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Popular Culture Review
various situations, their predatory behavior is also coded as criminal, and the fact
that they exist outside normal systems of economic exchange and “feed off the
living” often codes them as lower-class citizens or even parasitical welfare
recipients. Therefore, rather than simply representing abstract ideas, such as the
failure of reason, science, and social order, or as a problem that must be completely
eliminated, vampires and demons—creatures without souls—^represent figures who
are truly marginahzed by society and supposedly in need of disciphne.
This relationship between vampires and discipline is particularly appropriate
given that, according to Foucault, the exercise of disciphnary power is directly
linked to the notion of the soul. Foucault argues that the soul is produced in the act
of punishment, and thus the history of the creation of the modem institutional
apparatus is also a “history of the modem soul”: “[The soul] is not bom in sin and
subject to punishment, but is bom rather out of methods of punishment, supervision
and constraint” (29). In other words, the notion of a soul is inherently connected
with forces of control, and rather than simply “slaying” the soulless, as her job title
suggests, Buffy’s exercise of disciphnary power actually rehearses the process by
which souls are produced and sustained. This connection between disciphne and
the soul is most exphcit in the character of Angel. In an invers ion of the traditional
Faust myth, Angel is punished for his evil deeds by being given back a soul, which
causes him to experience torment and guilt. His punishment and his soul are thus
inseparable, and for as long as he retains his soul, he continues to be punished.
Therefore, rather than critiquing Foucaultian institutions, BtVS actually
demonstrates the uses of power which Foucault describes as essential to modem
penal systems. For example, unhke the medieval torture scene Foucault describes
in “The Spectacle of the Scaffold,” Buffy and Angel’s methods of punishment are
not linked to economic and political status. They are not representatives of a
monarchical or governmental power, but rather justice itself, otherwise known as
the seemingly benevolent “Powers That Be” (PTB). The objective of this system
of justice is, as Foucault argues for the modem penal system, “to make of the
punishment and repression of illegahties a regular function, coextensive with
society; not to punish less, but to punish better; to punish with an attenuated severity
perhaps, but in order to punish with more universahty and necessity; to insert the
power to punish more deeply into the social body” (82). Rather than performing
the function of the executioner, Buffy and Angel hve within society, integrating
their roles as punishers into their everyday hves.
Buffy and Angel can also be distinguished from executioners by the fact that
their punishments are more “humane.” Unlike executioners, who perform a
spectacle of torture in front of a crowd to deter future crimes, Buffy and Angel’s
tactics do not rely on terror, shock, and physical horror, but rather they are depicted
as measured, merciful, and appropriate to the crime. In the chapter “The Gentle