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For the original film of the same name, see Buffy the Vampire Slayer (film). For the main character of the series, see Buffy Summers.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an American television series based upon the 1992 film of the same name. The original concept, screenplay, and TV series were created by writer/director Joss Whedon under his personal production tag, Mutant Enemy Productions. The show's title is often abbreviated simply to Buffy or BtVS.

The series follows the day-to-day life of the Slayer, Buffy Summers, a teenage girl chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other supernatural foes. She is often aided by her Watcher and her loyal circle of misfit friends.

The first five seasons of the series aired on The WB; after a network change, the final two seasons aired on UPN. The series now airs daily in worldwide syndication. The series finale aired in May 2003.

Origins

Writer Joss Whedon developed Buffy as an intentional inversion of the pervasive horror film formula, in which young girls are typically depicted as helpless, hysterical victims of violence. Whedon's vision featured a young woman who was not only an exceptional fighter but also a powerful leader, without sacrificing her femininity. By reversing the cliché of the helpless female victim, Buffy presented an alternative paradigm embraced by many as an emblem of female power - in Whedon's narrative, Buffy's male friend Xander is more likely to need rescuing *, while Buffy is more than capable of looking after herself and those around her. However, her personal life is as painful and confusing as any teenage girl's. This combination of empowerment and empathy has earned Buffy a passionate following among fans, giving the show a cult status.

Whedon's other "mission statement" was to employ supernatural elements as metaphors for personal anxieties, particularly those associated with adolescence and young adulthood. Throughout its run, the show developed a substantial contemporary mythology, and addressed a large number of common emotional and cultural themes.

On the basis of a 30-minute presentation sometimes called the unaired Buffy pilot, the WB Network bought the show. The WB advertised the show with a History of the Slayer promotional video clip. Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired on March 10, 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 on May 20 2003. Buffy is credited with playing a key role in the growth of the Warner Bros. television network in its early years. The show maintained relatively low ratings (typically lower than 90th place per week), but attracted a great deal of attention and performed well in key youth demographics.

Format and themes

The series tells the story of Buffy and her friends as they battle demons and other supernatural evils while negotiating their own complicated social and romantic lives. Buffy is told in a dual arc serialized format, with each episode both telling a single story and contributing to a larger overall storyline, which on Buffy is broken down into distinct season-long narratives marked by the rise and defeat of a powerful antagonist (commonly referred to as the "Big Bad"). Individual episodes usually contain one or more villains, monsters, or supernatural phenomena which are defeated, or merely survived, by the episode's end. Though many elements and relationships are explored and many ongoing subplots are included, the show's primary focus throughout is on Buffy and her role as an archetypal hero.

The show is noteworthy in part for its blending of genres, including horror, martial arts, romance, melodrama, farce, screwball comedy, and even (in one memorable episode) musical comedy. Unlike the marginally successful movie, of which Whedon himself is somewhat critical, the TV series achieved popular and critical success, appreciated equally by mainstream TV critics and its target audience of young viewers. Fans of the show attribute its success to clever and unusual writing, a strong sense of ongoing story, and a sense of deeper meaning and metaphor.* Whedon has said "I designed Buffy to be an icon" and "the shows are intentionally designed to create cults"

The show received an Emmy Award nomination for the 2000 episode Hush, which featured an extended sequence with no character dialog. The 2001 episode "The Body" revolved around the death of Buffy's mother, and was filmed in a stark Dogme inspired style and with no musical score, only diegetic music; it 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, but was omitted from Emmy nomination ballots by accident. * All three episodes were written and directed by Joss Whedon, and are frequently cited as fan favorites.

Monsters and dark forces

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, as well as ghosts, gods, zombies, and evil humans, and are frequently called upon to save the world from complete destruction. The mythology of the show is often inspired by classical supernatural tales and other cultural, fictional, and religious sources. The supernatural elements of the show often have a clear metaphorical or symbolic aspect.

Buffy and her friends battle dark forces using a combination of physical combat, magic, and detective-style investigation, guided by the extensive research of ancient and mystical reference books. Hand-to-hand combat is chiefly undertaken by Buffy, Angel and later, Spike. Willow eventually becomes an adept witch, while Giles contributes his extensive knowledge of demonology and supernatural lore.

