Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
(religion, spiritualism, and occult)Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992) was originally a Twentieth Century-Fox movie directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui and written by Joss Whedon. The title character is Buffy Summers, played by Kirsty Swanson, a Californian high school cheerleader who is acknowledged as "The Chosen One" or "The Slayer," a once-in-a-generation person who is destined to battle evil and destroy vampires. Buffy does this under the tutelage of the mysterious Merrick (Donald Sutherland), who is later killed by Lothos, a major vampire (Rutger Hauer). Lothos is eventually exterminated by Buffy.
The movie spawned a television series, which began in 1996 with a two-part episode, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Welcome to Hellmouth. In the series, the title role is played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. At Sunnydale High School, Buffy gathers a close group of friends who learn of her role in life and assist her to the best of their abilities. Among them is Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hanningan), who is a selftaught Witch, learning from library books. The library becomes the headquarters for the group, under the aegis of Rupert Giles, the librarian, who also happens to be Buffy's "Watcher," a guidance counselor for vampire slayers. Willow is something of a computer nerd and helps Giles do research and decipher ancient texts.
With the success of the television series, a set of novels have been published, the first written by Ritchie Cusick, who wrote the novel based on the original movie.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Television Series)
(pop culture)The original Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie appeared in 1992 to mixed reviews. Its creator Joss Whedon (born Joseph Hill Whedon, 1964) considered it a significantly altered representation of his original screenplay but also a stage of development of the Buffy character he wanted. He has noted that he traces his interest in the character of Buffy as an attempt to reimagine a horror stereotype, the image of a naïve but beautiful young woman wandering into a dark alley only to be dispatched by some monster. He looked for a movie in which the girl goes into the alley and turns the tables on the monster using her own remarkable strength and powers.
During the years following the movie, Whedon expanded his knowledge of the vampire genre as it had appeared on both television and in the movies and thought more about the nature of horror. The darker world inhabited by the television Buffy manifested from the very first episode, in which Whedon now set his characters in a world reminiscent of the Chtulu mythos of H. P. Lovecraft. Whedon concentrates on the immediate battle between good and evil, between the “powers that be” and the forces of supernatural evil that once overran planet earth. These forces have been pushed back into the nether reaches, but are constantly trying to return through the Hell-mouth, which Weadon locates in Sunnydale, a small California city that bears a remarkable resemblance to Santa Barbara. (An original Hellmouth is found in the sleepy town of Caicais, Portugal, and so designated because of an unusual rock formation that an angry sea had carved out of the rocky shoreline.) Whedon’s world is inhabited by a spectrum of demonic characters, most importantly the vampires. To keep the vampires in check, the cosmos regularly spits up a slayer, a young female with some extraordinary abilities.
There is but a single slayer at any given moment, but as soon as a slayer is killed, a new one arises to take her place. There are several slayers in training at any time. At the end of Season One, Buffy dies for a few minutes only to be revived. Her death, however, calls up the next slayer, first Kendra Young (Bianca Lawson) and then Faith Lehane (Eliza Dushku), and for the remainder of the series two slayers exist simultaneously.
Whedon conceived of vampires as deceased humans reanimated by invading demonic spirits. When killed, they immediately disintegrate into dust (very much as Dracula in Hammer‘s The Horror of Dracula), a convenient revision of the vampire myth which keeps the authorities uninvolved since the Slayer does not leave a pile of corpses behind no matter how many vampires she eliminates. Vampires have the memory of the person whose body they inhabit, but no soul, hence no conscience. Most vampires in Buffy, lacking a soul, are evil and fit only for quick dispatch, and most episodes began with the Slayer doing just that. Angel, the vampire who falls in love with Buffy, is cursed with a soul/conscience that continually wars with his vampiric urges, thus creating his special hell.
