Before we get started into the discussion of episode one of the series, "Welcome to The Hellmouth," take a look at part of the much fabled and little seen pilot for the series, called, strangely enough, "Welcome to The Hellmouth." The story behind this is, to many Buffy fans, well known, and is here. The short story is that the original film made in 1992 pleased no one, above all writer Joss Whedon. In 1996 Whedon had a chance to redo his original story on TV, and thus made the pilot, which later became the first episode of the series, but redone in several crucial ways. Here is an excerpt from that pilot.
If you are interested in watching the whole pilot, it is available on You Tube. Probably the biggest change made between the pilot and the aired version we're watching is Willow as played by Riff Regan being replaced by Alyson Hannigan. As Keith Topping writes in The Complete Slayer, "Casting [Willow] as a shy obese girl with a very unflattering skirt length and then dropping her in favour of a someone thinner was, perhaps, unfortunate." Buffy would have been a very different show with this Willow as opposed to the more traditionally attractive Alyson Hannigan. Then again, Sarah Michelle Geller originally auditioned for the role of Cordelia.
There's no doubt that Buffy begins by acknowledging the classic high school movie stereotypes. Just as with the beginning few minutes of the episode that we talked about in class, where the series pays total homage to the damsel-in-distress narrative and then turns it on its head, the characters come from central casting. We've seen them all before. So with this in mind, answer the following questions in about 2-300 words...
1. Your reaction to the episode. Like? Dislike? What particularly jumped out at you in it?
2. Is there any reality to the world we're introduced to here? Think about what we talked about in class today, the life of a teenager as you defined it to some extent. Does anything in this first episode strike you as being true to life—or at least true to your life? If so, name it, and how it feels actual, lived in, true? If not, name one egregious example of what the show gets wrong, and how so?
3. Going back to what I wrote above, about how the characters are stereotypes. Jenny, Harrison, Leah, Anna, and Sara: talk about Willow as a stereotypical figure. Eliot, Emma Ming, Emma K., Mary, talk about Cordelia as a stereotype. Elizabeth, Emma P., Izzie (if that's spelled correctly), Ari, talk about Xander as a stereotype. And Jonathan, James, Caroline, Maddie, and Annice, talk about Buffy as a stereotype.
See you all tomorrow.
Day 1
ReplyDeleteI must admit, I had higher hopes for this episode. Despite the thought provoking themes that were touched on, the corny dialogue, under-done effects, bad makeup, and odd, half completed plot line (I know its split into two parts, but it still bothers me), took a lot out of it. The dialogue about “the rise of the old ones” and “the harvest” seemed like the writers were trying too hard. The makeup made what should have been scary characters laughable. In total, I think they could have done much better with the plot line/special effects for the episode.
Despite the corny plot and set, many themes that I saw about growing up and being a teenager in the episode were very realistic and help me re-connect to the story. For instance, Buffy blows off the british mentor, Rupert when she feels he can’t help her. This is something I, and others have felt towards our parents many times. Rupert seems to be caught in a classic situation where parental or mentor figures want to help their pupils but have no idea how to reach them. I can tell you first hand how the disappointment from both sides feels and this connection to reality helps me relate better to Buffy in the episode, and it kept my attention.
Another interesting theme/thing that I saw in the episode was the perpetuation and simultaneous breaking of traditional stereotypes in high school. Some stereotypes, such as in the beginning scene when the pretty blond “damsel in distress” is scared of a noise, was completely broken when it turned out the blond was the killer vampire. Other stereotypes were perpetuated. For example, Willow struck me as a nerdy school girl immediately from the way she looked and the way she carried herself even before we saw the popular kids make fun of her, and even before we heard her talking dejectedly about herself at the club. I like how the Buffy creators play with stereotypes like this. Willow, at this point, is a perpetuation of the classic stereotype concerning “nerds” at high school. However, I feel that in the end Willow won’t be as powerless as she appears.
All in all, I have high hopes the next episode will be better.
