Adam (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) - Themes

Themes

Buffy studies scholar Roz Kaveney states that estrangement from the self and others is the primary theme of the fourth season. To illustrate the absolute search for identity, the series writers created Adam, who is more truly alone than is anyone else. He is a creature assembled from a man, vampires, demons, and cutting edge cybernetic technology. Adam was not the first re-animated corpse to be presented in the series. "Some Assembly Required" in the second season also had a Frankenstein monster-like creation and "Beauty and the Beasts" in the third includes references to Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde; both touch on the misuse or abuse of science. Adam is a clear reference to Frankenstein's monster, who in the novel Frankenstein (1818) tells his creator that he is the "Adam of your labours". Mary Shelley wrote the novel to highlight the problems progress, science, and industry create for humanity. Throughout the action, the monster constantly asks what he is and why he was created. Likewise, Adam escapes from 314 and makes his way out into the world, and much like Frankenstein's monster, he finds a little boy and asks the boy who and what he (Adam) is, then murders and dissects him. Adam is a curious character, seeking the truth and pontificating on what he has learned, even if he gained the knowledge through heartless violence. Whedon wanted Adam to be inquisitive and introspective, directing George Hertzberg to "find the stillness" in the character. Roz Kaveney notes that Hertzberg's "flawed but impressive performance" includes Adam's interesting idiosyncrasy of pausing each time he speaks, as if he is creating meaning with his own words and must consider the implications of what he is saying. Author Nikki Stafford connects Adam's need to learn about the world around him to Frankenstein's monster: Adam must understand why other people are here and why he has emotions, a peculiarity of his creation as Dr. Walsh never encouraged others to question her. One Buffy studies writer draws comparisons between Dr. Walsh and Victor Frankenstein, both of whom build monsters out of body parts "to compensate for human vulnerability". The moral of Shelley's novel is that what science can accomplish is not necessarily what it should.

Questioning tradition and authority, specifically institutional authority, is a repeated theme on the show. Buffy was created to subvert the media trope of a young, petite girl who easily falls prey to a male monster. Resisting patriarchy is exhibited in Buffy's opposing the first season's Master (Mark Metcalf), the leader of a cult determined to cause the apocalypse, and again in the third season where exploring the issues of power and its abuse is a primary theme. Buffy opposes Sunnydale's secretly evil Mayor (Harry Groener), who is planning to transform into a giant demon and feed on the graduating class of Sunnydale High School. The military-industrial complex is at the heart of the authority question in season four, again drawing comparisons to Frankenstein. Where Frankenstein's monster had no parental love, Adam has a "design flaw". Unlike Frankenstein's monster, who needs his creator to make him a mate, Adam supplants Dr. Walsh's existence with technology, finding her unnecessary and thus he kills her. Adam is the embodiment of the lack of moral guidance in pursuing scientific and technological advancement. He represents the cannibalistic nature of relentless and unchecked power: what that power wreaks comes back to devour its source. Buffy, however, subverts Shelley's novel in the way Adam is defeated. Both Frankenstein and the monster must suffer alone. Frankenstein itself is an inversion of the Romantic era ideal of a solitary hero who must endure struggles, by portraying the monster and its creator as isolated and miserable. Buffy, as the embodiment of the postfeminist Romantic hero, further subverts this because the source of her success, according to Anita Rose, is that she fights with friends. Only then is she able to defeat Adam.

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