Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel (Tauris Parke Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Roz Kaveney (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1860647626 | ISBN-13: 978-1860647628 | Publication Date: January 12, 2002

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are two of today's biggest cult television show hits. This unique guide to both shows examines a variety of the complex ways in which Buffy and its spin-off series Angel have won the hearts of its target audience and the minds of intellectual commentators. The book provides a short episode guide to all five seasons of Buffy and the first two seasons of Angel, as well as an intriguing look at how the shows are written based on interviews with the shows' principal writers.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

When TV shows are as smart as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel, they are bound to attract people who want to analyze them. Editor Kaveney has gathered some very thoughtful essays on the shows. A number of these pieces lean toward academic tedium, but most are accessible and intriguing. Kaveney's own essay leads the set, and it is a great primer on both shows, summarizing all but their current seasons and discussing some major themes and characters in each. Other standouts include an essay on the use of California as a setting, a pair of essays pondering Buffy and feminism, and one dealing with the strength of characterizations and the talent of the casts of both shows. The handy episode guide at the end will help newer fans get caught up. Because many viewers are drawn to Buffy and Angel by the shows' intelligence and multilayered stories, expect them to be enticed by this engaging collection. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"...very thoughtful essays...accessible and intriguing..." -- Booklist

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Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Tauris Parke Paperbacks (January 12, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1860647626
• ISBN-13: 978-1860647628
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,850,833 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Views on Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the Ivory Towers, September 11, 2002

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Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel (Tauris Parke Paperbacks) (Paperback)

"Reading the Vampire Slayer" is a critical appreciation of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" from those living in their proverbial ivory towers but glued to their tube for "BtVS." This collection of 10 essays focuses on seasons 1-5 of Buffy, 1-2 of Angel, and as the spelling of some of the words in some of these titles will tell you, a lot of these authors are British:

1. Roz Kaveney, "She Saved the World. A Lot: An Introduction to the themes and structure of 'Buffy' and 'Angel'" is the first and most fan friendly essay in this collection. Looking at character clusters and season structures, Kaveney does a nice job of articulating what most fans of "BtVS" have intuited regarding why the show works and works so well. The key section of the essay books at each season of "BtVS" in turn from the perspective of Big Bads and Emotional Traumas. This is the perfect introductory essay for this collection because it makes a clear case for how patterns and meaning become significant in this series. The only problem is that as the most comprehensive look at "BtVS" in this collection, readers (whether academicians or fans) will find all the rest of these efforts pale in comparison.

2. Boyd Tonkin, "Entropy as Demon: Buffy in Southern California," might have the most erroneous title of the bunch because the article focuses much more on So Cal than notions of entropy. Whereas "Angel" deals more explicitly with the cultural mythology of Los Angeles, "BtVS" creates a fictional local with Sunnydale that Tonkin argues "gives a fresh, and quite distinctive, twist to a strain of Southern Californian suburban noir that has flourished at least since the 1930s." However, the best parts of this essay look at the way "BtVS" confronts genre cliches and typologies.

3. Brian Wall and Michael Zryd, "Vampire Dialectics: Knowledge, Institutions and Labour" looks at the battles of Buffy and Angel with supernatural creatures as allegorical battles with the very logic or modernity. Writing in the tradition of Walter Benjamin and Fredric Jameson, this essay might be a struggle for many readers, but there are a couple of very interesting sections in which they look at the death of Joyce as the first "real" death in the series (all others being essentially "symbolic") and look at the evolution of Giles's character.

4. Steve Wilson, "Laugh, Spawn of Hell, Laugh," focuses on the jokes in Buffy and not just Xander's lame jokes but also the larger humor of casting adolescent growing pains as externalized demons. Wilson goes to great pains to catalogue the times of "time-honoured buffoonery" that abound on the show, making connections to the comic impulse in history from William Shakespeare to David Letterman with extensive dialogue examples. This essay might be much ado about nothing, but it will probably be one of the more enjoyable ones for readers.

5. Karen Sayer, "It Wasn't Our World Anymore--They Made It Theirs: Reading Space and Place," looks at the concept of Home on both "BtVS" and "Angel." Sayer is particularly interested in how the group on each soul takes over the space of a specific individual (e.g., Giles in terms of the library, his apartment and the Magic Box on "BtVS"). However, Occam's razor reminds us that
these shows have "x" number of sets and building/finding/using news ones costs money. Just keep that particular grain of salt in mind while you read this one.

6. Zoe-Jane Playden's "'What You Are, What's To Come': Feminism, citizenship, and the divine" starts off with the idea that important aspects of Virginia Woolf's seminal feminist manifesto are reflected in "BtVS." Playden uses the metaphor of Buffy on patrol to explore some pretty heavy philosophical notions and deals most explicitly with Christian imagery and Buffy's spirituality. I think this is probably the most ambitious essay in the collection.

7. Anne Millard Daugherty's "Just a Girl: Buffy as Icon" is concerned with how Buffy exists as a "post-gaze" product (i.e., she functions as a "feminist spectator icon"). Daugherty looks at the episodes "Beauty and the Beasts," "Family," and "Buffy vs. Dracula" to argue that no matter how cute Buffy is, she remains an icon for female representation.

