Buffy the Vampire Slayer

0:00:03.0 Landry Ayres: Welcome to Pop & Locke. I’m Landry Ayres.

0:00:06.5 Natalie Dowzicky: And I’m Natalie Dowzicky. In the spring of 1997, a teenage girl and her Scoobies started defending the town of Sunnydale and the world from previously unimaginable demons, all while being on time for chemistry class. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, created by Joss Whedon, has never been fully appreciated for putting the teen soap era of television on the map, until today. Our very own Buffy buffs join us today, co-​host of our Free Thoughts Podcast and research fellow in the Cato Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, Trevor Burrus.

0:00:40.0 Trevor Burrus: So glad we’re finally doing the episode on the greatest television show in the history of mankind, and one of the greatest pieces of art ever created by a human being. Happy to be here.

[chuckle]

0:00:48.3 Natalie Dowzicky: And the Executive Director of Feminists for Liberty, Kat Murti.

0:00:51.5 Kat Murti: I watched Buffy all the way through, three times, over lockdown. And that wasn’t my first time, so I am very excited to talk all the Buffy.

[chuckle]

0:01:02.1 Landry Ayres: Wow, Buffy buffs in the house. This is not their first rodeo. I will say this, very high praise right off the bat from both of our guests today. How did Buffy become so significant? Why did it garner such a following, both critically, commercially and sort of in a cult manner, in the years past? I mean, how did it become so popular that Wikipedia has to have its own page specifically called Buffy Studies for all of the academic literature on this subject. ‘Cause honestly, I had never watched Buffy before we were preparing for this podcast. I didn’t have a lot of interest in it, but I had heard so much about it, I never understood why. Give me your takes for why you think it had the effect that it did.

0:01:55.6 Trevor Burrus: Well, I think it’s first important to look at the nature of television in 1997, and as the oldest one in the virtual room here, just because the medium is the message, the fact that you had to be at home at 8 o’clock on Tuesday was the defining technological characteristic of the time, so most of your shows were very lightly serialized, if at all. And you knew on a show like Star Trek, which is notorious for this, and I like Star Trek a lot, but you always know they’re gonna fix whatever is the problem before the end of the show. You just know, it’s like, “Well, they’ve got 10 minutes, and it looks bad, but it’s gonna be fixed.” Unless it’s like a season finale. That’s pretty… Or a two-​parter, you just knew.

0:02:41.6 Trevor Burrus: And you also… This is common for pretty much all other shows too, that the characters on these shows seem to forget that they had done similar things like two weeks ago, they just they don’t remember. You can count on one hand how many Next Generation episodes refer to even a previous episode, just like, “Why don’t we ever grow as people? Why don’t we actually become better at doing this if we’re doing this every Tuesday?” So, that I think is… People will say The Sopranos, rightfully, and The Wire’s sort of inaugurating the modern era of television, but I think Buffy deserves a place in that because there’s just something interesting about it. Much, much I think less to you, Landry and Natalie, that it would be… ’cause you’ve seen so many shows like this, but if you flipped on the television in 1999, and suddenly these characters are referring to what happened to them before. A good example is the Halloween episode in season two is consistently referred to as like, “Well, remember the time I was a soldier?” And it was like, “Well, at least he’d learned. At least this was a thing that he learned about.”

0:03:39.3 Trevor Burrus: They grew over time, so I think that’s… Aside from the fact the writing is incredible and other things we could talk about, that it created an entire generation of writers who write like Joss Whedon, all that stuff is… But there’s a weird timelessness to it, and maybe, Natalie, you can disagree with me or Landry, but I find it very interesting. Also ’cause I am to Buffy as Paul was to Jesus. I’m not the message, but I am the messenger. And so, I’ve proselytized Buffy for two decades now, and I usually win over. So, Veronique de Rugy, her daughters, who are 18 and 16. Well, I got all of them to watch Buffy, but even her daughters who are 18 and 16 just tore through it and loved it and found it to be relevant and not dated. So, it just says something about the quality of the show.

0:04:23.3 Kat Murti: Yeah, I absolutely agree. Buffy is just a good TV show, and I think that’s a big part of it. As Trevor mentioned, 90s TV, I watch a lot of 90s TV, and when you watch it in the sort of modern version of binge watching, there’s just so many plot holes and so many things. And part of this was because you really had to watch each episode, only at a specific time. And there wasn’t the ability to sit and binge and watch the whole thing. And they kind of assumed that you would forget details or you would forget this, and it wasn’t really all that important for the development of the show. And Buffy turns that on its head. So, when I was watching it, when it was actually on the air, I wasn’t writing down, making sure to watch at that time, I just sort of watched Buffy whenever I was flipping through, and I saw it was on TV, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I like this show, let me go watch it. Watch some rerun sometimes, whatever.” And that’s how I watched most 90s television, I was just never the kind of person who scheduled out when I was gonna watch stuff.

0:05:24.3 Kat Murti: And then, now that I can binge, I do binge, and I go back and watch all these shows, and most of them have these glaring holes in them that Buffy just doesn’t. Buffy builds the characters, Buffy references back, and it has all of these interesting little details that don’t get dropped, that might get picked up even like a couple seasons later. All of a sudden something happens or… Each time you’re watching, you go back and you’re like, “Oh, actually that makes sense, because I remember that character had this experience that would make sense why they would then think about this in this way, in a significantly later episode,” even though that’s not even referenced.

0:06:03.3 Kat Murti: So, I think that’s a big part of it. But honestly, Buffy just completely changed the genre. Joss Whedon has talked about how Buffy is supposed to be that perky, blonde cheerleader girl that you see in every horror movie, every monster movie of the genre who dies usually first or right at the beginning.

0:06:25.9 Natalie Dowzicky: [chuckle] She always dies.

0:06:28.6 Kat Murti: Yeah, always dies, always does all of this. And so she’s built as that trope, but she’s the blonde cheerleader who loves fashion, who loves shopping, who’s a teenage girl, a really teenage girl, pretty, feminine, all of that, and she’s the baddest bitch on the show, there’s no other way to put it, she’s out there saving the world every episode, and she’s doing it without sacrificing who she is as this very feminine, preppy little girl. And I think that that was really cool and that completely changed the genre, and I think that that’s also what’s made it stand out, and would stand the test of time where it’s still a good show when you watch it now. Unlike a lot of other 90s shows where you’re like, “Yeah, I like it,” but you kind of have to look at it through the lens of like, “Well, people kind of view things differently now, almost 30 years ago.” But you don’t have to do that as much with Buffy, you really see it and you’re like, “Yeah, that makes sense.” And she was a strong, powerful female character then, and she still is now.

