buffy and the magic of critique

7/27/2019 Buffy and the Magic of Critique

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The Magic of Critique:

Science and Technology Studies in Joss Whedons Televisual Cosmos

Dr. Dennis M. Weiss

York College of Pennsylvania

English and Humanities Department

York, PA 17405

[email protected]

(717) 846-7788

Abstract:

At first blush,Buffy the Vampire Slayerhardly seems like the television

show to turn to as a reflection on science and technology studies. Something

of a cross between the teen drama and horror genres,Buffy was more about

vampires, wooden stakes, and cross bows, than high technology. And yet,running throughout the series, this presentation will contend, is a meditation

on the place of science and technology in our postmodern age. It is in fact

clear from a cursory glance, thatBuffy had an interest in the state of

technology. In I RobotYou Jane, the Moloch is unleashed onto the

Internet when an ancient text is scanned for digitization. Ted, the homicidal

robotic paramour of Joyce, almost kills our lead. Season four revolves

around the high-technology Initiative and plans to construct the ultimate

demon-fighting technology, in the form of the hybrid Adam. Season five

focuses on those high-tech geeks Warren, Andrew, and Jonathan. Runningthrough the series then is an interest in technology. And yet, the series seems

to opt for magic over technology, endorsing the ancient ways over the

modern, or perhaps postmodern, ways. This is nowhere made clearer than in

Buffys confrontation with Adam. Willow, Xander, and Giles join forces to

magically imbue Buffy with the power of the Primitive, the first Slayer.

Buffy uses this power to vanquish Adam, who might be taken to represent

the postmodern interest in hybrids currently dominating work in science and

technology studies.Buffy seemingly comes down consistently in favor of

ancient magic and ritual. Focusing on the character of Willow, though,

suggests a counter-narrative in which the forces of technology, ourpostmodern magic, are not to be denied but must be tamed through

critique. This presentation contends that a close reading of Willow, as the

site where the forces of magic and technology converge, suggests a

worthwhile perspective on the current state of science and technology

studies.
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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The Magic of Critique

I. Buffy and Dolly

Id like to begin with the story of a female character that first makes her

appearance in the mass media and popular culture in 1997.

Shes instantly recognized as something different.

Shes maybe kind of blonde, some people would say cute.

Shes definitely new on the scene, something of a hybrid, created

mostly by a group of men. And her creation was controversial.

Many claimed she was the breakthrough of the decade.

She lives only a short time, her story ending in 2003.

Some say she died too soon but her last years were a real death marchand it was probably her time.

And I think her problems were really written in her genes, so to speak.

But she left behind a lot of imitators and pretenders to the throne.

Now of course we are all thinking about the same thing, right? Dolly, the

famous, if not infamous cloned sheep, that made her world-wide, mass

media debut in February of 1997 and died in February of 2003. What? You

mean you werent thinking of Dolly? Well, maybe youre wondering why I

am thinking about Dolly in the midst of a conference on all things JossWhedon.

I admit, it is something of a conceit, but an interesting one, for Dollys short

and somewhat controversial life was roughly coterminous with the life of

that other blonde figure were all really interested in: Buffy Summers. Its

true that Dolly was born in July of 1996, but her birth wasnt announced

until February of 1997. Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuts shortly thereafter

in March of 1997. Dollys short life ended in February of 2003 when she

was euthanized after veterinarians confirmed she had a progressive lung

disease. And of course Buffy didnt die but her series ended that same year,just a few months later, in May of 2003.

With these interesting parallels between Buffy and Dolly I wish to call

attention to the point that Buffy the Vampire Slayer unfolded over a period

of deep fascination and trepidation over developments in our techno-culture.

Knowing this, we might wonder whether the figure of an older, pre-modern,


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pre-technological Slayer has anything to tell us about our contemporary

techno-cultural. I would like to suggest that it does and that, unfortunately,

what it has to tell us is very problematic.

Buffy is justifiably lauded for its smart, contemporary take on a host of

issues, its ability to tolerate moral ambiguities and show us the tensions and

complexities in contemporary teen life, and its refusal to paint the world in

black and white and engage in dichotomous thinking. And yet when it came

to the shows treatment of technology, its moral nerve finally failed. Buffy

charts an experience with technology that follows the reception of

technology in popular culture and that begins with at least some sense of

excitement and hopefulness but ends with a techno-phobic rejection of

technology and a pre-lapsarian embrace of the traditional, if not the down

right primeval.