8. Dave West's "'Concentrate on the kicking movie': "Buffy" and East Asian Cinema" argues that "BtVS" draws thematically on the entire tradition of East Asian cinema while using those themes in a decidedly different context. However, surprisingly West draws more upon the films of Akira Kurosawa, most notably "Seven Samurai" and "Yojimbo," rather than the Hong Kong martial art films that seem an obvious reference point. The more you know Kurosawa, the more you will enjoy this essay.

9. Esther Saxey's "Staking a Claim: The Series and Its Slash Fan-Fiction," is the essay that may well send the more innocent Buffy viewers who have stumbled across this book running to the hill. Slash is a genre of fan-fiction in which the relationships between characters are developed along overtly loving and sexual lines (i.e., a different interpretation for all that tension between Spike and Xander). However, the key point of Saxey's essay is how the series actually invites such interpretations. The "gay" subtext of Buffy's "coming out" as a Slayer to her mom was particularly interesting as was her exploration of the Buffy-Faith dynamic. This essay actually devotes relatively little time to actual examples of slash stories.

10. Ian Shuttleworth's "''They always mistake me for the character I play!': Transformation, identity and role-playing in the Buffyverse (and a defence of fine acting)", makes the compelling argument that actors in genre shows are called upon for greater complexity of performance than do most naturalistic dramas. This essay examines the complexity of identity as a major thread in both series, with some solid analysis of Xander, Willow and Giles.

There are some nice critical insights into "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" in this volume, and I think that overall, despite the academic verbiage, most of the show's fans will be able to follow along.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Must have if you like talking and thinking..., January 6, 2004

By 

Kate Page (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel (Tauris Parke Paperbacks) (Paperback)

I can't begin to describe what it was like to get this as a Christmas present a couple of years ago. As a confirmed Buffy addict and a modern lit major, there were times where the "watch Buffy" parties lasted much longer than my friends could stand because I wanted to TALK ABOUT THE SHOW. Finally here was a volume of people who were just like me - well, maybe better educated and clear spoken, but you get the idea.

If you're new to a show that's was on the air for 7 or so seasons, and like a little light theory, I'd advocate getting this book simply to put in perspective what all of those crazies are talking about. While every essay may not strike a chord, some of them will begin the painful process of explaining just why there are a number of fanatics out there who will watch this silly main character fulfill improbably plot lines till the very end. Read She saved the world. A lot. - An introduction to the themes and structures of Buffy and Angel. Don't skip it. It's the most important one for you.

And for those of you who loved the show in the good old days but can't watch it past season three (because that's when it started to get bad), there's plenty of material here for you as well. Most of the discussions center around the early years - with good reason. That's when the identity of the show was forming itself and so many of the characteristics that make it so exciting were created. And they do talk about them, with abandon.

Then for everyone who's like me, and watched the show till the bitter end, not just because you didn't have anything else to do on Tuesday nights, but because the characters (even when they were developed badly) and the sequences (even when they become overly dramatic) still had an almost inexpressible draw - you'll love this book because it whets your appetite for more. Each essay will call up just as many memories of watching the show as it does ask some of those questions your non-lit friends just don't want to entertain (or your het friends just don't want to discuss - see Staking a Claim #9).

But in a very real sense, these essays seem like introductions to topics that can be discussed at greater length. Maybe it's simply wishful thinking on my part, but I think almost every chapter could begin it's own book. Maybe someday?

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A model of how to write about popular media, August 24, 2003

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Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel (Tauris Parke Paperbacks) (Paperback)

Let's face it: academics are people, too. And like everyday folk, they enjoy being fans. Truth be told, the contributors didn't write these essays so much because they had deep insights into the nature of society, but because they, like me and probably you, love BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and ANGEL. I don't fault them for this: I praise them.

We are currently seeing a growing number of academic books focusing on Buffy/Angel. I am completely on the fence as to whether this one or the volume edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery--FIGHTING THE FORCES: WHAT'S AT STAKE IN BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER--is the better. Both are superior to the more recent BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER AND PHILOSOPHY: FEAR AND TREMBLING IN SUNNYDALE, edited by James B. South. Interestingly, all the academic studies so far have been anthologies. It will be curious to see if anyone undertakes a book-length study.

For the most part, these essays in this collection are very interesting. I suspect that each individual will respond more or less strongly to various essays. I particularly enjoyed the essays in the first half of the volume, especially "Vampire dialectics: Knowledge, institutions and labour" by Brian Wall and Michael Zyrd. I had a lot less interest in an essay discussing Buffy in terms of East Asian martial arts films. And I must confess that I am utterly baffled by Slash fiction--i.e., fan fiction depicting major characters from television shows in kinky homosexual relationships, a practice that originated in STAR TREK. Personally, the appeal of imaging Xander and Spike as lovers utterly escapes me. The essay dealing with this aspect of Buffy, therefore, failed to engage me. But I acknowledge another reader might prefer those essays that I found dull to those I found invigorating.

What is not debatable is the high quality of the essays as a whole. All anthologies are uneven, either in the abilities of the individual contributors, or in the intrinsic appeal each essay makes to a particular reader. No reader is likely to enjoy all of this collection, but I'd bet that any academically oriented fan of BUFFY and ANGEL will find more than a few to their liking. I heartily recommend this.

I should note that there is a second book with nearly the same title edited by Roz Kaveney scheduled for publication in January of 2004. I am unclear as to whether this will be a reprint or a new, expanded, and updated edition. The pagination for the new book shows it to be longer. At any rate, I would heartily recommend anyone interested in this one to also investigate that book, to determine whether it is a second, distinct volume.