0:07:34.6 Trevor Burrus: There’s another interesting aspect just on the way Buffy approaches its subject matter because for a variety of reasons, if we just take a genre of media where it’s sort of weird stuff happens, so that’s science fiction fantasy, monsters, it wasn’t too popular before, let’s say 2000. The X-​Files was a trailblazing show for that, and you can name these other ones, like Star Trek and stuff, but it wasn’t winning Emmys and it wasn’t smashing up the box office, you could say things like Lord of the Rings, all of these, ’cause we live now in a world where everyone loves to watch weird stuff, and accept all these weird premises, just as a matter of course. “Okay, sure, yes, Guardians of the Galaxy, they’re in space, they’re fighting this. Whatever, I’ll go with it.”

0:08:17.9 Trevor Burrus: But one of the things Buffy did to make that work and make that pill easier to swallow is the characters themselves talk about how silly it is what they’re doing, and by doing that, they make it easier to be like, “Alright, I’m with you.” Like, “Why are we fighting monsters? We’re living in a world with vampires, is this really happening?” And they just reference. One of my favorite lines for that is the fifth season, episode 1 Buffy vs. Dracula, when they find his huge mansion, and they just have to say… Xander has to say, “Oh, I’m so glad that there’s a huge mansion in Sunnydale that we never have seen before.” That kind of stuff just really helps you be like, “Yes, okay, this is silly but we’re all having fun together.”

0:08:57.5 Kat Murti: I think that that’s one of the strengths of the show. It’s also just really strong acting, there’s amazing, powerful stuff, but then the show itself is not afraid to be campy, and it really embraces the campiness of sci-​fi and monster movies, and at the same time, it also addresses these really deep serious points as well, and those things are very well-​balanced. I know that when… I know I’ve brought up several times that we should cover the show, but I think the Twitter exchange that really led to us doing this episode, Trevor was referencing, spoiler alert, sorry you all, the episode in which Buffy’s mom dies of brain cancer.

0:09:40.3 Kat Murti: And she’s actually in recovery, and it seems like everything’s going well, and then she just dies, and it’s one of the most beautifully done, cinematic things on television, I think. Outside of the show, outside of the genre, it’s just a beautiful episode. And they really do touch on these very serious issues, and they do it really well, and at the same time, they’re also willing to do a musical episode…

0:10:05.5 Natalie Dowzicky: [chuckle] I hated that episode.

0:10:06.4 Kat Murti: They make jokes about the genre, they… It’s poking fun… Oh, I love that episode. [chuckle] But the whole thing is sort of like poking fun at this, and yet it also is equally able to touch on the seriousness of everything that’s happening around it, and I think that that’s what makes it really good, and the fact that the actors themselves are well-​versed enough to be able to play off both and be able to play off both even in the same episode, they’re just really strong, good characters.

0:10:35.3 Trevor Burrus: I may or may not own Once More with Feeling on vinyl. That’s… I do. [laughter]

0:10:39.5 Landry Ayres: I loved it, I thought it was great.

0:10:41.3 Trevor Burrus: Oh, it’s… Don’t even get me started. But anyway, you guys, that was the next question. I have the vinyl copy and you can come over and listen to it in my awesome listening room, and we can sing all the words to it.

0:10:49.8 Natalie Dowzicky: I was just so… All I’ll say about that episode, I was just very caught off guard. I did think it was funny, and Xander’s reaction was like, “Oh, I didn’t realize.” And I think… And getting back to what Kat was saying, I think the show is very good at being self-​aware. Not just the characters, but also the overarching show, and what was… ’cause this is the first time I’ve watched it all the way through. I had seen an episode here or there, but didn’t understand the larger context. But what really struck me in terms of why I think it’s probably as famous as it is now, or even more famous than it was then, was partially because of the way the episodes were framed, so they always had a battle of evil that was going on that episode, but there was always the overarching evil from the season as well.

0:11:42.9 Natalie Dowzicky: And the overarching evil from the season was either sometimes obvious depending on the season, or other times just like didn’t come up until four or five episodes from the end of the season. But then I was starting to think about all these shows that came after that are like pretty much exactly the same. So, Lost does it that way, one of my favorite vampire shows, Vampire Diaries, does it that way, and I think Supernatural does it that way, too. And then I started realizing that… So I really enjoyed the show, which I’m not surprised at all, I just had never gotten a chance to watching it all, and I think it’s partially because it brings in, like we were saying, the campy, self-​aware, comedy aspect, and a lot of the Supernatural-​esque stuff that I like.

0:12:29.0 Natalie Dowzicky: And then it also… It had a weird nostalgia, I think that’s ’cause I’m watching it now. For some reason, when I was watching the first season, all I could think about was My So-​Called Life. And I had seen that… I’d seen that before, and I think it only had one season, but I was… I got this weird… I was like, “This is just like… ” In terms of the video style and all that kind of stuff reminded me so much of My So-​Called-​Life, put all the demon fighting aside. But then I had this weird nostalgia towards it as well. I was like, “This is kind of cool.”

0:13:06.5 Landry Ayres: You brought up other vampire shows, specifically, and I think it is interesting that we talk about Buffy as a show, I mean, there’s all sorts of demons that they come up with. And this concept of demons as being more of a catch-​all term rather than the normal way we imagine what a demon is is important, but it is Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, it got started as a series about vampires, and that is the big, important characters for the most part, central to the story are somehow related to this sort of vampire culture. And there’s something about that device of vampirism and being so out of time, that is really, really interesting, you see it even in today’s vampire series that are really, really popular, like What We Do in the Shadows, which sort of takes it in a comedic direction, or the movie with Tilda Swinton and the other guy, Only Lovers Left Alive, which is about a series of a couple of vampires that are sort of dealing with different ways of being stuck in the past.