In creating Angel, Whedon adapted his unique idea of the vampire to the new conflicted vampire explored by Dan Curtis in Dark Shadows and Anne Rice in her novels, and the good-guy vampire developed in the comic book Vampirella and the novels of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Fred Saberhagen. Just as the original Buffy movie was released, a good-guy vampire appeared on television in the person of Nick Knight, the vampire detective in Forever Night. When emotionally upset or about to feed, the vampires of Forever Knight put on what became known as a “game face,” a horrific appearance not unlike that of a klingon on Star Trek. Finally, from the Hong Kong vampire movies, Whedon introduced the martial arts as a major weapon in the Slayer’s arsenal.
In spite of Whedon’s maturing vision, the television series attempted to provide some continuity with the movie. After the events at her Los Angeles high school, Buffy Summers and her mother hoped to finally resume a normal life, but through the show’s early episodes Buffy comes to understand that normality and peace were not central to her existence.
She was bothered by dreams and, more importantly, has the burden of understanding the significance of the wave of deaths and disappearances among her new classmates. One body had even dropped out of a locker in the gym. The librarian, Rupert Giles, offered her a book on vampires.
Very early in her career at Sunnydale, Buffy found a support group among a small group of students who come to believe in the existence of vampires and appreciate Buffy’s distinctive position in life. Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) is a shy computer nerd, pretty, but rather inept socially. Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) is a young teen who is too unhip to be popular. Cornelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), one of the most popular (and shallow) girls in school, was rewarded for her attempts to introduce Buffy into the circle of the school’s elite by being drawn into the Slayer’s supernatural world. The group was held together by the wise Giles, Buffy’s Watcher, whose library also became their headquarters. Giles relied on Willow to extend his knowledge through her knowledgable use of the Internet.
Only reluctantly did Buffy reconcile herself to her Chosenness. Her immediate task was to handle the Master, a powerful ancient vampire king who had planned to renter the world of humans from which he had been banished. Each century there is an evening, called the Harvest, when he can select another vampire, a vessel, and send him out into the world. On the evening in question, his vessel Luke took over The Bronze, a teen club, and began to feed. The Master felt the strength received from each feeding, as if he had been feeding himself. Unfortunately for the Master, before he could gain the strength to break free, Buffy arrived and killed Luke.
The key person in her last-minute rescue of her classmates was a young man who warned her about the Harvest. Although he appeared to be a young man only a few years older than Buffy, he turned out to be a two hundred and forty-year-old vampire named Angel (David Boreanaz). Once a vicious killer, he encountered some Gypsies who punished him by restoring his soul, or conscience, with a magical curse. With his soul restored, Angel found that he could no longer kill.
Although Buffy stopped the Master, it was only temporary. He would be back and it would be Angel who again intervened and told of a prophecy indicating that on the following evening Buffy would have to fight the Master and she would lose. The next evening, at the school dance, Buffy and the Master did fight, and Buffy did lose. However, she was rescued and revived by her friends and ended the initial season by destroying the Master permanently.
Seasons Two and Three saw Buffy and her colleagues through the last two years of high school, during which time they slew countless vampires and a few supernatural baddies of a non-vampiric nature, mostly demons of one sort or the other. Buffy’s love life with her vampire boyfriend Angle blossomed, but had a disastrous ending when during their intimate time together, Angel had a moment of joy and reverted to his vampire nature. Buffy had to impale him with a sword.
She also had her first encounters with Spike (James Marsters) and his slightly crazy girlfriend Drusilla, in what would become a rocky relationship. Willow’s heart would be broken when Xander became involved with someone, but she would recover with the help of Oz, the loveable werewolf. Buffy’s rivalry with the other slayer Faith would lead Faith into an alliance with Sunnydale’s mayor, who turned out to be a demon, and would culminate at their high school graduation. When the vampire was able to come out in the daytime momentarily, Buffy and her friends had to organize the student body to fight for their future. The mayor would be killed when he chased Buffy into the school which had been loaded with explosives. Recalling the fire at her first outing, Buffy ended her high school career by destroying Sunnydale High.
