BAILII is celebrating 24 years of free online access to the law! Would you consider making a contribution?
No donation is too small. If every visitor before 31 December gives just £1, it will have a significant impact on BAILII's ability to continue providing free access to the law.
Thank you very much for your support!

Professor of Law
Faculty of Law
University of Leicester
<[email protected]>

© Copyright 2003 Anthony Bradney.
First published in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues.

---

The analysis of law and popular culture is a nascent area of study in Great Britain. This article, a contribution to that area, examines the changing image of law and law enforcement that is found in the first six series of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’. For most of the first three series the programme follows many of the conventions of the traditional police series with Buffy and her friends playing the role of a non-state police force operating within a hierarchical command structure. As with other police series, it offers an inherently unrealistic account where law is seen as being clear and simple and law enforcement a straightforward matter. Series four to six offer a more complex view of the world with the notion of the legitimacy of external authority being rejected. Laws are seen as chosen rather than imposed and the choice we make of law is seen as being linked to the familial connections that we enter into. The programme thus offers a sophisticated interpretation of the nature of law and the role that law plays in people’s lives.

---

Contents

---

Analysis of the relationship between law and literature is now a well-established area of research activity within the law school.⁽¹⁾ Initially a largely American phenomenon, there is now an increasing amount of such work coming out of British law schools, addressing a wide range of questions (see, for example, Ward, 1995; Freeman and Lewis, 1999, Williams, 2002b). The great majority of this work, whether in Great Britain or the Unites States, has focussed on literature seen as high art. Discussion has largely been of ‘Great Expectations’, ‘The Trial’ or other similar works. Works of popular culture have, by contrast, received less attention in British university law schools. Even in the United States, ‘[i]t is only quite recently that the study of law and popular culture [has] entered the citadel of legal scholarship’ (Friedman and Rosen-Zvi, 2001, p 1413). Without seeking to deny the importance of that work which has been done in the area of law and literature, this neglect of popular culture by legal scholars may, for a number of reasons, be a mistake.

As Steiner has noted,

In terms of simple quantitative impact on the population it is popular culture rather than high art that is important. BBC2’s showing of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (hereafter BtVS), the programme that is the subject of this article, regularly attracts three million viewers for the early evening broadcast and one million viewers for the late evening broadcast (Ratings). 800,000 viewers saw the first episode of the latest, sixth series of BtVS broadcast in Great Britain, even though it was screened on Sky One and not on a traditional terrestrial channel and even though it was an extended two-hour programme (Buffy fans, 2002).

Moreover, as in the United States, ‘our knowledge and experience of the outside world is increasingly available only from mass media, and predominantly from television’ (Harris, 1998a, 43-44). Images of law in popular culture thus merit study because of their ubiquity, as does the study of the inter-relationship between law and popular culture (Redhead, 1995; Sherwin, 2002; Thornton 2002).

Some work, largely American, has already been done in the area of law and popular culture, as, for example, in the case of Giller’s examination of ‘LA Law’ and Joseph and Carlin’s analysis of ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ (Gillers, 1989; Joseph and Carlin, 1992). In this article I will seek to expand on such work by looking at the interplay between the themes and images of law, authority and familial connection in BtVS. It is my contention that, as BtVS develops, so we see a rejection of traditional accounts of authority and law as being things that are given to us or determined outside ourselves as individuals in favour of an increasingly complex examination of the question of how we, as individuals, decide which laws we will live by. Moreover, I will argue that BtVS suggests an interrelationship between the laws that we choose and the familial relationships that we create.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

BtVS cannot be seen as being a typical example of popular culture. Much has already been made of the ‘complex texts’ in the series and, indeed, of the quality of its acting (Kaveney, 2002b, 3; Shuttleworth, 2002). It has already generated two volumes of critical essays (Kaveney, 2002a: Wilcox and Lavery, 2002), individual articles in a variety of academic journals (see, for example, Braun, 2000) and an academic journal, ‘Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies’, solely concerned with its analysis. The fact that both the journal ‘American Libraries’ and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington have published articles about BtVS is illustrative of the range of interest in the programme (DeCandido, 1999; Cordesman, 2001). Given the fact that the series is relatively new, the first episode only being screened in the United States on the 10^th March 1997 and in Great Britain on 30^th December 1998 (Topping, 2000, 30), this suggests unusual qualities in the series that sets it aside from many other examples of popular culture.

If, as Rahv suggests, the novel’s claim to being high art comes from the time when the Goncourt brothers, in their preface to ‘Germinie Lacerteux’, are able to assert that

then BtVS is arguably high art. BtVS is, amongst other things, a self-conscious exploration of moral problems.

Buffy is the keystone signifier of a youth community that fights Evil and deals with reconstructed problems of middle-class, Anglo, heteronormative, North American teenage socialization: shifting gender scripts, sexual maturation, sexual violence, drug use, peer pressure, clueless adults, the numbing banality of educational systems, the fragmented heterosexual, middle-class family unit, and the failures of the rational world paradigm. (Susan Owen, 1997, p 27)

It contains ‘allegories of contemporary society’ and tries ‘to understand the real and offer suggestions for change’ (Wall and Zryed, 2001, p 62 and p 53). This ambivalent status of BtVS as both high art and popular culture is not surprising.

However, questions such as whether or not, notwithstanding its provenance, BtVS has merits that give it the status of high art and, indeed, whether or not high art and popular culture are separable concepts are not ones that are germane to this article. Whatever else it is, BtVS is a part of popular culture. Whatever else it contains, BtVS does contain themes that relate to familial connection, authority and law.

Equally, for the purposes of this article, it is not necessary to contend that the themes that are under analysis here are at the core of BtVS or are of overwhelming importance for its audience. It is evident that these themes do have resonances for some fans, with, for example, one web-site, ‘Above the Law’, being largely devoted to them and another, ‘All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series’, referring to them along with a range of other matters. It is probable, given the frequency with which they are rehearsed in BtVS, that these themes have some significance for many or even most fans. Yet, at the same time, it is also true that ‘[i]n the discussion around fandom, the authentic voices of fans themselves are rarely heard’ (Harris, 1998b, p 5). What fans and viewers find fascinating in popular culture and what critics find interesting are plainly not precisely co-terminous (Tulloch, 2000, chp 1). This is an article about themes that are to be found in BtVS. It is based upon a close reading of the programmes. Thus, ‘the activity of reading in which I...[engage] here is conjectural and open to dispute...’ (Sparkes, 1992, p 149). Precisely how viewers and fans of BtVS react to and construct these themes, precisely how they react to the dissemination of information and opinion that the series contains, the question of ‘audience reception’, are all matters that would be the subject of a different kind of analysis (Tulloch, 2000). Equally, I would accept that other themes might be of more importance in BtVS than the connections between law, family and authority discussed here. Thus, for example, Early might well be correct in arguing that BtVS is ‘pre-eminently a narrative of the disorderly rebellious female’ (Early, 2002, 3). I would merely want to add that it is also about law, authority and family.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

Traditional analyses in the area of law and literature start with a relatively clear subject. There may be some textual differences between editions of the work being analysed or a question as to the correct translation of a book. Nonetheless there is little dispute as to what is ‘Great Expectations’ or ‘The Trial’. By way of contrast works of popular culture are sometimes a somewhat elusive phenomenon (see, for example, the much analysed 1970s police series ‘The Sweeney’ (Drummond, 1976, p 15)). BtVS takes seven major forms. It is both a film, a television series (or, to be more precise, a series of six television series with a 7^th now being broadcast in the USA), a set of video tapes covering the six series, a set of DVDs (covering, in Great Britain, the first three series), a set of scripts (with the first and half of the second series being available in published form and all 6 series being available as unofficial transcripts on the web), a book series and a comic book series. There are also three minor forms: an untransmitted pilot for the television series, which has a rather different plot-line to the subsequent series (Topping, 2000, pp 22-25); a video game that closely follows the plot-line of the first few series; and the spin-off television series ‘Angel’ (with three series having been broadcast to date), which has several main characters who originally appeared in BtVS and in which Buffy the Vampire Slayer herself occasionally appears and a comic book series. BtVS has also been translated into a number of different languages with these translations spawning both fan web-sites and a range of secondary literature (Melton, 2001). Within these forms there are variations. Thus, for example, the television programmes broadcast in the United States are not always the same as the programmes broadcast in Great Britain (Alternate). Programmes have been edited to take account of the different time available for episodes in programmes schedules (Musical Episode, 2002). Even more importantly for the purposes of this article, ‘scenes and even entire episodes have been cut by UK broadcasters to conform to taste and decency guidelines’ (Hill and Calcutt, 2001). Differences between broadcasts are sometimes important with, for example, some fans in a petition, arguing that cuts made by Sky One to series six affects both ‘the character’s development and the overall story arc of the season’ (Buffy fans, 2002).