0:14:17.5 Landry Ayres: And the question of whether you are determined by your circumstances, your time or your place or the destiny that you’ve been bestowed upon, like Buffy is. And it just got me thinking like, how much of this show is about the idea of self-​determination, destiny, and choice in what you can do with your life, because I see it in a lot of other Joss Whedon shows. There’s a little bit in Firefly, there’s definitely a lot of it in a show that I watched several years ago, Doll House, that I really, really enjoy. So I was just curious about what your thoughts about that theme in the show are for Buffy.

0:15:04.3 Trevor Burrus: Okay, well, can I give my grand overarching theory?

0:15:08.3 Natalie Dowzicky: There we go. Drum roll, please.

0:15:10.6 Trevor Burrus: Well, we’ve talked about how great it is in so many different ways, but for me, there’s a deeply tragic aspect to it, like just the emotional parts from being… Kat mentioned The Body episode, and there are so many other parts. But I think, ultimately, with both the vampires, you are this thing, how much can you choose differently like, with Angel or even with Spike. But the ultimate… Jean-​Paul Sartre wrote this essay called Existentialism is a Humanism, where he defined existentialism as existence before essence. And what he means by that is that, any time anything is made by people, like you make a hammer, or in his example, it’s a paper knife, which is a knife to cut apart the pages of books.

0:15:55.5 Trevor Burrus: So you make a hammer, but before a hammer exists, you have to conceive of a hammer. So you have it, you have an essence in your head before the hammer actually exists. Now, that’s not true of rocks and other things. But his argument was that being a human being means that you’re not for anything. And what existentialism is, is dealing with the fact, at least in an atheistic universe, you’re not for anything, you’re not made for anything, you have no purpose, you exist before you have an essence, and dealing with that is existentialism. And interestingly, I think a lot of people think that if someone told them what they were for, maybe God or the Watchers Council, if someone told them what they were for, like “This is what you’re supposed to do with your life,” then it would make life easier.

0:16:38.7 Trevor Burrus: And I think Buffy is fundamentally about that that is not true. If you are told that you have to do this thing, like, “You have to kill the vampires and you can’t go to the mall, you can’t like date boys,” and stuff like this, it makes your life much harder and it ends up being this question of choice that what matters is not that you’re for this, whether… And I include on the vampire side, it’s whether you make the choices to move towards something that are your free choices. Like Buffy chooses to do this, right? And that, to me, is like the existential fable of Buffy. Then, you can kind of fit all this stuff into it, like the choices you make and when and how you’re allowed to make them, even if you’re supposedly some mystical creature who is designed for one purpose, you still can make a choice. So yes, I think, Landry, that is a huge theme of the show, which I think is why it has a lot of libertarian in the philosophical sense of the term themes to it.

0:17:30.2 Kat Murti: Yeah, I think connected to that is this whole overarching theme of sort of the individual versus the collective, and even within the collective there’s sort of like voluntary collective versus this imposed collective. And you see that, whether it’s Buffy rebelling against the Watchers Council, whether seeing the episode in which she first meets the first slayer, and finds out how the first slayer was sort of enslaved by this Watchers Council. It’s this really from a feminist perspective, it’s very fascinating because she’s this strong female energy that’s literally enslaved by this patriarchy of men who are going to then own her life, tell her what to do, and that’s like how the Watchers Council ends up working. You see that in specific episodes, there’s an episode about homelessness after… At the beginning of, I think, the third season, Buffy has run away from home and she kind of gets involved…

0:18:26.2 Trevor Burrus: The episode is called Anne, it’s, yes, episode 1, season 3.

0:18:30.5 Kat Murti: Yes, it’s Anne, that’s her ultimate name. And so there’s these kids that are being imprisoned by this hell demon and, you very much see this like, you have no choice, you have to work for our state. You see it when… Which Buffy then rebels against, you see it with the Initiative, which again sort of owns the people in the program. Buffy tries to join it and realizes that this doesn’t work, they’re doing a terrible job, there’s all sorts of problems with the Initiative. You see it with the way that… When they have multiple slayers towards the end, they create their own collective, and I think when the characters are able to be theirselves as their own individual, and find their own individual strengths, and then work with others to build out that strength, whether it’s the chosen family, that they have, Tara, one of the characters breaks away from her abusive family and joins the chosen family of the Scoobies.

0:19:29.8 Kat Murti: Whether it’s all of the slayers coming together to save the world at the end, whether it’s the Scoobies themselves, who are sort of this network of really, honestly, the weirdos of society. Whether it’s… At the beginning, it starts with Buffy and her friends, Xander and Willow, who are sort of these nerdy kids who… They’re just nerdy kids. They’re not completely outcasts, but they’re not really the cool kids in school. But then over time, they gather more and more people, including a lot of people who the watchers would immediately classify as bads that need to be killed, whether it’s characters like Spike or Angel or whether it’s all sorts of other people that they work with.

0:20:12.8 Kat Murti: And it really comes down to, I think, that there’s no set good or bad, there’s not like specific good people and bad people. They all have this sort of in this gray area, and they’re all individuals, and they’re all making choices. And they’re able to work together best when they’re respecting who they are as individuals, and what their strengths are, and voluntarily working together. And I think that that’s one of just these many libertarian themes throughout the show.

0:20:40.8 Natalie Dowzicky: I do have to say one of my favorite parts about that was when… I think it’s… Is it the end of season 3? Trevor’s gonna correct me no matter what I say, so I think it was somewhere around that area, was that when Buffy was trying to defend the Council or why she should have her group of Scoobies, and why they should stay together, and why the slayer isn’t like in a lone project, and… Oh, Trevor, you’re not here to correct me? Was it the end of season 3?

0:21:11.9 Trevor Burrus: If you’re talking about the episode Powerless, the one where it take their powers as part of an experiment. Yeah, that’s… It’s the 18th episode of season 3, I believe.

0:21:19.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh, I was close. Okay. [laughter] But I also just… That episode to me was just kind of cute, ’cause Buffy was validating the value of her friends and how they all have this special little niche within their group. So like, Willow does witchcraft and then Buffy magically gets a sister, season 5, but then she has a role, and I think everyone kind of figured out through their character development what they were like, what their identity within the group was, which is another cool thing throughout the show, ’cause in the beginning, I know too, it was kind of funny to watch Xander kind of flounder and not really… He was upset that he didn’t have special powers. And then… But also wanted to be part of the crew. I just thought that was another interesting thing, to watch everyone come into their own and kind of accept their position and their strategic advantage within their little Scooby gang.