I really liked the episode, granted that I had seen it ages ago, but it was good to see it again. What I really liked was that there is no laugh-track in the show. I feel like that pulls away from the experience and tells the audience when to laugh instead of letting people figure out jokes on their own. One thing that struck me as odd, was that there is not really an indication of time – the day, year – and this was surprising to me. It is not needed, but I’m so used to seeing references to the current time period in shows.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a lot of reality in the world we see. Even though vampires are not real, there is a sense of depth to the entire world. What strikes true with me is the whole first day as a new student experience. I have been a new kid three times. There always seems to be that one popular kid who decides to befriend you before someone else “less cool” can snatch you up. I have definitely been told not to hang out with someone just because they are not the preset idea of cool.
Cordelia is, seemingly, the coolest girl in the school, not to mention the most popular. She always has a group of girls around her; she has an entourage. She sees Buffy as a new toy that she could just throw away later. She thinks that Buffy will just play along with her popularity-ness. She is stereotypically the popular girl who has a hidden backstory. It seems that a lot of the people we see as “bad guys,” are just putting on, figurative or not, masks, ie V from V for Vendetta, Severus Snape.
1. I’m not completely sold on the show yet. For some reason I find it hard to root for Buffy, and I find myself relating more to Cordelia than to Willow or Buffy. I just find Buffy to be annoying due to the way she goes about handling her problems, and maybe it is because in this episode she’s only grappling with whether or not she wants to go back to her slaying ways, but it makes it difficult for me to like her. I get that that’s the whole point, that this decision for Buffy on whether or not to continue down one path or switch to another lifestyle is representative of teens having to figure out what to do with their lives, but her quandary is so outlandish that it just seems stupid and trite to me.
ReplyDelete2. The social environment portrayed feels very realistic to me. When I think about the scary things about high school, that’s definitely at the top of the list, and I think it’s funny that for Buffy, the two most threatening things are actual monsters and teen girls. The social aspect of high school I think definitely adds to the anxiety-ridden aura that surrounds it, and I think that the show does a good job of showing that through Cordelia and her interactions with the other, less popular characters.
3. In this episode, Willow doesn’t do much to break the stereotype of the “nerd”. She’s 100% playing into the nerd trope that film and television has created: she’s meek, smart, socially awkward, and when she tries to be bold, it leads to a huge mistake. She’s book smart, but she can’t seem to do anything right other than school. I’m interested to see how this character develops, because it seems that one of Joss Whedon’s goals is to challenge re-write those stereotypes.
1) Being one of the four students who has never seen this TV show, I've found it quite under my liking. Because of nowadays huge popularity of the Vampire genre, I've become a huge fan. However, I'm not a "Twi-heart" because I find Stephanie Myers series of Twilight unfathomably stupid. Given my somewhat knowledge on Vampire's in the media, I became instantly attached to "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Something that I really enjoyed and valued about this TV show was that Buffy was a girl! As feminist as that
ReplyDeletesound's, I and my friends had assumed Buffy was male. Usually, the big hero is male and is portrayed as a dominant, male character portrayed as a dominant, male character. Another thing that really stood out to me was the given personality of Buffy, and the humor she gives the show. I'm curious to see how she grows as a character
2)Of course there is loads of aspects of reality in this show. Even though there are vampires and vampire slayers it is set mainly in a High School and the characters lives at school and how that affects them. Buffy for example, still has the pressure of trying to fit in on the first day and being praised by the popular girl. Going back to our discussion, we talked about being a teenager hard. I totally agree in the lenses of Buffy. She's dealing with the awkward balance of school and vampires and that creates confusion for her.
3)Buffy is first introduced has the new girl. Blonde, and hopeless. She begins hanging out with the popular girl Cordelia and realizes that she needs to break the stereo-type of the lost new kid trying to fit in. She starts talking to a girl named Willow and gives her the advice that "Life is too short" (something around those lines). I thought this was showing that she was trying to break the stereo type of the new kid and she was the one who stepped up and gave advice. I can defiantly see a pattern in Buffy's growth.
