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Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer
File:TV DVD cover buffy season 2.jpg
DVD cover of the second season
Created byJoss Whedon
StarringSarah Michelle Gellar
Nicholas Brendon
Alyson Hannigan
Country of originUnited States
No. of episodes144
Production
Running time44 minutes
Original release
NetworkThe WB (1997-2001), UPN (2001-2003)
ReleaseMarch 10, 1997 –
May 20, 2003

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer was a U.S. television series based on the original script for the 1992 movie of the same name.

It first aired in March 1997 on The WB network; after five seasons it transferred to the United Paramount Network (UPN) for its final two seasons. The last episode aired in May 2003. The series was created by Joss Whedon, who also wrote the movie, and was produced by Mutant Enemy Productions. The show's title is often abbreviated simply to Buffy or BtVS.

The series follows the life and trials of Buffy Summers, a teenage girl chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other supernatural foes, usually with the help of her Watcher and her loyal circle of misfit friends.

In addition to its critical success and "cult" appeal, the show functions as a contemporary parable, using supernatural elements as metaphors for personal anxieties, particularly those associated with adolescence and young adulthood.

The show is notable for attracting the interest of scholars of popular culture. It has been the subject of numerous conferences and articles in academic journals [1]. There are at least four books of Buffy criticism in print, and there is an online refereed journal, Slayage, dedicated to critical studies of the show.

In 1999 it inspired a spin-off, Angel, which aired on the WB through 2004. An animated series based on Buffy's first year in Sunnydale has been in development since 2001, and a four-minute pilot was completed in 2004. However, so far the series has not been picked up by a network.

Buffy is credited (alongside the teen drama Dawson's Creek) with playing a key role in the success of the Warner Bros. television network in its early years. After Buffy's fifth season, UPN outbid The WB for the rights to air Buffy. Currently, Buffy airs weekday mornings at 7 AM E/P on FX in the U.S.

Genesis, plot and format

Template:Spoiler Writer Joss Whedon originally conceived of the show as an intentional reversal of horror film formula, by placing the recurrent vacuous, blonde girl in charge. Rather than shrieking and running off into dark alleys to be killed, petite valley-girl Buffy takes weapons in her own hands and actively hunts down potential enemies herself. As Whedon himself has stated: "I wanted her to be a cultural phenomenon. I wanted there to be dolls, Barbie with kung-fu grip." To an extent, he succeeded, as many have embraced this alternative paradigm as an emblem of female power, an issue that has been examined by both critics and academics.

Secondly, the show aimed to establish a basic analogy of high school as hell, by quite literally putting the show's main characters, including Buffy herself, through both - Sunnydale High isn't just a regular school, with the trials such a place involves, but the location of an actual demonic nexus, drawing about many of the enemies the group are forced to face and permeating their lives with magical occurences which ilustrate those trials. (The show's metaphorical content as to high school in particular is further explored in this article's section on its Metaphorical nature)

This combination of playfully handled feminist tendencies and the depiction of a consistent core of teenage characters in an exaggerated version of High School life is precisely what seems to have garnered Buffy a passionate and relatively varied fan following.

Main characters

File:Buffy Cast1.jpg
The core cast of "Buffy" in season one, 1997

Buffy (portrayed by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is "The Slayer", one in a long line of (often short-lived) young girls chosen by fate to battle the forces of darkness. This calling also mystically endows her with dramatically increased physical strength, endurance, agility, intuition, accelerated healing, and a limited degree of clairvoyance, usually in the form of prophetic dreams. Buffy fights under the direction of her "Watcher", Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), who begins the series as the high school's librarian.

She is also assisted by several friends, who later in the series are nicknamed the "Scooby Gang" because of their distant resemblance to the teens in the cartoon Scooby Doo. Most prominent among these are awkward semi-geek Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and shy computer-nerd Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan).

Other important members of the gang throughout the series include: seemingly vapid "alpha-girl" cheerleader Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter); the ensouled vampire and Buffy's first love Angel (David Boreanaz); the taciturn werewolf and guitar player Oz (Seth Green); eccentric ex-vengeance demon Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield); shy witch Tara Maclay (Amber Benson); reluctantly reformed vampire Spike; and Buffy's younger teen-aged sister, Dawn Summers, created by magical means in season five. Buffy also lives with her recently divorced mother Joyce.

The close interpersonal relationships between these characters is at least as important in the series as their ongoing battle against evil.

