Slayage (Jun 2020)
"It's good to be me.": Buffy's Resistance to Renaming
Abstract
In a series rife with examples of renaming, self-naming, loss of name, nick-naming, and name-based magic, Buffy Summers stands out as a character resistant to any attempt to over-write her core identity through re-naming or un-naming. The female naming plot, the name imposed or taken away by another entity, has no lasting hold over her. In this paper I’ll look at three episodes in particular: “Halloween” (B2.6), where a spell turns people into the costumes they wear; “Anne” (B3.1), in which Buffy is living under an alias and forced renunciation of personal identity is used to control slaves in a hell-dimension, and “Tabula Rasa” (B6.8), in which Willow’s memory spell causes the entire Scooby Gang to forget their names and identities and Buffy gives herself the name Joan.
