Buffy The Disciplinarian
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emphasizes yet again the importance of employing a measured punishment that
considers the offender’s background.
Such intimate knowledge of the differences between individual vampires and
demons allows Buffy to employ certain demons for her own ends. In his discussion
of the delinquent, Foucault adds that “prison, and no doubt punishment in general,
is not intended to eliminate offenses, but rather to distinguish them, to distribute
them, to use them; that it is not so much that they render docile those who transgress
the law, but that they tend to assimilate the transgression of the laws in a general
tactics of subjection” (272). This is illustrated in several episodes of BtVSy such as
“Enemies,” in which Buffy is able to use Angel and his known status as a delinquent
in order to gain Faith’s confidence and learn the mayor’s evil plans; Buffy is able
to incorporate Angel’s past transgressions into a “general tactics of subjection” by
asking him to masquerade in the guise of his formerly evil self. Buffy is also aware
of a local bar frequented by vampires and demons, but rather than killing them she
allows the bar to stay open and often uses it to get information on demon activity.
Perhaps the clearest example of Buffy’s strategic use of delinquents is her
relationship with Spike, a vampire who was formerly her archenemy. Near the end
of the second season. Spike begins an association with Buffy and her friends in
which their interests frequently coincide; for example, in that season’s finale,
“Becoming, Part Two,” Spike even helps them save the world. In the fourth season.
Spike falls prey to The Initiative, who install a chip in his brain that prevents him
from physically harming humans and makes him even more useful as an ally.
While The Initiative wants to keep Spike incarcerated, Buffy allows him his liberty
for as long as he proves useful in gaining her objectives. Spike does not become
good; rather, Buffy’s knowledge of both his powerlessness and his greed allows
her to use him in productive ways. For example, in “Doomed,” Spike helps Buffy
defeat three demons seeking to reopen the Hellmouth under the high school. Giles
similarly pays Spike to help him during the episode “A New Man,” in which he is
transformed into a demon and hunted by The Initiative. The employment of Spike
in these moments represents a much more efficient use of disciplinary power than
that of The Initiative or the Council, who would simply kill or incarcerate him.
Foucault’s chapter on Bentham’s Panopticon is often cited as the most crucial
part of his study of disciplinary models, and the similarities between Bentham’s
model and the methods employed by Buffy and her allies are striking. As we have
already pointed out. The Initiative and the Council appear to fulfill Bentham’s
dream of a disciplinary regime grounded in the principle of surveillance. For
example, the architectural design of The Initiative’s underground complex, which
holds demons in individual cells with transparent walls facing a central hallway,
seems to replicate Bentham’s Panopticon: “Each individual, in his place, is securely
confined to a cell from which he is seen from the front by the supervisor; but the