Angel who has returned from the hell Buffy had sent him to, recovered to join the graduation battle, but immediately afterwards, left for Los Angeles and his new series built around his quest for redemption. Cornelia would soon also find her way to Angel’s door, leaving Giles, Willow, and Xander to carry on in Sunnydale. Willow and Buffy would attend college, at the University of California at Sunnydale, while Xander tried his hand at a construction job. With the school library destroyed, their new headquarters would become a local magic shop now run by Giles. Buffy got a new love life in the person of Riley Finn, a soldier with a unit called the “Initiative,” which specializes in fighting the supernatural invaders with the latest technology. Among their victims is Spike, who has a chip placed in him preventing him from doing any harm to humans. Eventually Oz would leave to try to find a cure for his lycanthropy, and Willow would discover that she is a lesbian. Unlike Riley, whom the fans generally disliked, they fell in love with Willow’s girlfriend, Tara Maclay. Xander would eventually fall for Anya, a demon who gave up her powers to be with him.
Buffy’s family would be enlarged at the beginning of Season Five with the addition of a sister, Dawn, who arrives out of nowhere, complete with a set of memories involving the main characters, who weave her into the action as if she had always been present. Buffy eventually discovers that Dawn is a mystical object known as the Key, transformed into human form and sent to the Slayer for protection. When the villainous Glory (Clare Kramer) uses Dawn to break down the barriers separating the dimensions, Buffy sacrifices her own life to save the world as we know it.
Buffy’s death sets the scene for Willow to emerge as a witch whose magic is real and powerful. It is powerful enough to bring Buffy back from the grave, and send her on a quest for power that becomes addictive and almost costs her the relationship with Tara. In her attempt to readjust from being pulled back from her brief visit to a heaven-like realm, Buffy begins an intense relationship with the vampire Spike, who falls for Buffy only to find her still in love with Angel.
Willow is recovering from her addiction to magic only to have Tara taken from her by a stray bullet intended for Buffy. In her grief, she tracks down Warren Mears, who fired the bullets and she uses her magic powers to skin him alive. She then transforms into her opposite, popularly called Dark Willow, but recovers to engage in the final battle that pits Buffy against the First Evil, a being that has manifested from all the evil in existence. The First makes itself known through its agent-sidekick Caleb, a serial killer who appears as a priest. The First is an incorporeal entity who able to come to earth because of the instability introduced into the cosmos when Buffy is raised from the dead. He sets about to destroy the slayers-in-waiting and the Watchers Council that oversees them. The surviving slayers come to Sunnydale, where a final battle is in the making at the Hellmouth.
In the final episode, Buffy, Spike, the rehabilitated Faith, and all the would-be slayers fight against the horde of vampires who are storming into the human realm. In the battle Anya dies and Spike shows his love for Buffy by sacrificing himself. The amulet he wears, which channels the sun’s light, turns the tide of the battle. Sunnydale is destroyed, but humanity is saved.
Whedon uses the last episode to punctuate the feminist message he has been projecting through the series: Every woman is a potential slayer, they just have to step forward and claim their status. In the final episode, Willow uses her magic powers to turn all of the potential slayers into actual slayers. Henceforth, there will be more than one slayer.
On Television: The first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer aired on March 10, 1997, on the WB network, and is credited with saving the young network and setting it on a firm footing with its youthful audience. The first five seasons remained on the WB, but the last two were run on the UPN Network. The show then ran in syndication on the FX cable network. In England the show ran on Sky1 and BBC2. On both networks, it was run in two versions. In the afternoon, presumably when a younger audience was watching, it was run in a sanitized version, with violence and sex deleted. The original version was run in the evenings during prime time. The series was also translated for viewing in France, Germany, Italy and Russia, and other countries.