0:22:15.0 Kat Murti: Yeah, I think what’s interesting too, is you’re talking about how the Slayer was always viewed as sort of this solo project. And you see this interesting, almost counterfactual… So, Buffy dies early on, but only for a second, she drowns, but because of her friends, she doesn’t actually die. She’s revived, she’s saved, but in that second that she dies, another slayer is called forward. There’s Kendra, Kendra the second Slayer. Now, Kendra the second Slayer has spent her entire life, since childhood, training to be the Slayer. She has no friends, she’s never dated anyone, she has no personal interests, she doesn’t have a family, she has nothing. Her entire life has been training to be the Slayer. And so, when she comes forward, she and Buffy clash on this because she sees Buffy, and Buffy has all these friends she hangs out with, Buffy is a cheerleader, Buffy is going to high school, she has a boyfriend who is a vampire, all of these different things. She’s like, “What is going on here?”

0:23:11.2 Kat Murti: And so, they really have a clash over this idea that the only way to do it is all on your own. And Buffy’s saying like, no, there’s actually this value in this collective that’s sort of chosen… That saved her. That’s the reason that she’s even there at that point, and Kendra ends up dying as well, as she sees the value of the collective, but even then, she sort of dies because she didn’t have that support network herself. And so, you see that as well, which I think is really interesting, particularly as you… If we’re gonna go back to the libertarian themes with this, a lot of people view libertarianism as like, “Oh, okay, you don’t think that there’s value in people, you think that there’s only… Everything should only be individualistic, etcetera.”

0:23:55.2 Kat Murti: And I think that no, that’s not actually what it is, it’s that there is value in all people because of who they are as individuals, and because of how as individuals they are able to interact with other individuals. So, it’s like it’s not enforced collectivism, but really libertarianism in its strength is people choosing to work with each other, and people choosing to find those strengths together as a group, whether it’s markets that span the world or whether in this case it’s a teenager saving the world from the big bad.

0:24:30.6 Trevor Burrus: Yeah, and of course, the government is either non-​existent, either you’re like, “Where the hell are the police?” Or malevolent as in season 3 with the Mayor and season 4 with the Initiative. So yeah, I don’t think, even though Joss Whedon, and we thought about this with Firefly, he’s not a libertarian, but he didn’t rely upon the government to fix these problems, and he wouldn’t have been interested in that story. And he would definitely say, “Well, they make it worse.” And the worse rise to the top, whether it’s the Initiative or the Mayor.

0:25:00.1 Natalie Dowzicky: I had actually written down on my notes, I was like, “What are the police doing in Sunnydale?” ‘Cause they reference them, but they’re also aware that there are demons around, and sometimes they help the demons, like if you’re the Mayor, but… [chuckle]

0:25:16.7 Trevor Burrus: My theory is that they’re probably heavily unionized and they cook their murder rates, so people don’t think that it’s as high as it possibly is. That would be my guess, if they’re anything like modern police departments.

0:25:28.6 Kat Murti: I think also it’s very much it’s part of the whole thing. The people in the town, they’ve normalized this and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, our town’s kooky.” But they don’t really believe in vampires. They don’t believe in things… There’s this episode… Trevor will know the name of the episode, I’m sure. This episode of witchcraft, and they have this anti-​witchcraft movement, which is actually very relevant for the contemporary time of the episode because there were all of these parents groups that were against shows like Buffy because they thought that it promoted witchcraft, and you have this parents group that’s led by Joyce, Buffy’s mom, who they almost burn Buffy at the stake because they’re worried about witchcraft and things like that in their town, and they’re talking about… Joyce makes this big speech to rally all of the parents to join her group, and one of the things she talks about is like, “How many of our loved ones have died of spontaneous neck rupture and stuff.”

0:26:28.3 Kat Murti: So, they’re not like vampire death, but they’re like, “Clearly, there’s something weird going on in our town,” but they’re not exactly clued in. I think they’re sort of ignoring it because, honestly, if a bunch of people were dying in your town all the time, would you… Would most people say like, “Oh, clearly it’s because we live on a hell mouth, and there’s a lot of vampires and evil beings around.” No, you wouldn’t. Of course not. So I think that that’s also a part of it, and that’s what makes the show good. That goes back into this sort of like, it’s campy. But it’s also realistic.

0:27:00.7 Trevor Burrus: That episode is called Gingerbread. I think it’s the third… 19th episode of the third season. But don’t quote me exactly on the numbers, but it’s called Gingerbread. Yeah, its a great one.

0:27:08.2 Landry Ayres: Don’t worry this isn’t being recorded or anything. [laughter] So there will be no record if you get it wrong.

0:27:14.4 Trevor Burrus: It’s kind of like on the level of Music Man. Or Monorail from The Simpsons…

0:27:17.9 Landry Ayres: Sure.

0:27:18.1 Natalie Dowzicky: When he got trouble. You gotta get everyone together…

0:27:21.0 Kat Murti: Best Simpsons episode, by the way. Monorail, love it.

0:27:23.7 Landry Ayres: So many great musical references and tropes in these shows. It was weird, but I… When we watched… When I watched the musical episode, the thing that I thought about is there are a lot of great shows that took the idea of the musical episode at certain points, and would do it for an episode. But I can see the Buffy influences and the campiness on a show that took that idea and took it to the nth degree, like Crazy Ex-​Girlfriend. Which is a hilarious and so, so smart show, and I can see some of the tonal choices and things like that. And the recurrence of themes, which is really interesting, because musicals in their history for a long time… When you would sing things in song, it was about things that you weren’t expressing outward, it was about expressing your thoughts and feelings. And musicals like Oklahoma or things like that sort of set the trend that those songs could then further the plot and not just be set dressing and ways to explore themes but not move the plot forward. And they all… And this show does all of that and takes it and pushes it even forward even more.

0:28:36.6 Trevor Burrus: Other than… I might be wrong, but a lot of shows have had musical episodes now. And Buffy was the first and… Except for something like Cop Rock, which is this notoriously bad all-​musical cop show from the mid-​90s that if you ever want to have a… If you ever swallow poison and want to purge your stomach, you can just put on a YouTube episode. It’s just unbelievably bad. And part of the reason is, is because of that, the lack of the self-​awareness that is very, even more important when you have a musical episode. You have to be like, “Why are we all singing?” Someone has to bring that up. Why are we all singing? Why is this happening? And Cop Rock was so earnest. It had so many things wrong with it. Buffy is the first for television.

