Something to Sing About in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Essay -- Buffy the

throughout much of recorded human history, people have written tales of the stagnant returning to life, usually to trouble the living in some way. These conventional myths have progressed from ancient superstitions, to campfire ghost stories, to television shows such as Joss Whedons Buffy the vampire Slayer. In the series, vampires atomic number 18 created from the dead victims of other vampires (as long as a certain rite is performed during the victims last). After a time they rise from their carve and immediately seek to kill and drink the blood of the living. Creatures such as these are, as Lacan give first name when you first mention someone describes them, between the 2 deaths and live again only to fulfill insistent, mechanical drive. This drive, often focus on on killing, vengeance, or some other quest for closure, is distinct from hope in that it is not caught up in dialectical trickery (Zizek 21). accord to Zizek ditto, normal appetencys are not alway s what they seem, for when we desire something, we may be seeking something else entirely (21). Most of the vampires in Buffy the Vampire Slayer adapted Lacans profile of between the twain deaths, and, as one might expect, they are antagonists to the protector of the living, Buffy. However, in the musical episode Once More, with Feeling, Whedon explores two protagonists who are also between the two deaths, each struggling to revert pole to their prior state of being, but both in a different situation. One of these characters, Spike, once fit the archetype of the vampire, but now faces trouble as he is forced to cope with normal dialectical desire in order to exist in the civilized, symbolic world. The other, Buffy, fulfilled the death drive when she sa... ... her to be the Slayer. Her only chance to find motivation in the world is to find a new desire. Both characters approach the equivalent center, but from different ends of the drive-symbol spectrum. Thus, Whedo n not only makes use of the Lacanian between the two deaths concept, but he also plays with making it dynamic (Spike) and with inverting it (Buffy). Then, at the precise end of the episode, the two experiments are united in an elegant closure. Sources Cited or Consulted Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Once More, with Feeling. Felluga, Dino. Modules on Lacan On Desire. Introductory Guide to hypercritical Theory. Date March 11, 2003. Purdue U. March 23, 2003. <http//www.purdue.edu/guidetotheory/psychoanalysis/lacandesire.html>. Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry An gateway to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture. Cambridge MIT P, 1991.