Some of the different forms that BtVS takes closely reflect each other. This is true of the scripts, both official and unofficial, the television series, the DVDs and the video tapes. Even here, however, none of these forms is a perfect copy of another. Some forms deal with different time periods. The film, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, narrates events that are a historical precursor to the television series, the book series includes both ‘novelizations’ developed from television show scripts and ‘original novels expanding the story line of the series’ whilst the comic books contain ‘new story lines...consistent with the show’ (Melton, 2001; Melton 2002).

In this context of variant forms of BtVS, it is important to identify what constitutes BtVS for the purposes of this article. This article is based on a reading of the official and unofficial scripts for the first six television series and the video tapes available in Great Britain for the those series.⁽²⁾ It is these forms that are the heart of BtVS as an artefact of popular culture, generating large viewing figures. Moreover, it is these forms that have been the focus of critical attention to date (see, for example, Kaveney, 2002b). Using other forms of BtVS would certainly produce alternative examples of the themes and images under analysis in this article. It might also result in different arguments.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

The initial premise of BtVS is that human beings share the world with vampires, demons and other supernatural creatures that are, on the whole, hostile to humanity. As Buffy is told early in the first episode of the first series,

The Slayer, though human, has heightened ‘[a]gility, clarity, stamina and strength’ (‘Checkpoint’, Episode 90, Series Five, Act II). Her main task is to kill vampires and demons. She is responsible to a Watcher who is her ‘commander’ and who trains her (‘Consequences’, Episode 49, Series Three, Part One; ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’, Episode One, Series One, Act Two, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000a, 30). In turn the Watcher ‘in matters of tradition and protocol’ is accountable to a Watcher’s Council (‘Helpless’, Episode 46, Series Three, Part 3). The Watcher’s Council has final responsibility for determining both what the Watcher and the Slayer should do, basing their decisions on ‘laws that have existed longer than civilization’ (‘Graduation: Part One’, Episode 55, Series Three).

At the level of its basic premises, BtVS is a programme that is very much about law and its administration but, in being this, it is little more than a traditional police series. The police, Buffy and later her friends, have no uniforms and the villains, vampires and demons, may look strange; nevertheless, essentially we are still in the realm of ‘Dixon of Dock Green’, ‘The Bill’ or a hundred other similar programmes. Indeed, in ‘What’s My Line? – Part One’, both her school’s vocational aptitude tests and Giles, her Watcher, separately tell Buffy that her future career, once she has left high school, ought to be in the police (‘What’s My Line? – Part One’, Episode 21, Series Two, Act One and Act Two, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001b), 14 and 25). The traditional state police are disparaged as being irrelevant;

are largely shown as being incompetent, even when working within their own supposed area of expertise (failing, for example, to notice that a ‘man’ that Buffy has supposedly murdered is, in fact, a robot (‘Ted’ Episode 23, Series Two, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001b), and sometimes seem, at least at senior level, to have some connections with vampires and demons (‘I Only Have Eyes or You’, Episode 31, Series Two, Part 2; ‘Lover´s Walk, Episode 42, Series Three, Part 2) but the basic setting for Buffy puts her in her own hierarchical policing structure with her own given set of laws to enforce; a law-enforcer working within a pluralistic legal system which offers ‘an alternate system of power and control’ to that of the state (Buinicki and Enns, 2001).

It is easy to underestimate the degree to which BtVS starts off by being a police series. Superficially there may seem to be a world of difference between a typical police series such as, for example, ‘The Sweeney’, which has a realist setting (London as viewers could then see it) (Paterson, 1976, p 10), portrays and celebrates a macho, masculinist culture, the Flying Squad, which ‘map out male fantasies central to upholding the patriarchal order’ (Tulloch, 1990, p 72) and whose characters are mature adults, and BtVS, which has a much more idealised physical setting (southern California but a southern California that is physically perfect), is overtly and intentionally feminist with its strong central female character (Vint, 2002) and whose main characters are mostly adolescent. In fact, however, there are many points of connection between the two programmes. Drummond’s 1976 analysis of the ‘The Sweeney’ is uncannily accurate as an account of BtVS.

Within The Sweeney a binary dramatic structure unites a paradigm of representatives of the law against an episodically varied repertory of representatives of the world of crime. Since the forces of law and order predominate, Regan, Carter and Haskins...form an almost perpetual ensemble versus opponents inevitably characterised by fictional ephemerality; intruding into fiction, non-regular characters are much more likely to be transgressors – expelled from the contest, they are expelled from the fiction. In other words, the actant ‘villain’ remains essential within the opposition, its actorial expression is in constant flux. (Drummond, 1976, p 24)

Mutatis mutandis, much the same could be said of BtVs. Demons and vampires usually die unnamed and rarely appear in more than one episode. With the exception of the characters Angel and Spike, none appear regularly in more than one series. Angel does not breach the binary divide since, though a vampire, he possesses a soul, works with Buffy and the Scooby Gang and becomes Buffy’s lover. Spike is anomalous because in Series Two and Series Three he is unambiguously evil. However, in Series Four the insertion of a chip into his brain makes it impossible for him to hurt human beings and he gradually begins to work, albeit ‘for a mix of reasons not themselves good nor interested in the promotion of good’, with Buffy and her friends, the Scooby Gang (Boycott, 2001, 8). In series five Spike´s deepening feelings for Buffy changes his motivation and he shows himself capable of self-sacrifice almost to the point of death (‘Intervention’ Episode 96, Series Five, Act IV). In Series Six he becomes, for a time, her lover.

Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang, in contrast to the anonymous vampires and demons, are a constant through all six series. From the second episode Giles accepts that Willow and Xander will work with Buffy in her slaying activities even though the Slayer normally works alone and in secret (‘The Harvest’, Episode 2, Series One, Act Four, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000a, p 127). Other characters are gradually assimilated into what becomes the Scooby Gang who help Buffy. Although some members of the Gang leave the first two members, Willow and Xander, who make their first appearance in episode one, remain through all six series. Nevertheless, although BtVS starts out as a stereotypical police series, I will argue that the development of the story arcs through the first three series gradually change the plot setting from a mildly interesting example of a well-established genre to a much more challenging programme.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

From the very beginning of BtVS, Buffy proves to be a recalcitrant Slayer. Giles her Watcher’s first diary entry regarding her reads, ‘Slayer is wilful and insolent’ (‘Bad Girls’, Episode 48, Series Three). There are certainly times when Buffy fails to follow Giles’ directions (‘Reptile Boy’, Episode 17, Series Two, Act Four, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001a, p 52). In series two, when Kendra, another Slayer, suggests that she and Buffy return to their Watcher to ask for orders, Buffy responds ‘[o]rders? I don’t take orders. I do things my way’ and when asked in series four whether she ever obeyed the orders of the Watchers Council, Buffy responds, ‘[s]ure. The ones I was going to do any way’ (‘What’s My line? – Part Two’, Episode 22, Series Two, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001b, p 14; ‘This Year’s Girl’, Episode 71, Series Four). These remarks, however, are not entirely accurate, since in the early series of BtVS, Buffy does evidence a regular, albeit reluctant, willingness to obey instructions. Thus, for example, she breaks a much-wanted date in order to join Giles in a fruitless search for a vampire (‘Never Kill a Boy on the First Date’, Episode 5, Series One, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000a, p 274). At this level a hierarchy prevails; as Buffy says to Giles, ‘[y]ou’re the Watcher, I just work here’ (‘When She Was Bad’, Episode 13, Series Two, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001a, p 12).

For most of the first three series of BtVs, Buffy is portrayed as a deviant police-officer doing the job, vampire slaying and demon hunting, that is given to her in her own, sometimes unofficial, way but nevertheless working within an established hierarchy. In the first few series of BtVS, Buffy, in her ambivalent attitude to hierarchy, does not represent vigilante justice, as McClelland has suggested (McClelland, 2001), because vigilante justice is the mob violence that is exemplified when Buffy and Willow are nearly burnt as witches in ‘Gingerbread’ (‘Gingerbread’ Epsiode 45, Series Three). Instead, as in Hurd’s description of Regan in ‘The Sweeney’, Buffy is practising ‘rule-suppression in pursuit of law’ (Hurd, 1976, p 50). Indeed there are archetypical examples of Hurd’s rule-suppression in BtVS as, for example, when Buffy physically intimidates and then hits a human suspect in order to obtain information in one episode and when she tortures a vampire for the same purpose in another (‘Band Candy’, Episode 40, Series Three, Part Three; ‘When She Was Bad’, Episode 13 Series Two, Act Four, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001a, pp 442-43). Her method of securing information may lie outside the strictures of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 but her aim is to prevent the commission of serious crimes. Police series ‘return continually to the conditions under which the hero is or is not entitled to use force or resort to extra-legal methods’ (Sparkes, 1992, p 133); so does BtVS. In BtVS, in the first three series, we find an example of the ‘empowerment and constraint’ that is the characteristic position of the police in this genre (Sparkes, 1992, p 133). Thus when Faith, another Slayer, accidentally kills a human being, believing them to be a vampire, Buffy knows that this is wrong and has to be reported to her hierarchical command structures (‘Consequences’ Episode 49, Series Three, Part One). Rule transgression is one thing; breach of the law another.

