Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bradney, Anthony

Titel

For and Against the Law:‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, ‘Angel’ and the Academy

Ist Teil von

• Entertainment and sports law journal (Coventry, England), 2016-06, Vol.9 (1)

Ort / Verlag

University of Westminster Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2016

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

EZB Free E-Journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this article I will first argue that the two television series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ (hereafter BtVS) and its spinoff series ‘Angel’ both contain an account of the place of law and legal institutions in society. However, whilst one series, BtVS, takes a mainly positive attitude towards law, the central characters usually seeking to live lawfully, ‘Angel’ shows those involved in the law to be, at best, morally flawed and the main character, Angel, consistently rejects the idea that any kind of law should determine his behaviour. If this is so, this appears to create a serious problem for the academic analysis of ideas about law in such programmes. The initial broadcasting of the two series overlaps. One man, Joss Whedon, is usually credited with the creation of both of the series. Given this, the utility of examining conceptions of law and legal institutions in programmes such as these might then seem to be put in doubt. Two different accounts of law and legal institutions produced at much the same time by the same person seems to emphasise the pure fictionality of the series. Interrogating the ideas and arguments in the series ignores the fact that they say radically different things at the same time. Why look at what the series and thus Whedon says about law and legal institutions in the two series, given the fact that Whedon seems to feel free to say anything that he chooses on an almost random basis? In the final part of this article I will show why, notwithstanding their contradictory nature, both accounts of law still deserve attention within the academy.