Coincidentally, Gellar later played one of the actual "Scooby Gang", Daphne Blake, in the movies Scooby Doo and Scooby Doo 2

Foes and supernatural elements

File:Buffy Spike2.jpg
James Marsters as the vampire Spike

The most prominent monsters in the Buffy bestiary are vampires, who are presented in the show in a variety of ways, selectively following traditional myths, lore, and literary conventions. Buffy and her companions also fight a wide variety of demons, shape-shifters, ghosts, gods, zombies, witches, and each other. They are so frequently called upon to save the world from annihilation that they quickly find themselves, as the character Riley Finn puts it, "needing to know the plural of apocalypse". The mythology of the show is often inspired by traditional supernatural tales and other cultural, fictional, and religious sources. In its seven-year run, the series also developed an extensive contemporary mythology of its own. The supernatural elements of the show almost always have a clear metaphorical or symbolic aspect (see Metaphorical nature and moral connotations for more on this).

Buffy and her "scooby gang" battle demonic forces using a combination of physical combat, detective work, various forms of magic and sorcery, and the extensive research of ancient and mystical texts. Hand to hand combat is usually undertaken by Buffy, Angel and, later, Spike as they all had supernaturally enhanced strength, with Buffy slightly above the other two (as stated by Angel in "Sanctuary" ). Willow eventually becomes an adept witch, and Giles is relied upon for his extensive knowledge of demonology and supernatural references. Xander, whose primary responsibility sometimes appears to be getting donuts for the gang, is an Everyman character who provides perspective and grounding for the others.

Setting

The show is set in the fictional California town of Sunnydale, whose suburban Sunnydale High School rests on the site of a "Hellmouth", a gateway between our world and the realm of demons. The Hellmouth serves as a nexus for a wide variety of evil creatures and supernatural phenomena. The Hellmouth lies directly beneath the school library (later, in a reconstructed school, beneath the Principal's office).

In addition to being an open-ended plot device, Joss Whedon has cited the Hellmouth as one of his primary metaphors in creating the series, suggesting that a large number of contemporary teenagers feel that their own high school is a sinister, threatening place.

The high school used in the first three seasons is actually Torrance High School, in Torrance, California. The school exterior is frequently used in other television shows and movies, most notably Beverly Hills 90210, Bring It On, and the spoof, Not Another Teen Movie.

In addition to the high school and its library, action frequently takes place in many of the town's cemeteries, local nightclub The Bronze, and Buffy and her mother's home, where many of the characters also live at various points in the series.

Format and content

The show is noteworthy in part for its blending of genres, including horror, martial arts, romance, melodrama, farce, and comic banter. Unlike the movie, which, for the most part, was poorly received (and practically disowned by its writer, Whedon), the TV series achieved great popular and critical success, appreciated equally by middle-aged TV critics and its primarily teen/twenty something audience. Fans of the show attribute its success to smartly written, continuity-aware scripts and its creator's vision. The show and characters inspire an unusually strong emotional connection with fans.

Buffy has also been noted for taking risks with both its format and content. The 1999 episode "Hush" included 26 minutes without any spoken dialog, and received an Emmy Award nomination for best teleplay. The 2001 episode "The Body", which revolved around the death of Buffy's mother, Joyce Summers, and which used no non-diegetic music, was included in over 100 major critics' Ten Best lists that year. The fall 2001 musical episode "Once More, with Feeling" also received many plaudits. All three episodes are frequently cited as fan favorites.

Continuity

Whedon has stated that he is a fan of serialized fiction, and, to this end, each season, rather than being purely episodic, tends to follow a largely self-contained story arc, with its own unique villain. This "Big Bad" is often preceded by a "Little Bad", a minor villain introduced to throw viewers off-track. The series is also characterized by the close attention it pays to the continuity and consistency of its universe; references to events that occurred in earlier seasons occur both as major plot points and as throwaway jokes. However, in terms of analysis of what occurs on screen, things are far more variable. Joss himself admits to caring more about the emotional arcs than anything else, occasionally resulting in inconsistencies (IE: the strength of the Turok-Han decreasing dramatically in the last episode), stating that science makes his 'head hurt'.

Metaphorical nature and moral connotations

Many Buffy stories are thinly veiled metaphors for the anxieties and ordeals of adolescence or young adulthood. In "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" invisibility is used as a metaphor for being ignored. In "The Pack", Xander and other teens become possessed by hyenas, which allegorizes the pack mentality that often results from negative peer pressure. The tragic love affair between the vampire Angel and Buffy was fraught with metaphorical elements, the most noteworthy of which occurred when their first sexual consummation resulted in the vampire losing his soul and becoming a murderous villain. As Sarah Michelle Gellar puts it:

"That's the ultimate metaphor. You sleep with a guy and he turns bad on you."
— Bye-Bye Buffy on 2003-05-20 at CBS News

The show has also garnered criticism for this and other ostensibly "puritanical" subtexts. However, Whedon argues that rather than endorsing a particular moral stance, the show is much more concerned with consequences and the role they play in gratifying the audience's emotional investment in the story — though this gratification is seldom a simple matter of wish fulfilment:

[ I ] Don't give people what they want, [ I ] give them what they need.