II. Looking at Buffy from the perspective of an interest in technology

On the surface, this doesnt seem to be the show to turn to when thinking

about technology. As a cross between the teen drama and the horror/gothic

genre, Buffy isnt centrally concerned with technology; if anything the world

it inhabits is a throw-back to an earlier technological age of cross bows,

stakes, and other medieval instruments, not one where we would expect to

find many insights about our current techno-culture.

And admittedly, despite an already large corpus of work on the Buffyverse,

there havent been many explicit treatments of the theme of technology as it

runs throughout the series. There are a number of very fine essays on the

place of knowledge and science in Buffy, but little explicit attention to the

theme of technology as it runs through the series. One might think that this

is because it doesnt warrant it, but here too I think things are not so clear.

There are a number of reasons that might motivate turning to Buffy when

thinking about technology.

So what justifies a focus on technology in the Buffyverse? Id like topoint to four reasons that justify such a focus.

First, and probably most important, the theme is not absent from Buffy. A

concern over technology runs throughout the series.


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The episode I robot, you Jane gives us an extended take on several

different matters related to technology. (1.08) As early as the first

reason we see an interesting debate over the Internet and computers,

especially versus a book culture.

In the second season, one of our villains is Ted who works in acomputer store and has created a replica for himself which (perhaps)

he is downloaded into. (2.11)

In the third season, the Master is bored with the mindless routine of

the predator and introduced the vampire world to a truly demonic

concept: mass production. (The Wish 3.09) The Master has created a

human blood processing chamber in the Bronze. He is planning to

industrialize blood removal from humans through assembly lines, to

eliminate the hunt aspect of vampire lives while allowing them to still

have ample access to blood.

The story arc of the fourth season focuses on the Initiative and the

cyber-demonoid Adam. As have been noted elsewhere, we have the

parallels between Adam and Frankenstein, which are also suggestive

of the role of science and technology studies in Buffy story lines.

Fifth season: We have April and the first appearance of Warren. In I

Was Made to Love You (5.15) we have the appearance of Warren

Meers who attended Sunnydale High for a semester, before

transferring to a tech college and who seems like something like a

mad roboticist. At the end of that episode, Spike commissions the

construction of the Buffybot, which shows up several times again,meeting a fairly tragic demise in the opening of the sixth season.

Our sixth season villains are the Trio, Uber-geeks who practice a

blend of magic and technology.

On top of this, we have Joss Whedons interest in science fiction (credited as

a screenwriter on Titan A.E. andAlien: Resurrection) and the cross between

the Western genre and science fiction in the case of Firefly and the theme of

biotechnology appearing in both Alien: Resurrection and Serenity.

Serenity: They reach Miranda unscathed and find that it is actually

habitable, but its cities contain only corpses. The crew finds a

transmission from an Alliance officer, which explains that the

Alliance attempted to achieve permanent peace on the planet by

pumping a drug designed to suppress aggression into the atmosphere.

Instead, the drug suppressed the population's motivation to do


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Willow (excited): I think Im onto something. Ive been assuming the

cipher-text was encrypted with an asymmetric algorithm. Then it hit

me: a hexagonic key patter. Its [realizing Tara is staring] Im

scaring you know, huh?

Tara (smiling): A little. In a good way. Its like a different kind of

magic.

This linking of magic and technology, and a reading of magic as standing in

for technology, is suggested by a number of points. Many of you will likely

recall Arthur C. Clarkes oft-quoted Third Law, (Profiles of the Future):

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

This view is supported by Erik Davis excellent analysis of technology

through the lens of religion and Gnosticism, Techgnosis.

The powerful aura that todays advanced technologies cast does not

derive solely from their novelty or their mystifying complexity; it also

derives from their literal realization of the virtual projects willed by

the wizards and alchemists of an earlier age. Magic is technologys

unconscious, is own arational spell. Our modern technological world

is not nature, but augmented nature, super-nature, and the more

intensely we probe its mutant edge of mind and matter, the more our

disenchanted productions will find themselves wrestling with the

rhetoric of the supernatural.

Ioan Couliano, inEros and Magic in the Renaissance, suggests a similar

point of view on the links between magic and technology:

38 Historians have been wrong in concluding that magic disappeared

with the advent of quantitative science. The latter has simply

substituted itself for a part of magic while extending its dreams and its

goals by means of technology. Electricity, rapid transport, radio and

television, the airplane, and the computer have merely carried into

effect the promises first formulated by magic, resulting from thesupernatural processes of the magician: to produce light, to move

instantaneously from one point in space to another, to communicate

with faraway regions of space, to fly through the air, and to have an

infallible memory at ones disposal.


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And interestingly, Buffy has a lot of company during this time period in

which magic is resurgent in popular culture.

