The current issues of both "In These Times" and "The Weekly Standard" both have articles praising "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". The best thing is, both authors love Buffy, but give completly opposite reasons!
To the guy from ITT (Title of the piece: "Buffy the Anarchosyndicalist") Buffy and her collective are teenage anarchists, smashing the authorities (parents, teachers, coaches) who are literal monsters. He pointed out something that I had completly missed: in this season's premiere, a church offering help to teenage runaways turns out to be a group of demons who take the kids to an alternate dimension, to slave in dark satanic mills until they are too old. Buffy leads a rebellion - and this is what I missed - with a hammer in one hand and a sickle in the other. (!)
The Standard, on the other hand, sees Buffy as heralding a return to good old fashioned "morality" on the part of its teenage fans. He apparently sees Buff and crew as struggling against the relativism of their Boomer parents, reestablishing a god-centered moral universe of absolute good and evil.
Now, the point is not that ITT is right and TWS is wrong. (That goes without saying, no matter what the topic...) The point is, here is a show that can appeal to polar opposites, who find "messages" in it that are not only different, but completly contradict each other!
That, my friends, is Art.
Jim Baird, keeping his stakes sharp
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