The Slayer and the Slayerettes: Buffy and the Cluster Theory of Vocation

Abstract

HE TELEVISION SERIES BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER INVITES ITS viewers to share in the central characters' discernment about what would be, for each of them, the most fulfilling life. 1 However, circumstances force Buffy and her friends to search for that answer without appeal to the typical categories of commercial society. Buffy's unique situation, especially her preternatural powers, makes her decidedly unsuited to traditional jobs. Despite her strength (or perhaps because of it), she fails at construction work. She is at sea as a high school counselor. Her stint at the Doublemeat Palace weighs her down and heightens her feelings of being dead. Her unsuitability for success in the business world comes into focus in "Flooded," when Anya suggests Buffy charge for slaying vampires. After all, she performs a "valuable service to the whole community" and so should "cash in." Everyone else sees all too easily why "supernatural hero" cannot serve as a viable job category, including Mr. Savitsky, the bank officer who refuses to give Buffy a loan even after she saves him from a demon attack. While members of Buffy's inner circle-Giles, Willow, and Xander-work in more traditional occupations (as librarian, student, and construction worker, respectively), these roles do not fulfill them. 2 Their deepest commitments in life are to the work they perform with Buffy. The show therefore invites viewers to think about life's fulfillment without appeal to the usual categories of commercial society. 3 Instead, it appeals to an idiom that is older and less familiar, once common but now generally reserved for religious contexts: that of vocation. One's vocation is not simply employment; it is an