I feel obliged to like the episode, albeit its overtly quirky nature (it's from the 90's- give it a break), literally having grown up on the show. Like most things I enjoy, however, I can acknowledge that it may be of poor quality and not technically "good", but the nostalgia of it makes it endearing nonetheless. Having finished the series a while back, seeing it this time, the pure innocence of all of the characters, even Giles, really got me. After seeing how they develop into adulthood already, this image of them being my age (younger, even), is really funny and kind of crazy. I remember from my first viewing really liking the powerful female heroine, and the way that she wasn't trying to push that strength in everyone's face.
ReplyDeleteSeeing it first as a preteen, this along with many other media (mostly crappy Disney shows and 80's movies) forced my perception of this high school like of FREEDOM. "Yeah, mom, I'm just a white middle-class sophomore going to a club alone my first night in this new town and you have no questions so its all good." Nope. That does not fly. I envisioned high school to be like this, though, and had many visions of grandeur. I expected a close group of friends who can rely on each other indefinitely, a spot where we hung out all the time, and even a mentor like Giles (I even was actually very close with my middle school librarian, and he called me Buffy and I called him Giles as a running joke), and meanwhile my friends and I would fight society as if the cogs in the machine, as I saw most adults, tried to suck the life out of our youth. And ultimately, I envisioned high school to be consistent to the ways of the 1990's. But I don't really know what high school is really like, to be honest. I go to Paideia, where Cordelia would be an extremely passive-agressive hipster, Xander would be pretty cool, and Willow would have tons of friends just like her. However, the judgement of High School like Sunnydale's still ring true. "Excuse me, I have to call everyone I have ever met right now." That's how it is, nonetheless. People are still ruthless, but in my microcosm of Paideia, it seems to rarely ever happen face to face. How I feel living in this can be dreadfully neutral and tirelessly axiomatic. Sometimes it gets to the point where I want something real and dangerous, even living my middle school dream, to occur so feeling something doesn't have to involve a slap on the face.
Buffy is the stereotypical blonde, not-so-smart, girl (who even aspires to be a cheerleader at one point). She's new, confused, and wants her life to involve things like boys and shopping, and the only issues to be menial drama between friends. She's not a bitch though. And if she was, she would be doing it cluelessly. She befriends practically friendless, bookworm WIllow and later saves her life. And she's an extremely powerful vampire slayer who has the sole duty of protecting the world from demons and creatures of the night that can kill everyone. So, she breaks that stereotype, which pushes the theme that these stereotypes don't define people, people can have secrets, and people do have layers.
I thought for the most part the episode was entertaining. I’m still confused on why other people can’t beat up vampires and that it has to be Buffy. All she does is stab them, something anyone could do. And also if she is the only person who can kill them why don’ the vampires just leave her alone and avoid her? I still don’t know what I think about Buffy, and if I like her or not. Her personality is somewhat annoying, but at the same time it is enticing. The fight scenes in the show are terrible so far, and I hope they improve.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think there is some reality to the high school life so far. What happens with Buffy going to a new school I think happens in real life. A pretty girl starts a new girl and the girl on the top of the food chain, Cordelia, invites her into her group. There have also been some things that aren’t so realistic. When Buffy asks her mom if she can go to a club, especially being only a sophomore, and her mom says yes without asking any questions, that rarely, if at all, happens in real life. Especially on a school night, and especially because Buffy isn’t a golden child. She burned down a gym.
I think Buffy is stereotypical in some ways, but in other ways she isn’t. She wants to live a normal life, and do normal girl things, but who wouldn’t want to be normal if all you’ve done is kill vampires? She cares about her social life, but isn’t so excited to become friends with the popular girls. She instead becomes friends with Willow, who is on the bottom of the food chain. The stereotypical girl would treat Cordelia like a princess and try to be in that group, but that’s not all Buffy wants.
1. I love the pilot. Personally, I think the first season is underrated. The cheesy effects, the banter of the characters, and Buffy's killer one liners before she dusts a vamp. That's what makes the show so special. However, each character is so young that now that I've seen the entire show a million times it makes me sad when I think of what each of them will have to go through. Those who disapprove of the campiness probably haven't seen the movie version, which Joss does not take nearly the same amount of pride in. While in later episodes I always think back to the earliest ones with some annoyance due to inconsistencies, what is always consistent is the spirit of the show, which was introduced perfectly from the start.
