Blood Relations

<p> The television series <I>Buffy</I> and <I>Angel</I> revolve around radical conceptions of family. Indeed their coherence depends on the establishment of nontraditional families that admit vampires demons witches werewolves and other bizarre characters without censuring them for their peculiarities. This work argues that what makes these characters enduring and engaging is their critical family connections--for their most involved struggles occur not within the graveyard but around the dinner table just as the most challenging adversarial forces that they must face are not demons or vampires but the stuff of everyday life.</p><p> What does family encompass within these two series? How does it relate to concepts of gender sexuality power and the supernatural as they emerge from the shows' complex narratives? This book explores such questions. It also examines the chosen family (an idea marketed specifically by successful programs such as <I>Friends</I> and <I>Sex in the City</I> within the past ten years) juxtaposing it against various images of the fractured biological family displayed in both <I>Buffy</I> and <I>Angel.</I></p><p> Through eight chapters addressing various family-related aspects within both shows this work plots the trajectory of this unstable notion of family even as it is transformed remediated and rendered unrecognizable from a family values perspective by the unique and supernatural relationships that proliferate in <I>Buffy</I> and <I>Angel.</I></p>