Blood Relations: Chosen Families In Buffy The Vampire Slayer And Angel [Paperback]

Jes Battis (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 078642172X | ISBN-13: 978-0786421725 | Publication Date: June 23, 2005

The television series Buffy and Angel revolve around radical conceptions of family. Indeed, their coherence depends on the establishment of nontraditional families that admit vampires, demons, witches, werewolves, and other bizarre characters without censuring them for their peculiarities. This work argues that what makes these characters enduring and engaging is their critical family connections—for their most involved struggles occur not within the graveyard, but around the dinner table, just as the most challenging adversarial forces that they must face are not demons or vampires but the stuff of everyday life. What does “family” encompass within these two series? How does it relate to concepts of gender, sexuality, power and the supernatural as they emerge from the shows’ complex narratives? This book explores such questions. It also examines the “chosen family” (an idea marketed specifically by successful programs such as Friends and Sex in the City within the past ten years), juxtaposing it against various images of the fractured biological family displayed in both Buffy and Angel. Through eight chapters addressing various family-related aspects within both shows, this work plots the trajectory of this unstable notion of family, even as it is transformed, remediated, and rendered unrecognizable from a “family values” perspective by the unique and supernatural relationships that proliferate in Buffy and Angel.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jes Battis is a doctoral student in the Department of English at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: McFarland & Company (June 23, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078642172X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786421725
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #889,097 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jes Battis is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Regina, teaching classes in fantasy and science fiction, queer studies, children's lit, and medieval material culture. His OSI Series is available from Ace-Penguin.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars It's not always about you..., April 26, 2006

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oldfan "toni" (new york) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Blood Relations: Chosen Families In Buffy The Vampire Slayer And Angel (Paperback)

This book represents itself as an academic discussion of the family in Buffy and Angel, and is dressed in the jargon of contemporary criticism, but is a largely unreadable essay of personal reflections about what the programs mean to the author. Better choices for the academic fan are Jowett's Sex and the Slayer or Wilcox' Why Buffy Matters or any of the collections of shorter pieces available in book form or on line, or, on the other hand, for the pleasure of well written personal essays with insight, Seven Seasons of Buffy. This is least successful of the growing number of Buffy studies.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Muddled mess, August 7, 2006

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ZombiKitty "zombikitty" (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Relations: Chosen Families In Buffy The Vampire Slayer And Angel (Paperback)

This book purports to examine the TV series Buffy and Angel with respect to the characters relationships as "families." I thought that sounded like a great idea, so I read this book. Unfortunately, the essays in this work are quite muddled. The author begins each essay by stating what he will be focusing on for the duration of the essay, but then he inevitably meanders away from the topic. Maybe he should consider creating an outline before he starts writing and sticking to it! Another problem I had with the essays in this book is the fact that the information about the shows that is presented within them is often incorrect. I found that incredibly distracting and annoying. I am giving this book the two stars for the idea --- it gets no stars for the execution of the idea.

23 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Anyone out there speak Acadamian?, December 2, 2005

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Etsonia "SG19er" (Rhode Island) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood Relations: Chosen Families In Buffy The Vampire Slayer And Angel (Paperback)

I bought this book with great hopes, the extended family aspects of Buffy being one of my favorite topics. First, and foremost it is outrageously priced at $32.00. $3.20 would have been more appropriate. I'm just grateful I bought a used half-priced copy. The text reads more like a doctoral thesis than most of its predecessors and is much the worse for it. If you can wade through descriptions of Buffy episodes as, "They are visual representations, whose imagery is double-coded with semantic "values" that often conflict, or even negate each other," and other comments like, "I mentioned a Deluzian family-rhizome in the introduction, but that's absurdly abstract," then you'll probably love this book. Anyone else will be much better served checking out Reading the Slayer or Why Buffy Matters. Nothing really new is said here, but writing it in acadamian just makes it seem new and important. I give this book 5 yawns and a 10 on the waste of money scale.