into the new thing

Heroes
Icon Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Occupation troubled teen, stake holder, lust object
UK GQ, September 2001, pp94-99

The appeal of America's tastiest toughest teen icon goes way beyond good
and evil. By John Naughton

There are a handful of US TV shows that are so good it hurts. So good,
you are left licence-huggingly grateful for the brilliance of their
script, acting, direction and televisual savoir-faire. So good you know
only poet and professional picker of nits Tom Paulin could consider them
bad.

Guarding this Hall of Acclaim are those twin extremes of American family
values, The Sopranos and The Simpsons, demanding that any show aspiring to
their greatness matches their (apparently) effortless wit and invention.
Frasier, of course, passes the test, blustering its way into the elite
with a succinct bon mot from the good doctor and a Mojave-dry wisecrack
from Marty. ER barrels through on my count of three. Friends finds it's
still on the guest list. Just. And Seinfeld? Well, Scylla gratefully
takes his coat while Charybdis attends to the valet parking.

And then there's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Should she wish, Buffy could
gain entry by force. Anyone who saw how she dealt with the Mayor at the
conclusion of series three will have little doubt about her ability to
effortlessly despatch a pair of multi-headed sea-serpent types. But that
won't be necessary. Because Buffy earns its place above the salt at the
high table of US TV on merit alone. Working within the restrictions of
formula teen fodder television, the show has consistently delivered an
unformulaic, witty, action-led allegory about the demons of adolescence,
that feeds the head and the heart - while never forgetting to kick the
ass.

As Sarah Michelle Gellar subdues Sunnydale's demonic population, armed
only with a wooden stake and a Wonderbra, Buffy pulls off that neat trick
of appealing equally to the hormonally rocketing adolescent girl, the
constantly priapic teenage male and, of course, us. Girls see
empowerment, boys embonpoint. In a word, Buffy incontrovertibly rocks,
like the slab of pop-metal thrash which announces each new diamond-hard
episode.

Ten things which illustrate Buffy's bona fide ability to rock:
1. The Doppelganger episode when Willow turns bad.
2. The fact that Cordelia Chase is played by an actress who possesses the
unfeasibly great name, Charisma Carpenter.
3. That the aforementioned Ms Carpenter has the body to match and so is
almost certainly not related to Harry.
4. She was also a champion cheerleader at high school, but let's move on.
5. The way Spike says "bollocks, mate" in an Anglo-US accent of no fixed
continent.
6. Principal Snyder and his world view of teenagers as "locusts mindlessly
bent on feeding and mating".
7. Xander's unfailing supply of zinging one-liners and pioneering use of
Keyser Soze as a verb.
8. The cat fight between Buffy and Faith in "Graduation Day Part 1" and
the preposterously enormous knife with which the former wastes the latter.
9. Angel feeding on Buffy in "Graduation Day Part 2". Without doubt, the
most erotic, libidinous act ever shown on pre-watershed US television.
10. The rather puerile pleasure to be gained from noting that the man
responsible for writing the musical score for the fifth series goes by the
name of "Thomas Wanker".

So for those of you already aware that Buffy rocks, we salute you. And
for those who haven't yet got with the programme, here is your Previously
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer Moment.

Neatly reversing the recent Hollywood trend for making very poor films
from very good TV shows, Buffy began as a truly awful, scare-the-horses
bad film. The premise was the same - ditzy Californian high school girl
(Kirsty Swanson, in this case) discovers she is the Chosen One, the Slayer
who must face up to her destiny to kill vampires (in particular Rutger
Hauer) while coping with traditional sources of teen angst and being
tutored in the ways of slayage by The Watcher (Donald Sutherland). The
Hauer-Sutherland alliance-of-the-hams did not, of itself, sink the film.
It was more the absence of a dark side; a tendency to play everything for
rather weak laughs, which rendered it neither use nor ornament. Some
called it a turkey, but in fact, having lost its balls along the way, it
was technically a capon. Either way, it sure as heck didn't get off the
ground.

Enter another hero of this peculiar story: Joss Whedon. A
third-generation screenwriter whose credits include Speed, Toy Story and
Roseanne, Whedon was undaunted by the mutilation of his film screenplay
and offered the original idea of a girl trapped between high school and
the hellmouth to the newly launched WB television network, which took it
on in 1997 for a run of just 11 episodes. The assembling of the so-called
"Scooby Gang" could begin.

