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NO ORDINARY GIRL Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale Edited by James B. South Open Court Publishing, $17.95, 335 pp.
In the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, our golden-haired heroine found herself facing one of the worst enemies she'd seen in the TV show's seven-year run: a minion of "The First" (the primeval evil) named Caleb-a fallen preacher, imbued with supernatural strength verging on invincibility. Buffy was stuck, lost on how to beat him. Lucky for her she stumbled upon a useful-looking scythe, and, King Arthur-style, pulled it from a stone. When the weapon's creator revealed that it was meant for the prophesied savior of the world-otherwise known as the Slayer-she also asked the perky superhero her name.
"Buffy."
"No, really?"
"Yes, really."
That sums it up. Buffy began when its creator, Joss Whedon, wondered what would happen if the helpless blonde who always gets killed in horror films turned around and fought back. He built this story around a Valley Girl in Southern California who was called at age fifteen as the "chosen one" to fight "vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness." It quickly became an epic about the Big Questions (What is our purpose in life? How do we deal with suffering and loss? What should we wear to the prom?) and Big Issues (vocation, redemption, and bad-hair days).
Buffy was "unlike any other vampire fiction ever produced," claims Greg Forster in the first of the twenty-two essays in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy. Where early vampire fiction portrayed a Christian worldview of good against...