He continues:

What they want is for Sam and Diane to get together. [...] Don't give it to them. Trust me. [...] No one's going to go see the story of Othello going to get a peaceful divorce. People want the tragedy. [...] Things have to go wrong, bad things have to happen.
—Interview for The Onion AV Club

While fans may joke about characters being punished for sex, Whedon has insisted that the show must "earn" its emotional moments, and that he and his writers are more concerned with exploring the consequences of actions than making broad moral statements. Buffy's resurrection in season six is not a simple plot device; it sends ripples through the last two seasons of the show. These include both supernatural repercussions (a killer demon follows her back from the afterlife) and emotional fallout (Buffy suffers from severe depression and isolation). The ongoing exploration of choices and consequences in life, depicted both literally and metaphorically, constitutes what Joss Whedon refers to as one of the show's many "mission statements".

Also, over the course of its seven seasons, Buffy has engaged with a number of social issues, most notably (and controversially) the question of sexuality, and has received a great deal of critical attention — from fans, critics and the academic community — for its treatment. See the main article on this topic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Social Issues for a full account.

Influences

Whedon has often noted the impact that comic books have had on his work. He is currently writing for the Astonishing X-Men series and has credited Kitty Pryde, who he is currently handling in that series, as a significant influence on the character of Buffy, as well as some of his other female characters. In addition, comics such as Superman and Spider-Man explore similar themes, particularly those relating to the tension between the duties of a superhero and the more mundane concerns of their "ordinary" alter ego.

Other influences include My So-Called Life, whose sympathetic portrayal of teen anxieties served as an acknowledged template for Buffy ("I'm basically trying to write My So-Called Life with vampires" [2]), and the "monster of the week" storylines of X-Files. Whedon has also cited cult film Night of the Comet as a "big influence" on Buffy. [3]

"Buffyverse" expansions

Buffy's perpetually tragic, doomed love for the vampire-with-a-soul, Angel, played by David Boreanaz, was a recurrent theme in the first three seasons of the show. Angelus, as he was originally known, had his human soul restored by a gypsy curse, plaguing him with guilt over the one hundred and forty-five years of murder and mayhem he had inflicted on a slew of innocent victims. The Angel character was so popular that a series featuring him, Angel, was spun off from Buffy; there were occasional "crossovers" between the two shows and these continued into the final season of Angel even though Buffy was no longer on the air.

Angel and Buffy have both inspired several comic book adaptations, magazines, companion books, novelizations, video games, and a card game, as well as several spinoff proposals (including a cartoon series and a BBC drama), and countless websites, online discussion forums, and works of fan fiction. In 2001, Joss Whedon wrote an eight-issue miniseries for Dark Horse Comics called Fray, about a futuristic vampire slayer. Its final issue came out in August 2003. There have also been two soundtrack albums (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Radio Sunnydale - Music from the TV Series), as well as a CD (and, in Europe, DVD single) of the "Once More, with Feeling" musical episode.

Academic works

The show has inspired several academic books and essays, including Reading the Vampire Slayer, edited by Roz Kaveney, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy edited by James B. South. An academic discipline known as Buffy Studies developed during the late 1990s which encouraged the development of scholarship and courses exploring Girl Power in popular culture. Fans of both Buffy and Angel often use the term "Buffyverse" to describe the detailed fictional universe the shows share.

Parodies and references

There have also been a number of spoofs of the show, including a Hobbit themed rewriting of "Once More, with Feeling" entitled "Once More With Hobbits", and a Saturday Night Live sketch which relocated the Slayer, played by guest host Sarah Michelle Gellar, to the Seinfeld universe. MadTV featured a sketch called "Buffy the Umpire Slayer" in which Buffy (played by series regular Nicole Sullivan) slew umpires in high school baseball games. The series, which employed pop-culture references as a frequent humorous device, has itself become a frequent pop-culture reference in other works. A Friends episode featured Ursula, Phoebe's twin sister, in a porn movie entitled Phoebe Buffay in: Buffay the Vampire Layer; and the Sluggy Freelance webcomic featured a storyline called "Muffin the Vampire Baker". There was also a passing reference to a play "Buffus: The Bacchae Slayer" on an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess and at least three episodes of Will & Grace which mention Buffy or star Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Similar works

As well as these extracurricular offspring, Buffy has exerted a marked influence on TV and film, with shows such as Smallville and Roswell, as well as movies such as The Faculty and Bring It On owing something in their themes, devices, and verbal style to the show. The mythology of the series has also influenced other series, notably Cartoon Network's The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, and Sky's Hex.

In addition, many Buffy alumni have gone on to write for or create other shows, some of which bear a notable resemblance to the style and concepts of Buffy. Such Whedonesque endeavors include Tru Calling (Doug Petrie), Wonderfalls (Tim Minear), Still Life (Marti Noxon) and Jake 2.0 (David Greenwalt).

