One of the best television shows ever? MORE : 17 beauty products we refused to go out without in the nineties. Poppy Logo. FB house promo. Share this article via facebook Share this article via twitter Share this article via messenger Share this with Share this article via email Share this article via flipboard Copy link. Share this article via comment Share this article via facebook Share this article via twitter.
More Stories. Who-esque campiness itself has merited critical essays. Meanwhile, other scholars have unpacked the complex relationship Joss Whedon has to his universes, examining him as an auteur on par with show creators such as Vince Gilligan, Matthew Weiner, and Shonda Rhimes.
Beyond Buffy , the field of popular-culture studies is rising in universities across the country. Rhonda Wilcox, who also co-founded the Whedon Studies Association, frequently compares the episodic format of television to 19th century serialization of novels, like those of Charles Dickens.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Whedon himself supports the rise of the discipline. Perhaps the most amazing feat Whedon accomplished with Buffy is that the narrative structure of the show — all the plots, the reveals, the devastating deaths — served the overall arc of the show, and felt organic. So when Willow went nuts, skinned Warren, and almost destroyed the world singlehandedly, it made complete sense, because everything leading up to that point brought her there she and Tara fighting for an entire season prior about her potentially destructive use of magic, for example.
The Vampire Diaries. True Blood. Veronica Mars. Doctor Who. The Twilight series. This, coupled with its genre mash-ups, and its strong, female butt-kicking lead, were things we have seen recycled again — to much lesser effect — in the pop culture-verse nearly every year since. Whether it was Mr. Did she say the end was near, or here? Another feat few other shows have attempted much less accomplished is a successful interweaving of genres.
All at once, Buffy can be described as a horror, sci-fi, comedy, fantasy, or drama series, to name but a few. There haven't been many shows that have been audacious enough to even try mashing two genres, much less an endless amount.
There were also multiple elements of romance, with Buffy having three significant loves -- two of whom were vampires with major dark sides -- but all of whom were wildly different from each other. In general, as a mass medium, TV tried to attract as large an audience as possible, which meant that shows ostensibly about teenagers, like Happy Days , were often aimed more at parents with young children.
Of course, there had been teen booms in pop culture prior to that moment. What was different with the boom that Buffy helped set in motion was an increase in critical respectability of teen-centric stories. It was also the best. Critics hailed it, placing it in the No. It received major awards recognition, including an Emmy nomination for its writing. And when it moved to UPN in its sixth season — because UPN was willing to pay a higher licensing fee than The WB — it helped reestablish that network as well, paving the way for later Buffy -alikes such as Veronica Mars.
The show was clearly in love with language, with arranging words in unexpected ways and delighting in the fizzy alchemy of the resulting scripts. Take the moment in season one when Buffy goes up against ancient vampire the Master and full-on drown s , but is resuscitated by Xander to defeat him.
It might seem weird to modern audiences, but Buffy , despite fighting a monster of the week in nearly every episode, was considered a heavily serialized show when it debuted in And it only became more serialized as it progressed, especially in seasons six and seven, when it prioritized grand, complicated arcs at the expense of episodic coherency. Every season of the venerable monster-hunting show Supernatural , now in its 12th season, uses this model.
Lost used it too, but broke its overarching story into smaller pieces and swapped primary objectives getting off the Island, etc. Probably not. But the format is present even in non-genre shows, from Scandal to Justified. Each season, some major crisis or villain dominates the storytelling, and every episode reflects on it somehow, sometimes in a major way and sometimes in a much more minor one. And his debt to Marvel shines throughout the show, particularly in its wildly inventive plot twists.
Characters on Buffy are never one thing.
0コメント