Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Violence

This essay confers how violence is depicted in the fictional television program "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" in the first episode of the first season. It also provides a textual analysis in regard to genre, narrative format, visual and sound that are used in the episode.

Violence has been a major problem in many societies and even in smaller communities with friendly neighbourhood. Violence has come in either in its good form or in its bad form. Many of the movies and television shows we watch today, has shown violence in both forms. For example in TV shows like Lost, people use violence against the people who are hurting them. On the other hand, the villains are originally violent people in the show. Even in other TV shows like One Tree Hill which is not about violence and terror, still portrays violence in different forms and in different aspects. For example in the show, they use violence to protect their family and friends.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer portrays a young college girl named Buffy who defeats crowds of vampires and demons merely all the way through her adroitness in the martial arts. With the help of her friends she finds herself doing a perfect job in slaying vampires and saving innocent people. Buffy uses violence in the most righteous way to take precautions and prevent people from any vampires. Mainly her job is making sure the environment is free from vampires and stopping any further developments in vampire activity. This task is only completed through appropriate violence and that is the reason why most of the scenes portray different levels of violence.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer valorises physical violence on both a practical level (how to survive in a dangerous world) and a religious level (how to save the world from evil). It is clear within the series that the world is infected by violence. Sunnydale is a dangerous place, where assault and murder are everyday realities. In this context, physical violence is presented as a necessity. Frequently it is the only way to survive the evening and/or save the world. Yet the show does not condone all physical violence; significant norms and restrictions are given regarding appropriate violence. Some of these norms are spoken clearly, while others are communicated more dramatically by being associated with either heroic or demonic characters. For the most part, Buffy's behaviour (at her best) is presented as exemplary, revealing the characteristics of appropriate use of violence." (Snell, 2006)

In the first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, when it gets started, the pictures come with a narration in a voice that gives the feeling, that the episode could be really scary or the whole series could be. As a matter of fact, to a certain extent it is scary yet the scariness is only propped up by the violence that the viewers witness in the episodes. In the pictures that are featured with the narration in the start of the first episode, shows axes and sharp killer tools in big box and after that shows a little bit of shooting and stabbing. Those are the first few scenes before the episode really begins.

Those scenes are followed by a scene showing two teenagers breaking into a suburban high school through the window. After sometime the girl's face transforms into a vampire. She bites into the boy's neck just as vampires normally do in most vampire portrayed movies. The boy dies due to this and is found the next day in one of the girls' locker when she opens it in the locker room of the school. The vampire killed him.

The beginning of the violence is portrayed in a very interesting manner. Firstly the teenagers break in. Secondly, the girl pulling away the boy and thirdly she bit into her shocked date's neck when she got transformed into a vampire. That helps to conquer the mind of the viewers as the first impression, that the episode features violence. Not only that, but also the sound that we hear at the beginning until the part that the boy gets bitten, supports to the fact that viewers could think the episode goes all horror and violent. The sound at the start comes with the narrator's voice which also gives the creeps and the background music which plays in a normal speed. When that piece of music is over, the next sound alerts us more - the sound of the night with mixed sounds which we hear in the forests, jungles and the bushes. It keeps getting louder and louder until they show the library of the school, from there is a softer sound which is something like the heart beat sound. So somehow we get interested in to find out what kind of scary and violent scene we are going to witness. As a matter of fact every horror movie or scary movie has violent scenes in it. Basically they are based on making people scared through violence.

In another scene of the episode Buffy's friend Willow gets hammered while she walks into the cemetery. The vampire tries to entice Willow to go in. When she declines, the vampire pushes her inside. Darla, another vampire blocks her way when Willow tries to escape. Suddenly, she sees Jesse (Willow's friend) appearing at the doorway, bleeding from his throat. When they try to leave Darla says in a fearful drawl "You are not going anywhere - until we have fed". These words sound violent. The vampires are trying to suck up the blood of them. They create violence in order to satisfy their needs. But then, Buffy shows up to save her friends and slay the vampires; depicting reasonable and justifiable violence. "Throughout the series, Buffy engages in difficult ethical choices of deep moral ambiguity. The ethics of violence presented is not completely clear-cut, but it is fairly consistent and sturdy." (Snell, 2006)

Those are some of the scenes in the first episode. So until now, any viewer is able to make presumptions of how violent scenes can be in the following episodes, after watching the first one. However, the violence exposed in the episode, shows good reason to believe in its necessity in tackling certain matters in order to be safe from the hands of evil. Buffy's character moreover represents the better side of violence than the bitter. Buffy and her friends as a team, kills the demons, devils and threats to humans - mostly in cases where it is necessarily important.