ReplyDelete2. Another genius yet humorous thing about BTVS is the obvious comparisons of reality to unlikely plotlines. The metaphors are not exactly few and far between, and often quite literal (a Lone Shark with a shark head), and most relate back to the theme of growing up. One thing I find very interesting about the show is the lack of human crimes. I think the reality is that one of the greatest ways to unite a group is to have a common enemy. Without the battles they fight in the very first episodes, would Willow, Xander and Buffy become such fast friends? Would Buffy had given into Giles if she hadn't realized he was right, and she couldn't do it alone? Sure, it's pretty similar to actual high school--"hell." But the real reality is the pattern of human nature, and the extremes it can go to.
3. To me, Buffy breaks all the stereotypes. Back in LA she may have made "Spordelia" look like a classical philosopher, but now she's wiser, less shallow, tougher, and basically a badass. But the most interesting stereotype to me is the way she strays from "The Hero's Journey". She doesn't accept her role as the Slayer right away, and frequently questions it as she grows up. And why should she be okay with this? Why is it her job to kill the demons? Why is her life in danger? If someone told me I not only had to struggle with the whole teenager thing but also defend the world, I might not be so willing either. Buffy is real. She sacrifices, she rescues, but she isn't happy about it. It's why I love her. There are few heroes who will readily admit that if they had the choice, they'd forget all about their duty to protect. But there are few teenage girls who will protect the people anyways, and that's why Buffy is not only the exception she is exceptional.
1) It definitely isn’t one of my favorite Buffy episodes, though I did enjoy it nevertheless. It wasn’t as entertaining as many of the other episodes are, though it is always difficult to start off a season since they have to introduce characters etc. I enjoyed seeing the episode again while thinking more about the teenage growing aspect of it and that changed my perspective because I felt some of the bits were cheesy.
ReplyDelete2) Though there were many ideas concerning teenagers brought up within this episode, I don’t feel that any were blatantly wrong or correct. The ideas had to come from some truth obviously, such as the idea conveyed behind Buffy expresses to Giles about how she was more worried about having the updated hairstyle than vampires. This thought of teenage girls worrying about their appearance, and how others will perceive them is true. I believe it is true for pretty much any teenager since your teenage years are such an awkward time period where you are developing more self-consciousness and figuring out how to deal with it. So even though this idea about teenage self-consciousness is real, the show takes it to an extreme by saying it outweighs the need to kill vampires.
3) The show displays stereotypes when it portrays Cordelia’s character as being the typical mean girl who puts down everyone she believes to be beneath her. It isn’t unusual for there to be a girl that is rude to others because of her own insecurities, so that stays true to reality. The part where it strays from reality is their attempt at displaying this “mean girl”, for instance when Cordelia quizzes Buffy on current fashion and boys in order to deem her worthy of Cordelia’s friendship. That particular instance is something that would never happen in real life, or at least I have never encountered any situation similar to it. It also feeds into stereotypes when Cordelia is shown putting down Willow, and having to call everyone she knows as soon as she has an extremely unusual situation with Buffy.
1. Having watched almost every episode in the series, this first one was not one i remembered well. trying to watch objectively i found that Buffy doesn't quite come off as a character you want to stand behind. Although admirable for walking away from the "popular" crowd which Cordelia offers, Buffy initially comes off as immature, selfish, and way too reliant on corny 90's slang. Although this first episode was not totally memorable, a part which particularly stood out to me and which i remembered well from my first viewing was when Angel and Buffy first meet. i like how the way he and Buffy meet is so atypical of what one would expect, given their later alliance.
ReplyDelete2. i believe this episode very clearly illustrates your stereotypical high school scene (which we all can agree is not a category Paideia cleanly fits under). though the physical aspects may not directly correlate with our own school, i think that the image of the confused, stressed, fun teenager that we described in class today is well portrayed. for example, the way Xander and Willow become tongue tied and intimidated when talking to Buffy for the first time, this displays the awkward teenage encounter very nicely.