Setting

The show is set in the fictional California town of Sunnydale (roughly analogous to Santa Barbara), 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, and 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, The O.C. 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.

Metaphorical nature

Many Buffy stories are metaphors for the emotional challenges 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. Vampirism and magic are frequently used as metaphors for sexual intercourse. The tragic love affair between the vampire Angel and Buffy was fraught with metaphorical elements, the most noteworthy of which occurred when their having sex 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

Influences and influence

Inspirations for Buffy

Whedon has often noted the impact of comic books on his work. He is writing for the Astonishing X-Men series and has credited Kitty Pryde, whom he handles in that series, as a significant influence on the character of Buffy and 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 (Executive Producer Marti Noxon stated: "I'm basically trying to write My So-Called Life with vampires" and the "monster of the week" storylines of The X-Files. Whedon has also cited cult film Night of the Comet as a "big influence" on Buffy. [http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/425/425492p6.html

Works influenced by Buffy

Buffy has exerted a marked influence on TV and film, with shows such as Smallville, Roswell, and Ghost Whisperer, as well as movies such as The Faculty and Bring It On owing something in their themes, devices, and verbal style to the show. Other shows reflective of Buffy's influence are, notably Cartoon Network's The Life and Times of Juniper Lee, Sky's Hex and UPN's Veronica Mars *.

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 (Douglas Petrie, Jane Espenson), Wonderfalls (Tim Minear), Point Pleasant (Marti Noxon), Jake 2.0 (David Greenwalt), The Inside (Tim Minear) and Smallville (Steven S. DeKnight)

Moreover, Autumn 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:

* 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.

In addition, Buffy has inspired a new historical novel series titled The Gardella Vampire Chronicles, by Colleen Gleason. The first in the series, about a "chosen" female vampire hunter with echoes of Buffy, is set in Jane Austen's England and will be released in January 2007. Titled The Rest Falls Away, it and its sequel, Rises the Night are being published by Penguin/Putnam.

Legacy

Academic studies

The show is notable for attracting the interest of scholars of popular culture. * The show is being increasingly included in academic settings as a topic of literary study and analysis. It has inspired several books and essays, including Reading the Vampire Slayer, edited by Roz Kaveney, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy, edited by James B. South. There is also an online refereed journal, Slayage, dedicated to critical studies of the show, which has an expansive list of essays and articles from professors, critics, and students. The creators of Slayage coined the now commonly accepted term Buffy Studies.

The overall analysis of Buffy frequently focuses on its relevance to contemporary feminism The show is sometimes used a textual example of third wave feminism, a field which encourages the development of scholarship and courses exploring Girl Power in popular culture. Others have referred to Buffy as post feminist *.

Other topics associated with Buffy are issues of sexuality (particularly lesbianism) and its representation otherness metaphorically represented through supernatural creatures [http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage10/Alderman_&_Seidel-Arpaci.htm" target="_blank" >*.

Spinoffs

Buffy has inspired a wide range of official and unofficial works, including television shows, books, comics and games. A timeline listing when these stories take place in relation to each other can be traced in Buffyverse chronology. The franchise has also inspired a number of action figures and other merchandise.

Angel

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. In addition to Boreanaz, Angel inherited Buffy regulars Charisma Carpenter and Alexis Denisof, followed later by Mercedes McNab and James Marsters. Angel continued to appear occasionally on Buffy and several Buffy characters made guest appearances on Angel. The spin off ran for five seasons on The WB, and was ultimately more successful in the ratings than its parent series.

Expanded Universe, fan films, and adult parody

The Buffyverse canon comprises the TV series Buffy and Angel along with several comics written by members of Mutant Enemy. The Buffyverse novels, Buffy video games and the vast majority of Buffyverse comics, though licensed by 20th Century Fox, are generally considered non-canon, as are Buffyverse fan made productions.

