisible Girl

PLOT: A girl's unpopularity causes her to become such a non-entity that she is rendered invisible. Her revenge takes several lives before targeting the prom queen.

SUBTEXT?: Competitive, success-crazed life blinds us to the lives and pain of marginalized people.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: The episode concludes with the CIA abducting the girl, who is placed with other invisible girl cases from around the country, and begins training as a CIA assassin.

EPISODE: Some Assembly Required

PLOT: The younger brother of a dead varsity football star revives the corpse. He attempts to create a partner for his secluded undead brother by killing women for their best body parts and assembling the ideal woman. He has trouble when trying to take the bodyparts of Buffy, whose humanity exposes the depravity of his project, and the undead brother refuses the "gift."

SUBTEXT?: Men's reduction of female value into a set of body parts ultimately impoverishes their entire emotional lives.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: Not available

EPISODE: Reptile Boy

PLOT: A rich white fraternity is actually a cult which annually sacrifices girls to a large snake-demon. Buffy becomes a potential sacrifice while attending a frat party and kicks some frat boy ass.

SUBTEXT?: The 'old boys' club' and all white boys' clubs are based on the domination of women. Powerful old men around the world owe success to their exclusive power networks and privileges.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: The episode concludes with a news story reporting that the frat's alumni are rich powerful men around the world, and they start losing privileges and stock value after the slaying of the reptile demon.

EPISODE: Ted

PLOT: Buffy's mom starts dating a seemingly perfect guy, though he secretly has dominating urges and threatens Buffy. Nobody believes her, but he turns out to be a crazy robot designed to take the place of a dying scientist who wanted his ex-wife back.

SUBTEXT?: Even seemingly nice guys can be misogynists following socialization they themselves may not recognize. Trust women when they say someone threatened them.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "I don't take orders from women, I'm not wired that way."

EPISODE: Surprise / Innocence

PLOT: Vampires assemble a demon from pieces that were spread around the world. Once assembled this demon will burn the humanity out of everyone on Earth.

SUBTEXT?: The breakdown of trade barriers is utilized by economic bloodsuckers to assemble products in a way that dehumanizes people.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: In the sub-plot, Giles (Buffy's slaying advisor) refuses to reprimand Buffy for having sex, and instead offers support and trust.

EPISODE: Phases

PLOT: A Sunnydale student is a werewolf, which is actually the condition of having animalistic base urges manifest physically and take over. Buffy figures the quarterback is the likely candidate, but he's not (though he does come out of the closet). It turns out to be a gentle, sensitive boy who didn't know what had been happening and he agrees to be locked in a cage during full moons.

SUBTEXT?: Again, misogyny and aggression are sometimes found in unexpected people because socialization can be subtle. A real man is not someone who is without faults, but someone who faces those faults and tries to prevent their harmful effects.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: Not available.

EPISODE: Killed By Death

PLOT: While in the hospital, Buffy finds that there is a monster sucking the life out of kids in the pediatric ward and only the children can see it. Only by injecting herself with the same virus the children are afflicted with can she see it and kill it.

SUBTEXT?: Adults are often blind to collective grievances of children as they have their dreams and individuality crushed by socialization. They must themselves question the restrictive socialization in order to understand what is troubling the kids.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "There are real heroes that fight monsters, and that's me. I fight the bad guys."

EPISODE: Anne

PLOT: Street Kids are being kidnapped into an underground dimension called Hell, where they are worked 'till old age and spit out again, after being forced to surrender their individuality. Buffy saves kidnappees and wreaks havoc in Hell when she stops trying to be uninvolved in saving people from evil. A girl she saves takes on Buffy's pseudonym when Buffy returns to her life as a slayer.

SUBTEXT?: Hell is a sweatshop / a sweatshop is Hell. They steal young lives, strip them of their individuality and spit them back out when they are done. They should be rebelled against and fought. Being an activist is a choice you make but once you have seen its importance you can't ignore your role in fighting injustice. In so doing you help others take on the identity of political actors.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: Buffy fights off the slavedrivers in Hell with a hammer and sickle. "Humans don't fight back! Thats not how this works!"

EPISODE: Beauty and the Beasts

PLOT: A dominating boyfriend becomes a violent monster whenever he takes a potion designed to make him the man he thinks his girlfriend wants him to be. After a while he no longer needs the potion, and becomes an abusive monster in fits of jealous rage.

SUBTEXT?: Domestic violence as the result of images of masculinity.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "Anyone who really loves you wouldn't do this to you."

EPISODE: Band Candy

PLOT: The Mayor maintains power by annual sacrifices to a demon. He contracts an entrepreneurial vampire to create a distraction, who subcontracts his plan to distribute tainted candy bars to a wizard. The candy bars are sold to fundraise for the school band, and cause all of Sunnydales adults to regress into adolescent immaturity, allowing babies to be sacrificed for the Mayor.

SUBTEXT?: There are behind-the-scenes deals between politicians and capitalists to distract the public from real crimes being committed, and in the process the population is psychologically twisted into immaturity. Subcontracting complicates the evil-fighting process because you have to follow the chain to the big bad-guy.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "Demand is high. That's the reason I love this country. You make a good product and people will come to you. Of course, a lot of them are gonna die but that's the other thing I love about this country"

EPISODE: Wish

PLOT: A goddess of scorned women grants a wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale. Suddenly the world is a very different place, with the vampires triumphant, though a small band of rebels still try against all odds to fight back. The ascendant vampires introduce "mass production" crediting humans with the development of technology which they will use to put people into machines which efficiently drain their blood for the tapping. Buffy gets to Sunnydale too late and everyone dies.

SUBTEXT?: Without activists the world would be even shittier than it is. The idea that the world can't be any better than it is serves as a manipulative tool for those who want it to stay the same. The triumph of free markets is seen as the only possibility, and in its ascendance, people are drained of life working at machines of mass production.

QUOTE/CONSPICUOUS SCENE: "How do you know the other world is any better than this?" "Because it has to be."

EDITOR'S NOTE: Despite progressive tendencies within the show, the racial politics of the show are, at best, abominable. The few black characters have either been killed within a few episodes, or are evil creatures. Also, somehow, Sunnydale of southern California seems to be lacking any Chicano presence apart from a janitor.

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