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Week 2 - Darkness
"I'll Just Let It Burn"

Opening

Ambiguity finds its most disturbing expression when we poke around inside ourselves, exploring the maze of contradictions within. We are spiritual and carnal, altruistic and selfish, magnanimous and narrow-minded, good and evil. What twentieth-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung called the "shadow self"-our darker double-is always with us. Jung told a relevant story about an upstanding family he once knew: the father, a Quaker, "could not imagine that he had ever done anything wrong in his life," Jung said, and he "would not take on his shadow." The man's denial of his shadow self played out in his children succumbing wholly to darkness, Jung believed; one of them became a thief and the other a prostitute... Although we may not agree with Jung's conclusion that this man's children took on their father's shadow in destructive ways, Jung's overall idea-that denial of our shadow selves is destructive to everyone around us-speaks a very real truth.

-Jana Riess
What Would Buffy Do?

Episode 2.13 - Surprise

Continuity

  • Spike was injured in an earlier episode, and is now confined to a wheelchair

What to watch for:

  • Angel's curse, and its effect on the family of those who gave him the curse
  • Buffy blinding herself to the risks of loving Angel

Transcript is available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season2/transcripts/25_tran.shtml

Episode 2.14 - Innocence

Photo: Angel

What to watch for:

  • How Angel's curse returns on Jenny and her uncle
  • Angel's sense of release when the curse is broken
  • What Buffy can, and cannot, do in response to Angel's change
  • Willow's response to Xander and Cordelia

Transcript is available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season2/transcripts/26_tran.shtml

Questions

Buffy, Giles, and Willow all experience deep feelings of betrayal in these episodes. How do we work through feelings of betrayal when it happens to us?

How are we sometimes blinded to other people's darkness?

Why is Buffy unable to kill Angel when she has the chance?

What are other ways that we may leave ourselves open to betrayal?

Have you ever watched someone close to you being consumed by some inner darkness? How did you respond?

What are the things that can trigger our own dark sides to come out?

Who is responsible for our own inner darkness? Why does it take so long for most people to understand that?

What are the things that we do to compensate for our own darkness?

How can we acknowledge and respect our own darkness without plunging ourselves into its abyss?

Closing

Angel's inner darkness may be supernatural and demonic, but it's a rare person who has never once wanted to seize something he has no right to take; never once wanted to give free rein to instinct and desire with no thought for social mores; never once wanted to act out of anger without consideration for the consequences; and never once wanted to break a strict and unsatisfying diet... Though we may feel repelled by or wary of the demonic urges living so close to his surface, Angel's struggles are nevertheless our struggles-taken to dramatically heightened extremes by the supernatural qualities of the Buffyverse.

-Laura Resnick

Additional Reading

Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Rebecca Ann Parker, Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering, and the Search for What Saves Us. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Erickson, Gregory, "Sometimes You Need a Story": American Christianity, Vampires, and Buffy. Wilcox, Rhonda V., and David Lavery, Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.

Kaverny, Roz, She Saved The World. A Lot. An Introduction to the Themes and Structures of Buffy and Angel. Kaveny, Roz, Reading the Vampire Slayer, second edition. London: Taurisparke Paperbacks, 2004.

Korsmeyer, Carolyn, Passion and Action: In and Out of Control. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Krimmer, Elisabeth, and Shilpa Raval, "Digging the Undead": Death and Desire on Buffy. Wilcox, Rhonda V., and David Lavery, Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.

Lorrah, Jean, Love Saves the World. Yeffeth, Glenn, ed., Seven Seasons of Buffy. Dallas, TX: Benbella Books, 2003.

Marinucci, Mimi, Feminism and the Ethics of Violence. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Miller, Jessica Prata, "The I in Team": Buffy and Feminist Ethics. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.

Riess, Jana, What Would Buffy Do? San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Stroud, Scott R., A Kantian Analysis of Moral Judgment in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. South, James B, ed., Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003.