The casting of Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy Anne Summers was a
masterstroke. (It's tempting, too, to think that maybe Whedon - who spent
time at boarding school in England - took inspiration for her name from
this country's foremost supplier of vibrating "Mr Pointys"). As the first
series fought it out in the Nielsen-ratings war, and its popularity
rippled through cyberspace, Gellar's lithe body and scrubbed Californian
sex appeal was the show's first-strike, heat-seeking missile. Fans of the
Gellar figure still talk wistfully of this first series, where Buffy's
skirts are at their shortest and her costumes at their most unashamedly
figure-clinging.

Gellar, however, has proved herself much, much more than a mannequin for
microskirts and Miu Miu. Although her fight sequences are handled by her
stunt double, Sophia Crawford, Gellar, a brown belt in the Korean martial
art Tae Kwon Do, has always looked convincing in the close-up work and
moves with the athleticism we demand in a demon disposer. A child actress
discovered at four, Gellar at 19 was a seasoned, Emmy-winning veteran of
the daytime soap All My Children and numerous ad campaigns (as a child she
was banned from setting foot in McDonald's because of her declaration in a
BK commercial, "I only eat at Burger King"). She originally auditioned
for the role of Cordelia but landed the lead and has made it her own, with
her rapid-fire delivery perfectly suited to the show's uncommonly
sophisticated, wordy dialogue.

Buffy's success, however, owes much to the fact that, notwithstanding the
luminosity of its lead, it has always been an ensemble performance.
Another former child actress, Alyson Hannigan, took the role of Willow -
best friend to Buffy, computer nerd and girlfriend of sometime werewolf Oz
(played by the impeccably monosyllabic Seth Green). Deconstructing Buffy
along Scooby-Doo lines, Willow equals Velma, she of the knee-high orange
socks. Her subsequent switch to being a sister of Sappho appeared
particularly apt as this always seemed the screaming subtext of Velma's
sexual identity. Cornering the market in bisexual geek chic, Hannigan has
since suggested that she limits the wearing of comfortable footwear to the
screen by dating one of the show's late additions - Alexis Denisof, who
plays the English (and therefore ineffectual) Watcher, Wesley
Wyndham-Pryce.

Completing the core of the show's cast are Nicholas Brendon as Xander, an
inveterate horndog, lacking in courage but overflowing with one-liner wit
(think Shaggy), and Anthony Stewart-Head as school librarian and Buffy's
original Watcher, Rupert Giles. Evincing a studied Englishness that makes
Hugh Grant look like an inner-city rude boy, the excellent Stewart-Head is
otherwise best known as the bloke in the Gold Blend advert. And did we
mention Charisma Carpenter, who plays Cordelia, she of hidden depths!
Given that Sunnydale is located on the hellmouth, the gateway to all
things satanic, there is never a shortage of vampires (or "undead
Americans" to give them their PC moniker) in need of weekly destruction,
but the show also boasts a cast of more enduring villains. After the
short-lived Master, there came Spike, a Billy Idol-style punk-vamp in love
with goth Drusilla and with a tongue almost as deadly as his fangs; The
Mayor, a seriously corrupt local politician who co-opts rogue slayer,
Faith, onto his side; and Adam, a cyborg killing machine whose lack of
charisma is so complete that if he were to be played by a member of the
Shadow Cabinet, the part would be a shoo-in for Francis Maude.
And somewhere between good and evils, there is Angel, Buffy's 240-year-old
vampire lover, a dark brooding presence played by the angular David
Boreanaz. Their love has survived death, hell, bloodshed and redemption
only to be cruelly and finally (but by no means permanently) cast asunder
by the pressing commercial demands for his own stand-alone spin-off
series.

Key locations in Buffy include the school library, where the gang always
meets (a nice running gag being that they know they won't be disturbed
there by other students). There's the graveyard where the majority of
slaying takes place. And for downtime, check out The Bronze, a nightclub
specialising in whiny singer-songwriters of such uniform sub-Thom York
miserabilism that "Bronze" deserves it's own music sub-classification.
But partygoers beware - the dark alley outside the club is home not to the
traditional teenage pastimes of blowjobs, fingerings and sniffing glue,
but boasts a shocking incidence of vampire attack.