3. Willow is depicted as a stereotypical shy, nerdy girl. Pure at heart and with only good intentions, she only wants to please her peers and be accepted. Willow is an embodiment of a typical high school girl's self consciousness and self doubt. she looks up to Buffy as a role model because she is strong and self assure. Willow still has a lot of growing up to do, but with a friend like Buffy to encourage her, she wont be timid much longer.
1. I am one of the few people who has never seen the show before and so far I have liked it. It is a little corny, but quirky and fun to watch. I have to admit that when we watched that first scene I did not expect the girl to be the vampire. I went through all of the other options. I thought that maybe the guy was a vampire or there was another vampire waiting around the corner. It only occurred to me that the girl could be the vampire when someone else suggested it. I hate catching myself going along with stereotypes that I would expect myself to see. I can tell that this show means a lot to a huge portion of the class and I will probably start to like it more as the show continues. For the first episode it was good, the first episode of a show is usually the one you have to sit through to get to the real meat later. I am really excited to see more episodes and see how the show progresses.
ReplyDelete2. Sunnydale High School is the stereotype of a high school on any TV sitcom. There are the popular girls, the shy, smart, and pretty nerd whose beauty is hidden, the awkward boys who just want a girl to notice them, and probably any other imaginable clique. It is as realistic as any high school is portrayed on TV. Yes, there are awkward boys, shy girls and mean, popular girls, but everything about a TV high school is put to the extreme and shown in a higher concentration. On TV the characters spend more time in the halls and at lunch than they do at class. Also I bet that Buffy had homework the night she went to the club, but that is never mentioned. School is just a base for social interaction and two minute clips of the characters in class proves that they are learning. There is a reality embedded within the characters. Many girls across America can relate with WIllow. Also many guys can relate to Xander and his tiny fence jokes around Buffy. Amid the TV show generalizations there are some truths. Social life is hard, school is hard, being a teenager is hard and this show puts all of these ideas to the extreme by adding the fact that Buffy is a a vampire slayer.
3. Xander is a necessary character in any TV show. He is a little bit quirky and within 10 minutes of the show's start he is head over heels for the lead girl. Xander is awkward and misunderstood by the popular crowd. He says things to Buffy that make no since because of his nerves. He is the guy who clumsily falls off his skateboard when he first sees the "new girl." No guy wants to admit that a part of them is Xander. The awkwardness of his stereotype is innocent and funny. His character is unthreatening and not overly masculine. So far he has not broken from his stereotype, but apparently he is going to come out his shell and grow up.
1. There are parts of this episode that I really enjoy, but there are certain parts of it that I struggle to like. It is a fairly old show, so the special effects aren't that good, but even more than that certain parts of it are just so unrealistic. Besides the vampires I mean. The high school kid aspect of it often seems even more unbelievable than the monsters. The way Cordelia is so openly cruel to Willow just doesn't seem like something would happen in real life. There may be mean girls, but they are rarely up front. It seems more likely that a girl like Cordelia would talk about Willow behind her back and that the divides between people would not be made as plain as they are in this first episode of Buffy. There are certain moments that are funny or brilliant, (such as the opening scene, or the moment when Principal Flutey is taping her transcript back together) but I don't feel like this is one of the stronger episodes. I know when I first watched the show, I was not hooked from episode one. It was really fun re-watching it and seeing how the characters change so dramatically from the final episode, but this isn't one of my favorites. I don't dislike it, but I wouldn't say I love it either.
ReplyDelete2. I started to answer this question in my first prompt, with what I said about the relationship between Willow and Cordelia. There are definitely parts of Buffy that are true of high school, but they are taken to an extreme. There are popular girls and clicks and all that, but they are rarely as openly aggressive or separate from each other as we see here. However, I do feel like the alienation, the basic wish Buffy has to just be normal, to make friends is a real part of high school. Almost everyone comes into high school a little nervous about being accepted, about making friends, and I feel like Buffy shows this well. She wants the normal high school experience; she doesn't want all this extra responsibility, and that's very relatable. So while some aspects are exaggerated (such as Xander and Jessi(?) reaction to the new girl at the school) a lot of the fundamentals are there. They're just taken to extremes to create an interesting story.