While superficially challenging traditional notions of hierarchy and authority in relation to law, by denigrating the position of the state´s police, the programmes reinforce a respect for a form of authority, the position of the Watcher and the Watcher’s Council, that mirrors the authority that is normally, formally accorded to the state police. Though some forms of authority are rejected the necessity for externally located authority is accepted. Moreover, in a reversal of the Weberian progression, the Watcher’s Council legitimates its authority simply by an appeal to its place in history; in Weberian terms, traditional authority is thus acknowledged and legal-rational authority, in the form of the state’s police, is ignored (Weber, 1968, p 215). Far from BtVS being about,

it is, at this stage in the development of the series, about Buffy accepting her pre-destined relationship with authority, and the Scooby Gang, choosing to accept the same rule. (The Scooby Gang’s early relationship to Giles is similar to Buffy’s; obedience tinged with rebellion (‘The Harvest’ Episode 2, Series One Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2000a, p 82 and p 89)).

In positing the notion that there is an element of individual choice involved in deciding which laws and which authority to submit to, BtVS is to some extent subversive of traditional concepts of law and authority. However, the extent of the subversion of the discourse is limited by the fact that the selection is seen as being between an authority, the state’s police, that is portrayed as being ‘incompetent and easily thwarted’ and an authority, the Watcher and the Watcher’s Council, that is portrayed as offering access to knowledge in a context where knowledge is seen as being ‘the ultimate weapon’ (Clark and Miller, 2001; Wandless, 2001; ‘Never Kill a Boy on the First Date’, Episode 5, Series One, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000a, p 290). One chooses between the police who do not know what they are doing and the police who do know what they are doing. In the context of the situation in modern liberal democracies, where state policing has frequently come to be seen as being problematic by a wide range of people within the population, the choice offered in the early series of BtVS is thus as much a way of reinforcing respect for authority as it is a way of subverting that respect. As in all police series, BtVs calms our fear of

On one level the propositions in the programme in the first three series are that criminals are wholly different to ‘us’, being vampires and demons, and that, notwithstanding the failings of the police that we see in our everyday lives, there are out there police who are worthy of our respect; people who will, as Buffy’s tombstone reads, save the world ‘a lot’ (‘The Gift’ Episode 100, Series Five, Act IV). The world is a simple and thus a comforting place.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

Part of the key to the change in Buffy’s relationship with authority during the story arcs in the first three series lies in the emotional relationship that she has with Giles, her Watcher, and with others around her. Here, from the very beginning, BtVS exhibits a dimension that is unusual in police series. In most police series emotional relationships for the central characters are limited and not infrequently dysfunctional. It is almost a given within the genre that being a successful police officer means giving up connection with others. In ‘The Sweeney’

It is Buffy’s relationship with Giles and, to a lesser extent, her relationship with people such as Willow and Xander that is the key to BtVS changing from a police series into something that is rather more sophisticated in its analysis of the place in law in society.

The fact that Buffy has any emotional connection with Giles or anybody else is, in itself, a deviation from the normal patterns of the hierarchical relationship between Watcher and Slayer. Kendra, another Slayer, has been taught by her Watcher that ‘[e]motions are weaknesses’ and that family or friends are a distraction from the calling of being a Slayer (‘What’s My line? – Part Two’, Episode 22, Series Two, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001b, p 38). When a new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, is appointed to replace Giles he displays no interest in anything other than training Buffy and directing her in her slaying activities (‘Bad Girls’, Episode 48, Series Three, Part One). In contrast, even in the first series, at the very outset of their relationship, Giles seeks to comfort Buffy in her realisation that her calling as a Slayer will make any kind of normal life difficult if not impossible by recounting his own feelings when, as a 10 year old, he was told that he was destined to be a Watcher (‘Never Kill a Boy on the First Date’, Episode 5, Series One, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000a, p 318). His attention to her emotional state is a persistent and increasingly strong theme in BtVS, as is her concern for him, and, as this develops, so hierarchical structures are replaced by the emotional structures that will come to dominate her life (Kaveney, 2002b, p 5). At the beginning of the third series, when Buffy, having run away from her duties as Slayer and having run away from Sunnydale, returns, the Scooby Gang’s concern is not that Giles will think she has disobeyed his orders but rather that she ‘made him lay awake every night worrying about you’ (‘Dead Man’s Party’, Episode 36, Series Three, Part 1). This emotional concern is reciprocal. As early as the second episode of the second series Buffy has given Giles advice on successful dating, which he has attempted to follow (‘Some Assembly Required’, Episode 14, Series Two, Act One and Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001a, pp 6-7 and pp 30-31). Later in the same series Giles turns to alcohol when he is pursued by the demon Eyghon (‘The Dark Age’ Episode 20, Series Two, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001b) 17-18). Buffy´s reaction, in Bowers’ phrase, is one of ‘parent-like attention’ (Bowers, 2001, 6). In the end, the Watcher’s Council sack Giles as Watcher because, he is told, ‘[y]ou have a father’s love for the child’ (‘Helpless’, Episode 46, Series Three, Part 4). In fact the relationship between the two is more complex and idiosyncratic than a simple paternal one, involving Giles being mentor, friend and confidant but it is a connection that is sufficiently strong, as Buffy’s mother herself observes, to challenge Buffy’s relationship with her mother (‘Anne’ Episode 35, Series Three, Part 2).

The development of Buffy’s relationship with Giles from an apparently hierarchical one to a wholly emotional and supportive one is something that progresses through the first three series of BtVS. There are, however, two defining moments. The first is Giles’ sacking as Buffy’s Watcher by the Council noted above; the second is Buffy’s later refusal to continue to work with the Council ((‘Helpless’, Episode 46, Series Three, Part 4; ‘Graduation: Part 1’, Episode 55, Series Three). Although initially after the sacking of Giles Buffy accepts that she will have to obey the orders of her new Watcher, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, arguing ‘[t]hat’s the job’ (‘Bad Girls’, Episode 48, Series Three, Part One), her attitude very soon turns to direct disobedience (‘Bad Girls’, Episode 48, Series Three, Part Two). In the case of Giles Buffy had sometimes subverted his authority and had frequently debated and negotiated her position with him (as for example when she tries to become a cheerleader, ‘The Witch’ Episode Series One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2000a, 133-134). In the case of Wesley, Buffy quickly begins to confront and ignore his standing as Watcher. When Wesley refuses to trade the Box of Gavrok, which is necessary to make a demon invincible, for Willow’s life, arguing the greater good of the greater number is served by its destruction even given Willow’s probable death, Buffy rejects his order insisting the trade takes place (‘Choices’ Episode 53, Series Three). When the Watcher’s Council refuse to provide information about the anti-toxin that will save Angel, her vampire-lover’s life, because ‘it’s not Council policy to cure vampires’, Buffy’s response is to repudiate Wesley and the Council, declining to take any further orders from either. When Wesley describes her actions as ‘mutiny’ she replies, ‘I like to think of it as graduation’ (‘Graduation Part 1’ Episode 55, Series Three). Buffy has finally fully rejected compliance to external authority. Much later, in episode 90 in series five, when the Watcher’s Council seek to reassert their authority and test Buffy and the Scooby Gang, Buffy once again rejects their authority and insists that the Council must work with her and the Scooby Gang on her terms (‘Checkpoint’ Episode 90, Series Five, Act IV).

