Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781845110291)

Hugely enjoyable, long awaited book by top world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Buffy is still on screens and on DVD in home television libraries of a wide array of TV watchers and fans. This is also the student text for TV and cultural studies at colleges and universities where Buffy is widely taught. Rhonda Wilcox is a world authority on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", who has been writing and lecturing about the show since its arrival on our screens. This book is the distillation of this remarkable body of work and thought, a celebration of the series that she proposes is an aesthetic test case for television. Buffy is enduring as art, she argues, by exploring its own possibilities for long-term construction as well as producing individual episodes that are powerful in their own right. She examines therefore the larger patterns that extend through many episodes: the hero myth, the imagery of light, naming symbolism, Spike, sex and redemption, Buffy Summers compared and contrasted with Harry Potter. She then moves in to focus on individual episodes, such as the "Buffy musical Once More, with Feeling", the largely silent Hush and the dream episode "Restless" (T.S.
Eliot comes to television). She also examines Buffy's ways of making meaning - from literary narrative and symbolism to visual imagery and sound. Combining great intelligence and wit, written for the wide Buffy readership, this is the worthy companion to the show that has claimed and kept the minds and hearts of watchers worldwide.

Author: Rhonda Wilcox
ISBN-10: 1845110293
ISBN-13: 9781845110291
Publisher: Continnuum-3PL
Language: English
Published: 12/01/2005
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.72lbs
Size: 8.58h x 5.46w x 0.78d
Award: Bram Stoker Awards - Nominee

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 12/15/2005 pg. 13
Library Journal 12/08/2005