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DEATH AND
THE MAIDEN
Buffy the
vampire slayer is back from the dead for a new series - to the relief of
millions of teenage fans
"Buffy Anne Summers
(1981-2001): Beloved sister, devoted friend. She saved the
world. A lot." This pithy epitaph, carved into sun-dappled
granite in a West Coast cemetery, has a definite ring to it. It may
not have the resonance of Percy Bysshe Shelley's inscription for Ozymandias:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and
despair!" But, for millions, Buffy the vampire slayer, of the
eponymous television show, means far more than Ozymandias and - dare one say
it? - more than Shelley.
Yet I rather think that
Shelley would have liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was an
avowed atheist who liked ghost stories and his second wife, Mary, wrote Frankenstein.
With such tastes, he would surely have been amused by the notion of a
television series based on an all-American cheerleader type - blonde hair,
perfect teeth - who pursues a parallel life as a slayer of vampires and
world saviour. And who lives in a town called Sunnydale, in southern
California, which is located at The Hellmouth, gateway to an evil dimension.
Surely Shelley would be
intrigued by the story's rather bizarre beliefs, as propounded by Buffy's
mentor, librarian Rupert Giles, portrayed by Anthony Head, the man from the
Nescafé commercials.
"This world is older
than any of you know and, contrary to popular mythology, it did not begin as
a paradise," intones the stereotypically tweedy, overly English
Giles. "For untold aeons, demons walked the Earth, made it their
home, their hell. In time, they lost their purchase on this reality
and the way was made for mortal animals. For man.
"The books tell that
the last demon to leave this reality fed off a human and mixed their
blood. The human became possessed, infected, by the demon's
soul. He bit another and another...and so they walk the Earth,
feeding. Killing some, mixing their blood with others to make more of
their kind. Waiting for the animals to die out and the Old Ones to
return."
But what would have most
endeared Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Shelley is that the series also
explores adolescent angst. He would have identified with Buffy -
played by Sarah Michelle Gellar - as an outsider. At Eton he was known
as "Mad Shelley", and he was sent down from Oxford university for
writing a text entitled The Necessity of Atheism. Buffy, too,
has a problem with authority: after all, killing vampires and saving the
world does tend to get in the way of your studies.
But vampire slaying aside,
there is a certain universality about Buffy the Vampire Slayer that
accounts, at least partially, for its appeal. In making its heroine a
normal(ish) young woman from a broken home, undergoing typical teenage
traumas, it speaks to an entire generation.
That she happens to have
been saddled with the unhappy task of saving the world from supernatural
evil is almost incidental. She has a healthy cynicism about her role,
as the following exchange with her mentor shows.
Giles: "Into each
generation, a slayer is born. One girl, in all the world, a chosen
one. One born with the -"
Buffy: "- the strength
and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of evil, blah,
blah. I've heard it, OK?"
Buffy is aspirational,
eloquent and conventionally pretty. Yet she is vulnerable enough to be
someone with whom the audience can empathise. She still carries the
emotional scars of her doomed long-term affair with the vampire Angel.
An icon for the
post-feminist age, she is someone who would like to carry her stakes in a
Prada handbag. She voices genuine concern about a broken nail before
going on to avert the apocalypse using nothing more than a few wisecracks,
the odd incantation, a spot of kick boxing and a stake or two.
Teenagers waited with
baited breath as Buffy plunged to her death, courtesy of arch enemy Glory,
at the end of the last series. But fear not: Sunnydale's saviour will
rise again, exquisitely coiffed and manicured, none the worse for a return
trip to hell.
The show is blessed with
brilliant scriptwriting and has touches of the scintillating humour of
sitcoms such as Frasier and Friends. It reaches inside
the anguished soul of every American teenager and plucks out some rare
moments of wit.
The heightened yet
naturalistic dialogue gives the show an edge. It's littered with
throwaway lines of sheer brilliance: "If the apocalypse comes, beep
me." When talking about her wooden stake, Buffy passes it off as
a fashion accessory: "But everyone has them in Los Angeles.
Pepper spray is so passé."
And then there is the
constant, knowing, self-reverential dialogue that taps into the huge library
of popular culture locked away inside the heads of the show's
audience. Buffy's sidekicks are referred to as "the Scooby
gang." Spike, a morally ambivalent ghoul, churns out such quips
as: "If every vampire who said he was at the Crucifixion was actually
there, it would have been like Woodstock." Buffy describes the
antics of one satanic student: "No, no, I'm not saying she craned her
neck. We are talking full-on Exorcist twist."
From vintage Hanna-Barbera
cartoon via Sixties rock concert to seminal Seventies demonic-possession
flick, the pop-culture quotient is convincingly high.
Added to the pop-cultural
allusions is the show's psychological subtext. It has been mooted that
the show's demons are metaphors for the anxieties that assault teenagers
every day. With all those hormones bouncing about, life is bound to
seem more vivid. And amateur analysts everywhere must have been
reaching all sorts of conclusions in the episode in which Buffy's best
friend Willow finds out that her boyfriend is a werewolf.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
follows in the strong tradition of the paranormal-meets-everyday-America
that was first portrayed in now-classic shows such as Bewitched,
which ran from 1964 to 1971, I Dream of Jeannie (1965-1970) and The
Addams Family. But it is the skillful portrayal of the
"reality" of Buffy's Sunnydale - into which wander
werewolves, zombies, demons, ghosts, sorcerers and, of course, vampires -
that makes for rather compelling television.
This show tells us more
about contemporary American mores than any highbrow programme. And it
also entertains. Rest in peace, Slayer - until the new series, that
is.
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