Outside of the TV series, the Buffyverse has been officially expanded and elaborated on by various authors and artists in the so-called "Buffyverse Expanded Universe", despite the fact that 20th Century Fox does consider these derivative works canon. The creators of these works are generally free to tell their own stories set in the Buffyverse, and may or may not keep to established continuity. Similarly writers for the TV series are under no obligation to use continuity which has been established by the Expanded Universe, and may contradict such continuity. The works sometimes flesh out background information on characters. For example Go Ask Malice provides essential information about the character, Faith Lehane.

The Buffyverse comics were first published by Dark Horse who have retained the the right to produce Buffy comics. IDW now hold the license to produce Angel comics. Joss Whedon wrote an eight-issue miniseries for Dark Horse Comics entitled Fray, about a futuristic vampire slayer. Its final issue came out in August 2003. Pocket Books hold the license to produce Buffy novels, but their license to produce Angel novels expired in 2004.

The Buffyverse has also inspired several unofficial fan-made productions. For example, in recent years Buffyverse fan films have been created for distribution on the internet. In 2001 "Fluffy the English Vampire Slayer" was released and became "one of the first widely watched Whedonverse fan films"Wired.com - Fan Films Reclaim the Whedonverse. The computer-animated series Consanguinity following the fictional vampires 'Damien' and 'James', was released from 2004 onwards. Currently Cherub, a parody of Angel is already in its second season. Furthermore the upcoming Forgotten Memories will provide a direct continuation of Buffy (with all roles recast), the story will takes place 23 months after "Chosen".

Several adult parodies of Buffy have also been produced. None were licensed by 20th Century Fox as official Buffy merchandise: The graphic novel Boffy the Vampire Layer, and several pornographic films; Buffy the Vampire Layer, Muffy the Vampire Layer, and Muffy the Vampire Slayer

Others

Buffy has inspired several magazines and companion books, as well as countless websites, online discussion forums, and works of fan fiction. Eden Studios have published a Buffy role-playing game. There have also been two soundtrack albums ( The Album and 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.

Undeveloped spinoffs

Main article: Undeveloped Buffyverse productions

Parodies and references

There have been a number of spoofs of the show, including a Saturday Night Live sketch, which relocated the Slayer to the Seinfeld universe. MADtv featured a "Buffy the Umpire Slayer" sketch, in which Buffy slew umpires in high school baseball games. Other parodies include Muffin the Vampire Baker on the Sluggy Freelance webcomic, Fluffy the English Vampire Slayer an amateur fan film from 2001, and Once More With Hobbits, which rewrites the lyrics of Buffy's musical episode Once More, with Feeling.

The series, which employed pop-culture references as a frequent humorous device, has itself become a frequent pop-culture reference in other works. For example, a Friends episode included a pornographic movie entitled Buffay the Vampire Layer. The TV show Supernatural made reference to Buffy when two amateur ghost hunters ask themselves "What Would Buffy Do?"

Webcomic The Wotch * frequently references Buffy; the main characters are fans of the show and reference it, Angel, and Firefly often.

In 2005, a Trans-Neptunian object was unofficially named "Buffy", after the main character of the series.

In the House of Mouse episode "Gone Goofy", when Donald Duck is watching TV, there is a parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer called "Goofy the Vampire Slayer".

References to the show also appear in video games, including a decorative statue in the MMORPG Anarchy Online called the "Marble Statue of the Goddess Buffy Summers". Buffy was also referenced in the 2004 video game The X-Files: Resist or Serve.* In the game Max Payne a secret room contains a staked corpse with "Buffy" smeared on the wall in blood. There are also several unofficial MUDs and MUSHes based on the series.

Sarah Michelle Gellar lent her voice to an episode of Robot Chicken, co-created by Seth Green (who played Oz on "Buffy"), for a parody version of what the 8th season of "Buffy" might have been like.

Buffy has also been the topic of filk songs, such as Angel's Lament by the Brobdingnagian Bards.

