WORDS: Sarah Lennon Galavan
With the recent premiere of the Jonathan Rhy Meyers helmed Dracula, it seems like the current abundance of vampires in film and TV is a trend that refuses to die. Buffy the Vampire Slayer actually belongs to an older and perhaps now largely under-represented strand of the supernatural narrative -— that of the vampire hunter. Our eponymous protagonist is Van Helsing in a crop top, a 16-year-old girl who finds herself entrusted with the mystical office of “The Slayer”. “She alone” (intones the eerie pre-credit voice-over) “will wield the strength and skill to stand against the vampires, the demons and the forces of darkness”. Living on the Hellmouth or interdimensional portal of Sunnydale, California, Buffy must balance her extra-curricular slaying with the difficulties of growing up, aided by her friends, the self described “Scooby Gang” and school librarian/”Watcher” Giles. While originally hailed a critical and commercial success, even spawning its own academic journal, Buffy has come under fire in recent years. Dismissed as a product of the not so fondly remembered girl power era or as an example of show runner Joss Whedon’s semi-fetishistic interest in delicate, girly badasses, Buffy lacks the cultural cache of Twin Peaks or Freaks and Geeks. Yet despite its silly name and ‘Teen Beat’ friendly cast, Buffy is a complex show that was willing to take thematic and structural risks that have not lost their power to impress in this so-called Golden Age of Television.
Horror has always been a willing repository of cultural anxieties. Victorian xenophobia gave life to Dracula while the Red Scare prompted a deluge of alien abduction films in the 50s. According to Whedon, Buffy was pitched as a metaphorical high school programme put in a horror movie. As such, the trials and tribulations of adolescence are reflected through supernatural happenings drawn from everything from medieval folklore to contemporary slasher movies. The persecution of LGBT youth literally becomes a witch hunt. There is something not quite right about your mother’s new boyfriend. And the guy who told you he loved you then went off you after sex? Well, he’s literally evil.
Starting out as an often-overwrought pastiche of teen sex comedy and dated horror tropes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer found its voice by becoming progressively darker, developing the intricacies of the so-called Buffyverse. While the early seasons establish a black and white dichotomy between good and evil, the ever-expanding internal mythology gradually erases such clear-cut divisions. This is particularly evident in the case of its portrayal of its heroine’s primary antagonists, vampires. Despite the first episode establishing them as parasitic demons that take possession of dead bodies, the introduction of sympathetic vampires such as Angel and later Spike complicates how the practice of slaying should be viewed and undermines Buffy’s status as an unequivocal hero. As dark as the series becomes, however, humour remains a central component in the form of the characteristically witty and acerbic dialogue.
From a critical perspective, the most lauded episodes have been those that innovate in terms of form. In Hush, the voices of Sunnydale’s residents are stolen by goosebump inducing ghouls The Gentlemen, prompting a masterfully executed silent episode which relies heavily on the cast’s ability to work without the usual safety net of whip-smart writing. The Body, which centres on the death of a significant character, strips away the score to allow the audience to feel the extent of the characters’ emotional devastation. Once More With Feeling manages to succeed as both a 40 minute musical and as an episode that furthers the season’s plot arc. In a pre-Netflix world of rigorously controlled network programming, Whedon and his creative team at Mutant Enemy Productions really stretched the concept of what a modestly successful teen show could be artistically.
At its heart, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is Buffy Summers’ story and her character maintains its centrality throughout the seven seasons. Unlike similar “chosen one” narrative, Buffy is not the tortured outsider. She’s popular, attractive and not particularly intelligent or cultured. (Viewers seeking audience surrogates should probably look to geeky Willow or perpetual underachiever Xander) She’s also deeply flawed. At times, she can be downright unlikable- stubborn, self-righteous and controlling. Yet, the fact that Buffy is not perfect makes her journey all the more compelling. For a supernatural series, it is surprising that one of Buffy’s greatest strength is in its depiction of her humanity. She is allowed to make bad decisions, choose the wrong men and let the pressure of being the Slayer turn her into a hard and dissatisfied woman. And hey, says Whedon, that’s ok.
Buffy does have its weak points. In typical late nineties fashion, the CGI is laughably poor and the practical effects a mixed bag. The first season is also too focused on attracting a desirable demographic to be representative of what the series would become and can be a turn-off for the uninitiated.
During its seven year run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer continually broke new ground. It challenged traditional conceptions of the female lead, the figure of the vampire and the intellectual merits of television aimed at young people. One of the most fearlessly innovative series of the nineties, Buffy is both an engaging coming-of-age story and a highly original re-imaging of the archetypal hero’s journey..
