Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: A Layman's Journey

Buffy, the Vampire Slayer: A Layman's Journey

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

http://jordan-criticalmass.blogspot.com/2007/09/buffy-vampire-slayer-
laymans-journey.html

The Critical Mass

This blog is dedicated to film analysis, review, and commentary.

Recently, I embarked on a strange and wondrous journey; a journey so bizarre and uncharacteristic of me that it would bring a grown man to his knees. I, however, may be grown and may be a man, but I am by no means a “grown man.” I began watching a little television show
entitled: “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.” At first, this was under duress in the form of insistent and frequent recommendations that it would be up my alley. Well, I finally walked down that dark and menacing alley, and what I found was a little, blonde valley girl who could quite swiftly and thoroughly kick my ass from here till next Tuesday. Now, I said that I started watching this fledgling series, but I failed to mention that I also FINISHED watching it. That’s right. I, a complete stranger to the series, put myself through a rigorous Buffy boot camp: seasons 1-7. 144 episodes in their entirety began to single file in. One by one, they crowded into my tiny brain in what must have been some sort of fire hazard. They definitely reached maximum occupancy. If you would have told me that I would do this a year ago, I would have thought you were insane… inventive, but insane. Buffy has build up quite a cult fan base over the years, and continues to be the object of much analysis among its disciples. I couldn’t just let this whole experience wash over me and fade into my subconscious, so I decided to share this former layman’s thoughts on the little show that could.

I can’t discuss Buffy, the Vampire Slayer without discussing its proud parent, Joss Whedon. My exposure to Whedon is somewhat backwards compared to most of his fans, but I guess any exposure is better than none. Serenity was a film that blew my mind, and continues to be one of my favorite Sci-Fi films ever. I wondered, “Who was behind this project, and how can I pretend that I already knew who he was.” To the bandwagon!! Now, I had heard of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, but it was fused in my mind with the odd and confusingly unappealing movie of the same name. If you’re like me, and I know I am, when you discover a new filmmaker or writer, or artist of any kind, it’s the best thing that can happen, because it’s like a whole world opening up. And right away, the writing stood out to me, first in Serenity and then when I began watching Buffy. Whedon had crafted a bizarre language all his own, fusing pop culture with high culture (those two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but usually that’s the case), and even quite literally inventing words in order to keep the characters and dialogue from growing stale or blending in with that of its colleagues. Now, I know Whedon wasn’t and couldn’t be the originator of every line of dialogue or every storyline, but like most cult shows, he assembled quite a Legion of Super Writers to engage in a never ending battle against the Legion of Doom (aka Network Television).

And so it begins. The first season of most shows is usually the worst. Buffy is no exception. Of course we get to meet Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), her Watcher, Giles (Anthony Head), and her geeky friends, Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Xander (Nicolas Brendon).
Willow’s a witch and Xander’s a doofus. We also get the set up. Buffy is the chosen one, and has been recruited to wage a never ending battle against the forces of evil, usually in the form of vampires.
Buffy starts out as a 16-year-old high school student, carefully juggling her slaying duties with more important things like shopping and hanging out. She moves to Sunnydale, a town in California that exists on the worst piece of real estate since Chernobyl. Sunnydale exists over a “Hellmouth”, which basically serves the purpose of an Indian burial ground, where strange events happen to anyone or anything privy to it. To me, it didn’t seem like a particularly interesting set-up. Buffy’s basically Spider-man. They’re both teens balancing their superhero duties with mundane everyday life. But Buffy’s not the nerdy Peter Parker. She’s the popular chick, or for the purposes of this analogy, she’s Mary Jane AND a superhero (because pretty girls don’t get enough perks). Something that dawned on me much later (I catch on slowly) whilst listening to a commentary track was the underlying theme of the series. Whedon takes the idea of a helpless horror film vixen, and gives her a fighting chance.
This is something that needed to be done. In case you hadn’t noticed, horror film directors have lots of issues with women, and let’s just leave it at that.

It took a while for the characters to grow on me, and the stand-alone first season stories didn’t help much to build a consistent, growing relationship between the audience and the characters. It was like a house of cards that got blown over after each episode. The special effects also didn’t help, and would continue to be a hindrance on Buffy for some time. These are minor quibbles, though. The show gives you an idea and the basic framework, and you can fill in the gaps.
After all, it’s not really that important that Buffy’s stuntwoman is probably a full foot and a half taller than her petite counterpart.
It’s cheesy, and cheap, and that’s part of its appeal. Buffy won’t shy away from pointing out that it’s the third, fourth, or even fifth time she has to save the world from a near Apocalypse. Being self- aware is dangerous water to tread, though. Merely pointing out that you know why something doesn’t make sense doesn’t always absolve you from responsibility, or instantly translate into humor. Most of the time it’s quite obviously and quite shamelessly used like an easily accessible jetpack to fly out of the corner you purposefully painted yourself into, and nothing more. It shouldn’t be used as an escape hatch, but as a bar of soap that you can whittle into a tool of some sort in order to dig your way out. In other words, it should be difficult to come up with clever ways to point out logical flaws, and it should breed new comedy in the hands of the individual artist instead of being the same thing over and over again. I think what makes it work in the case of Buffy is the fusion of its genres. Buffy wears many hats and tackles many subjects. As I mentioned, Buffy fuses high culture with pop culture; Shakespeare with Stephen King; Welles with Tarantino; Star Wars with Star Trek. This ability to simultaneously exist in all universes makes it easy and almost necessary to point out where you stand at any given time. Buffy will have fanciful, soap-operatic moments, gut-wrenching and heartbreaking dramatic moments, truly effective horror moments, silly and jaw- dropping, goofy moments, and yet it all absorbs believably into a cohesive storyline with all the actors remaining in character. The characters refer back to sillier times in sillier episodes because those events happened to them, whether we want to accept it or not.