Characters

Main characters

Buffy is "The Slayer", one in a long line of young girls chosen by fate to battle evil forces. 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. Giles (rarely referred to by his first name) is a Watcher, a member of an academic council whose job has been to train the Slayers. Giles researches the supernatural creatures that Buffy must face, offering insights into their origins and advice on how to kill them. Willow was originally a nerdy girl who contrasted Buffy's beautiful cheerleader personality but also reflected the social isolation Buffy suffered as a Slayer. As the seasons progressed, Willow became a more aggressive, active, and even sensual character, becoming a powerful Wiccan and a lesbian. Possessing no special skills, Xander often functioned as comic relief, but also provided a grounded, "everyman" perspective in the supernatural Buffyverse. In another departure from the usual conventions of television, Xander was notable for being an insecure and subordinate male in a world dominated by powerful females.

Buffy and Willow are the only characters to appear in every episode of all seven seasons. Xander appeared in all except Season 7, Episode 7 (Conversations with Dead People).

Supporting characters

Spike is a vampire character whose role varies dramatically through the course of the series, ranging from major villain to comic relief to romantic interest to self-sacrificing hero. The character was a critical and fan favorite, and became a popular icon of the series in its later years, appearing frequently on magazine covers and promotional materials. The character's style and attitude are modeled after British punk, especially Billy Idol. Spike went on to appear as a series regular on the spin-off Angel. Anya is a former vengeance demon (Anyanka) who specialized in aiding scorned women. After being forcibly stripped of her demonic powers, the character is forced to re-learn how to be an ordinary human, a journey which is portrayed as both comical and poignant. Her story is largely focused on her romantic relationship with Xander and, like many characters on the show, she is portrayed as morally ambivalent. Tara is introduced first as a fellow member of a Wicca group during Willow's first year of college, their friendship eventually turning into an ongoing love affair. Her character and her relationship to Willow attracted significant attention as one of few featured same-sex relationships on television. Dawn was introduced in Season 5 as Buffy's fourteen-year-old younger sister, sent to Buffy in human form as a disguise for a dangerous magical artifact. Although Dawn's genesis was magical, she functioned as a complete and normal human girl, which significantly changed the character dynamics for the remainder of the series. Dawn allowed the narrative to stay connected to its teen-aged roots as the other characters grew older, e.g. allowing the return in season 7 to the primary setting of Sunnydale High School. The vampire Angel was Buffy's love interest and the central relationship in the show in seasons 1 and 2. Once an especially vicious and destructive vampire, Angel suffered under a gypsy curse which restored his human soul, leaving him plauged with guilt and sorrow for his misdeeds. Angel's status as Buffy's first love and potential soul-mate, doomed to be tragic and unfulfilled, is an example of Joss Whedon's use of supernatural-as-metaphor in the series. Cordelia was the archetypal popular, shallow, mean-spirited cheerleader, included in part as a contrast to Buffy's former-cheerleader character. She is tactless, but her directness is also funny and, at times, a necessary corrective. After season 3 she left Buffy and appeared as a founding regular on the spin-off Angel Oz was introduced as Willow's first boyfriend, and later became a werewolf and an active member of Buffy's inner circle. Portrayed as taciturn and unflappable, the contrast between his outward coolness and his violent animal episodes was an example of the show's efforts to subvert usual character expectations. As an unusual side-note, the actor Seth Green went on to co-design and supervise the creation of the acclaimed line of Buffy the Vampire Slayer action figures. Buffy's mother is an anchor of normality in the Scoobies' lives, even after she learns of Buffy's role in the supernatural world ("Becoming, Part Two"). In "Lover's Walk", she lends a sympathetic ear to Spike's heartbreak, a gesture that he will never forget. In season 5, she dies of an aneurysm after a tumor is removed from her brain ("The Body"). In the first episode of season 4 The Freshman Buffy jokes "Can't wait till mom gets the bill for these books, I hope it's a funny aneurysm." The character of Joyce reappears in later seasons, but without the character truly returning from the dead. Faith is the slayer who was brought forth when Kendra was killed by the vampire Drusilla. To begin with, she fought on the side of good with Buffy and the rest of the Scooby gang, but she was soon drawn to the dark side and joined forces with The Mayor. Faith was put in to a coma by Buffy; eight months later she woke and swapped bodies with Buffy. After being defeated she fled to Los Angeles and went to prison. Three years later she broke out of prison, aided by Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, to help fight evil once again (the Beast and the First Evil). Riley is Buffy's first serious boyfriend after Angel. He is an operative in a military organisation called "The Initiative" that uses science and military technology to hunt down HST's or "hostile sub-terrestrials" (demons). Riley is Angel's opposite, an Iowa-born-and-raised man whose strength lies in his Captain America-style military secret identity. Buffy's superior physical strength was the cause of some insecurity, which, along with Buffy's seeming inability to let him in, eventually caused him to leave in the middle of Season 5.

