'Welcome to the Hellmouth' and 'The Harvest'
Genre: Fantasy, Action
A young woman destined to be 'The Slayer' fights against supernatural forces whilst attempting to live a normal teenage life in the town of Sunnydale.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a fantasy drama created by Joss Whedon, which run from 1997-2003. There was a total of 145 episodes over 7 seasons.
Analysis:
Due to the growth of the internet during this show's run, its large fandom created a lot of "user generated content" online, such as fan fiction and fan art. Most of this fan fiction is speculative, including stories written by fans about what could have happened in the fictional town of Sunnydale if Buffy had not arrived during these first two episodes.
However, some fans also have blogs for fan fiction so they can create their own world based on the world of the TV show and expand on smaller details in episode's story arcs. An example of this is The Sunnydale Press, a newspaper style blog which details strange goings on in the town, almost like the newspapers Willow was looking in during the episode 'The Harvest' to find information about an earthquake.
Fan art is also able to expand on the show's fictional world by letting fans create new situations to place the characters in even though the images are still.
This expanded world also helps to connect the fans, a connection which is strengthened by the fandom name of "Buffistas", as they all belong to a collective group who share the same interest.
The show's creator, Joss Whedon, approves of this fan world and doesn't mind what the fans choose to do to his characters. He has even stated: "I love it. I absolutely love it. I wish I had grown up in the era of fanfiction, because I was living those shows and those movies that I loved and I would put on the score to Superman and just relive the movie over and over." (Kaveney, 2010).
I think this is important because the creator's approval gives fans more creative freedom and could even mean they might end up having an effect on the show since the creator is aware of, and sometimes even reads or comments on their fan generated content. This turns the fans into something more than just the audience, but maybe even co-producers, as they work with the creator's original work and interpret it in their own way.
Merchandise is also important to fans because, as argued by Matt Hills, "owning fan memorabilia and merchandise might be ways of injecting the positive feelings and memories associated with the fan object into one's daily life... as might fan boards and other sites for fan interactions" (Gray and Lotz, 2012:83).
These items can help show who is a fan of the show, helping fans make friends and create not only a community but also a culture. T-shirts featuring the show's fictional school logo also create the illusion of Sunnydale being a real place, providing a connection to Buffy and her friends who attend there in the show. The Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe even has the name of the 'Buffyverse' which connects this show to its successor series Angel, creating an even wider community of fans and fan culture.
This is a similar type of fandom evident with shows and films today, such as other fantasies, Harry Potter and Once Upon A Time, but it is also present in the musical genre with Glee and cult-TV shows like Lost.
Review:
What made me most curious about Buffy The Vampire Slayer was that it has such a large fanbase and the creator, Joss Whedon is so well-known, having directed an episode of Glee I had seen, and also being in the news recently after helping direct Justice League. Therefore, it was interesting to see how he wrote a screenplay as I had mainly associated him as a director, usually of big action sequences and dance numbers. This show was filled with as much action as I expected but what I thought was the most clever is that Whedon managed to set up the show's vast mythology quickly, without making it boring or confusing, which is probably why the show has gained so many fans over the years. I found that Buffy as a main character was relatable, being a teenage girl trying to figure out where she fits in. She reminded me of a more fashionable, but less troubled Veronica Mars so what I would like to see from Whedon's writing is how he gives Buffy more internal conflict, not just the external conflicts of her mother, the popular girls at school, and the supernatural forces she must fight. Therefore, I would like to see more episodes of this show to find out how and if he will do this, but also to see Buffy uncover more of the supernatural secrets that lie under her new home town of Sunnydale.
References:
Kaveney, R. (2010) 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer without Joss Whedon? That's been going on for years.' In: The Guardian [online] At: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/nov/24/buffy-vampire-slayer-joss-whedon-movie-fanfiction (Accessed on 1 December 2017)
Gray, J., Lotz, A. D. (2012) Television Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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