Week 10- Anita Ibell

In what way was Buffy influenced by the romantic gothic Tradition? Yet how does Buffy deviate from this tradition?

“It is one thing to make an idea clear and another to make it effective to the imagination and it is the imagination that all art must address: the imagination, not reason. Through imagination, art must reach the passions...”

Edmund Burke.

When Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she used her imagination to explore complex philosophical and moral questions in the tradition of Romanticism, during the age of traditional upheavals (Rose. 2002). By directly comparing Shelley's 'Frankenstein' to the episodes of Buffy that include the monstrous Adam it can be seen that Buffy has 'adopted and adapted' many of the conventions used by Shelley in this tradition (Rose. 2002); such as using dramatic symbolism to contrast the natural with the supernatural in order to explore real psychological concerns and a penchant for the gothic aesthetic, all monsters and demons and darkness, used- perhaps, to scare us into thinking about these things.

Both Frankenstein's monster and the demons that come out of the Hellmouth represent something strongly felt, socially relevant and destructive- yet unseen. In Frankenstein, the monster is a symbolic representative that infiltrates a realistic world of normal people. He is given part of the book in first person narrative to further elaborate his purpose. After killing the little boy, the monster says: “I too can create desolation; my enemy is not invulnerable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.”(Shelley) If the monster is a symbol of the collective fears surrounding 'industrialization and science and their effects on morality and humanity' (Rose. 2002.pp.135.), then this message is not a hopeful one. It causes reader concern for his creator, the romantic hero who struggles inside his own head against the opposing forces he faces in his psyche. He is also the only one who knows of the beast and has any chance of stopping him and thus his journey is a lonely one full of despair and hard lessons- as the romantic hero's often was. (Rose, 2002. pp.135)

In comparison, Buffy and the Scooby gang fight a league of demons and vampires that inhabit the world of unknowing citizens and they too, are among the only people aware of this underground threat. Buffy is the re-imagined feminine hero without most of the inner torment and conflict of M. Frankenstein, because she has the power of the team to back her up and create strength. Adam is strikingly similar to Frankenstein's nameless monster as he is the product of Maggie's scientific greed. However Adam has more knowledge & power than Frankenstein's monster ever did. He doesn't need his mother creator though, only the information she has left him with. This, I think is a comment on how technology and science has advanced past Shelley's imaginings. There are similarities obviously within the theme that's explored through having the monsters so similarly created, however Buffy deviates from the romantic gothic tradition by blurring gender roles (Rose, 2002.) and amalgamating individual strengths to triumph over evil and illustrate how important social cohesiveness is in the face of chaos.

References:

Rose, A (2002) Of Creatures and Creators: Buffy does Frankenstein, in: R. Wilcox and D. Lavery (eds) Fighting the Forces, what's at stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield.

Shelley, M. (1831?) Frankenstein