Moreover, fall 2003 saw a number of new shows going into production in the US that featured strong girls/young women forced to come to terms with some supernatural power or destiny while trying to maintain a normal life. These "post-Buffy" shows include the aforementioned Tru Calling and Wonderfalls, as well as Dead Like Me and Joan of Arcadia. In the words of Bryan Fuller, the creator of Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls:

[Buffy] really turned a corner for series storytelling. It showed that young women could be in situations that were both fantastic and relatable, and instead of shunting women off to the side, it put them at the center.

Series information

See also - List of Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes.

Characters

Main characters

Recurring guest stars

Important villains

(commonly referred to within the show as the "Big Bads")

Recurring characters

Other languages

(See episode entries for details on translation)

  • Croatian: Buffy, ubojica vampira ("Buffy, killer of vampires"); "Slayer" is ubojica vampira ("killer of vampires"), "Watcher" is Čuvar ("guardian, keeper").
  • Estonian: Vampiiritapja Buffy (as "Vampirekiller Buffy").
  • Finnish: Buffy, vampyyrintappaja ("Buffy, killer of vampires"); "Slayer" is Tappaja ("Killer"), and "Watcher" is Valvoja ("Watcher", "Overseer").
  • French: Buffy Contre les Vampires ("Buffy versus the vampires"); "slayer" is la Tueuse ("the Killer"), and "Watcher" is l'Observateur ("the Watcher")
  • Hebrew: באפי ציידת הערפדים ("Buffy the vampires hunter"); "Slayer" is קוטלת ("Slayer"), and "Watcher" is צופה ("Watcher").
  • Hungarian: Buffy a vámpírok réme (Roughly, "Buffy: The bogey of the Vampires"); slayer is Vadász ("Hunter") and "Watcher" is Őrző (Keeper, Watcher)
  • German: Buffy - Im Bann der Dämonen (Meaning somewhere between "Buffy - in the thrall of demons", and "Buffy - in the shadow of demons"); "Slayer" is translated as die Jägerin ("Huntress"), "Watcher" as der Wächter ("Watchman"/"Warden").
  • Icelandic: Vampírubaninn Buffy (Roughly, "The Vampireslayer Buffy"); "Slayer" is translated as bani ("killer").
  • Italian: Buffy l'Ammazza Vampiri ("Buffy The Vampires Killer"); "Slayer" is Cacciatrice ("huntress"), and "Watcher" is Osservatore ("Watchman").
  • Japanese: バフィー～恋する十字架 (Bafii koi suru juujika: "Buffy the Loving Cross" or "The Cross that Loves"); バフィー (Bafii) is "Buffy", ～恋する (koi suru) is "to love", and 十字架 (juujika) is "the Cross".
  • Polish: Buffy postrach wampirów
  • Portuguese: in Brazil, Buffy, a Caça-Vampiros ("Buffy the Vampire-huntress"); "Slayer" is a Caçadora ("the Huntress"), and "Watcher" is o Vigia ("the Watchman"); in Portugal, Buffy, a Caçadora de Vampiros ("Buffy the Vampire Huntress)"; "Slayer" is a Caçadora ("the Huntress"), and "Wacther" is o Observador ("the Observer", "the Watcher").
  • Spanish: Buffy, la Cazavampiros ("Buffy, vampire hunter"); "Slayer" is Cazadora ("huntress"), and "Watcher" is Vigilante ("Watchman").
  • Swedish: Buffy & vampyrerna ("Buffy & The Vampires"); "Slayer" is Dråpare ("Slayer"), and "Watcher" is Väktare ("Watchman").

See also

References

  • Entertainment books
    • The Quotable Slayer, by Steven Brezenoff and Micol Ostow (compilers) (ISBN 0743410173)
    • Slayer Slang: A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Lexicon, by Michael Adams (ISBN 0195160339)
    • What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, Jana Riess (ISBN 0787969222)
    • Why Buffy Matters, Rhonda Wilcox (ISBN 1845110293)
  • Academic books
    • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale, James B. South (ed), Open Court Publishing 2003 (ISBN 0812695313) (philosophy)
    • Sex And The Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer For The Buffy Fan, Lorna Jowett, Wesleyan University Press 2005(ISBN 0819567582) (Gender Studies)
    • Fighting The Forces: What's At Stake In Buffy The Vampire Slayer?, Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery (eds), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2002 (ISBN 0742516814) (Cultural studies)
    • Reading the Vampire Slayer : The Unofficial Critical Companion to Buffy and Angel, Roz Kaveney (ed), Tauris Parke Paperbacks 2002, (ISBN 1860647626) (Cultural studies)
    • Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Discuss Their Favorite Television Show, Glenn Yeffeth (ed), Benbella Books 2003, (ISBN 1932100083) (Cultural studies)
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