Buffy the Vampire Slayer Essay -- Television TV Show Essays

Buffy the Vampire SlayerWhile the first seasons of Buffy are structured around an external flagellum seeking to corrupt the order of the world, later the source of the threat becomes increasingly internal, and the characters must embrace a side of themselves which is evil, irrational, or dangerous. When Giles extinguishs an arguably unprejudiced Ben, he does not suffer the moral ambiguity that Willow encounters when she kills a blameful Warren. Willow has to deal with an evil internal to her in a way Giles does not, and this unornamented discrepancy is the result of a general evolution of the series, rather than a double standard. The murder of Ben is comparable to the murder of Warren, even though Ben is mostly innocent and Warren is mostly guilty. They are both human, and their deaths are necessary to stop further evil. Even though Ben cohabits the same body with the hell god Glory, he, as an independent being, is innocent of Glorys actions, as the Scoobies uniformly agree Wha t about Ben? He can be killed, right? I mean, I know hes an innocent, but, you know, not, like Dawn innocent. We could kill... a regular guy... (no we couldnt) God. Even the script directions (no we couldnt) suggest that the way Xander delivers these lines should emphasize the moral impossibility of killing Ben as a way of stopping Glory. beingness Glory is to Ben what being the Key is to Dawn it could make him other but it cannot make him either good or bad on Glorys behalf. It is true that Ben is guilty of other things -- he summons the demon who kills (or merely finishes off) Glorys brain sucked victims and, in Listening to Fear, there is even a real chance that Joyce might feel killed because of him (an event which Buffy prevents from happening). ... ...umans into vampires) at some point someone has to draw the line, and that is always going to be me. You get down on me for cutting myself off, but in the end the slayer is always cut off (Selfless). At the same time, she is th e most ambiguous one, the one who is ready to cut alone ties with family and friends and kill people she loves, if necessary (e.g., Angel). The requirement that she know exactly which side she must stay on (regardless of where those she loves are) gives her the responsibility to keep the other other at all costs -- even at the cost of becoming an other herself. This would be the moral equivalent of dying to save lives in The Gift -- in this case, cut across over to the dark side in order to prevent others from doing it. Paradoxically, she protects the line which separates good from evil by crossing it, by becoming more than and more other.