Charmedran from October 1998 to May 2006

Sabrina the Teenage Witch ran from September 1996 to April 2003

In film:Practical Magic in 1998 toBewitchedin 2005

And in general, there seems to be an interest in magic at times of heightened

science and technology chance.

The witch craze reached its height precisely when early modern

physics was formed {Carolyn Merchant}.

The rise in interest in sances during the period of electrification.

The rise of the technopagans; the role of magic and mysticism online,

especially in early MUDs and MOOs which we set up following a

kind of dungeons and dragons thematic, Gibsons treatment of

magic/religion in cyberspace.

Fourth:A fourth reason for reading magic and technology together is

their connection in the character of Willow. The final point I want to make

in this section ties this presentation back to the focus on Willow, who I think

in many respects is one of the most interesting characters on Buffy,

especially when you begin thinking about magic and technology. Today on

American television, nerds and geeks seem to be everywhere, but it wasntthat long ago when the negative stereotype of the nerd prevented it from

being a central character. And most nerds and geeks are still male. Most

histories of the hacker underground, including Steven LevysHackers and

similar texts by Bruce Sterling and Katie Hafner and Sherry Turkles early

explorations of the hacker subculture, suggest that it is stereotypically male.

In the character of Willow we have an early appearance of a nerd/hacker as a

significant character and interestingly shes female.

That we should read Willow as a nerd/hacker is very clear throughout Buffy.

When Cordelia and Buffy bumped into Willow, the shows brain,

and in the high school world, a pariah, the exchange of dialogue is

as follows:

CORDELIA: Willow! Nice dress! Good to know youve seen the

softer side of Sears.


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WILLOW: Uh, oh, well, my mom picked it out.

CORDELIA: No wonder youre such a guy magnet.

Cordelia then turns to Buffy and says: You wanna fit in here, the first

rule is: know your losers (Welcome to Hellmouth).

And especially in the early seasons, Willow is coded, and mostly positively,

as a kind of cyber-geek.

We are repeatedly reminded throughout the series of Willows

computer skills. The Harvest: accidentally decrypts the city

councils security system.

She takes a computer science class with Cordelia and Harmony, who

bumble their way through the class.

In Teachers Pet she hacks into the Coroners office computer.

Every year she enters the science fair contest. Shes bookmarked the

coroners web site, reads Scientific American and is well versed in

physiology.

Shes helping Ms. Calendars computer class for extra credit. By

episode 19 in the second season, Willow is teaching Jenny Calendars

computer science class and she discovers files about paganism and

magic among her effects. And of course its partly under the influence

of Jenny Calendar that Willow begins to understand the connections

between magic and technology.

During the Career Week story Whats My Line? we learn that for

some time now, the worlds leading software company has been

secretly tracking her as recruitment material.

Ted: Willow keeps a few parts of Ted for later research, but none of

the big ones.

In Dopplegangland, from the third season, Willow is ordered to

tutor Percy West and we learn that she had been accepted by every

college she applied to and represented the pinnacle of academic

achievement at Sunnydale High.

In Doomed, (4.11) Willow overhears a conversation between PercyWest and Laurie where Percy calls Willow captain of the nerd

squad and shes upset and feels like she is right back in high school.

Its Willow as well who keeps the Buffybot functioning in Buffys

absencesuggestive of the power of Willow as a character: she re-

animates Buffy both through magic (bringing the real Buffy back


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from the dead) and through her technical expertise (keeping the

Buffybot functioning).

Even as we enter the fourth season, we still see Willows fascination with

education and knowledge:

Its justin high school, knowledge was pretty much frowned upon.

You really had to work to learn anything. But here, I mean, the

energy, the collective intelligenceits like this force, this penetrating

force, I can feel my mind just opening up, you know, letting the place

just thrust into it and spurt knowledgeinto That sentence ended

up in a different place than it started out in. (The Freshmen)

And of course we know that Willow is not fascinated simply with

technology but that over the seven seasons of Buffy she becomes a verystrong witch, again suggestive of a link between the interest in science and

technology and the magical arts.

These four points, then, suggest a reading of Buffy in which technology is a

central concern. And on the surface, we might think that technology is

positively valued in the Buffyverse. After all, especially in the character of

Willow we have an appealing character who is technically savvy, who is

often portrayed as the moral center of the Scoobies, and whose interest and

growing confidence in the magical arts can be read as a metaphor for our

own concourse with technology.

And yet things arent so simple.

