Buffy The Disciplinarian
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which the criminars act against the sovereignty is revenged; in punishing a crime,
therefore, “the intervention of the sovereign is not...an arbitration between two
adversaries:.. .t is a direct reply to the person who has offended him” (47-48). In a
similar way, the Council does not seem to be concerned simply with punishing
those who break the law, but rather they treat all transgressions as direct affronts to
their authority. In condemning Angel, for example, the Council reveals that it is
more concerned with preserving its own codes than it is with justice, or, as Wesley
tells Buffy, “It’s not Council pohcy to cure vampires” (“Graduation Day, Part One”).
This emphasis on preserving authority is even more pronounced when the
transgression is committed by one of the Council’s own members. For example,
Wesley refers to Buffy’s desire to help Angel as “mutiny,” a term which seems
highly extreme, and in the episode “Who Are You,” where Faith is chased for
committing murder, the Council’s retrieval team says to her, “The Watcher’s Council
used to mean something. You perverted it.” This accusation is shown to be doubly
misplaced in that it not only reveals the Council’s megalomania but also their
ineptitude; due to a magical device. Faith has switched bodies with Buffy, and the
Council’s policy of following orders without question allows them to capture and
accuse the wrong person. This episode also depicts the Council’s brutality: rather
than returning Faith to the U.K. for trial, the Council orders her immediate execution,
and thus Faith’s eventual confession to the police in “Sanctuary” depicts the legal
system as a much more civilized and modem institution. (The legal system is rarely
shown in such a positive light in the series; it is only in contrast to the primitive
extremism of the Council that this is possible.) The Council applies the same extreme
measures to all vampires and demons, measures that bear a striking similarity to
what Foucault describes as the “limit of punishment”: “The dissymmetry, the
irreversible imbalance of forces were an essential element in the public execution.
A body effaced, reduced to dust and thrown to the winds, a body destroyed piece
by piece by the infinite power of the sovereign constituted not only the ideal, but
the real limit of punishment” (50). The show’s use of special effects to make the
vampires explode into dust whenever they are killed would seem to be the most
perfect illustration of this hmit, and the Council’s blanket use of this extreme form
of punishment shows its medieval nature. By rejecting the Council, Buffy also
rejects this excessive use of force.
But perhaps the clearest way in which BtVS illustrates Foucault’s model of
discipline and punishment is in the notion of the slayer itself. As the prologue to
the show’s early episodes states, the slayer is a mystical figure who appears in
each generation and who possesses superhuman abilities that allow her to combat
the forces of evil. Buffy is not the only such slayer, but rather the latest in a long
line of slayers who have all performed a similar function in society. Unlike a typical
superhero, the power of the slayer in no way resides uniquely in Buffy herself, but