Maybe neocons should watch Buffy
I’ve been watching The Power of Nightmares over the past couple of weeks. The documentary attempts to describe the roots of both the American neo-conservative ideology and radical Islam.
Both, it argues, were born out of the percieved failure of the liberal dream of building a bettter world and both have contributed to a world in which politicians now try to scare us into voting for them by promising to protect us from illlusionary fears rather than offfering any hope of a bettter life.
Against that background, this article in The Orlando Weekly News (link via Blue Glow) provides an interesting counterpoint by discussing the essentially positive values - tolerance, generosity, family, and so on - that underlie Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
[T]he show’s prime ethical directive: Humans are flawed and therefore don’t own the right to judge – to say nothing of kill – one another. The ideology holds no matter the profit potential involved
…
The far right occludes our sense of decency by turning “foreigners” into abstracted nonhumans it’s OK to slaughter; Whedon’s crew seeks to humanize even the apparently nonhuman as long as they’re willing to work for redemption.
If the neo-cons want a myth to unite their country, maybe they’d be better off looking to the positive and essentially human values espoused by Bufffy rather than constantly looking for an outsider to demonise.
Sunday 31 Oct 2004 | Paul | The Pit