IV. Complicating the portrayal of technology in the Buffyverse

In especially its first three seasons, I think Buffy begins with the potential to

say something meaningful about our concourse with technology and the

pleasures as well as dangers of living in our techno-culture. In this regard

Willow really is one of the most appealing characters on the show and theearly presence of a female geek/nerd as a key character that alone speaks

volumes about the potential the show had for dealing with technology in a

complicated manner. But that potential unfortunately is never realized and I

think very early in the evolution of the series we begin to get a sense of how

that potential is foreclosed upon.


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1. Consider for instance the first extended treatment of technology on

Buffy: I Robot You Jane. On the surface I Robot You Jane would

seem to suggest a positive and optimistic approach to technology coming

from a distinctive vantage point: technopagan Jenny Calendar.

Jenny tempers the overly enthusiastic comments by Fritz:

Fritz: (self-righteously) The printed page is obsolete. (stands up)

Information isn't bound up anymore. It's an entity. The only reality is

virtual. If you're not jacked in, you're not alive. (grabs his books and

leaves)

Ms. Calendar: Thank you, Fritz, for making us all sound like crazy

people. (to Giles) Fritz, Fritz comes on a little strong, but he does

have a point. You know, for the last two years more e-mail was sentthan regular mail.

Jenny also argues that a new society is being created, one which perhaps

challenges old white guys with their lock on information and knowledge:

Ms. Calendar: Oh, you are a *big* snob. You, you think that

knowledge should be kept in these carefully guarded repositories

where only a handful of white guys can get at it.

Giles: Nonsense! I simply don't adhere to a, a knee-jerk assumption

that because something is new, it's better.

Ms. Calendar: This isn't a fad, Rupert! We are creating a new society

here.

Giles: A society in which human interaction is all but obsolete? In

which people can be completely manipulated by technology, well,

well...Thank you, I'll pass.

Importantly as well it is Jenny with her knowledge of the Internet that

figures out the first step in defeating Moloch the Corrupter: she forms the

circle of Kayless via the PC and her online group of technopagans, forcing

Moloch out of the Net and binding him in his mechanical body. This might

suggest a positive reading of the union of magic and technology.


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But here too I think such a reading is undermined by some of the stronger

elements of this particular episode.

The dangers of Internet dating

The dangers of addiction to technology The way in which technology makes us mindless automatons, slaves

to the machine

The fears of technology coming to life and developing its own agency

The need to bind technology: Its true that Jenny and Giles use an

Internet coven, use technology, to defeat Moloch, but their spell is a

binding spell, suggesting the need to bind technology, control it.

This last point is the one I find most interesting as it suggests that

technology must be bound, must be tightly controlled, and that it cannot bepermitted to develop its own agency. In I Robot You Jane, the technology

comes alive, acquires its own agency {several scenes in the episode take the

perspective of Moloch inhabiting various cameras and computers}, and does

precisely what Giles fears it will do: enslaves the students of Sunnydale and

creates a world in which people can be completely manipulated by

technology. These themes regarding the autonomy of technology and our

fear of losing control over technology and becoming enslaved by it and

common techno-phobic themes that, in the course of this episode,

overwhelm any counter-tale the show is trying to develop.

2. Similar points are apparent in other episodes of Buffy: the

repudiation of technology.

Its these same fears of technology come up again in the second season

episode Ted, where technology threatens to step into the family unit and

take over. The robotic Ted, like the Moloch, has to be neutralized. Similar

doubts about technology emerge very clearly in the sixth season, especially

with its focus on twin themes: The Trios (Warren, Andrew, and Jonathan)

reliance on magic and technology in order to dominate the world, or at leastget a date, and Willows descent into addiction. By the sixth season, its very

clear both that the image of the nerd or geek has lost whatever positive value

it had and that technology and its stand-in in the Buffyverse, magic, is

dangerously out of control. In this regard, I think it is telling that the event

that precipitates Willows efforts at apocalypse comes as a result of the

technology of a handgun.


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Most significantly, these themes are the focus of the fourth season story arc

involving the Initiative and Adam, the kinematically redundant, bio-

mechanical demonoid designed by Maggie Walsh. Its in the fourth season

where the initial fears of technology voiced in I Robot, You Jane, most

come alive.

The fourth season story arc, with its focus on The Initiative and Adam, has

already received a lot of attention, especially focusing on The Initiative as

the symbol of reason, science, and technology run amuck. You may be

familiar, for instance, with Rob Breton and Lindsey McMasters essay

Dissing in the Age of MOO: Initiatives, Alternatives, and Rationality

which appeared in the very first Slayage. As it has generated some analysis

already, I dont want to belabor my point too much. I might note several

points:

Its interesting that it is in the context of the fourth season and Buffys

relationship to Riley that we have the clearest indication of Buffys

unwillingness to make stark, black-and-white moral judgments about people

being good and demons being bad. This is a point that Breton and McMaster

call explicit attention to. And yet Buffy, in the context of the show, is

unwilling to extend that same consideration to technology. The starkness of

the contrast suggested between the Slayer and the Scoobies versus Maggie

Walsh and The Initiative is especially stark and admits no possibility for any

kind of reconciliation. Gone is any subtlety in the portrayal of technology in

the Buffyverse.