In the series as a whole, it gives ideas why and how violence arises. For instance the violence in the series to a very large extent symbolizes the reason for violence in many cases in the real world; the violence connected to sex. Violence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer is frequently linked to sex. The series does not eroticize violence as sexy. Rather, it recognizes that sexual relationships take place within a violent world and are thereby infected with violence. Likewise, violence takes place within a sexist world, and is therefore shaped by sexual politics that oppress and victimize women. In the first five seasons, characters in the series who enjoy violence as sexual, in the sado-masochistic sense of giving and receiving pain, are morally deficient beings. The primary example is vampires, who frequently exhibit, refer to, or invoke images of sado-masochistic activity." (Snell, 2006)

The genre of this series can be classified as adventurous, partly action and fantasy. Mittel (2004:12) refers to this series as a mixture of genres, "horror and teen drama". Genre is basically about the groups a work can be classified into. "The genre theory deals with the ways in which a work can be considered to belong to a class of related works." (Feuer, 1993:4) There is a traditional literary way in which genre is viewed and how it is limited to television and films. Feur (1993:139) states "Film and television, however, are culturally specific and temporarily limited." In the series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the genre is decided as action, drama and fantasy because the violence depicted in the episodes are mostly practical actions; the romance depicted in the episodes decided drama as one genre for it; and finally fantasy as its genre is decided from the fact that vampires do not exist and this is simply a fantasy. The mixture of genres in one series, sometimes attract the viewers and can be highly noted as effective. In his book, Mittel (2004:156-157) states that "Traditional critics have suggested that genre is most useful in either providing a distinct definition for textual categories or pointing to a core set of meanings contained within the genre's texts. Based on these assumptions, genre mixture confounds those clear categorical imperatives by diluting boundaries and core meanings. But if we look at genres as culturally operative categories, then genre mixing becomes a site of heightened genre discourse - industrial personnel, critics, and the audience members spend more energy linking a mixed program like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) to genre categories than more "pure" teen dramas like Beverly Hills 90210 (1990-2000)."

Buffy the vampire slayer is mostly portrayed in a linear narrative form. In each episode a certain dilemma is tackled. But Jowett (2005:10-11) argues that even though Buffy series is a standard series, solving a problem each week, and offering a linear narrative, its narrative form is intricate. "Another longer-running linear narrative can be identified in terms of the season: there is generally a season villain (the "big bad") who recurs and is defeated at the end." (Jowett, 2005:11) It is understood that violence plays a very important part in the narrative form. In fact in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it is only violence that can be used to "solve the problem of the week" or "trounce the monster of the week".

The visual style of Buffy series offer effective emotional response towards what is happening in each scene portraying some sort of violence. It portrays violence just as lively it could be. "As the episode progresses, the visual style shifts from very dynamic moving camera with jump cuts and asymmetrical compositions to more and more static shots almost perfectly balanced (which feel off-balance in their symmetry)." (Steiff, 2001)

Miklitsch (2006:185) states that " With its high production values, its "glossy visual style, fluid camera work and artistically choreographed fight sequences," Buffy is a prime example, like The Sopranos, of "quality prime-time programming." "

Sound is one other element in Buffy series letting the viewers get a strong feeling about violence in the episodes and more over it helps the viewers to observe the imagery. "Sound can actively shape how we perceive and interpret the image" (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008:265) In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the sound is a very powerful element depicting the horror, the fear and the practical violence shown in the episodes. "Sound can guide us through the images, pointing to things to watch" Most of the time like many other shows, the sound lets the viewer get the idea what is going to happen now or next. (Bordwell and Thompson, 2008:265) for example in the starting of the first episode before the two teenagers break into the high school, the sound of music played, gives the viewer the idea that something bad or violent is going to happen.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a whole, does not only portray violence, but also looks into many other issues, mainly related to society. For example Buffy fighting to save the world and the people around her with the help of friends, bring about the idea of community and family. If one could think, feminism is also a portrayed subject in the series. Buffy is a female slayer. She shows strength as a female even slaying the strong male vampires and demons. But however, apart from all those issues, Buffy the Vampire Slayer portrays violence as a major issue as far as I am concerned. There is always a reason to attack people - there is always a time for violence and Buffy series has planted a positive idea about violence in the minds of viewers to a certain extent through all the elements used to portray the series.

References

Brodwell, D and Kristan, T. (2008) "Film Art: An introduction" (8^th ed.) The McGraw Hill Comapnies, Inc.

Feuer, J. (1993), Genre study and television Media Studies Reader in "Channels of discourse, reassembled; television and contemporary criticism", Routledge, London. p 138-145

Jowett, L. (2005) Sex and the Slayer: A gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan. Wesleyan University Press.

Mittel, J. (2004) Genreand Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. Routledge, London.

Snell, S. C. (2006) "What would Buffy do? Feminist ethics and epistemic violence", Buffy Ethics. http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc48.2006/BuffyEthics/index.html (accessed 21 October 2008)

Steiff, J. (2001) "The cheerleading vampire hunter is halfway through season 5 and still going strong", Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Body. http://onthebox.netfirms.com/Articles/BuffyBody/BuffyBody.html (accessed 21 October 2008)