At the point that Buffy resigns from the Council, BtVS becomes much more wholeheartedly subversive of traditional notions of authority and the programme moves away from the genre of the police series. Now the contention in the series is not that some authority fails but, rather, that hierarchical forms of authority fail. At this point in the development of the series Clark and Miller’s observation about the series, that it is about ‘struggling against all the various authorities to which they are subject’ (emphasis added) becomes correct (Clark and Miller, 2001). Buffy, the Scooby Gang and Giles must now decide for themselves what they will do. Yet, whilst walking away from the Watcher’s Council, Buffy does not give up her role as Slayer. In the final episodes of Series Three, despite her resignation from the Council’s jurisdiction, Buffy, the Scooby Gang and Giles work to both save Angel’s life and prevent the Mayor of Sunnydale changing into a demon. The cop is no longer a cop but the job remains a focus for her life.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

Buffy’s final rejection of the Council highlights a problem that has already begun to become apparent much earlier in the series. What laws, if any, should Buffy obey? The Council’s laws are in essence quite simple: Kill vampires and demons and make the world safe for humanity. For Buffy, these laws are not sufficient from early in the first series when she discovers that Angel, with whom she is beginning to develop a romantic attachment, is a vampire. Convinced that he will not hurt her, she cannot think of killing him (‘Angel’ Episode 7, Series One, Act Two, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2000b, p 38). The crudity, and thus the unacceptability, of the Council’s laws is a theme that BtVS returns to again and again. In series five Giles says of the Watcher’s Council, ‘essentially their agenda is the same as ours, they want to save the world and kill demons’ (‘Checkpoint’, Episode 90, Series Five, Teaser). Anya, a member of the Scooby Gang who is a thousand year old ex-vengeance demon, immediately responds, ‘[k]ill current demons, right? Current demons.’ In fact the Council’s agenda is very different from the complexities of the moral world that Buffy and the Scooby Gang inhabit. Towards the end of series two, Buffy observes that her date for the High School Prom is Angel and Xander’s is Anya. ‘Some of us are with demons, but I think that’s a valid lifestyle choice’ (‘The Prom’ Episode 54, Series Two). When Buffy is readying herself for a final fight in series six she first seeks to leave her sister Dawn for protection with Spike, a vampire, and then, when he is not available, leaves her with Clem, a demon; she has already charged Spike with Dawn’s protection in series five (‘Villains’ Episode 120, Series Six, Act Three; ‘The Gift’ Episode 100, Series Five, Act II). ‘Kill vampires and demons’ is not a satisfactory law for Buffy, despite the fact that she is the Chosen One, the Slayer.

In series two, Buffy, tiring of the effort to achieve an understanding of the true nature of the moral world, asks Giles to comfort her by assuring her that there are simple morality verities. He tells her,

Buffy responds with the single word ‘[l]iar’. She wants to believe such things but, by now, her experience belies their truth. Yet the laws of the Council are based on verities like these. Once Buffy begins to see them as lies and to reject not just the rules relating to how the Council’s laws should be enforced but also the norms of the law itself, the question becomes, what law is then to govern Buffy or indeed the Scooby Gang? ‘Normative chaos is subsumed under law which makes things certain and predictable’(Bańkowski, 2001, p 26). Without the Council’s law how will Buffy live and how will order, both in the world and for her, be maintained? This problem becomes increasingly insistent as BtVS develops.

Given the physical superiority that her powers as a Slayer give her, one obvious potential answer to the question what laws should Buffy obey is that Slayers, as Faith another Slayer, puts it ‘don’t need the law. We are the law’ (‘Consequences’ Episode 49, Series Three, Part 4). (Cordelia, a member of the Scooby Gang, also makes a similar suggestion (‘Ted’ Episode 23, Series Two, Act Three, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2001b, p 38). Faith’s solution to the question of law is to reject the authority of the Watcher’s Council in favour of a nihilism that first allows her to take pleasure in the job of Slayer simply because it is ‘fun’ (‘Faith, Hope and Trick’ Episode 37, Series Three, Part 2) and subsequently to pursue whatever she sees as being to her own personal advantage, leading her later to work with rather than against a demon seeking an apocalypse (‘Enemies’ Episode 51, Series Three). ‘Life for a Slayer is very simple’ suggests Faith, ‘want...take’ (‘Bad Girls’ Episode 48, Series Three, Part 2). However, although this position briefly attracts Buffy she quickly rejects it (as, eventually, does Faith herself), even though she is not capable of clearly articulating any reason why Faith is wrong (‘Bad Girls’, Episode 48, Series Three, Part 2; ‘Consequences’ Episode 49, Series Three, Part 2; ‘Who Are You?’ Episode 72, Series Four, Part Four).

Colonel MacNarmara, commander of the Initiative, a military/scientific-style group that fights demons and vampires and who, believing vampires and demons to be ‘just animals...plain and simple’, holds a similar view of the moral universe to that of the Council, describes Buffy and the Scooby Gang as anarchists (‘Doomed’ Episode 67, Series Four); a description that Riley, a member of the Initiative, accepts when he leaves the Initiative and joins the Scooby Gang (‘New Moon Rising’ Episode 75, Series Four). Notwithstanding Buinicki and Enns contrary position, to characterise Buffy and the Scooby Gang thus is not inappropriate, particularly after Buffy has resigned from the Watcher’s Council. Buinicki and Enns’ view that ‘Buffy and her allies actually fulfil the promise of Foucault’s institutional apparatus’, with their actions embodying ‘modern structures of discipline and punishment’, so that they can seen to be agents of the state, is tenable only if one ignores the fact that, once Buffy has resigned from the Council, they act outside the framework of institutional structures and ‘[t]heir authority...becomes increasingly non-institutional’ (Buinicki and Enns, 2001; Wall and Zyred, 2001, p 60). Indeed, anarchic elements are a feature of the series from the very beginning, even when Buffy can be seen as a police figure. ‘Villainy in Buffy...is consistently associated with hierarchical institutions’ reflecting the ‘increasingly anarchic politics of the show’ (Wall and Zyred, 2001, p 55 and p 56). Topping’s guide to BtVS contains one category heading in his episode descriptions, ‘Authority Sucks!’, which he describes as being ‘for would-be anarchists everywhere’ (Topping, 2001, p 3). Yet, for Buffy and the Scooby Gang to just be anarchists who reject social and civic authority is not enough. They need a reason for doing things as well as a reason for not doing things. Buffy needs something to make her not Faith.

Trilling writes of Forster’s early novels,

For Trilling, in the case of Forster, that is to be found in Forster’s later novel ‘Howards End’. Here, famously, the source of rightful authority is in the imperative

Series four to six of BtVS provide the ‘forceful indication of what right authority should be’ and, in a similar fashion to ‘Howards End’, the source of right authority is found not in the moral worlds of the beast (the Initiative) or the monk (the Watcher’s Council) but in the familial bond, the connection, that Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang make.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

One form of authority that is invariably portrayed as dysfunctional in BtVS is the traditional biological family unit. Families are either broken, as in the case of Buffy, her mother and father being divorced with her father largely and increasingly absent, or together but destructive, as in the case of both Xander and Willow who are emotionally abused by their families (‘Helpless’ Episode 46, Series 3 Part 1; ‘Amends’ Episode 44, Series Three, Part 1; ‘Gingerbread’ Episode 45, Series Three, Part 1). Individual biological family relationships can occasionally be close and supportive, as is generally the case in Buffy’s relationship with her mother, Joyce, and her sister, Dawn. The biological unit as a whole, however, is never portrayed as a success. Yet it is familial connections that provide the source for law once Buffy and the Scooby Gang reject the Council.

Over the various series of BtVS Buffy’ relationship with Giles and the Scooby Gang, and their relationship with each other, becomes more than that that there is between a group of friends. Giles developing quasi-paternal relationship with Buffy has already been noted above. The Scooby Gang’s concern for Buffy, and hers for them, goes beyond an interest in the slaying of vampires and demons, although in the repeated view of Spike, the most emotionally perceptive of all the characters in BtVS, the depth of her connection with them is the most significant reason for her unusually long-lived life as a Slayer (‘The Yoko Factor’ Episode 76, Series Four, Part One; ‘Fool for Love’ Episode 85, Series Five). As BtVS develops through series four to six so the relationship between Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang grows into that of a self-generated organic family that is ‘yielding, shifting and adaptable’, separate from others and protective of its members, yet able to accept new-comers (Sayer, 2002, p 109).

In part the change in the relationship between Buffy and the others is signalled by the way they combat vampires and demons. The legend is that the Slayer fights alone (Topping, 2002, p 12). In fact through all six series Buffy’s eventual success in her major battles is always predicated on the aid of others. Thus, for example, at the end of series one Buffy is only able to defeat the Master, a particularly powerful vampire, because Xander resuscitates her when the Master drowns her (‘Prophecy Girl’ Episode 12, Series One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer 2000b, p 376). However, at this early stage in BtVS, even though it is with assistance, it is still Buffy who is responsible for the fighting in the major confrontations. ‘[W]hen it comes to Battle, Buffy must fight alone...’ (‘School Hard’ Episode 15, Series Two, Act One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2001a, p 15). The climax of series four is, however, strikingly different. Having been unable to physically best Adam, a monster built of parts taken from machines, humans and demons, during the series Buffy, through a spell, joins with Giles, Willow and Xander and becomes ‘We’ with ‘We’ having attributes and skills taken from each of them. ‘We’, not Buffy, then defeats Adam (‘Primeval’ Episode 77, Series Four’). In series five Buffy consistently fails to defeat Glory, a god, with whom she fights. She does slightly better when she fights Glory with Willow but Glory is only beaten when Giles and the whole Scooby Gang fight alongside her (‘Tough Love’ Episode 97 Series Five Act IV; ‘The Gift’ Episode 100, Series Five, Act IV). In series six, though it is still Buffy who is the Vampire Slayer, her relationship with the others takes on a much greater degree of equality. The musical episode ‘Once More, With Feeling’ in series six focuses on Buffy’s angst about her role as the Slayer and on her relationship with the others. Near the beginning of the programme, Buffy sings, ‘What can’t we face if we’re together?/What’s in this place that we can’t weather?/Apocalypse?/We’ve all been there’. The characters commitment to each other is physically as well as intellectually signalled by first the Scooby Gang and then Giles joining Buffy in singing the subsequent verses which largely repeat the opening lines of the song (‘Once More, With Feeling’ Episode 107, Series Six, Act I). Towards the end of the episode everybody again joins in song and ‘walk[s] through the fire’ to challenge the demon, Sweet, with Spike saving Buffy from self-immolation (‘Once More, With Feeling’ Act IV). At the culmination of series six it is Xander who saves the world, whilst Buffy is engaged in a fight that is peripheral to the main action and during which she has to ask for Dawn’s assistance (‘Grave’ Episode 122, Series Six, Act Four). Such examples could be multiplied. In series four to six the Scooby Gang are no longer merely the Slayerettes, as Willow has self-mockingly described herself and Xander in the third episode of BtVS, but instead are, as Buffy says, ‘a unit’ (‘The Witch’, Episode 3, Series One, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, 2000a, p 140; ‘Checkpoint’ Episode 90, Series Five, Act IV).

