© Jim Checkley
August 3, 2003
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
SERMON
When Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended its seven-year run this past May, I knew I would make it the subject of a service. My first thought was to call it “Requiem for a Slayer.” But I quickly realized that Buffy did not need a mass for the dead, but rather a proclamation for the living. Because while Buffy the Vampire Slayer is ostensibly a show about the supernatural battle between good and evil, at its heart, it is really an exploration of all things human, a celebration of the best that we can be.
I’ve seen all the episodes of the series – some more than once. I saw most of them on Tuesday nights with my daughter Kathleen, who earlier sang for you the love ballad from the musical episode “Once More With Feeling.” She and I had a standing date for a number of years and watched the show together as she passed through her teen years. The show acted as a wonderful catalyst for our relationship during those years. Subjects like high school, dating, peer pressure, drugs, sex, friends, or lack thereof, rejection, personal responsibility, moral choices, loyalty, love, all these and more were explored on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Now I know it’s just a TV show, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer was special. And you don’t have to take my word for it. BTVS, as it’s known on the Internet, has generated over 2000 Internet sites, many of them devoted to the deeper aspects of the show. There are two scholarly books I am aware of: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy and Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both are collections of essays by noted academics on subjects like philosophy, ethics, sociology and religion. I had a nice e-mail correspondence with one of the authors, a professor of philosophy, regarding issues of love and friendship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and William James’ philosophy, in particular his “will to believe.” There’s even an Internet site called slayage.com where papers that didn’t make the books are posted for reading and comment – and more are posted all the time.
During the months leading to the series finale, people were coming out of the woodwork to praise BTVS. The Sunday Times had a spread written by a woman who did the TV beat for a Boston paper similar in spirit to our Austin Chronicle. I had to laugh – there probably wasn’t anybody at the blue-blood NY Times who knew enough about Buffy to write the piece. The Austin American Statesman also did a wrap-up piece, one that featured where the best parties were in town. That is where I copied the handout you received today. Buffy is the best show that wasn’t accepted by the mainstream – at least not until its demise.
Let’s face it, the name of the show does not inspire confidence and series creator Joss Whedon admits that the studio begged him to change the name, but he refused. Plus, Buffy the TV series was spawned from a rather mediocre 1992 movie of the same name. Joss Whedon wrote that movie too, but did not care for how it turned out. So when 20th Century Fox gave Whedon the opportunity to do Buffy on TV, he jumped at the chance.
And the difference was remarkable: the dialogue was hip, crisp, and articulate. Hillary, who has now seen two episodes and is a convert, asked me to emphasize the humor. There is humor, lots of humor, but the show took itself seriously enough that all the supernatural aspects were played straight up. That is, BTVS is not a spoof. This combination of wildly creative, supernatural material explored in an honest, straight forward way produced a marvelous canvas upon which to explore what it means to be human, and how to best live one’s life in the company of others. Amidst the demons and the vampires, the deep humanity of the show shined like a beacon. I have always said that science fiction and fantasy provide the best opportunity to explore our humanity. Buffy the Vampire Slayer proved the point with style and aplomb.
BTVS is a show primarily about teenagers as they moved through high school and college, but it was not just a teen show. The teen years are an intense time in our lives and during those years we make choices and experience events that set our path for much of the rest of our lives. And I frankly don’t get it when people reject out of hand shows or movies that focus on teens or the teen years. While it is obviously possible to portray the vapid, hormone driven side of teen life, and a lot of Hollywood producers do just that, it is also possible to use the teen years and the choices they present as a rich canvas to explore life and the struggle we all face to become the persons we want to be. In this sense Buffy is very real and taps into the deep emotions of growing into adulthood.
And here’s a surprise. We may fool ourselves into thinking that we only get or need to make fundamental choices once. But I don’t think that’s true. Chronologically at least, I am a middle-aged man, and yet I found myself time and again identifying with those teenagers and the choices that confronted them about how to live their lives. It turns out that I looked around to discover that my children are grown and my needs, goals, and hopes for the future were very, very different from when I was a teenager, or even in my thirties. I realized while watching Buffy that I too have fundamental choices to make about how I live the second half of life. This resonance with the teens on the show was often quite powerful and helped me to “think outside the box” about the rest of my life.
I have brought a prop with me today. Some assembly is required so give me a moment. Here, larger than life, is Buffy the Vampire Slayer – or at least her cardboard cutout. I don’t know if I should tell you this, but she was given to me by my son for Father’s Day. Now, of course, this a picture of Sara Michelle Gellar, the young woman who played Buffy. Pretty cute, huh? It’s easy to see why some people might assume that Buffy the Vampire Slayer is just another show about a scantily clad young thing and thus dismiss it. It also explains why I got so much grief from my colleagues and friends, and why my son, TJ, told me I was taking a risk doing this service.