Over the many episodes, the characters grew on me. The relationship between Buffy and Giles was obviously the most interesting impetus for character development in the beginning, but Xander and Willow gradually found something to do in each episode. Giles, however, would slowly begin to fade into the background, until the show actually called attention to it, and he left the series when he felt he was a hindrance on Buffy by just being there and twiddling his thumbs. Other characters like Oz (Seth Green) and Anya (Emma Caulfield), who eventually found a little footing, would also be examples of underused potential. Anya, sadly, became a one-note joke.
She was my favorite character for a long time, until she eventually wore out her welcome by not bringing a lot to the table. A refreshing addition to the series was Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn (Michelle Trachtenberg). Ostensibly, Dawn was the stereotypical annoying kid added as a last ditch effort to re-enliven a struggling series. But underneath her appearance lies the cleverest part of that story. Dawn actually was just injected into the series, literally. She was a magical “key” manifested into human form by monks. This was so that this integral key wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands, and what better person to disguise it as than the younger sister of an overprotective superhero? All the characters had supplanted memories of Dawn, and she basically was just added to the cast. No fuss, no muss. Buffy had successfully jumped the shark. This is probably the most unique and creative way to add a character to a series that I’ve ever seen. This eventually lead to some of my favorite moments, like when Dawn struggles with the fact that she’s not “real”, and may end up being jammed into a lock of some sort (or at the very least, being branded with a “DO NOT DUPLICATE” warning). They added a great character flawlessly, and got a great overarching storyline out of it. Buffy eventually dies at the end of that storyline in one of my most memorable episodes, “the Gift.” Sure, she was alive in the very next episode of the series, but it all made sense in that very special, Buffy sort of way.

Another interesting addition was Faith (Eliza Dushku). Faith was a rebellious slayer who was activated when Buffy “died.” No, not when she died from saving Dawn, the other time she died. You know, at the end of the first season. Faith was a “cleavagy slut-bomb” who played by her own slayin’ rules, in sharp relief to Buffy’s perceived lax inefficiency. Spike (James Marsters) and Angel (David Boreanaz) rounded out the crew as recurring vampires who vied for Buffy’s ever- waning affections. Both of them had something that prevented them from being complete vampires, and allowed them to leave the dark side… at least for a while. Buffy did more with demonology than I thought would have been possible. The amount of material they were able to craft out of this universe (not to mention on a shoestring
budget) is remarkable. There was a silent episode that was so effective, that I think it could have been adapted into a truly frightful horror film. That episode was called “Hush.” On the other end of the spectrum, a surprisingly well crafted musical episode called “Once More with Feeling” would assure Buffy would never be pigeonholed. Both of those episodes expanded the scope of the show, not only with a clever idea, but on a visually cinematic level. Both episodes were almost a knee jerk reaction to critics. Whedon was praised for his dialogue, so he did a silent episode. A musical episode proved that Buffy could be a launching ground for just about any idea, no matter how odd it sounds. The most important themes would eventually manifest as the show grew more confident. The idea that morals and values are not a function of faith, but an entity all their own was the impetus for development in the Buffyverse. A brilliant encapsulation of another theme is the episode entitled “The Body”, wherein Buffy deals with the death of her mother in an all too real setting. The thought that if that’s all life really is doesn’t make the time spent any less meaningful. There are frankly too many episodes to get into the details, but when they hit you, they hit you.

This marathon has made me appreciate this great series. I’m sure that if you’re reading this, you need no convincing of the show’s importance and quality. When the last episode ended, it was good closure. Probably the best compliment I can give the series would be that throughout watching over a hundred episodes, I never grew sick of it, and I never dreaded the next episode or needed to take an extended break from it. The characters are great, and really engaging. Ok, so not all of them were engaging… I’m talking to you, Adam. But Buffy had a pretty good batting average for rewarding its audience with original characters and interesting plot twists. The show never threw away opportunities to enlighten audiences, even when Buffy’s stunt double was kicking a guy in a rubber monster mask. The big picture was always clear and always distinct. I dare not calculate how many hours of my life went into this insane venture for fear of spiraling into some sort of mid-mid-life crisis, but all I’ll say is this: I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Posted by Jordan at 11:57 PM