gTexts Blog Redux
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Household Emergencies (8/30/02)
GTEXTS PRIMER ON COLONIALISM (8/26/02)
Sell Your Cell Phone (8/21/02)
GTEXTS PRIMER ON ENGLISH HISTORY (8/21/02)
On the Road (8/20/02)
THE NEW MEDIEVALISM (8/19/02)
Law School Advice (8/18/02)
Tower Power (8/14/02)
Buffy and the CSIS (8/08/02)
ASSETS &LIEABILITIE (8/01/02)
THE TWENTY-SIX-MILE LIE (6/26/02)
Understanding Your Comics (5/17/02)
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© 2002, Garrett Moritz
AU CONTRAIRE! I am both alarmed and amused by the fact that a reputable
thinktank like CSIS is drawing on Buffy the Vampire
Slayer for insights critical to our national security. See below.
In any event, after reading some
of the characteristics of the so-called "Buffy Paradigm" (p. 4), I have to
wonder, just what show were these guys watching? Charmed?
While I think we can all agree that the CSIS report is certainly no Long Telegram, they could
have at least done their research thoroughly. Specifically, I take issue
with the following descriptions of the "Buffy Paradigm":
-- What expertise there is consists largely of bad or uncertain advice and old, flawed, and confusing technical data(emphasis added) Yo! Show some respect for Buffy's intelligence source, high-powered high-school librarian Giles. You go to this guy with a vague description of the episode's villain, he comes back five minutes later with the precise species of cacodaemon and what its weak points are. Whatever may be the contours of "Buffy Syndrome," a lack of good data is not one of them.
-- Arcane knowledge is always inadequate and fails to predict, detect, and properly characterize the threat.
Indeed, I did a little digging, and it turns out that Giles has quite a following among librarians. Consider the following excerpts from GraceAnne A. DeCandido's essay praising "Giles: Hero Librarian":
[T]he appearance of school librarian Rupert Giles on television's Buffy the Vampire Slayer has done more for the image of the profession than anything in the past fifty years, with the possible exception of Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set. Giles, this wily and attractive professional, is our hero librarian: a pop culture idol whose love of books and devotion to research hold the key to saving the universe - every week....The librarians say it better than me: the true "Buffy Paradigm" is not typified by a lack of information, but a wealth of it. One can only conclude that CSIS's blatant mischaracterization reflects their quite understandable jealousy of Buffy's far superior thinktank.
Buffy's buddies...meet and conduct much of their research in the school library. Giles, whose collection development policy must be an extraordinary document, has access in the stacks to a vast number of volumes on vampire and demon lore, the occult, witchcraft, spellcasting, and other rarities....
It is a heady experience for any profession to find itself an integral part of a wildly popular TV series. How much more so for librarians, who have been bedeviled with a poor public image since at least the nineteenth century....
We have a librarian model who is elegant, deeply educated, well if fussily dressed, handsome, and charged with eroticism. In a world of teens where parents rarely make an appearance, he is a stable, friendly, and supportive adult. He stands by Buffy even when the powers that be require him to step down. He lives the faith that answers can be found, and most often found in the pages of a book....