- Hardcover: 320 pages
- Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (1 Feb 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0742516806
- ISBN-13: 978-0742516809
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 2.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 5,101,034 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Review
All 'Buffy' books are not created equal. Anyone interested in delving into the issues raised by the show (including what constitutes feminism, how we can define 'the other,' and whether the world can be reduced with Manichaean simplicity to the battle between good and evil) should invest in Fighting the Forces. The New York Observer In giving 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' the academic attention it so deserves, Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer acknowledges the richness and complexity of the program. Be advised, however, that it is not simply a rah-rah, Buffy is great lovefest. Rather, it is a thought-provoking deconstruction of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' as text that is sure to be of interest to both scholars and fans alike. Taken together, the essays in this book provide insight into what is at once a complicated yet underrated program. Like the program itself, Fighting the Forces gives the reader, if you'll pardon my pun, a lot to sink her/his teeth into! -- Sharon R. Mazzarella, Ph.D., Ithaca College, co-editor of Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity Fighting the Forces is a solid collection and shows how much substance there is to a show that to the casual observer might seem campy and shallow. Rain Taxi Review Of Books A collection of scholarly essays treats the show with the serious attention fans have long known it was worthy of. Although the essays take an academic approach, the arcane jargon is nearly absent, yet each essay offers a serious, entertaining perspective on the social, literary, and artistic aspects of Buffy. The Austin Chronicle Screens Race, gender, religion, history, music, technology: who would've thought you could deliver an entire liberal arts curriculum by talking about nothing but Buffy? Rhonda Wilcox and David Lavery, important voices in contemporary television studies, have gathered a compelling set of essays that make up one of the best books available about a single TV series. The scholarship is sophisticated, but the prose is readable and amusing. The volume avoids both the slobbering panegyrics of fan books and the incomprehensible jargon of so many academic books. Including the introduction and afterword there are 22 chapters: read one a week and it'll last the whole TV season. -- Robert Thompson, Trustee Professor of Media and Popular Culture, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television, Syracuse University Fascinating reading which provides a deeper understanding of the richly detailed Buffy the Vampire Slayer. -- Laurie Thayer Rambles The twenty essays collected in Fighting the Forces, and others available on its companion website www.slayage.tv, demonstrate a higher level of critical rigor and quality of writing. Science Fiction Research Association Review Will appeal to the more intellectual of the show's core teenage constituency, helping empower them with respect to the often crypto-vampiric institution of academia. Science Fiction Studies [The book] contains 20 essays organized into three overlapping sections, all of which deal quite seriously and affectionately with aspects of this silly-sounding but quite seriously-written program. The Whitehorse Star
Product Description
For every television series, the original vision grows within a press of forces-both social and artistic expectations, conventions of the business, as well as conventions of the art. Bad television--predictable, commercial, exploitative--simply yields to the forces. Good television, like the character of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, fights them. Fighting the Forces explores the struggle to create meaning in an impressive example of popular culture, the television series phenomenon Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the essays collected here, contributors examine the series using a variety of techniques and viewpoints. They analyze the social and cultural issues implicit in the series and place it in its literary context, not only by examining its literary influences (from German liebestod to Huckleberry Finn) but also by exploring the series' purposeful literary allusions. Furthermore, the book explores the extratextual, such as fanfiction and online discussion groups. The book is additionally supplemented by an online journal Slayage (www.slayage.tv), created by the book editors in acknowledgement of the ongoing nature of television art. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery have written and edited several books and articles exploring the social, literary, and artistic merit of quality television. In addition to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, their work has covered a variety of programs including Twin Peaks, Northern Exposure, The X-Files, and The Sopranos.
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11 reviews
44 of 48 people found the following review helpful
Cogent, scholarly, entertaining
13 Aug 2002
Format:Paperback
Now, let me start by saying that I don't typically read scholarly books about television series. Quite frankly, most of them are just chock-full of flowery, useless speech and precious little actual information or well-argued opinion.
I picked up this book because I'm a huge fan of Buffy and I wanted to see how badly a bunch of academics would mangle the themes and structures Joss & Co. employ on a weekly basis. Odd as this sounds, I was disappointed to find myself greatly enjoying each and every essay.
Now, not each one is a perfect gem and a couple of them made me wonder if the writer had ever actually sat through and enjoyed a single episode, but some of those essays were the most entertaining because they were quite thought-provoking.
I would recommend this book to anyone who's a long-time viewer of the show, regardless of academic experience, although it doesn't hurt to have a B.A. in something under your belt.
This book receives four stars simply because of a few minor grammar and spelling errors. In any other book, I'd let it slide, but this is supposed to be made by real professionals and should be perfect in that regard.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Amazing book for those who like Buffy for it's depth
28 Jun 2002
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you watch Buffy because of the great fight scenes and the pretty people, this book is probably not for you.
But if you watch this show because you see the amazing depth of the characters, the metaphor and mythology it uses expertly, or if you'd like to understand those things more, this book is amazing.
It contains essays on everything from gender and postmodern politics to the uses and purposes of fanfiction and fairy tales. These are the types of topics I discuss after viewing the show, but much more in-depth due to the writers expertise. (Many of them are processors of film, literature, media studies, women's studies, etc.) It's a facinating read for anyone really interested in the show, and for those who don't watch, it will show you that the show is much more than you think.
16 of 17 people found the following review helpful
a solid body of academic work on the series
6 Nov 2003
Format:Paperback
As a collection of critical essays on pop culture, I'd probably only give this 4 stars, but this is head and shoulders above the rest in comparison with the other collections of Buffy academia I've slogged through lately. (Reading the Vampire Slayer and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy - both good in their own right, but rather unpolished).
This collection has both the widest number of topics, and some of the best written essays on the show I've read. We get the usual ones like feminism, female representation, and race, as well as some extremely interesting ones on language uses and a nice homage to the creator. Like all collections of this type, there's a nice hefty appendix of sources and references, mostly online due to the relative lack of published work, but a surprising amount of them reference 'ordinary' fans (those of us without a PhD. in media studies). We also get a nice healthy examination of fanfiction and the fan dynamic, unlike one rather anemic essay in another volume. If you're having a hard time deciding how to get into cultural critisism, ignore the rather stuffy cover and check this out.
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