But anybody who gets stuck on Buffy’s appearance is missing the entire point of the show. For underneath her Vogue and Maybelline exterior lies the heart and soul of a super hero. The whole point is that Buffy is not what she appears to be. The whole point is to get beyond stereotypes and superficial appearances and discovery what lies beneath. As I will discuss throughout the rest of this talk, what matters is who we are inside – our strength as a person – and the choices we make when confronted with the challenges of the world.
British psychologist Cynthia McVey says Buffy’s appeal as a character is that, while looking frail and girlish, she is deeply powerful. In this respect, Buffy has a lot in common with that celebrated British teenager, Harry Potter. Nobody would suspect that beneath those round glasses and slight build is a great wizard. Therein lies, I think, much of the appeal of Buffy and Harry with young people: those young people are hoping against hope that inside of them there is something or someone special, just like Buffy and Harry.
As a female super hero, Buffy belongs to the recent pop cultural movement that is entwined with the empowerment of women. We can start with Diana Rigg, who, as Mrs. Peel, was partners in the spy game with John Steed in the 1960s British TV series The Avengers (recently reprised by Uma Thurman), and more recently recall the likes of Wonder Woman, Ripley, Xena: Warrior Princess, La Femme Nikita, Charmed, Witchblade, Electra, Lara Croft, Dark Angel, Birds of Prey, the PowerPuff Girls, Charlie’s Angels, and Sidney Bristow of Alias. Our culture is currently flooded with images of outwardly powerful women.
And yes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer blows the lid off female stereotypes and the message is clear: women are as powerful and independent as men and deserve to be treated with just as much respect. But Buffy is not just an adolescent boy’s dream on steroids, someone who can fly through the air on wires and never get her make-up mussed, like some of the images out in our culture today, those that I call the “adolescent empowerment of women.” Buffy represents an “adult empowerment of women,” one that empowers on the inside as well as the outside and comes complete with responsibility, moral dilemmas, and a real person.
In adult empowerment, the power I am talking about goes beyond physical strength and magical abilities, although these are fun and admirable. Buffy – and several of her friends – are powerful in this way, of course, but the power I am talking about is the power inside, the power of the heart and the will. Buffy, many times with the help of her friends, overcomes obstacles that would crush most of us. And often it is not Buffy’s supernatural powers that save the day. They are a mere instrumentality. What saves the day is Buffy’s dedication and indomitable will.
For example, at the end of the first season, Buffy discovers that an infallible prophecy says that the Master Vampire will kill her on Prom Night. Her initial reaction is to want to run away, of course, and she asks her mother if they can go away for the weekend. But after her fiend Willow discovers some boys at the high school who have been horribly killed by the gathering vampires, Buffy changes her mind. Willow, shaken, and lying in bed, tells Buffy:
I’m not OK. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be okay. I knew those guys. I go to that room every day. And when I walked in there, it was… it wasn’t our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had fun. What are we going to do?
Buffy answers simply: “What we have to.” In that moment, Buffy decides to confront the Master even knowing that it will mean she is going to die. Those moments of courage and responsibility go beyond any external strength or beauty. She then confronts the Master and is killed. Only this is TV, and so she drowns, and, as luck would have it, is revived by one of her friends who knows CPR, and comes back stronger than ever to ultimately defeat the Master.
You see, while the Buffyverse is supernatural, the lessons are not. The lessons touch us in the most real ways possible. This is one of the great truths about how we interact with our stories, whether they are from the Bible, other scriptures, mythology, or, yes, even television. We will translate the lessons to our lives and to our hearts, if those lessons – even if they are in a supernatural setting, an unreal setting, an impossible setting – if those lessons touch our souls.
Moreover, the lessons from Buffy are positive lessons, including self-reliance, self-knowledge, and self-exploration. Let me give you one example, my favorite example, among many. At the end of Season Two, in the two part season finale I think is Buffy’s best, Buffy loses everything she cares about in her life as a consequence of her battle against evil. She is kicked out of school, kicked out of her home by her mother who cannot accept her calling as the Slayer, she loses her friends, is accused of murder, and must, in the final analysis, literally send the man she loves to hell in order to save the world.
At the absolute nadir of the episode, when all seems lost, the evil vampire Angelus approaches a fallen and apparently beaten Buffy and says: “So that’s everything, huh? No weapons, no friends, no hope. Take all that away and what’s left?” “Me,” says Buffy as she catches his sword just before it would have killed her. What’s left is me. Self-reliance. Self-confidence. Self-esteem. No Ophelia Complex here. From that point, Buffy battles back, and at great cost to herself, does what is right, what needs to be done. For seven years Buffy always battled back, always had the will and resolve to do what was right, always did what needed to be done. I can’t think of a more positive lesson whether you are a man or a woman. I can’t think of a more positive empowerment for a human being.
I only have a few minutes left and there are any number of things I could talk about, but let me talk about an overarching theme: the power of choice. Because in a world where beings are defined by what they are – demon, human, slayer, vampire – it turns out that the most important aspect of life is the power to choose.
