Homework, Family, Vampires, and a Curfew: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a teen show filled with romance, horror, humor, and all the tropes of modern fantasy dramas. However, as cliché as the show seems now, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has a comforting, timeless quality to it, and helped create many modern cliches in teen romantic dramas and in modern fantasy

Written and created by Joss Whedon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about Buffy Summers, a normal girl who worries about her grades, hanging out with her friends, the approval of her mother, and if the boy she has a crush on notices her new outfit. However, Buffy has a secret: she is a Slayer.

The Slayer, in the canon, is a young woman destined to fight the forces of evil, from vampires and demons, all the way to gods and The First Evil. The Slayer has super strength, a faster than average healing ability, and sometimes has prophetic dreams that serve as warnings when some particularly nasty monster makes its way through to kill them or to just run amok.

The Slayer is paired with an individual called a Watcher (usually British), who reads ancient text regarding prophetic signs and terrifying monsters, then passes the information to the Slayer, often giving orders. They also train and help hone the Slayer’s capabilities. Buffy’s Watcher is Rupert Giles, a high school librarian with a past.

Buffy’s situation is… unique. She is willful, witty, and wants nothing more than a normal life, including friends. Her friends are Willow Rosenberg, shy nerdy girl, and Xander Harris, awkward teenage dork.

Now that I’ve set the scene and talked about the main characters who are in the show in almost every episode, I’m going to talk about some of the pioneering aspects of the show, and why I think it has a timeless quality.

To start, the show takes itself seriously, but it still has a lot of humor and intelligence. Buffy herself is full of witticisms and puns, often saying them during fight scenes or when Giles is telling her she needs to focus. Giles is often dry and sarcastic, especially when Buffy and others don’t take him seriously, and Willow is unintentionally funny, especially when talking about boys and crushes. Buffy and her friends also use knowledge to fight against monsters and demons and grow together as people and in their relationships. They research weaknesses and plan out how to tackle everything from homework to the Mayor of Sunnydale, who transforms himself into a giant sandworm-like creature and attempts to eat their graduating class.

The plots and sublots to the show are, on the surface, simple: see weird death or hear about weird occurrence, research occurrence and also study for math, figure out how to get back home before curfew and kill the scary monster, and hopefully pass a math test the next day. However, the show deals with very heavy subject matter, from suicide and depression, to bullies and ways of dealing with them. There is also the aspect that Buffy and her friends deal with time and how things change over time. They, like most of us, go through limited experiences, like high school. They deal with things that constantly change, like themselves, and with unexpected changes that hit hard and painfully, such as losing a loved one.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is also pioneering in one very important aspect, and that is the portrayal of an LGBTQ relationship. The relationship is between two women and is not fetishistic, and also shows how a healthy couple works through complicated moments, like talking to each other about disagreements, and setting healthy boundaries.

The show also encourages young people, especially young women, to discover their own strengths and weaknesses and use their inner strength to stand up for themselves. While Buffy is an iconic feminist character, Willow and many of the other female characters exude inner strength and wisdom.

One of my favorite episodes, and a fan favorite and Emmy nominated episode to boot, is Hush (Season 4, episode 10). Part of the way through the episode, four heart-eating monsters called The Gentlemen come through town, using their powers to rend all of Sunnydale and the nearby college campus, where Buffy and Willow are attending classes, silent. No one is able to talk to each other, except in writing or emphatic gestures (which leads to some very funny pantomiming moments). Giles researches and finds that the only way to defeat the creatures is to use the scream of an unnamed warrior. The acting in the episode is superb and the storytelling is clear, despite the lack of sound.

I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer growing up, especially for its complicated characters and their stories. None of the characters are perfect people and make very human mistakes at times, even the nonhuman ones, and have to deal with the outcome of those mistakes. Even now, I look back on the show fondly and joke/brag to many that my husband (who happens to work in a college library and is very smart) is an American Giles. If you have the time, especially with fall and Halloween coming up, give Buffy the Vampire Slayer a try.