Buff-y and Blue

As a person who is obviously less familiar than many of my classmates with the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, I wanted my first blog post to be an attempt to grapple with the reasons for the “cult following” that the show has amassed. What initially struck me as very odd about the incredible devotion of many of my classmates to Buffy is that the show is not contemporary to our childhood. The show predates us, in a sense. I remember being a little girl and catching snippets of Buffy from the television in my parent’s room. My mom has always loved “vampire-esque” fiction, but I never really understood the fascination. Even though I have not historically read Gothic novels or been drawn to shows about vampires and werewolves, many of the books that we are reading in the course have always been on my “literary bucket-list,” so I decided that I would sign up, despite the concentration on a series with which I had little interest. I have now seen two episodes of Buffy in their entirety and I have to say that I still wouldn’t call the series my “thing,” but I can understand why it was (and still is, apparently) a very popular series. Interestingly, if one were to study the demographic of the “Buffy-obsessed” in our class, it appears as if the majority are young women. There is obviously something very appealing in the idea of a young, effervescent, and attractive blonde, who defies all stereotypes in being the “chosen slayer” of evil. Whedon’s portrayal of Buffy may also be called “feminist” because she is able to retain her femininity, while at the same time, being the ultimate power to conquer monsters of all kinds. In the episode we watched in class today “Living Conditions,” there were many elements to which a younger crowd of women (and men) could relate. I found myself laughing out loud about the hellish roommate, Kathy, who actually turns out to be a demon. As college students, I feel as if most of us can empathize with the perception of our roommate as an “actual soul-sucking demon from another dimension” when he drinks our milk, “borrows” clothing that is perhaps not her size, or refuses to turn off the lights when it is evident we are attempting to get precious sleep before a final. However, despite the silliness of the show, I think that it is important to address what many of my classmates were discussing regarding the constant blurring of lines and the lack of adherence to a strict binary that appear throughout the series. In life, there are gray areas. As humans, we are quick to put a label on something. In fact, this is how we often operate. If someone is pretty, we assume they’re not smart. If someone is studious, we assume they aren’t funny and so on and so forth. By creating a show in which the protagonist defies stereotypes, Whedon is perhaps pushing his viewers to readjust their initial instinct to label something as strictly “black” and another as strictly “white.” In that way, despite how ludicrous the show does appear at times, there is a certain profundity in it. Perhaps this is why so many of my classmates and even my mother, were (and are) so drawn to this show. There are certain formulaic and predictable Gothic conventions to which the show adheres (which is appealing to viewers, or it would not be done time and time again), but at the same time, pushes people to expand their perceptions and challenge the Gothic genre as a static entity.