Buffy the Vampire Slayer Essay -- TV Television Show Essays

Buffy the Vampire SlayerMentors feature prominently in the Gothic genre. From Dr Van Helsing in Bram Stokers genus Dracula, who leads the young heroes into their quest to annihilate the Count, to Rupert Giles, the Watcher in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, older and more experienced adults have provided essential focus for the younger protagonists of the genre. The differences in media of expression and the subsequent adaptations from novel to television series has not affected the presence of this character, more than a hundred historic period after the publication of Dracula in 1897. What also unites the novel and the series is their fin-de-sicle resonance. According to Elaine Showalter, sexually and socially subversive themes feature strongly in periods of cultural insecurity. In addition to the century that separates Buffy from the Count, there has been a embarrassment of vampire movies and books of various merits. As a result, the late-twentieth-century average spectator knows t he elemental facts of vampirism. Therefore, the creators of Buffy the Vampire Slayer need to challenge their audience through another(prenominal) aspect of the series. Turning to their advantage what might have been a wicked hindrance, they adopt a self-reflexive ironic perspective on the genre. This tenuous just now innovative tension between borrowing from the tenets of the Gothic and moving absent from them is especially appreciable when one evaluates the Watcher, Giles. Giles embodies both the principles of continuity and daring blueprint that characterise the series and contribute to its appeal. The similarities between Dr Van Helsing in Dracula and Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer create a sense of thematic and structural continuity through different media. They share a sim... ...Unofficial detailed Companion to Buffy and Angel. Ed. Roz Kaveney. London Tauris, 2001, 98-119. 8. Wall, Brian and Michael Zryd. Vampire dialectics. Knowledge, institutions and labour. Reading the Vampire Slayer. An unofficial slender companion to Buffy and Angel. Ed. Roz Kaveney. London Tauris, 2001, 53-77.9. Jung, C. G. The Phenomenology of the Spirit in Fairy Tales. 1912. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. London Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967. 10. Heilbronn, Lisa M. ingrained Man, Unnatural Science Rejection of Science in Recent Science manufacture and Fantasy Film. Contours of the Fantastic. Ed. Michele K. Langford. New York Greenwood, 1990, 113-9, 115.11. Auerbach, Nina. Our Vampires, Ourselves. Chicago U of Chicago P, 1995, 5.12. Tudor, Andrew. Monsters and frantic Scientists. A Cultural History of the Horror Movie. 1989. Oxford Blackwell, 1991, 114.