Aftermath: Buffy the Vampire Slayer remained on the air for seven seasons (1997–2003) while the spin-off Angel ran for five (1999–2004). Angel became the first story line developed from the original series. Besides Cornelia, several Buffy characters found their way to Los Angeles to become regulars on the show, including Faith and the vampires Harmony Kendall (Mercedes McNab), Darla (Julie Benz) and after the last battle in Sunnydale, Spike.
In 2007, Season Eight of Buffy would appear in a most unusual format, the comic book. An original “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” comic series had appeared from Dark Horse comics with sixty-three issues between 1990 and 2003. A variety of miniseries were subsequently published. But in 2007, Dark Horse began a second series that was partially written by Joss Whedon and sanctioned as an official continuation of the story after the end of the television series. It is popularly termed “the eighth season”. As of the summer of 2009, twenty-six issues of a projected forty issues have appeared.
As the eighth season has unfolded, Buffy has robbed a Swiss bank to obtain the funds to set up a technologically sophisticated central command for those slayers aligned to her (about 500 of the 1,800 in existence). Also at Buffy’s command is a large number of psychics and witches. To help protect the famous slayer, two decoy slayers have been deployed. From headquarters in a Scottish castle, Buffy and Xander have organized the slayers into ten squads. Giles heads one in England, while Robing the principal of Sunnydale High School at the time when the town was destroyed, leads one in Cleveland, Ohio. Two other slayers, Vi and Rona, who appeared in the seventh season, are operating in New York and Chicago.
The United States government, already aware of the existence of a variety of demonic beings, did not ignore the destruction of Sunnydale. They now look upon Buffy and her allies as a dangerous “terrorist” group that must be handled in the same manner as vampires and demons. They have recruited Amy Madison (a witch from the original series) and the still skinless Warren Mears. And, in case the government’s coming after her is not enough, Buffy must stave off the ambitions of a British socialite-turned-slayer named Lady Genevieve Savidge, who wishes to take Buffy’s place at the head of the slayer organization. And among the vampires, a savvy group from Japan are working on a way to reverse Willow’s global activation of the Potential Slayers. Behind all these forces targeting Buffy is an enigmatic character named Twilight. He heads a secret organization not unlike the original Initiative that views Buffy and the slayers as the enemy of humanity, as harmful as the vampires and demons. He aims to end the age of magic, both good and evil.
Buffy culture: Buffy the Vampire Slayer became a “cult” phenomenon that spun off numerous items beginning with a series of books, some novelized versions of the different episodes and others as entirely new stories. The comic books, action figures, and some twenty sets of trading cards soon followed. Pictures of the primary cast members and the show’s logo could be found on items from watches to lunch boxes, with T-shirts being among the most popular.
The show grew with an expansion of the Internet, and fan activity made full use of it. Internet networks led to organization of the first fan gatherings, and many of the cast members showed up for an annual gathering in Los Angeles. Fan fiction also became quite popular until suppressed for a host of copyright and trademark considerations.
A most fascinating phenomenon was found within the scholarly community, where an appreciation of Buffy, then Angel, and then the work of Joss Whedon evolved. Interest developed initially among professors of cinema and television, but soon spread to scholars of literature, sociology, philosophy, and religious studies. An initial conference was held at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England in October 2002 under the title “Blood, Text and Fears: Reading around Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” The conference brought together a hundred scholars from across Europe and North America and as far away as Australia. Recognizing the emerging field of “Buffyology,” two American scholars, Rhonda Wilcox and David Laverty, put together Slayage—an online scholarly journal, a network of scholars, and beginning in 2004, biennial conferences. Almost four hundred scholars showed up for the 2004 conference in Nashville, Tennessee. The next conference is projected for St. Augustine Florida in the summer of 2010.
The scholarly attention to Buffy and what is now termed the “Whedonverses,” has had a dramatic effect on the production of academic work on vampires. More than half of all the published scholarly articles on vampires have had Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel as their subject. Slayage also gives the Mt. Pointy awards for the best writing on the Whedonverses, the award being named for the stake that the slayer Kendra gave to Buffy.
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