That's Buffy, the story so far, with five series under its belt and around
100 episodes. But be warned - it is addictive. And it's such a small
step from watching your first episode to finding yourself in line at
Forbidden Planet, clutching Buffy merchandise behind the bloke with the
Metallica T-shirt and computer tan who's expressing an unhealthy interest
in owning that six-foot long replica Shaolin sword, which is, of course,
absolutely not a penis substitute.

Buffy's success today is omnipresent, reflected in the magazine, the Top
Trumps, the glassware, the action figures, the ringtone - and God knows
what lurks in deepest eBay. But in the beginning, it was one of the first
TV shows whose popularity was transmitted via the Internet, as websites of
the "Eternal Flame" and "Sarah Michelle Gellar: Beauty Incarnate" variety
proliferated. Perhaps because of this, the Forbidden Planet connection
and the fact that it resides where those two least desirable TV ghettoes
of Teen and Fantasy intersect, Buffy has long had an image problem with
"grown-ups".

While everyone accepts that The Simpsons straddles all ages with its
universal appeal, no such laurel has been accorded Buffy. Yet the talent
of the regular writing team betrays the fact that this is a show that
would never be content merely addressing (or worse, talking down to) its
target audience. Not only is Whedon an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, but
the original team of Buffy wordsmiths includes Dan Vebber, founder editor
of America's peerless satirical magazine The Onion, with other boasting
credits as varied as Ellen and The Wonder Years.

These writers have a hell of a handle on the horror that is high school.
Whedon, in particular, displays a consummate understanding of the
infinitely subtle shadings of high school prejudice, the crucial
delineation that separates the nerd, the geek, the preppy and the jock.
What's more, he understand how the US education system formalises this
striving for social success and the weeding out of winners and losers in
contest like the Prom Queen. Power flows from above. And with it comes
pain.

The show's ability to capture the education Zeitgeist was reflected,
albeit through a glass darkly, at the end of series three, which coincided
with the horrific Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado.
The episode, entitled "Earshot", was pulled from the schedules because of
Xander's prescient throwaway, "Who hasn't just idly thought about taking
out the whole place with a semiautomatic?" while the series finale, which
saw a transformed Mayor rampage through the school spreading death and
destruction was, understandably, toned down dramatically.

Aside from the coincidental timing, however, those killings dealt with the
same horror that is Buffy's weekly stock-in-trade. The Columbine killers,
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, belonged to a clique known as the
Trenchcoat Mafia, intelligent, introspective and therefore despised by
more popular types. Their appalling murder spree was conducted along
strict educational guidelines as they entered the school library and
shouted "All jocks stand up, we're going to kill every one of you."
Columbine made the Buffy critique of high school seem more reality than
fantasy.

"High school is all about alienation and horror," Whedon once commented.
"And I was very unhappy in high school, so it was the great well from
which to draw. People never get over it or they wouldn't respond to the
show the way they do."

Such material has been fertile territory for teen movies for decades now,
but where Buffy really scores is by linking routine teen angst to
terrifying paranormal activity. Hence the first season episode, "Out of
Mind, Out of Sight" where a flute-playing student's complete anonymity
leads to her gradually becoming invisible. The classic touch: the gang
discover her yearbook full of autographs with the inscription "Have a nice
summer" before revealing that this is the standard end-of-year valedictory
kiss-off for the kid you know nothing about.

Buffy's writing team also benefits from the vibrancy of America's
teen-speak, the victory of the mallrat's syntax and the energy, excitement
and experimentation of a language that is taking over the world. Allied
to this is the mastery of the pop-cultural reference book, which allows
cast members to happily and wittily namecheck Peckinpah cowboys, Robert
Frost poetry, Spinal Tap, George Romero, Welcome Back, Kotter and
Jean-Paul Sartre in the same series. Filtered through Whedon & Co's acute
ears, this has produced some of the best dialogue of the last decade, for
either big or small screen. Any show that borrows from arcane
aviator-speak for its standard term of approbation ("five by five") while
simultaneously dissing a character with rolled-up sleeves with the single
damning adjective, "Debarge", gets my vote. Tarantino, look to your
laurels.