The resurgence of human will against technology: Rileys digging out his

chip. Riley has an implant that makes him susceptible to The Initiatives

will. He has been, without his knowledge or consent, chemically and

physically altered to be more like Adam. It is Walsh who implanted the

behavior modification chip in Riley, and Walsh who, as Adam says,

shaped Riley (Goodbye Iowa). At first, Riley is helpless to resist Adams

summons, but then, at a critical moment, the power of his connection toBuffy allows him to regain his will and reject the dehumanization of

technology.

Finally, its precisely at the point of the defeat of Adam, taking place recall

just a few months after the hysteria of Y2K that the power of the first Slayer

is released. Buffy goes all Primeval on Adam and begins a series of


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episodes that call the Slayer back to her more primitive and traditional roots.

Something similar happens in the course of Willows eventual rehabilitation.

3. It is these fears which ultimately manifest themselves in Willows

eventual fall from grace in the sixth season. Returning then to the

character of Willow, we see these same fears about technology manifesting

themselves in her character as well. While on the surface Buffy seems to

celebrate Willows technical savvy and her devotion to the pursuit of

knowledge, we have regular hints throughout the series that Willow is not

entirely happy with her place in the world.

As early as the second season Halloween special, we get a sense of a

problem with Willows character. She dresses up as a ghost and

becomes invisible, intangible. Halloween: I dont get wild. Wild

on me equals spaz. We begin to get a sense that Willow is nothappy with her self.

Again, in Doppleganged, The similarities between Willow and her

evil double: Vampire Willow: This worlds no fun. Willow: You

noticed that, too? Subsequently, we learn that both Vampire Willow

and then Evil, Witchy Willow find the world boring.

In Wrecked, from the sixth season, Willow seeks the bliss of self-

obliteration brought about by the use of dark magic. Iit took me

away from myselfI was out of my mind, she says as she laments

the fact that she nearly caused the death of Dawn. She explains hermotivation: If you could be plain old Willow or super Willow, who

would you be?

The sixth season presents a much more complicated picture of

Willow: Let me tell you something about Willow. Shes a loser. And

she always has been. People picked on Willow in junior high school,

high school, up until collegewith her stupid mousy ways and now

Willows a junkie.

Very early in Willows developing character, then, we witness some tensionbetween her portrayal as the confident cyber-geek and aspiring witch and her

unhappiness with herself and her place in the world. Ultimately of course

Willow becomes dangerously addicted to magic, misusing her power finally

to the point of almost bringing the world to an end. If we continue to read

magic as a stand-in for technology, we might read Willow and her

experience with magic as a morality tale for our own experience with


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technology: it too needs to be tightly controlled and bound, is not fully to be

trusted, always threatens to run out of control.

This theme is certainly hinted at in the opening episode of the seventh

season, which is tellingly titled Lessons. When we first catch up with

Willow after her near-apocalyptic rampage, we find ourselves in the British

countryside. We see Giles on a horse and Willow making a Paraguayan

flower appear. Shes brought it through the earth, having learned at the

hands of the British coven where she is being rehabilitated that everything

is connected.

Willow: Its all connectedeverythings connected.Youve

[Giles] gone all Dumbledore on me. Im learning about magic, all

about energy and Gaia and root systems.

Willow recognizes that the coven is afraid of her and shes afraid about

confronting her friends again. Shes having to learn control, must be

controlled, before she can emerge back out into the world. And that control

is placed in an ecofeminist context often explicitly contrasted with a more

scientific and technological standpoint on the world. Willow redeems herself

in the seventh season by embracing a more mystical eco-feminist, Gaian

philosophy of connections. One can, I think, read this as a turn away from

technology and an implicit critique of technology, certainly one consistent

with those themes that emerged in the fourth and sixth seasons of Buffy.

Buffys treatment of technology suggests a parallel with our experience of

technology and a turn from what might have been a positive treatment of

technology to a negative onethat runs counter both to what we need, given

the role of technology in our lives and runs counter to some of the other

ways that Buffy demonstrated a complex attitude toward other issues, for

which the show is justifiably lauded. There are several points which justify

this assertion.

buffy and the magic of critique

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