0:29:25.4 Kat Murti: I really wanna talk about the elephant in the room, here because I think that it is gonna come up. Like Josh Whedon’s… The scandal around the way that he was treating the cast and specifically the female members of the cast, and how that… And I think a lot of people were surprised about that, because Buffy is this show about a strong female character. There’s these strong female characters… And they poke fun at it with things, like for instance, they have a lot of misogynistic bad characters that they’re pushing back against. They have all of these kinds of things. And they don’t have 2D women, and the women are not focused around the men so much. It’s… They’re as full of character as everyone else. And so people were surprised about this, and to be honest, it never shocked me. I was just like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. That’s pretty much what I would expect, and it’s because of Xander, right. So Xander is a much beloved character… He always annoyed me, I was like, I just really don’t like Xander.

0:30:25.3 Kat Murti: And it’s ’cause Xander is this prototypical nice guy and there’s this… There’s these characters, like one of the big bads are the trio who are these really incel nerdy kids who go to high school with Buffy and then turn into this, this collect… Again, collective, this is a bad collective. They wanna be super villains. They’re not quite good at it, but they really hate women, etcetera. Things like that. And so they’re written to poke fun at the sci-​fi characters or sci-​fi fans who hate women and are super nerdy and they wanna be the bad guys or they wanna be the heroes of the show and stuff, and so there’s that, but then the real… The real kind of insidious character is Xander in here, because he’s the character that Josh Whedon himself has said was written as Josh Whedon. Xander is supposed to be Josh Whedon when he was a teenager if he were in this environment.

0:31:24.6 Kat Murti: And he really is this nice guy trope. He’s… He views himself as the moral character. He views himself as the arbiter of what’s good and great in world. And he’s also, he’s jealous, he’s angry that Buffy is not interested in him. He feels that he’s owed her attentions, he feels… He has all these very misogynistic views that are sort of the subtle misogyny that’s underneath this view of himself as this very honorable man. And so when I heard that about the things coming out, I was like, yep, that’s pretty much what I thought. Because this is how Josh Whedon has himself written a flattering character of himself, has these major problems with just kind of being not a very nice person, really.

0:32:17.3 Kat Murti: And then, of course, so there’s a larger Buffy verse. And there are some funny things for instance, in Angel… Charisma Carpenter’s character and Charisma Carpenter was one of the people who really came out against Josh Whedon when these allegations came out. And a lot of people said that she was the one of the ones that he was worse, was worst to… Acted most horribly to. And she’s on Buffy, she’s on Angel. And there’s this episode in Angel, where she is… She’s trying to be an actress and she’s being abused by the show director, and I was like, how do you write this episode and it’s literally about you? Yeah so, I do think that the show is good, the show is powerful. There are definitely some things, like the fact that there’s… Buffy gets raped by Spike in one of the episodes, and it’s very much this… That’s one of my least favorite episodes for a couple different reasons. One, because I really like Spike as a character. I think he’s one of the most interesting and well-​developed and…

0:33:16.6 Natalie Dowzicky: I agree.

0:33:16.8 Kat Murti: Definitely one best acted characters in the show. He was only supposed to be there for five episodes, and then he was so good that they kept him and then they put them on the whole spin-​off and everything. But one of the things that I really hate about that is because it goes back to these… That old trope that we see in pop culture all the time, that women are made stronger through sexual assault, and that’s how you show the development of a character. We see it on shows like Game of Thrones. We see it on all sorts of movies across pop culture, and I think that this is one of those episodes where it was just like, look, you made this whole show to turn these tropes on their head, and then you still cling to them. And so there are these spots where it sort of pushes through and it’s like, this is this fantastic show. It’s got all these strengths. And you can also see where it’s coming up at the edges, and you see, yeah, this makes sense that this is your character, Josh.

0:34:11.7 Landry Ayres: Yeah, and I also didn’t like the Spike turn with that specific plot line, because the way it gets rationalized with him is that it’s this demonic manifestation of this tainted soul or lack of that he has. And it really plays into this excusing way of viewing sexual assault that you couldn’t control yourself and that there was something that you didn’t have, that it’s really not your fault because this happened.

0:34:43.3 Kat Murti: Yes. Yeah.

0:34:43.8 Landry Ayres: And while you can… In the verisimilitude of the show that might make sense. It creates this very, very messy message when you view it from a metaphorical level. And it made me sad too, because I did like Spike as well as an interesting character. And I really like the way you brought up Xander as a villainous character, because it would be one thing if we got a really good chance to… And see a certain amount of change with him. But a lot of the stuff is played for it even just chuckles or laughs. It’s not even like a… If it were written as a big laugh line, some of his subtle misogyny, it would be one thing, because then you could possibly analyze it as, wow, we’re all laughing at how ridiculous it is that he can get away with saying this in this world, sort of like a Michael Scott in The Office scenario, like they’re so inept and removed from reality that it becomes funny.

0:35:49.5 Landry Ayres: But when it’s so subtle and it’s not played for that, it just becomes baseline and acceptable. And I think that is hopefully something that we can get away from and is the type of stuff that I see and have more problems with from this era of material and shows. When I watch… It’s not quite the same, but Friends or Seinfeld. The further and further I get away from it, it’s the little things that I have more problems with rather than any big jokes that someone makes.

0:36:26.9 Kat Murti: It’s the stuff that’s normalized as like this is okay. And that’s what’s really notable about Xander’s character is not only is this the character that Josh has written as, here is his stand-​in. This is the Josh Whedon stand-​in every episode. But it’s also like, here are all of these things that are these subtle attitudes or these subtle jokes or these things that he does that are written off as, oh, that’s perfectly normal and fine, that really aren’t. And so I think that those speak to this, like, yeah, okay. You might have characters where it’s like, okay, he’s evil, and he builds this evil robot and… Woman. And he’s very misogynistic.

0:37:06.3 Natalie Dowzicky: That was so weird.

0:37:07.2 Kat Murti: Or like… There’s so many weird robots that beat women in this show and they’re always like, here is the evil. And it’s like, okay, yes, that is clearly misogynistic and a problem. There’s more than one evil wife-​beating robot in the show. Or a robot-​themed wife-​beating episode and… Yeah, it’s like, yeah, okay, we see it. That’s evil. But you know what, it’s also not great to be this guy who thinks that you’re owed sex by your friends because they are your friends and because you’re a good guy, so of course you should get it and then be angry and be lashing out at them. And honestly, even the way that Xander treats Anya, his fiancee, for a while, in the show. Who’s another awesome character. She goes on all these… As an aside, she’s always talking about how great capitalism is and I love her.