Recurring Characters

= Villains
=

= Allies
=

= Others
=

Series information

Episodes

DVD releases

DVD Release Date
US UK Australia
The Complete First Season 15 Jan 2002 27 Nov 2000 20 Nov 2000
The Complete Second Season 11 Jun 2002 21 May 2001 15 Jun 2001
The Complete Third Season 7 Jan 2003 29 Oct 2001 22 Nov 2001
The Complete Fourth Season 10 Jun 2003 13 May 2002 20 May 2002
The Complete Fifth Season 9 Dec 2003 28 Oct 2002 29 Nov 2002
The Complete Sixth Season 25 May 2004 12 May 2003 20 April 2003
The Complete Seventh Season 16 Nov 2004 5 April 2004 15 May 2004
The Chosen Collection (Seasons 1–7) 15 Nov 2005 --
The Complete DVD Collection (Seasons 1–7) -- 31 Oct 2005 23 Nov 2005

Awards and nominations

References

Articles

Books

Popular
  • The Book of Fours, Nancy Holder (ISBN 0743412400)
  • Chosen, (season seven novelization) Nancy Holder (ISBN 0689866259)
  • Cursed, Mel Odom (ISBN 068986437x)
  • Doomsday Deck, Diana G. Gallagher, (ISBN 0743400410)
  • Halloween Rain, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder (ISBN 0671017136)
  • Heat, Nancy Holder (ISBN 068986017x)
  • Immortal, Christopher Golden and Nancy Holder (ISBN 0671041754)
  • Monster Island, Christopher Golden and Thomas E. Sniegoski (ISBN 0689856652)
  • Mortal Fear, Scott and Denise Ciencin, (ISBN 0743427718)
  • Night of the Living Rerun, Arthur Byron Cover, (ISBN 0671017152)
  • Night Terrors, Alice Henderson, (ISBN 1416909273)
  • Oz Into The Wind, Christopher Golden (ISBN 0743400380)
  • Pretty Maids All in a Row, Christopher Golden (ISBN 0743418921)
  • Queen of the Slayers, Nancy Holder (ISBN 1416902414)
  • The Quotable Slayer, Steven Brezenoff and Micol Ostow (compilers) (ISBN 0743410173)
  • Return to Chaos, Craig Shaw Gardner (ISBN 0671021362)
  • Seven Crows, John Vornholt (ISBN 0689860145)
  • Slayer Slang: A Buffy The Vampire Slayer Lexicon, Michael Adams (ISBN 0195160339)
  • Spark and Burn, Diana G. Gallagher (ISBN 141690056x)
  • Visitors, Laura Anne Gilman and Josepha Sherman, (ISBN 0671026283)
  • What Would Buffy Do: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide, Jana Riess (ISBN 0787969222)
  • Why Buffy Matters, Rhonda Wilcox (ISBN 1845110293)

Academic
  • 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)
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Anne Billson, University of California Press 2005 (ISBN 1844570894) (Cultural Studies)

Footnotes

External links

1990s TV shows in the United States | 2000s TV shows in the United States | Teen dramas | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Horror television series | Television programs based on films | Television shows set in California | UPN network shows | WB network shows

بافي قاتلة مصاصي الدماء | Buffy, the Vampire Slayer (serija) | Buffy, přemožitelka upírů | Buffy – Im Bann der Dämonen | Buffy la cazavampiros | Buffy contre les vampires | Buffy l'ammazzavampiri (serie televisiva) | באפי ציידת הערפדים | Buffy the Vampire Slayer (serie) | Buffy, vampyrenes skrekk | Buffy postrach wampirów | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Buffy, vampyyrintappaja | Buffy och vampyrerna | มือใหม่ปราบผี

 

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