The familial relationship that Buffy and the others achieve in series four to six is even better illustrated by the emotional support that they offer each other. In series five Tara, Willow’s girl-friend, who is uncertain of her membership of the Gang, is visited by her stereotypically patriarchal family who want her to leave university and return home to look after them, telling her that, as with all women in her family, she is tainted by demon blood and thus incapable of living alone in the outside world. A spell by Tara, intended by her to conceal her supposed demon status from the others, nearly kills Buffy, Giles and the Gang. Despite having just discovered what Tara has done, when Tara’s relatives seek to force the issue, attempting to make her return home against her will, Buffy and the others support her, making her relationship with them the locus of their right to intervene.

Even Spike, who claims not to ‘care what happens’, provides support for Tara by proving she is not a demon and revealing the bogus nature of the Maclay’s claims. ‘There’s no demon in there. That’s just a family legend, am I right? Just a spin to keep the ladies in line.’ The entire scene is played out with Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang ranged out in a line facing the Maclays, protecting Tara. (This kind of shot, with all or most of the members of the ‘family’ in close proximity to each other, is a regular feature of episodes of BtVS.) Earlier in the episode Tara´s father tells Tara that ‘[y]our family loves you, no matter what’ (‘Family’ Act II). His statement proves to be true but to apply more accurately to Tara´s chosen family than to her blood kin (Locklin, 2002, 8).

When Buffy’s mother, Joyce, dies, Buffy takes over her parental role with respect to Dawn. However Giles and the others also help with her and, when Buffy dies at the end of series five, they take over all parental responsibilities with Willow and Tara moving into Buffy’s house to look after Dawn (‘Bargaining (Part 1) Episode 101, Series Six, Act I). They do indeed, as Buffy has instructed them to do just before her death at the end of series five, ‘take care of each other’ (‘The Gift’ Episode 100, series Five, Act IV). Through series four to six Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang’s concern for each other covers both their mundane, everyday lives and their efforts in the world of vampires and demons, ‘the prose and the passion’, and the family they have chosen to be is a more effective and a stronger bond than any biological family they have known.

In ‘Pangs’ Buffy and Riley misquote Robert Frost’s lines from ‘The Death of the Hired Man’, ‘[h]ome is the place where, when you have to go there/They have to take you in’ (‘Pangs’ Episode 64, Series Four, Part 2). In fact Buffy and the members of the Scooby Gang have for various reasons experienced the homes of their biological families as places where, physically or emotionally, they have not necessarily been taken in. Even Buffy’s normally good relationship with her mother was temporarily sundered when her mother, having learnt of her role as the Vampire Slayer, told her to leave home if she intended to continue her slaying activities (‘Becoming (Part 2)’ Episode 34, Series Two, Part Three). Moreover, in general, BtVS presents Buffy’s mother as being ‘naive’ and ‘well meaning but ineffectual’ (Locklin, 2002, 5; Williams, 2002, 61); a person who is of little assistance to her in her life. This contrasts markedly with the more powerful and positive portrayals of Giles and the Scooby Gang. In BtVS friends, Buffy, the Scooby Gang and Giles, ‘are family, because the traditional family unit has fragmented’ (Susan Owen, 1997, 25). It is they who ‘take each other in’ no matter what happens.

The end of the sixth series underscores the depth of the commitment of the characters to each other. When Willow’s lover, Tara, is murdered Willow first tries to kill those she holds responsible for Tara’s death and then, because of her grief, attempts to destroy the world (‘Villain’ Episode 120, Series Six; ‘Two to Go’ Episode 121, Series Six; ‘Grave’ Episode 122, Series Six). Each of the previous five series has also culminated in an attempt to create an apocalypse. On these occasions Buffy and the others have averted the apocalypse by killing the vampire, demon or god that sought the end of the world. In contrast, at the end of series six, though Buffy and the others seek to thwart Willow, their efforts are constrained by their continuing concern for her. She remains part of their family even when she seeks an apocalypse and even when they are unsure how much she continues to care for them (‘Two to Go’ Episode 121, Series Six, Act Three).

In ‘Normal Again’, in series six, the strength of the commitment to chosen rather than biological family is underlined. Having been drugged, Buffy experiences two alternative worlds. In one world she is a patient, who is hospitalised because of her delusions about the existence of both vampires and the friends (the Scooby Gang) who support her. In this world her parents are still married. Buffy is told by her doctors and her parents that she can return to live with her parents if she gives up her delusions. The other world is the world of BtVS. Forced to make a choice between the two worlds, and having been told by her mother that she has ‘people that love’ her and that she must ‘believe in yourself’, Buffy chooses the world of BtVS and her friends, her chosen family, rather than that of her biological family (‘Normal Again’ Episode 117, Series Six, Act Four).

Series four to six does not romanticise the chosen family, portraying it as a perfectly functioning system in antithesis to the imperfections of the biological bond. On the contrary, recurrent themes of series four to six are the failure of people to live up to their obligations to each other, the secrets they keep and the damage that both these things does to them as individuals and to the group as a whole. However, an equally recurrent theme is the attempts that Buffy and the others make to rectify their mistakes and make amends for their errors, with their chosen family, ‘a family founded, not primarily on blood, self-interest or patriarchal control, but instead on love, mutual responsibility and a mission to serve and save others in need’, being the ideal that they try to live up to (Locklin, 2002, 10).

Top | Contents | Bibliography

In ‘Pangs’ Hus, a vengeance spirit, seeks revenge for wrongs done to the Chumash, a native American tribe, when the Europeans colonized the USA (‘Pangs’ Episode 64, Series Four). He kills several people. For Buffy the question of what to do with him is complicated by the fact that Willow sees the conquest of the Chumash as an act of oppression for which reparation ought to be made. Willow argues that they ‘should be helping him redress his wrongs’ and tells Buffy ‘I’m not gonna help you kill him. I’m not on board’. Anya suggests that vengeance is sometimes justified whilst Giles and Spike, in different ways, contend that past wrongs do not justify what Hus is doing. When Xander, who has been infected by the various diseases that Europeans brought to the Humash as part of the cycle of vengeance, asks of the Hus, ‘it is for to be slaying soon’, Buffy’s response is, ‘[t]hat’s sort of the question before the court’ (‘Pangs’ Part 3 and Part 4). It is this that is the most significant point in the episode. Most of ‘Pangs’ is a debate between Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang about the general issue of the oppression of native Americans and the particular question of what to do with Hus. In the end Buffy kills him because he tries to kill them but the decision as to who to kill is, for her, not one that she can make on her own.

‘Pangs’ is illustrative of an important theme in the later series of BtVS, the need to involve other people in your decision-making. It is not simply for Buffy to decide who to trust and who to kill. She must do that in collaboration with others. When, towards the end of series six, Willow decides to kill Tara’s murderer, Warren, both Dawn and Xander suggest that she is right. Buffy argues that in a case of simple murder state laws dominate. ‘There are limits to what we can do. There should be’ (‘Villains’ Episode 120, Series Six, Act Three). Buffy’s view prevails. Nevertheless, the question has been put; the decision to stop Willow is one that is made jointly. In series one to three the decision as to who to kill was made, at least in principle, by the Watcher’s Council; now, in series four to six, the decision as to what the law is is made by the court, the chosen family to which Buffy belongs.

In ‘Postmodern Ethics’ Bauman argues both that ‘[m]oral responsibility is unconditional and infinite’ and that

Both ideas find a resonance in the law that is chosen by Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang in series four to six of BtVS; a law that is superficially similar to that of the Watcher’s Council but is, in fact, subtly but significantly different.