0:37:51.7 Natalie Dowzicky: I love when she starts working at the Magic Box, and she’s learning…

0:37:56.2 Kat Murti: Yes. Yes.

0:37:56.4 Natalie Dowzicky: She’s learning how to talk to customers.

0:38:00.5 Kat Murti: And then she takes over, she’s like, “You’re not running your business right. Here is how you make profits. You are doing it poorly.”

0:38:04.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Here’s how you talk to a customer.

0:38:07.0 Kat Murti: Xander… Xander’s character, I think the fact that Xander is kind of treated as the moral arbiter of the show when he still has all these negative things. I think that that’s kind of like… Again, it sort of adds to that realism, particularly from that 90s period, and the fact that this is actually how Josh views the world. But it’s also like… It wasn’t a surprise to hear the stuff about Josh.

0:38:27.9 Trevor Burrus: Well, I think it was quite surprising. I don’t totally agree with that Xander exists in the nice guy trope. I don’t think you can take every… Every guy who has a crush on one of his female friends and put him into the nice guy trope as someone who thinks he’s owed sex. I think at that point in the show, Xander is in a big crisis. And I think the most subtly misogynistic thing about him is the fact that he doesn’t like the fact that when Willow gets her powers and Anya has powers, and Tara has powers and he’s the only… He’s the one who doesn’t have powers. That’s to me the most subtly misogynistic thing.

0:39:04.9 Trevor Burrus: But I think that he’s extremely torn up by the fact that he doesn’t think he has a role or any real great characteristics. You see this in the episode, The Zeppo, which is one of my favorite all-​time episodes, where Xander runs around and saves the world in the background. In terms of Josh Whedon’s behavior himself, I wasn’t surprised that people… I think he’s always been very willing to make jokes, and at that time making jokes that were inappropriate. The thing that really shocked me was the revelation that Michelle Trachtenberg, who plays Dawn, was not allowed to be in a room alone with him, and then his ex-​wife came out to it.

0:39:44.6 Trevor Burrus: I was surprised, I think he’s done a lot of very powerful things about women empowerment and what it means and how it makes him feel. I was frankly surprised, and it does color the show to watch and see, well, can you see this now? Maybe if you look carefully, you can see more of this stuff. I’m not sure it’s so much in Xander as it is in other situational aspects.

0:40:07.3 Landry Ayres: Well, I think it’s interesting, because I just think that it brings to mind the absolutist… The critique of absolutist… Going back to the idea of self-​determination and what… Who you are and what you can do as a person. And this isn’t, while Whedon wrote it into the story, his actions and what they did to the show and what the show then subsequently did, makes meaning on its own beyond what he intended. And it becomes this commentary on absolutism and how you can create things that are great and can do a lot of really, really good things, but that doesn’t absolve you of… And I’m not suggesting that anyone here is trying to absolve Joss Whedon of his terrible actions and how he’s treating people. But it is a interesting way of… This content specifically of looking at what you can do with people who do bad things but might also have good intentions or have done good things in the past. And it’s an interesting way of looking at that.

0:41:24.5 Trevor Burrus: Well, that’s why the Spike thing is so interesting, and the rape, which is extremely disturbing. I like sixth season the most because it’s the darkest and it’s the most about their own demons. But we forget, and we’re talking about choice and pre-​determination and how much are you pre-​determined to do this. Spike initially is only quote-​unquote doing good things because he has a chip in his brain that hurts him when he does bad things. But then at some point, that chip is not working, but he’s still a vampire and so… And inherent in the idea of a vampire, or like you said, there’s a thing inside of him that he makes choices to not follow, that compels him to be bad, that he resists.

0:42:05.3 Trevor Burrus: Which makes him arguably a better person than Angel, for example, because that’s a Kantean point. One of the weird implications of Immanuel Kant’s work is that kind of the more you want to do something and don’t do it, the better person you are. If you really want to murder people and you don’t murder people, you’re a better person than someone who doesn’t want to murder people at all.

0:42:26.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Yes.

0:42:27.5 Trevor Burrus: And I think that scene with Buffy, it’s bad to, characters just say it, excuse sexual assault or this, I hate the trope that it makes women stronger. It’s bad to excuse it, and say, “Oh, this is a thing inside of me.” But in the case of Spike, it is a thing inside of him, like an actual thing inside of him, a vampire, that’s the definition of vampire. Anyhow, at the same time, feminists have said for many… Some waves of feminists have argued that there are things inside men that compel them to be sexually violent. That’s been an argument for some waves of feminists. It’s such a horrible thing to him, because the whole thing is about his love for Buffy, that it makes him go get his soul, like it’s sort of his answer to what he tried to do there. But no, it’s… Continue, sorry.

0:43:18.6 Kat Murti: No, I’m really glad that you brought up Spike versus Angel. And I’m also really glad that you’re probably the first person that I’ve seen agree with me, that Spike is an inherently better person than Angel is. Because Angel has a soul because he was cursed to have a soul so that he would feel bad. And Spike, sure, you can say that the Initiative puts a chip in his head that doesn’t allow him to harm humans. But even before that point, and then he chooses voluntarily to go and do this great penance at great… And get a soul, and all that. But he does a lot of good things, nice things, before then, he makes a lot of choices that he doesn’t necessarily need to do.

0:44:03.4 Kat Murti: And yeah, Spike does a lot of evil, even prior to the chip, but he also makes a lot of choices to not do evil. He also makes… He really shows how this is really a scale, that there’s not good versus bad, it’s all sorts of different things. Whether it’s the way that he takes care of Drusilla, the way his devotion to her prior to becoming a vampire. His devotion to his… To a mother. As soon as he becomes a vampire, theoretically, he doesn’t care about anyone else, but the first thing he thinks about is his mom is dying of this disease. He wants to turn her into a vampire so that she won’t die, so that he can continue to take care of her. And he’s also, he’s this nice guy loser at the beginning of… Not the beginning of the show, but the beginning of his character, like who he was.

