Frequent references to contemporary culture (e.g. Literature, Music, Politics, Pop Culture, Religion, Science, etc.) are a distinctive, and endearing, feature of Whedon’s series.  The Encyclopedia of Buffy Studies recognizes this fact in its section on “Intertexts and Allusions.”  Brief, explicit usage of Marian symbols (e.g. statues, hymns, characters, etc.) is a noteworthy example of this technique.  However, little research appears to have been published on this topic to date.  Zoe-Jane Playdon’s essay on Religious Imagery in Slayage 5 comes closest.  There are also points worth noting in the essays by Anderson and Levine, respectively, in South’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy.

My postgraduate research on The Virgin Mary in Film discovered, often in films with minimal religious orientation, several conventional usages for episodic appearances of Marian symbols.  Whedon appears to have largely followed these established norms (e.g. statues in graveyards).  An example is the use of a sacred sign as a standard against which to gauge a character’s virtue or vice (cf. the black rite to revive Drusilla done in a Church containing images of the Virgin Mary).

The proposed paper would catalog each instance of the use of these symbols in the series and attempt to analyze their communicative purpose, drawing on an awareness of established conventions when appropriate.  Especially interesting is considering the explicit use of Marian symbols in order to implicitly suggest a character(s) with some Marian trait(s).