The Watcher’s Council’s laws have two imperatives. One is ‘kill vampires and demons’. The other is ‘do not kill humans’. The first gives the Slayer her purpose but the second is equally important. Both are expressed in categorical form; always kill vampires and demons, never kill humans. Breaking the former, by saving Angel’s life, marks Buffy’s departure from the Slayer’s tradition; breaking the latter, by killing the Mayor’s secretary, Allan, and seeking to conceal the death, shows that Faith no longer accepts the role of Slayer (‘Graduation: Part 2’ Episode 56, Series Three, Part 2; ‘Bad Girls’ Episode 48, Series Three, Part 3 and Part 4). In series four to six, however, a more complex law prevails. Vampires and demons are sometimes protected and, very occasionally, humans die.

In the final episode of series five Giles kills Ben (‘The Gift’, Episode 100, Series Five, Act IV). Ben is no immediate danger to anyone; he is, as Xander has said earlier in the episode, ‘an innocent’ (‘The Gift’ Act I). Giles’ motivation for the murder is the fact that Ben’s human body also hosts the god, Glory, and his concern about what might happen in the future if Glory once more manifests herself through Ben. Giles´ action is nonetheless murder and the killing is, as he himself acknowledges, something that Buffy herself has refused to do (‘The Gift’ Act IV). Despite this, Giles goes unpunished. In series six Willow first tortures and then kills Warren (‘Enemies’ Episode 120, Series Six, Act Four). The fact that Warren has killed Willow’s lover, Tara, might be seen as justification for Warren’s death; as Xander says in the following episode

Yet, as noted above, in the previous episode Buffy had said of Warren, ‘the human world has it’s (sic) own rules for dealing with people like him’ and that ‘[t]here are limits to what we can do. There should be’ (‘Villains’ Episode 120, Series Six, Act Three). This attitude mirrors the approach of the Watcher’s Council towards homicide by humans; such matters are not part of the Slayer’s jurisdiction (‘Consequences’ Episode 49, Series Three, Part One). However, once Willow has killed Warren, Buffy’s position changes somewhat. To Xander’s justification of Warren’s killing she answers ‘[m]aybe’, implying both that the Scooby Gang have a legitimate interest in human murders and that they might sometimes justifiably kill humans. However, she then says of Willow’s new objective, the killing of Warren’s co-conspirators, Andrew and Jonathan (who were not directly involved in Tara’s death), ‘if she kill’s [them]..., a line gets crossed.’ (‘Two to Go’ Act Two); the line is not the killing of a human being, as is the case under the Council’s law, but the unjustifiable killing of a human being.

In ‘Two to Go’ and in the final episode of series six, ‘Grave’, Buffy and Xander seek to prevent Willow from killing Andrew and Jonathan. Their efforts, however, are constrained by the fact that their focus is on trying to help Willow; it is Willow that matters to them not the potential death of human beings. Buffy says to Jonathan, ‘I’m not protecting you, Jonathan. None of us are. We’re doing this for Willow’ (‘Two to Go’ Act Two). In the final act of the final episode, when Willow seeks to bring about the end of the world (with the mass deaths that this means), Xander does not try to stop her. He simply says that, since she is his best friend, if the world is going to end, he wishes to die with her and he repeatedly reminds her that he loves her (‘Grave’ Episode 122, Series Six, Act Four). Xander’s actions cannot simply be seen to be the consequence of the fact that Willow is a powerful witch who he is physically too weak to stop. Through the previous five series of BtVS he has battled demons and vampires in unpropitious circumstances and, indeed, has continued to do so in series six. Instead, for Xander, it seems, even the unjustifiable mass killing of human beings is less important than his concern for a friend who remains, for him, part of his family (‘Two to Go’ Act Three).

The new law arrived at by Buffy and the others sometimes protects vampires and demons. Early in series four Buffy and the others stop trying to kill the vampire, Spike. The fact that the Initiative have rendered him incapable of physically hurting humans, by inserting an electronic chip into Spike’s brain, might seem to explain their change in attitude. As Giles puts it, ‘look Spike – we have no intention of killing a harmless...uh, creature’ (‘Something Blue’ Episode 65, Series Four, Part 1). Yet this is not an entirely adequate analysis. Spike may not be capable of physically hurting humans but he is far from harmless. In series four he plots with Adam, the part machine, part demon monster, to kill Buffy (‘The Yoko Factor’ Episode 76, Series Four, Part One). In series five he is still trying to kill Buffy and in series six he is dealing in Suvolte demon eggs which foreign military powers want to purchase to attack other countries (‘Out of My Mind’ Episode 82, Series Five, Teaser; ‘As You Were’ Episode 115, Series Six, Act III and IV). Yet Buffy and the others go further than not trying to kill him. In series four they hide him from the Initiative, they feed him and, when, he becomes suicidal, they stop him killing himself (‘Doomed’ Episode 67, Series Four). In both a literal and a metaphorical sense they nurture him.

The principle that lies behind the departure from the simple rule ‘kill vampires’ is found in the reason why Buffy and the others feel impelled to care for Spike. Willow says of Spike’s attempted suicide ‘[i]t’s ooky. We know him, we can’t just let him poof himself’ (‘Doomed’ Episode 67, Series Four). They had had contact with him since the third episode of series two, ‘School Hard’. For much of that time he has sought their deaths. Yet, whilst fighting him they have become intimately acquainted with him and he with them. Thus, for example, they know of his love for the vampire, Druscilla, they know she has abandoned him and the devastating effect that this has had on him (‘Lover’s Walk’ Episode 42, Series Three). Conversely his emotional insight into Buffy is such as to lead him correctly to scoff when Angel and Buffy protest in ‘Lover’s Walk’ that they are just good friends. Similarly, he, but not the others, can see that Willow is failing to cope with the departure of her boyfriend Oz (‘Lover’s Walk’ Part Three; ‘Something Blue’ Episode 65, Series Four). A vampire that is simply a cipher can be killed without compunction (as continues to happen to other vampires through series four to six) but one that is known is subject to different rules. It is not simply that Spike’s relationship with the others has gone through a series of transformations from enemy to collaborator to informant to ally, that he ‘has utility’ for them (a point made by Greene and Yuen (Greene and Yuen, 2001)), but rather that his relationship with them has become a complex amalgam which, at any moment in time, is stained by its history. Buffy and the Scooby Gang

Greene and Yuen have attempted to reduce Buffy’s treatment of Spike to a set of seven principles (Greene and Yuen, 2001). At heart, however, Spike’s position resists precise articulation. As Bauman puts it, quoting Toulmin,

In this new law of intimacy, just as Giles and Willow’s behaviour is judged in the context of a discretion not afforded to strangers so Spike exists in a separate realm where law is infected with love; a love that has little to do with the affair that Spike and Buffy begin in series six (which remains a secret for most of the series) but instead results from the debts accumulated by the various characters’ interaction over series two to six.

The new law adopted by Buffy and the others contradicts the law of the Watcher’s Council in part because the Council’s law is based upon errors of fact. ‘Kill all demons and vampires’ is erroneous as a legal precept because ‘[n]ot all demons are dedicated to the destruction of all life’ (‘Becoming (Part 1)’ Episode 33, Series Two, Part 3). Only those that are dangerous should be killed. However, as importantly, the spirit of the Council’s laws is wrong. There is a utilitarian cast to the Council’s laws. In the culminating episode of series two Buffy, acting in obedience to the Council’s laws, kills Angel, knowing he is not guilty of the crimes of his alter-ego Angelus, because his death will prevent an apocalypse; at this juncture in the development of the series saving the lives of many people justifies his demise (‘Becoming (Part 2)’ Episode 34, Series Two, Part 4). At the end of series five, however, Buffy refuses to kill her sister Dawn, even if this becomes necessary to prevent an apocalypse (‘The Gift’ Episode 100, Series Five, Act I). Speaking of the fact she had been willing to kill Angel, Buffy says, ‘I sacrificed Angel to save the world. I loved him so much. But I knew...what was right’ (‘The Gift’ Act I). However, what she knew as ‘right’, the utilitarian ethic that comprises part of the basis of the Council’s law, has become as unacceptable to Buffy as the imperatives of the law. Buffy gives Dawn’s biological relationship to her, the fact that she is her sister, as the reason why she will not follow a utilitarian code. However, Buffy’s rejection of utilitarian ethics is in fact more general. When Buffy is asked to trade the Box of Gavrok for Willow’s life, Wesley, on behalf of the Council, argues that the greater good to the greater number will be achieved by not trading (‘Choices’ Episode 53, Series Three). Buffy rejects the argument and the trade takes place. Nor is it just Buffy who rejects the utilitarian ethic; the others support her when she wishes to trade for Willow’s life, whilst both Buffy and Xander are unwilling to kill Willow even if that is necessary to avert an apocalypse (‘Choices’; ‘Grave’ Episode 122, Series Six). Giles argues, being ‘sworn to protect this sorry world...sometimes...means saying and doing what other people can’t. What they shouldn’t have to’ (‘The Gift’ Episode 100, Series Five, Act I). So also protecting one’s chosen family sometimes means not doing what one would otherwise do, even when that otherwise is the job of the Slayer, saving the world. The law of intimacy protects members of a chosen family as well as excusing them.

