Movies - Sunnydale Syndrome

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Sunnydale Syndrome

	Movies - Sunnydale Syndrome

Sunnydale Syndrome is a phrase among fiction fandom that's used to describe the semi-common tendency of mundane characters to fail to notice or reject the unusual activities taking place under their noses, even when blindingly obvious.

The name derives from the fictional town of Sunnydale, California, where Buffy the Vampire Slayer
takes place. The town was intentionally designed to parody the phenomenon, and its general population is cheerfully oblivious to the ongoing conflict between the forces of good and evil. (There are a few cases where some residents of the town hint that they know that something, at least, is going on, as in one season premiere a football player gushes, "With just a little more training and a few less unexplained deaths, we could go all the way!"). In season 2, the character Oz, upon learning of the vampire's existence states "Actually, this explains a lot"

Sometimes the Syndrome is simply an accepted convention that has no explanation in the storyworld. Other times, it may be actually be a story element, as in the 1988-1990 television series War of the Worlds, where a recurring question for the main characters was why only a tiny fraction of those who lived through the alien invasion that occurred in 1953 actually remembered it at all. (While the first season played with a "selective-amnesia" theory, no solid explanation was given, however, as it was one of many plot threads dropped between the first and second seasons of the series.) In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, a similar phenomenon is the canonical explanation for most people never noticing the presence of supernatural entities, like Death: people just "won't allow themselves to see it."

Though this mainly manifests in western entertainment, anime and manga have a similar cliché, usually restricted to one character or a small group. A good example is Kasumi Tendo of Ranma ½, a pragmatic and upbeat woman who consistently sees life-or-death battles as 'Ranma playing with his friends' and the Kuno family of the same title, especially Tatewaki Kuno who refuses to believe the male and female versions of Ranma are the same - even after Ranma has transformed whilst Kuno was hugging his female self.

A clear parody of the phenomenon appears in The Simpsons where Mr. Burns, despite repeated close interaction with his employee Homer Simpson, never recalls Homer in subsequent episodes.

:Mr. Burns: Who's that man? :Smithers: Homer Simpson, sir. :Mr. Burns: Simpson, eh? New man? :Smithers: Actually sir, he thwarted your campaign for governor, you ran over his son, he saved the plant from meltdown, his wife painted you in the nude... :Mr. Burns: Ehh...doesn't ring a bell.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Sunnydale Syndrome ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Sunnydale Syndrome; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay