Why buffy kicked ass: the deep meaning of TV's favorite vampire slayer - Buffy, the Vampire Slayer

Reason, August, 2003 by Virginia Postrel

"It flies in the face of everything we've ever--every generation has ever done in the fight against evil," says Giles, her former Watcher and father figure, when Buffy lays out her plan in the finale. "I think it's bloody brilliant."

Life's pleasures are precious. Buffy maintains her sense of humor, her great hair, and her love of ice cream. She has fun with the friends she loves. The jokes and playful language are as essential to the Buffyverse as the earnest sentiments they cut across.

"So what do you guys want to do tomorrow?" Buffy asks her best friends as they walk to their final battle, a battle none expects to survive. "I was thinking of shopping, as per usual." Banter ensues about shoe cravings and the right look for a guy with an eye patch.

"Aren't we going to discuss this?" asks Giles, befuddled and a tad disapproving. "Save the world, and go to the mall?"

Well, yes. That's the world they're fighting for.

Virginia Postrel (vpostrel@dynamist.com) is the author of The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, which will he published in September by HarperCollins.

"It belongs in the canon," says former reason editor VIRGINIA POSTREL of her favorite TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (See "Why Buffy Kicked Ass," page 72.) Postrel, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, reconceived the political spectrum in her groundbreaking first book, The Future and Its Enemies (1998). Her second, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness (HarperCollins), was written from her Dallas home; it's due out this September. "Dallas turned out to be a great place to do the book," says Postrel, who writes monthly columns for The New York Times and D Magazine. "If I still lived in Los Angeles, people would have said, 'Well, that's just L.A.--Hollywood and all.' Dallas is more suburban middle America."