0:44:52.5 Kat Murti: My favorite episode is probably the episode where you get to find out about how Spike became Spike. And you find out that he was this nice guy character. He gets rejected by a woman, he’s upset, and then he meets Drusilla who turns him into a vampire. And then he’s very loyal to Drusilla. He does make choices all the time based upon what’s good versus bad versus his mother. As soon as she became a vampire, which he did in order to save her. And he gives her a choice and does it as choice, and all of that. And then the first thing she does is reject him and say, “I don’t like you anyway,” which I found very interesting. I always think that it’s sort of viewed as the chip is the only reason that Spike does good things, but that’s not true.

0:45:40.4 Kat Murti: Even prior to the chip, he had done many things that maybe he didn’t always understand. He clearly is operating on this moral framework that he has… Whether he has a soul, whether he has a chip or not. Versus Angel, only does good things because of the soul. When he loses the soul, he’s immediately very sadistic and evil again, including to people like Buffy who he supposedly loves and cares about. Whereas… You know, and including to other vampires that he supposedly cares about, all of these kinds of things, so it really is only the existence of a soul that he gets and loses several times in the Buffy universe that makes him good or bad, versus Spike, the focus is on whether he has a soul, whether he has a chip, but he’s making decisions all throughout that make him good or bad, regardless of whether he has the chip or the soul.

0:46:33.6 Trevor Burrus: Well, and I think that in terms of sort of nice guy syndrome problems, I think Angel is the biggest offender in that regard. And I think it has to be mentioned that Angel essentially stalks Buffy, who is 100 years younger than him…

[laughter]

0:46:47.1 Trevor Burrus: Or 200 years younger than him. Essentially stalks her as a teenager before getting together with her. Angel, I never liked the character in Buffy, he doesn’t become a really good character until the show Angel. And he becomes a very different character who is much more empowered and is not essentially stalking a teenager and thinking it’s the mission of his life to get with her, which is creepy, let be honest.

0:47:13.9 Kat Murti: Yeah, he’s a real creeper, and he’s only treated nicely because he’s a teenage heartthrob. That drove me nuts when I was watching it.

0:47:20.3 Natalie Dowzicky: I hate that.

0:47:20.7 Landry Ayres: Also, teenage heartthrob, that guy looks 35, like everybody on this show.

0:47:28.0 Kat Murti: Right. Well, I mean, that’s what they push on all these teenage shows, to be honest. And that’s the thing too. Landry was talking at the beginning about being out of his time, right? And I think part of it is like, yeah, sure, Angel comes from a significantly earlier period over a century before Buffy, but it’s also he’s out of his time because she’s a 16-​year-​old girl and he’s an approaching middle-​aged man. It’s very much treated as like, oh, it’s because he comes from this other period, but it’s also because he’s a creeper who’s trying to get with a teenage girl.

0:48:05.8 Natalie Dowzicky: So before we switch into anything else, I want to hear the opinion on the last season. I enjoyed it, that’s what I’ll say. I’ll start there. But I read quite a few reviews that said it was a letdown, so then I was a little confused by those, and I want to poll the crowd. I want to know if the last season was a fitting ending and kind of what your reactions were the first time you saw it. I know it’s not the same when you’re watching the show through a second time or a third time, ’cause you already know what the ending is.

0:48:40.8 Trevor Burrus: Well, it’s a perfect ending in terms of the way it actually ends. The seventh season is not the strongest season. I mean, the thing about Buffy is that it’s fundamentally a show about growing up.

0:48:50.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Right, it’s coming of age.

0:48:51.9 Trevor Burrus: It’s really good to watch it. Again, people can watch for the first time whenever. But the fact that she’s 16 when it begins and she’s 23 when it ends, and her mom has died. Joss Whedon had told Christine Sullivan, who plays Joyce, that she needed to come back. She was kind of out of the show; she’s not very common and present in the fourth season. But, she to needed come back so he could kill her because it was extremely important to Buffy’s arc that he kills her, and so she has to become the mom in many ways and then to all these girls. So it has issues. It has some plot holes that are kind of weird because the Uruk-​hai, the really big vampires, suddenly become really easy to kill. But because of the theme, I think that I had said for my interpretation of Buffy where she is the chosen one, and she’s the only one, and so that means that she’s for something and she has to do this and has this obligation.

0:49:44.5 Trevor Burrus: And the way that that part of her life ends is when she’s no longer the only one. And I think that that is a brilliant conceptual ending in terms of conceiving of it properly, but yeah, it’s not the strongest season, but it’s also where Buffy is the adult and has to do all of these things with all these mentees that she has in the house. So I think that that’s an interesting part of it. And it’s again, Sarah Michelle Gellar acting throughout the whole show is so unbelievably incredible, and it’s very, very good in particular in the seventh season.

0:50:16.0 Kat Murti: Yeah, I think that it has some of those problems that come about when you’re trying to end a show. There’s always issues where it’s like, you know, ending a show is hard. And there are a lot of things that come about because of that, and I think also part of it is like, yeah, it’s the end of an era for folks, and it’s also like they’re creating this new Slayer Academy, there’s all of these new slayers, this is a different show than you started with. It’s completely different. The whole feel of it is different. People know there’s something bad happening. All the non-​related people in the town, people who aren’t involved in fighting the big bads are all like… They’ve fled town. No one wants to live here, there’s something bad, everyone sort of… It’s a different show.

0:50:56.6 Kat Murti: But I will say that two of my favorite episodes in the entire season, in the entire series, are the last two episodes of the series. They’re really powerful, and again, I think part of this really comes down to acting. Sarah Michelle Gellar, as Trevor said, but also, James Marsters, who plays Spike, is just in that final episode. In every episode, there’s all this subtlety that comes from his character that builds on the story in a way that a lesser actor wouldn’t have been able to do. But in that final episode, his acting is phenomenal, and it really leaves it where you’re like… It could be anything. Like the end could be anything, that it’s open to things, but it also closes it, and it’s like it very much is, as Trevor said, the ending of an era for Buffy and her own life.

0:51:45.4 Kat Murti: Like, what’s gonna happen in her life? And I think that’s kind of where it ends it. And then, of course, Spike comes back in Angel, and he’s a fine character. I think that kind if you view it in the Buffy verse, his coming back kind of makes… Weakens that last episode of Buffy, but I see why he’s one of the most…

0:52:05.5 Trevor Burrus: But more Spike is always better.

