Narrative- Buffy the Vampire Slayer Response

Title: Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Season 1 Episode 1: Welcome to the Hellmouth

Season 1 Episode 2: The Harvest

Year: 1997

Country: USA

Filmmaker: Joss Whedon

Buffy Summers is a teenage girl who has just moved to Sunnydale California and is starting her first day at Sunnydale high. She is white, blond, and attractive. She dresses properly and looks like she would be your typical goody two shoes, but within the first ten minutes we find out that she has a “colorful record”. She was kicked out of her last school for burning down the gym. We find out later that she didn’t do it because she’s a pyrophiliac, but burned down the gym because it was full of vampires. Buffy is not the normal good girl she looks like, she is not the bad girl her reputation would leave you to believe either, but is in fact a hero. In every generation there is a chosen one; Buffy is the latest in a line of young women known as “Vampire Slayers”. Slayers are called to battle against vampires, demons and other dark forces. Buffy appears totally normal, but is actually considered “other” within her cultural context because she has this huge responsibility that no one else is even aware of.

She plays into some of the stereotypes of a pretty middle-class teenage girl. She is ultra feminine. She used to be popular and on the cheerleading squad. She likes clothes, makeup and boys. She challenges our pre-conceived notions by simultaneously having this immense strength and lack of fear, but she complicates that by not taking on the responsibilities she’s been given. She changes her mind later on, but when the show first starts out Buffy had given up her Slayer responsibilities in order to have a normal life. She is stereotypically girly, she is unstereotypically powerful, but she is settling back into what is expected of her by not taking the opportunity to fight evil. Then again, she eventually takes up her position again and becomes the feminist hero we know and love.

Buffy’s mom is completely obvlivious to Buffy’s slayer status. She tells Buffy that she is “a good girl who just fell in with the wrong crowd”. This is how Buffy’s mom rationalizes her good girl daughter’s bad girl behavior. Buffy is actually just a girl who knows how to defend herself and others against the things that everyone else is too ignorant to recognize, but how could anyone know that?

She is tough, but tough in a positive way that is rarely represented in our society. We see Buffy being stalked down an alley by what appears to be just some guy (who we find out later is a vampire with a soul, buts that’s a whole other story). He is supposed to appear to us as a potential rapist. Rather than running or screaming like any normal girl would do, Buffy uses her Slayer skills to hide until he comes along and she swoops down from above, pins him down, and interrogates him. He tells her not to worry because he “doesn’t bite”. She lets him up, but doesn’t drop her fighting stance. He tells her that he expected her to be taller or have bigger muscles. If a girl can defend herself it’s expected that she must be pretty masculine, but Buffy maintains femininity.  He offers her his help in fighting off the vampires. Normally we would expect the small girl to jump at the chance to be helped by the big guy, but she tells him that she doesn’t want it. She considers herself retired, but even if she were still working she would never ask for help. She sees being a Slayer as a stand-alone job. She eventually develops the “Scooby gang” (her group of friends that help her out whenever she needs them), but she always says that at the end of the day she stands alone. Buffy is an independent girl, which is considered unusual for most girls.

We later see Buffy at a club when she runs into her watcher. He tells her that she should be able to sense if there is a vampire in the room and asks her to give it a try. Rather than using her Slayer powers to feel where in the crowd below the vampire is she finds one because his clothes look dated. Girls are known for deciphering things about people by how they dress and Buffy is here falling into that exact same stereotype. When she sees Willow leaving with the vampire she just pegged Buffy doesn’t call for someone else to help, but goes out to fight the vampire on her own. She makes the jump again from what we expect to the unexpected.

She then confidently walks into a crypt with two vampires to save the day. She rants to one of the vampires that she wishes they had gone to some other town rather than coming to hers. This is pretty selfish of her. Had they been somewhere else they would have been killing other people. Because they came to Sunnydale she could at least protect the people around her and kill them. In the midst of her confident rant she is taken by surprise by some large male vampire. We end the episode with Buffy being pinned down by him, but pick up the next episode where we left off to see her just barely escape him. She finds the others being attacked by vampires throughout the graveyard and is able to fight them off and save her friends. It’s a constant back and forth from what we expect to the unexpected.

Buffy realizes where the vampires must be hiding and says that she is going to go save Jesse. Xander says that he wants to go with her and Buffy says that he can’t. Xander says that Buffy is basically telling him that he isn’t man enough, pointing out once again that what Buffy does is considered very manly. She says that it’s just because its too dangerous but he just brushes her off. Still, it’s nice to see the girl going to save a guy and turning down help from another guy. Though later we see that Xander comes anyways and ends up actually saving her.

Buffy goes to the vampire’s hideout in the sewers, but runs into Angel (the mysterious man from the last episode). He warns her not to go down. She ignores his advice and stubbornly goes anyways.

Later, we see Buffy back at home talking to her mom. She says that she got a call from the principal telling her that Buffy missed a few classes and points out that she didn’t hear Buffy come home last night. Buffy’s mom expects her to be the perfect little girl she looks like and when she isn’t she says that “it’s happening again” (referring to last years events). She says that Buffy can’t go out. Buffy insists that she has to but Buffy’s mom tells her that “everything feels life or death when your 16” and that it isn’t actually that important that she goes out. Buffy’s mom can’t see how her regular 16-year-old daughter could possibly have anything important to do. Of course Buffy goes anyways.

She goes to the Bronze where the vampires have all gathered and taken the kids hostage with no fear or hesitation. She takes on the main large vampire who had almost gotten her in the last episode. She defeats him and saves the day. Rather than everyone thanking her for saving them, they pretend nothing happened. The next morning, Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles meet up to talk and Buffy wears a girly dress with cherries on it while sucking a lollipop, returning to her inner valley girl self.