How does Buffy deconstruct traditional literary notions of good and evil?
According to Braun (2000), Buffy the Vampire Slayer contains characters that are often moral ambiguious, which results in a blurred line between good and evil. A good example of this is the character of Angel, who is a vampire and also Buffy’s love interest. When we first meet Angel he is a mysterious figure who eventually reveals himself to be a good guy, often saving Buffy when she is in trouble. However, after a sexual encounter with Buffy, he turns evil again and kills one of Buffy’s friends (Braun, 2000). Though later in the series, he does turn good again. It is this fluctuation between good and evil which is common in the show. Other examples are Oz, Anya and Spike. Oz is a sensitive, slightly geeky teenager who is also a werewolf, Anya was once a vengence demon but is now turned human, and Spike is a sort of anti-hero, a vampire who is initially bad but over the course of the series, becomes a regular in the “scooby gang.”
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a complex program which explores the theme of morality in a different light than a lot of other TV shows. Just like in reality, nothing is necessarily black or white, and few people are wholly good or bad, and I believe they try to capture this human complexity in Buffy.
How do you think Buffy has influenced the contemporary vampire drama “True Blood” and the “Twilight” series of novels and films?
As any with movies, tvs and books of any genre, they take ideas from, or build upon what has already been done in the past. We could say that what we know about vampires comes from“pioneer” vampire films/books such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Interview with a Vampire, and others that have been popular in the past. So when we look at True Blood and Twilight, which are quite new, it wil always have parallels to it’s predecessors, because we are just building upon we already know. Looking at True Blood, it is similar to Buffy in that there are a range of demons and magicals creatures apart from just vampires. In Twilight, it also features werewolves, is set in a high school like Buffy, and deals with the problems in dating a vampire. Only Twilight does it about a thousand times worse. I don’t think there are specific things that Buffy influenced in these two series, it is more general things to do with the vampire genre.
References
Braun, B. (2000) The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The ambiguity of evil in supernatural representations. Retrieved 18 October, 2005 from: http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0
412/is_2_28/ai_64688900
Good initial responses Stacey. There were some useful extracts from the PP that could have useful for your first response. Also was there anything in the two featured episodes of Buffy 'The I in Team' and 'Goodbye Iowa' that could have added to your discussion? Check out the following link - as it provides a good discussion on this area:
ReplyDeletehttp://thetorchonline.com/2010/06/22/buffy-the-vampire-innovator-how-so-many-stories-owe-everything-to-joss-whedon/
I have a same opinion with you about the deconstruction of notions of good and evil. In Buffy The Vampire Slayer stories, they want to describe the human’s complex moral by the themes and narratives through setting ambiguous character and its movement of behaviour. Also your clear view of the second question was quite interesting to me :)
ReplyDeleteAnd of course the fact that the series lasted for such a long time meant that characters were developed to a depth which enabled explorations of both their good and bad sides.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article you posted, it does seem like Buffy was pretty influential. It definitely came before the wave of vampire movies/books/films that has swept over us as of late. But as I said above, things that were done earlier on in any genre will always (consciously or unconsciously) provide inspiration for things produced later on in the same genre.
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