Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Softcover

Wilcox, Rhonda V.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845110293 ISBN 13: 9781845110291

Publisher: I.B. Tauris, 2005

Synopsis

Hugely enjoyable, long awaited book by top world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Buffy is still on screens and on DVD in home television libraries of a wide array of TV watchers and fans. This is also the student text for TV and cultural studies at colleges and universities where Buffy is widely taught. Rhonda Wilcox is a world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", who has been writing and lecturing about the show since its arrival on our screens. This book is the distillation of this remarkable body of work and thought, a celebration of the series that she proposes is an aesthetic test case for television. Buffy is enduring as art, she argues, by exploring its own possibilities for long-term construction as well as producing individual episodes that are powerful in their own right. She examines therefore the larger patterns that extend through many episodes: the hero myth, the imagery of light, naming symbolism, Spike, sex and redemption, Buffy Summers compared and contrasted with Harry Potter. She then moves in to focus on individual episodes, such as the "Buffy musical Once More, with Feeling", the largely silent Hush and the dream episode "Restless" (T.S.
Eliot comes to television). She also examines Buffy's ways of making meaning - from literary narrative and symbolism to visual imagery and sound. Combining great intelligence and wit, written for the wide Buffy readership, this is the worthy companion to the show that has claimed and kept the minds and hearts of watchers worldwide.

About this title

About the Author

Rhonda Wilcox is an English professor and television scholar. She is co-editor of 'Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and of 'Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies'. She has been described by CNN as 'the Mother of Buffy studies'.

Reviews

This accessible collection of essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer defends the artistic merit of the fantasy TV show with equal parts wit and insight. Wilcox, an English professor at Gordon College, is a fan of the series and doesn't condescend to other fans or disparage what she believes is "art, and deserves to be so studied. It is a work of literature, of language...of visual art...of music and sound." Wilcox looks at the big-picture narrative arc and at individual episodes, finding impressive, but sometimes tenuously connected, influences at work: Joseph Campbell's momomyth, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, John Donne, Virgil and Charles Dickens. "One of the great themes of Dickens's Bleak House," she writes, "is our interconnection; and one of the great themes of Buffy is the virtue of community." Not surprisingly, the author has no patience for critics and academics who dismiss Buffy as mere "cult TV" on the basis of its genre and argues that fantasy can have more emotional resonance than realism. Though not convincing as a work of genuine scholarship, Wilcox's book is a serviceable addition to the canon of Buffy.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Although television is often looked down upon, Wilcox, one editor of Slayage, the online journal devoted to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, presents a compelling argument for it as an art form as worthy of respect and acknowledgment as film or literature. She furthers her argument by using Joss Whedon's iconic show as a salient example, drawing on the depth of the characters, the symbolism in the show, and the many real-world commentaries that permeate its narrative. The first half of the book deals with everything from the significance of the characters' names in relation to their identities to parallels between Buffy and the Harry Potter saga, while the second half offers detailed analyses of seven of Buffy's finest, most complex episodes, including the ones that deal with the loss of Buffy's virginity and the almost entirely silent episode "Hush." The library of scholarly Buffy titles continues to grow, with Wilcox's thoughtful, accessible volume an honorable addition to it. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845110293
• ISBN 13: 9781845110291
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256