Why Buffy Matters - Annotated by Rhonda V Wilcox (Paperback)

About the Book

A celebration of TV's Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the woman CNN hailed as the *Mother of Buffy Studies*

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

'If there's anyone who doubts Buffy matters, Wilcox's accessible, well written, and carefully argued book is for them. For the rest of us who know Buffy matters, Wilcox provides a generous and richly textured reading of the series sure to provoke discussion and expand our appreciation of its achievement. Why Buffy Matters is a first-rate work of criticism' - James B. South, editor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale

'Why Buffy Matters assembles in one volume the astonishingly perceptive critical commentary of the Mother of Buffy Studies. Like the amazing series it delineates, it brings the funny and brings the tears - or am I the only one deeply moved by interpretive brilliance? This book confirms Rhonda Wilcox as the chosen one among television scholars, the one with the intellectual strength and hermeneutic skill to do battle with one of the most complex popular culture texts of our time.' - David Lavery, Co-editor of Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies

'Why Buffy Matters negotiates big ideas about literature, television, culture,
values, and language with verve and commitment - it's the best Buffy book so far. When it comes to Buffy studies, Wilcox is the Slayer.' - Michael Adams

About the Author

Rhonda Wilcox is an English professor and television scholar. She is co-editor of 'Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and of 'Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies'. She has been described by CNN as 'the Mother of Buffy studies'.