Movies - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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	Movies - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a U.S. television series loosely based on the 1992 movie of the same name. The original concept, screenplay, and TV series were created by writer/director Joss Whedon. It was the first product of Whedon's company, Mutant Enemy Productions. The show's title is often abbreviated simply to Buffy or BtVS.

The series follows the day-to-day life of 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 departure from the traditional horror film formula. Typical horror movies include young blonde girls as helpless, hysterical victims. 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.

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 the unaired Buffy pilot, the WB Network bought the show. The WB advertised the show with a History of the Slayer promotional 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.

Themes

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 movie, which, for the most part, was poorly received and practically disowned by Whedon, the TV series achieved great popular and critical success, appreciated equally by middle-aged TV critics and its primarily teen/twenty-something audience. Fans of the show attribute its success to smartly written, continuity-aware scripts and its creator's vision. The show and characters inspire an unusually strong emotional connection with fans.

Buffy has also been noted for taking risks with both its format and content. The 1999 episode "Hush" included 26 minutes without any spoken dialog, and received an Emmy Award nomination for best teleplay. The 2001 episode "The Body", which revolved around the death of Buffy's mother, Joyce Summers, and which, apart from the theme song, used only diegetic music, was included in over 100 major critics' Ten Best lists that year. The fall 2001 musical episode "Once More, with Feeling", which was accidentally left off the Emmy ballots, also received many plaudits. All three episodes were written and directed by Joss Whedon, and are frequently cited as fan favorites.

Monsters

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, shape-shifters, ghosts, gods, zombies, witches, and each other. They are called upon to save the world from annihilation so often that they find themselves, as the character Riley Finn puts it, "needing to know the plural of apocalypse". The mythology of the show is often inspired by classical supernatural tales and other cultural, fictional, and religious sources. In its seven-year run, the series also developed an extensive contemporary mythology of its own. The supernatural elements of the show almost always have a clear metaphorical or symbolic aspect (see Metaphorical nature and moral connotations for more on this).

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Movies - Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Origins

Themes

Monsters

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