Virginia Postrel’s Why Buffy Kicked Ass explains American values:
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer premiered on the WB Network in 1996, American culture was in trouble. Americans were bowling alone, pursuing individual interests to the detriment of the communal good. Business leaders were celebrating creativity and neglecting discipline. Nike’s “Just do it” ads were teaching young people to break the rules. Hollywood was turning out “nightmares of depravity.”Americans had forgotten bourgeois virtue. Freedom and affluence had made us soft. We were self-indulgent moral nihilists — materialistic, selfish, and impulsive. We might have been having fun, but we’d created a culture no one would fight for.
At least that’s what the wise men said.
On September 11, 2001, they shut up. Ordinary Americans, it turned out, were not only brave but resilient and creative, even lethal, when it mattered.
Buffy was right all along.
Nice use of “reification”:
The show, which ended its seven-season run in May, began as a reification of the horrors of high school. What if that ambitious cheerleader wannabe really was a witch? What if the girl no one paid attention to really turned invisible? What if the swim coach really would do anything to win? What if sleeping with your boyfriend made him act like a different person, turned your Angel into a cruel and vicious monster?
The show’s precepts (in a bulleted list):
- Evil exists.
- Redemption is possible.
- Evil must be fought.
- Evil never goes away.
- We don’t get to choose our reality.
- We do get to choose what we do.
- Life’s pleasures are precious.