Of course, in teen TV land, no matter how smart your writing team, action
speaks louder than words and Buffy has never stinted in this department.
It's a rare show where the body count doesn't reach double figures, but
it's the manner of their despatch which really sets Buffy apart. Every
fight sequence between vampire and slayer is choreographed with an Astaire
and Rogers-like precision, with Buffy - to paraphrase the famous summary
of Ginger's ability - doing everything her assailant does, but backwards
in Prada boots. And there's little point trying to argue there's nothing
sexual in Buffy's high-kicking and staking style. After all, Whedon
himself doesn't bother. "I think a woman kicking ass is extraordinarily
sexy," he declared in an interview last year. "Always. If I wasn't
compelled on a very base level by that archetype, I wouldn't have created
that kind of character."

Sex, understandably with a show aimed foursquare at teenagers, soaks into
every fold of the programme. The cast, while aiming to represent the
broad spectrum of high school outlooks, ranged in attractiveness from the
merely handsome to the unfeasibly perfect. There are few episodes that do
not require poster boy David Boreanaz to reveal his perfectly sculpted
pectorals, while even the seemingly geeky Xander buffed himself up
dramatically between series one and two. Male fans, too, have no shortage
of eye-candy to gaze upon and whenever the sexual temperature drops to
merely molten, the show throws in a new character, such as hot-for-teacher
Jenny Calendar, or the walking cleavage that is Faith, the kind of
hypersexed girl who confesses to getting hungry and horny after slaying.

And she does a lot of slaying.

Sex, however, brings its consequences - not always the inevitable death
sequence that is the horror film staple, but serious enough ones for all
that. Angel losing his mortal soul after taking Buffy's cherry was the
major one, but Xander's tumbles with the Inca mummy girl and praying
mantis woman ensure that the show displays sufficient responsibility for
the network executives to maintain its 8PM tuesday night slot in the
State.

But to talk of teenagers, watersheds and virginity raises the one problem
with the show, albeit one not of its own making. How do you explain being
addicted to Buffy while being in the unenviable position of finding
yourself nearer to 50 than 15 (do the maths and be aghast, anyone born
before the middle of 1968). It's a problem. For one thing, adults in
Buffy are shown as flaky, duplicitous or both, from Buffy's mum and her
crap boyfriend, Ted, through Mr Trick and the Mayor. Summers senior tries
to burn her daughter at the stake, Giles regresses to irresponsibility,
while Principal Snyder announces the new, brutal drill at Sunnydale High
by commenting on his predecessor. "Mr Flutie may have gone in for all
that touchy-feely relating nonsense, but he was eaten. You're in my world
now." Most disturbingly of all for the youngsters, grown-ups occasionally
express an interest in sex. Sex for post-teens? Eeurrgh, gross!

With the exception of The Simpsons, this is the first programme that
myself and my 13-year-old niece have both enjoyed equally. This is
worrying. The televisual taste gap that once kept a respectful distance
in an Our Friends In The North/Rugrats kind of way has narrowed to
nothing. I can choose to take this as a) simple arrested development, b)
an indicator of an impending tattoo-and-Harley-Davidson mid-life crisis,
or c) another sign of the show's all-conquering, universal appeal.
I'll take the latter explanation every time, but occasionally, during a
below-par episode such as "Beer Bad" in series four, watching Buffy can
feel unseemly and "no job for a grown man". It's an all-too-familiar
litany, beginning with the fact that Stuart Pearce is the only older
Premiership footballer, followed by the "haven't a lot of people been 35
for a long time" interior monologue, before moving on to Joseph Conrad's
Almayer's Folly, Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and The Best of Thelonious
Monk.

It's then that a sense of perspective is required. After all, wasn't
"Beer Bad" written by newcomer Tracy Forbes (sheesh)? And didn't it
redeem itself soon afterwards with the masterful "Hush"? And weren't
certain sacrifices essential in series four for the successful launch of
"Angel"? You see, it's easy enough to rationalise the genius of Buffy The
Vampire Slayer: the argument in favour is powerful - overwhelming even.
But in essence it boils down to just two words. Two words which mean
absolutely everything to the believer and, sadly, nothing to the
uninitiated.

In conclusion therefore:
Grrrr. Aargh.