Buffy is still a vampire slayer at the end of series six and ‘fight[ing] evil’, the ‘good fight’ that Willow has enlisted in in series three remains the centre of Buffy´s life (‘Choices’ Episode 53, Series Three). Vampires and demons in the main still die. Nevertheless there has been a substantial change in the law that she acknowledges. Its more nuanced approach to which vampires and which demons should die separate it out from the simplicities of the law operated by the Watcher´s Council. More importantly, the way in which the law is arrived at and applied, the process of decision and discussion that Buffy and the others go through, marks it as a law that has been chosen rather than one that has been imposed.

Top | Contents | Bibliography

Conclusion

The contrast between the view of law articulated in series one to three of BtVS and that put forward in series four to six can be analysed in a number of different ways. At the most superficial level it can be seen as a movement from a very simple command theory of law, the Council’s law, where law is seen simply as a set of legal rules which have black and white application, to the more sophisticated theory of law arrived at by Buffy and the others, where, alongside legal rules, there exist a set of Dworkinian legal principles which have weight rather than simple black and white application in regulating conduct (Dworkin, 1977, pp 24-27). Moreover, the new law reflects the Weberian taxonomy of authority in that it involves a shift from a form of authority that is simply sanctified by tradition to one that is legitimated by an appeal to rationality, illustrated by the continual discussions that Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang have about how to proceed.

Both the existence of the Council’s law and the move away from it in series four to six are examples of legal pluralism with non-state legal systems existing alongside state legal systems because the state legal system has failed to meet the needs of the population or a group of the population (Santos, 1995, pp 114-116). The law of the Watcher’s Council arises because of state law’s failure to take account of the existence of demons and vampires whilst the later law arrived at by Buffy and the others comes into being because the Council’s law relies on an inaccurate account of the nature of vampires and demons that cannot cope with the complexities of real world.

On even this relatively superficial level of analysis, BtVS has, as it has developed, gone far beyond the reassuring nature of the traditional police series that was noted at the beginning of this article. Rather than telling viewers about the underlying simplicity and stability of the everyday world, as happens in the first three series of BtVS and as generally happens with police series, the last three series are asking viewers to grapple with the quotidian world’s inherent ambiguities, ambivalence and unpredictability. Instead of offering a model set of clear rules to live by, ‘kill vampires; avoid vampires’, BtVS, in its later series, emphasises the difficulty of arriving at the law and its mutable nature.

When to kill vampires becomes the essence of the programme. Moreover, different legal systems compete for attention, with the legal system favoured in the programme being the one that is most complex and most personally challenging.

The Council’s law simply demands obedience. Applying it requires a high level of existential commitment. As Buffy sings in the musical episode ‘Once More, With Feeling’ ‘going through the motions/Walking through the part’ is not enough (‘Once More, With Feeling’ Epsiode 107, Series Six, Act I). In ‘Gingerbread’ Angel tells Buffy ‘[w]e will never win [completely]...We fight because there are things worth fighting for’ (‘Gingerbread’ Episode 45, Series Three, Part 3). Similarly, when Willow tells Buffy she intends to go to university in Sunnydale she gives as her main reason her desire to enforce the law by helping Buffy. She wants to

Nevertheless, notwithstanding this ‘existentialist determination’ that is needed to apply the law (Wall and Zyred, 2001, p 59), since the law is formulated by external authority those who apply it can feel themselves absolved of personal responsibility for it; they have to administer the law but they do not have to believe in it. Centuries-old traditions are responsible for the law not the Slayer who enforces it; a feeling which is further heightened by the fact that Slayers do not choose their job but, rather, are born to it. Both the other two Slayers seen on BtVS, Kendra and Faith, exemplify this alienation from the content of the law; neither think about the law, they simply apply it (‘What’s MY Line Part 2’ Episode 22, series Two; ‘Faith, Hope and Trick’ Episode 37, Series Three). Similarly Buffy in an alternative universe where she does not go to Sunnydale and meet the Scooby Gang says of her role as Slayer ‘[w]e fight. We die’ thus displaying no interest in why she is doing it (‘The Wish’ Episode 43, Series Three, Part 4).

In the later series of BtVS the law requires a continual personal investment and engagement in deciding what it is. What to do, how to act, becomes a constantly complex question, demanding a personal response. The distinction between the first three series and the second three series should not, of course, be over-emphasised. As noted above elements of rebellion to the Council’s law are a feature of BtVS from virtually the beginning of the first series. Nevertheless, there is a change in tone in the last three series that underscores the chosen nature of laws.

The more sophisticated view of law put forward in the later series of BtVS acknowledges the real world lives of its viewers in two significant ways. First, it reflects the fact that law in any system, whether it be state law or non-state law, is rarely straightforward. What the law commands is usually a difficult and uncertain matter. Secondly and more importantly, the series stresses the fact that for all of us obeying law, choosing to make a law our own as a model for behaviour, is precisely that, a matter of choice. Moreover, it is a choice that we make both personally and individually and, at the same time, in the context of the intimate relationships that we have.

This argument about the chosen nature of laws, put forward in the context of the fictional world of BtVS, is not as far removed from people’s experience of the empirical world as at first it might seem. Some people do make their choices about laws in precisely the way suggested by BtVS. Thus, for example,

Moreover, the Quaker law favoured as an alternative to state law is a law decided on by people who are ‘sometimes intensely in their beliefs’ but are, nonetheless, ‘always members of a community’ that places an exceptionally heavy emphasis on ‘consensus, ‘”a feeling that everybody is involved”’ (Bradney and Cownie, 2000, p 93 and p 125). It is not just Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang who choose their own laws. It is not just Buffy, Giles and the Scooby gang who make that choice on an individual basis whilst valuing the support of others around them.

Nevertheless, whilst the chosen family of the Buffy, Giles and the Scooby Gang does have its counterparts in the empirical world, it does go beyond the experience of most people in the depth of connection that the characters seeks and achieve. Despite this, it is both a metaphor for, and a more concrete expression of, the actual realities of most people’s lives in both modernity and post-modernity. Choices are individual, law is thus personal, but the choices are made in the context of a series of personal relationships that constitute a mix of traditional and non-traditional family forms, friendships and other connections of varying significance. Thus Bauman argues that

As Buffy is told on numerous occasions awareness of one’s own autonomy is vital. ‘In the end you are always by yourself. You’re all you’ve got’ (‘Becoming Part 2’ Episode v34, Series Two, Part One). ‘Belive in your self’ (‘Normal Again’ Episode 117, Series Six, Act Four). Yet, at the same time, it is a moral error to get ‘too wrapped up in...[one’s] own dumb life’ because ‘the way people manage is, they don’t do it alone. They pull each other through’ (‘Gone’ Episode 111, Series Six, Act I; ‘Doomed’ Episode 67, series Four).

The programme captures that which, elsewhere, has been described as being ‘the articulation of autonomy with heteronomy, freedom with regulation, love with law’ (Bańkowski, 2001, p 11). Bańkowski goes on to observe

that there are problems in human and social life with no good solutions, twisted trajectories that cannot be straightened up, ambivalences that are more than linguistic blunders yelling to be corrected, doubts which cannot be legislated out of existence, moral agonies which no reason-related recipes can soothe, let alone cure. (Bauman, 1993, p 245)

In the 1970s ‘The Sweeney’ calmed our fears about law and law enforcement. Now, in the twenty-first century, BtVs tells us that our fears are real and that both intellectual and emotional pain are an inevitable part of our effort to address them.