0:52:07.1 Kat Murti: Yeah, more Spike is always better. The only reason that I really like Angel is because of Spike, and maybe Fred.

0:52:13.1 Trevor Burrus: Well, also, the very last line is, “What do we do now?” The end of that last scene, the last shot of her face with a slight smile, ’cause the question of what we do now is very different after what happens in the last episode than in the seasons before.

0:52:28.0 Kat Murti: It’s not just the last episode, it’s the last like several seasons, right, like she’s struggling with paying bills, she’s raising her sister who was created as part of this big bad story arc and it was her creation that leads to her mother getting brain cancer, her mom dies, she’s struggling, and she was brought back from heaven to be back in hell on earth. All of these terrible things going on. And so this is finally her, “Okay, maybe I can start… I haven’t had a chance to have my own life,” since really she hit puberty and then all of a sudden, now is the first time maybe she can start thinking of the world and what life can look like for her as a person and not just holding literally the weight of the world on her shoulders.

0:53:19.1 Trevor Burrus: Which is the title of the 21st episode of the fifth season, Weight of the World.

[laughter]

[music]

0:53:27.1 Landry Ayres: So Trevor, Kat, what else has been occupying your time as we head into year three of being locked in, technically, the start of year three?

0:53:39.1 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s a scary thought.

0:53:40.1 Landry Ayres: I haven’t said that out loud yet.

0:53:42.8 Kat Murti: Being locked in has been great for my consumption of pop culture, let me just say. I feel like, than must have been…

0:53:49.1 Landry Ayres: Very true.

0:53:49.6 Kat Murti: Ever previously in my life.

0:53:52.0 Landry Ayres: Sure. So what else? What’s been occupying your time?

0:53:54.1 Kat Murti: Dexter. I’ve been watching the new Dexter series. It’s not getting as much attention as I would have liked to see, only because I really want it to get big so they’ll keep doing it, but it is phenomenal. It’s been so good. Cinematically, it’s powerful. The storyline is good. It doesn’t feel as if this is just a reboot to do a reboot, it really feels like, “Here’s a continuation, here is… ” You can watch it as its own show, you can watch it if you enjoyed the original Dexter, which I did. As a millennial, I’m very guilty of being a second screen person. I’m always on my phone doing other things, and when the new episode comes out, it’s very much a… I’ve turned off the lights, not looking at my phone, watching the screen. It’s really good. The story is good, the acting is good, the filmography is fantastic and I’m loving it so far.

0:54:51.1 Trevor Burrus: On the video game front, I will suggest a game called 12 Minutes, which has been getting a fair amount of attention, which is a game that features James McAvoy, Willem Dafoe and Daisy Ridley as the voice actors and it’s… You’re stuck in a time loop for 12 minutes and you have to solve essentially a mystery. It’s a pretty short game. It’s very, very good. And I would also very much suggest the Guardians of the Galaxy game. It is absolutely fun. It is an original story. It’s not taken from the movies, but it has a lot of that flavor. It is so well done, it is a blast to play. Definitely play it if you like good action video games, Marvel comic video games, games with good stories, funny games. Highly suggested.

0:55:36.8 Natalie Dowzicky: For me, I am just starting the Dune audiobook. Obviously, I’ve already seen Dune, but I would suggest… I was told… I think, Trevor, you might’ve told me this, or Aaron told me that it’s much better to listen to the audiobook if you’re reading other things, which I am currently in the middle of two or three other books.

0:55:55.0 Trevor Burrus: Yeah, that was me. Definitely.

0:55:57.1 Natalie Dowzicky: And so it’s really good. I do suggest since it is a long book, the audiobook version is good, especially since I have some car rides coming up here for the holidays. And then I also am… I’m gonna give in to temptation and go see the new Spider-​Man. So this past weekend all my roommates went to go see it on Sunday, so before that we watched four or five Spider-​Man movies on Friday and Saturday to prepare them. So that kinda got me back into it ’cause I had only ever seen the original, what was it, Tobey Maguire ones. So I will venture out there and go see the new Spider-​Man.

0:56:34.9 Trevor Burrus: Do it. I highly, highly recommend it. See it as soon as possible so you don’t get spoilers.

0:56:38.1 Natalie Dowzicky: I know, I know. So that’s why I was worried that Trevor was gonna talk about spoilers for it, but we’re good. But yeah, so I think that is going to be on my next few days, maybe.

0:56:49.1 Landry Ayres: I just this morning just finished re-​watching Season 1 of True Detective. So good. I loved it when it came on and my wife had never seen it and we had just finished playing Disco Elysium together and I was like, “This was a big influence on the game. I think you’ll really enjoy it.” And she, as someone who admittedly… She was like, “I do not get or like Mathew McConaughey at all,” which I’m kind of ambivalent about it.

0:57:18.8 Natalie Dowzicky: Dang. [chuckle]

0:57:19.1 Landry Ayres: She was like…

0:57:21.0 Kat Murti: I really love him. I don’t know why, but I love him.

0:57:23.1 Trevor Burrus: I think I do too, and I think it’s the Texan in me, but especially in True Detective he’s really good. Man, just Rustin Cohle is such a great character. The mood is this perfect Southern-​noir going… I love it so much. Season 2, I watched two episodes of, couldn’t get into it. I don’t care about LA. And then I heard there was a Season 3. I haven’t… I don’t know anything about it, so if it’s good, hit me up on Twitter and let me know. And I also, because I was playing Disco Elysium, a game I highly recommend that we may or may not do on a future episode. We’ll see. I am reading China Mieville’s The City & The City, which is this really cool weird fiction noir novel about two cities that co-​exist in the same geographic space and there’s this weird sort of… It’s not 1984, really, but there’s a sort of cultural way of un-​seeing people that exist in the areas where the cities are. It doesn’t make much sense when you explain it, but basically two cities exist in the same place and there is a conscious effort to ignore the people that exist “in the other city.”

[music]

0:58:51.0 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always, the best way to keep in touch with us and get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter. You can find us at the handle @PopnLockePod. That’s Pop, the letter N, Locke with an E, like the philosopher, Pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. We look forward to unravelling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is produced by me, Landry Ayres, and is co-​hosted by Natalie Dowzicky. We’re a project of lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. To learn more, visit us on the web at www​.lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.