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Popular Culture Review
side walls prevent him from coming into contact with his companions” (200).
Likewise, the use of video cameras in the demons’ holding cells ensures that each
prisoner is “seen, but he does not see” (200). This surveillance is extended
throughout the university through frequent camouflaged patrols and monitoring
devices concealed within each building. However, a closer reading of the show’s
juxtaposition of Buffy’s methods of tracking and subduing vampires and demons
with the methods used by The Initiative reveals that Buffy and her friends employ
a system of surveillance which more closely resembles the panoptic gaze elaborated
by Foucault. Like The Initiative, Buffy and her friends employ pa trols; however,
their patrols are even more invisible than the Initiative’s, whose gun-toting soldiers,
fully decked out in green combat fatigues, are almost comically obvious.
Buffy’s use of surveillance is also more efficient than The Initiative’s because
of its disassociation from architectural structures. Buffy’s system actually illustrates
“the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious
and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power so to
arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is
discontinuous in its action” (201). In other words, Buffy’s power is not restricted
to the prison environment, but rather diffused throughout society; demons are aware
that the slayer exists and thus, like the panoptic tower, the slayer represents an
observer who may or may not be watching but whose position nevertheless
continually exerts influence. The Initiative, on the other hand, is a secret institution
that depends on the actual performance of punishment to exert its influence; thus,
unlike Bentham ’s model, it fails to overcome its architectural and material
constraints. According to Foucault, Bentham was even “surprised that panoptic
institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more
heavy locks” (202). By embodying the ever-present potential of surveillance and
punishment, Buffy offers a far more accurate representation of the lightness of this
disciplinary model.
The W atcher’s Council seems to provide another model of this kind of
disembodied surveillance. As its title suggests, the Council is designed primarily
to watch the activities of vampires and demons, as well as the slayer herself, and
there is no suggestion that the Council possesses a prison or even a central
headquarters. Like Buffy and her friends, the Council also seems to have much
more knowledge about demons than The Initiative. However, rather than
representing the evolution of punishment towards the Panopticon, the Council seems
to be modeled on the sovereign’s use of disciplinary power. Not only do the trappings
of the Council mimic medieval society, a fact emphasized by their British, “Old
World” origins, but the Council also seems to employ Buffy as an executioner
whose only role is to follow orders and slay without question. According to Foucault,
the executioner is the sovereign’s representative in a symbolic ritual of power in