Top | Contents

‘Alternate Versions for ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (1997) http://us.imdb.com/AlternateVersions?0118276
Bańkowski, Zenon (2001) ‘Living Lawfully: Love in Law and Law in Love’ Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
Bauman, Zygmunt (1993) ‘Postmodern Ethics’ Blackwell Publishers, Oxford.
Bowers, Cynthia (2001) ‘Generation Lapse: The Problematic Parenting of Joyce Summers and Rupert Giles’ 2 Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
Boyette, Michele (2001) ‘The Comic Anti-hero in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or Silly villain: Spike is for Kicks’ 4 Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
Braun, B, (2000), ‘The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Ambiguity of Evil in Supernatural Representations’ Summer, 2000 Journal of Popular Film and Television http://www.findarticles.com/.
Bradney, Anthony and Cownie, Fiona (2000) ‘Living Without Law: An ethnography of Quaker decision-making, dispute avoidance and dispute resolution’ Ashgate, Dartmouth.
‘Buffy fans slay Sky One’ (2002)
http://www.news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/tv-and-radio/newsid-1763000/1763615.stm.
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book: Season One, Volume One’ (2000a), Pocket Books, New York.
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book: Season One, Volume Two’ (2000b), Pocket Books, New York.
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book: Season Two, Volume One’ (2001a), Pocket Books, New York.
‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Script Book: Season Two, Volume Two’ (2001b) Pocket Books, New York.
International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Clark, Daniel and Miller, Andrew, (2001) ‘Buffy, the Scooby Gang, and Monstrous Authority: BtVS and the Subversion of Authority’ 3 Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Cordesman, Anthony (2001) ‘Biological Warfare and the ‘”Buffy Paradigm”’ http://www.csis.org/burke/hd/reports/Buffy012902.pdf.
DeCandido, Gracenne (1999) ‘Bibliographic Good vs. Evil’ September 1999 American Libraries 44.
Drummond, Phillip (1976) ‘Structural and Narrative Constraints and Strategies in “The Sweeney”’ 20 Screen Education 15.
Dworkin, Ronald (1977) ‘Taking Rights Seriously’ Duckworth, London.
Eisgruber, Christopher ‘Constitutional Interpretation and Aspirations to a Good Society: Civic Virtue and the Limits of Constitutionalism’ 69 Fordham Law Review 2131.
Elliott, J (2001) ‘Copyright Fair Use and Private Ordering: Are Copyright Holders and Copyright Laws Fanatical for Fansites?’ 11 Journal of Art and Entertainment Law 329.
Forster, E (1973) Edward Arnold, London.
Freeman, Michael and Lewis, Andrew (1999) ‘Law and Literature’ Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Friedman, Lawrence and Rosen-Zvi, Issacher (2001) ‘Law and Popular Culture: Illegal Fictions: Mystery Novels and the Popular Image of Law’ 48 UCLA Law Review 1411.
Gillers, Stephen (1989) ‘Taking L.A. Law More Seriously’ 98 Yale Law Journal 1607.
Golden, Christopher and Holder, Nancy, (1998) ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher’s Guide’ Pocket Books, New York.
Greene, Richard and Yuen, Wayne (2001) ‘Why We Can’t Spike Spike?: Moral Themes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘ 3 Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Harris, Cheryl, (1998a) ‘A Sociology of Television Fandom’ in Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander ‘Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity’ Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey.
Harris, Cheryl (1998b) ‘Introduction Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity’ in Cheryl Harris and Alison Alexander ‘Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity’ Hampton Press, Cresskill, New Jersey.
Hill, A and Calcutt, I, (2001) ‘Vampire Hunters: the Scheduling and Reception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the UK’ 3 Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Hurd, Geoff (1976) ‘”The Sweeney” – Contradiction and Coherence’ 20 Screen Education 47.
Joseph, Paul and Carlin, Sharon (1992) ‘The Law of the Federation: Images of Law, Lawyers and the Legal System in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation’ 24 University of Toledo Law Review 43.
Kaveney, Roz (ed), (2002a) ‘Reading the Vampire Slayer’ Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Kaveney, Roz (2002b) ‘”She saved the world. A lot.” An introduction to the themes and structures of Buffy and Angel’ in Kaveney, R. (ed), ‘Reading the Vampire Slayer’ (2002) Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Locklin, Reid (2002) ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Domestic Church: Revisioning Family and the Common Good’ 6 Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
McClelland, Bruce, (2001) ‘By Whose Authority? The Magical Tradition, Violence and the Legitimation of the Vampire Slayer’ 1 Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Melton, J (2001) ‘Words from the Hellmouth: A Bibliography of Books on Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ 4 Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
Melton J (2002) ‘Images from the Hellmouth: Buffy the Vampire Comic Books 1998-2002’ 6 Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
Moore, Jennifer (2002) ‘Copyright Protection or Fan Loyalty – Must Entertainment Companies Choose? Addressing Internet Fan Sites’ 3 North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology 273.
Musical episode edited on SKY, (2002), Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the UK on BBC 2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/news/02010202.shtml.
Mustreadtv.com http://www.mustreadtv.com/buffyscripts/foxletter.html.
Paterson, Richard, (1976) ‘”The Sweeney”: A Euston Films Product’ 20 Screen Education 5.
Pender, Patricia (2002) ‘”I’m Buffy and You’re...History”: The Postmodern Politics of Buffy’ in Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery (eds) ‘Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Rowan & Littlefield Publishers Inc.
Ratings http://www.express-world.co.uk/stakeout/.
Redhead, S, (1995) ‘Unpopular Cultures: The birth of law and popular culture’, Manchester University Press, Manchester.
Rahv, Philip, (1970) ‘Literature and the Sixth Sense’ Faber and Faber, London.
Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (1995) ‘Towards a New Common Sense’ Routledge, London.
Sayer, Karen (2002) ‘It wasn’t our world anymore. They made it theirs’: Reading Space and place’ in Roz Kaveney (ed) ‘Reading the Vampire Slayer’ Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Sherwin, Richard (2002) ‘When Law Goes Pop’ University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Shuttleworth, I (2002) “’They always mistake me for the character I play!’: Transformation, identity and role-playing in the Buffverse (and a defence of fine acting)” in Roz Kaveney (ed) “Reading the Vampire Slayer” Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Sparkes, Richard (1993) “Inspector Morse: ‘The Last Enemy’ (Peter Buckman)” in George Bandt (ed) ‘British Television Drama in the 1980s’ Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Sparkes, Richard (1992) Television and the Drama of Crime’ Open University Press, Buckingham.
Susan Owen, A (1997) ‘Vampires, Postmodernity and Feminism’ No 2 Journal of Popular Film and Television 24.
Thornton, Margaret (ed) (2002) ‘Romancing the Tomes: Popular Culture, Law and Feminism’ Cavendish Publishing Limited, London.
Topping, Keith (2001) ‘Slayer’ 1^st updated ed, Virgin Publishing, London.
Topping, Keith (2002) ‘Slayer’ 2^nd ed, Virgin Books, London.
Trilling, Lionel (1967) ‘EM Forster: A Study’ The Hogarth Press, London.
Tulloch, John (2000) ‘Watching Television Audiences’ Arnold, London.
Tulloch, John (1990) ‘Television Drama: Agency, Audience and Myth’ Routledge, London.
Steiner, G, (1997) ‘Errata’ Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London.
Vint, Sherryl (2002) ‘”Killing us Softly?” A Feminist Search for the ‘Real’ Buffy’ 5 Slayage: The On-Line International Journal of Buffy Studies.
Walker, J (2000), ‘How intellectual property law stifle popular culture’ Reason http://www.reason.com/0003/fe.jw.copy.shtml.
Toppping, Keith (2000) ‘Slayer: The Revised and Updated Unofficial Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Virgin Publishing Limited, London.
Wall, Brian and Zryd, Michael (2001) Vampire dialectics: Knowledge, institutions and labour’ in Roz Kaveney ‘Reading the Vampire Slayer’ Tauris Parke Paperbacks, London.
Wandless, William, (2001) ‘Undead Letters: Searches and Researches in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Number 2, Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies.
Ward, Ian (1995) ‘Law and Literature’ Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Weber, Max (1968) ‘Economy and Society’ Bedminster Press, New York.
Wilcox, Rhonda and Laverty, David (eds) (2002)’Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Rowmna and Littlefield Publishers, Lanham.
Williams J (2002a) ‘Choosing Your Own Mother: Mother-Daughter Conflicts in Buffy’ in Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery (eds) ‘Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, Latham.
Williams, Melanie (2002b) ‘Empty Justice: One Hundred Years of Law, Literature and Philosophy’ Cavendish Publishing, London.

Web-Sites

Above the Law http://www.geocities.com/voxsententia/abovethelaw/
All Things Philosophical on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel the Series http://www.atpobtvs.com/index.html
Slayage: The Online Journal of Buffy Studies http://www.slayage.tv/

⁽¹⁾ I am grateful to Kirsty McCreesh for her comments on an earlier draft of this article. A paper based on that draft was presented at “Blood, Text and Fears: Reading Around Buffy the Vampire Slayer” at the University of East Anglia. I am grateful to those who were present for their comments on that paper.
⁽²⁾ The published scripts are Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000a), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2000b), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001a) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001b). Sources of unofficial transcripts on web-sites, which include both unpublished and published scripts, are often relatively short-lived since Twentieth Century Fox, the owners of the copyright in BtVS, seek to close them down (Walker, 2000; Mustreadtv.com). For an analysis of the copyright position of these web-sites see Elliott, 2001 and Moore, 2002. For the purposes of this article I have used published scripts where available and scripts from web-sites in other instances.
⁽³⁾ For convenience references to individual programmes are by title, the episode number which runs consecutively from the first episode in series one to the last episode in series six, series number, and where possible, the relevant part or act into which the programme is divided and, in the case of a published source, the appropriate page citation. Many web-sites give lists of episodes broken down into series.