I have never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer before this class, although I have dabbled in True Blood, Twilight, The Vampire Diaries, etc. However, after our first meeting and my first exposure to the series, I found myself in my dorm room searching the Internet for Season 1 of the show. I have always loved mystery books and spooky castles, which are hallmarks of many gothic novels, yet I have just recently become fascinated with the supernatural. Our discussion this afternoon really resonated with me when the idea of “suspension of disbelief” was brought up. I very strongly agree that you must “let go” of the reality that we know and love in order to simply lose yourself in the fantastic realms that Buffy and many other gothic novels, movies, and shows present us with. I would hypothetically like to believe in the idea that ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and other ghoulish creatures could potentially be roaming around campus right now, except in our reality, that just sounds crazy. However, in modern day takes on gothic themes and monsters, men and women are fighting and interacting with these very same creatures in typical, everyday settings that we ourselves could be found in. I think Buffy is a great outlet in which to let go of reality and imagine living an unnatural life that seems almost completely normal.
I agree that sometimes it's nicer, and let's face it, easier to imagine our biggest problems to be demons of the night. A well-aimed stake, and poof, there it goes, never to darken my door again. However, I do think that the hardest problems turn out to be the purely human ones - where to go to college, how to ask for a raise, how to tell your loved one the bad news. I never thought much on it before, but the Buffy series really does thoroughly explore these difficulties, drawing both parallels and juxtaposition between the real-life issues and the demon issues. Sometimes, it even happens that one is a solution to the other, and the other gives answers to the one. In our relatively boring reality, I think the equivalent to this is when people do things like Adirondack Adventure or climb Mount Everest. The physical challenges show you something about yourself that helps to sort out another problem in your daily life.
ReplyDeleteSydney, I agree. I have also never seen Buffy but I have dabbled in some of the other contemporary Vampire shows and books. With regard to your post, I like that you connected the total suspense of reality with the other Gothic shows and books. They produce a world, similar to Buffy, where anyone and anything could be extra-worldly. I think it is this reason why we are so enthralled by these shows. The thought that we could have secret identities or that our roommates could be demons from another dimension makes our own lives seem more interesting. After reading Twilight, I wanted nothing more than to be a Vampire and have the power to fly and be beautiful. The moral of the story is, the deeper Buffy and other Gothics go into the world of the surreal, the more we can believe in them.
ReplyDelete