3. Xander first comes in on a skateboard, weaving around people and generally looking ridiculous sets him up as a stereotypical character. The moment when everything just becomes slow-motion and he slams into the railing while staring at Buffy is pretty overdone. He sets himself up to be the comedic break, the awkward guy, who's really in to the first pretty girl he comes across. When he goes back and helps Buffy with her bag, that's such a corny movie moment. Xander is introduced as a stereotypical character, and although he does have moments when he shows himself to be something more (when he accompanies Buffy to the mausoleum and doesn't run away the instant he sees the vampires for instance) he does mostly fit the awkward, slightly desperate high school boy stereotype in this episode.
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ReplyDelete1. The first episode left me feeling slightly confused. The campy shots of the "supernatural world" and the grotesqueness of the vampire makeup certainly threw me off guard. I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to scream or laugh. Then again, I don't think that it is a show that demands to be taken seriously. I highly doubt that the director's main intent was to strike fear into the hearts of the viewers but rather to use the "silliness" of the vampires as a vessel with which to mock the typical teen sitcom. It has all of the components of your everyday high school show: a new girl, a jock, a nerd, the popular girl, etc...just with vampires.
ReplyDelete2. I think that the thing about this show that draws people in is its realness. Buffy experiences the pressure of being liked and the consequences that come with that. Willow is a girl who has been hurt and dejected so many times that she comes to expect (and even embrace) that people will leave her behind and use her. Of course, this show isn't entirely real. It's real life caricatured. Everything is exaggerated to the nth degree, to a point that it is easy to disregard any semblance of real life in the exuberantly over-dramatic plot line. However in looking closely, and stripping apart the goofy exterior of the characters, if is plain to see that these characters are more relatable than they may seem at first glance.
3. Cordelia presents one of the most overused, yet effective, stereotypes used in television: the popular girl. Whenever I sit down to watch a movie geared towards teenagers and encounter this character I roll my eyes at the ridiculous seeming cruelty that said girl dishes out to the high school student body. Although this is my instinctual response, I often wonder if this stereotype holds more truth than I give it credit. Am I so shrouded by the "Paideia bubble" that pure, unexplained snarkiness seems like a characteristic that can only exist in the TV and the movies? What I always want to know is what is the fuel that drives these girls to act the ways they do. I'm often interested in the story behind the story. What happened to this Cordelia girl that makes her so insecure about her position that she needs to constantly keep the "nerds" like Willow in their place? If this show wants to separate itself from its predecessors than it needs to delve more deeply into who these characters truly are instead of simply tossing them aside as a simple stock character.
1 I think that the Pilot, “Welcome to the Hellmouth”, is a good start to the show. The main gripe I had with the show was with Buffy’s struggle regarding her slaying. She has to decide whether she wants to continue being the slayer or if she wants to be a normal teenager, obviously she will pick being a slayer seeing as the whole show is about her and her struggle seems fake and a little foolish. I think that if the episode had started in the middle of the action, showing her slaying the first vampire and being introduced to Willow and Xander, it could have brought the viewer in quicker. But, I think that we now have a solid base of all the characters and plotline.
ReplyDelete2 Buffy has so far depicted as realistic of a school environment that it could have. Buffy shows up at school scared and nervous for her first day. She falls in with Cordelia at first, the most popular girl at the school, but then deigns to speak with Willow. She then realizes that she belongs with Willow and Xander in the social hierarchy. Buffy is very real (except for that she looks a lot older than a sophomore in high school) and Whedon is able to depict an accurate drab school setting, combined with the thrill of vampire slaying.
3 Cordelia is the typical top of the food chain, prom queen high school girl. She seems perfect. She expects Buffy to join in with her crowd because of Buffy’s looks. But, she is surprised when she finds Buffy talking with Willow and toting stakes around at The Bronze. I think that although Cordelia is able to put out the façade of having a perfect, popular, and trouble free life, she actually has a hard time. She will probably end up respected Buffy for being such an individual and fighting for herself.
I really started to enjoy the episode once I started to view and analyze it from a perspective adjusted to what the show truly is. While obviously dealing with several very serious and relatable themes, they are presented in such an exaggerated, stereotypical manner that it is much easier to distance oneself from the episode and view it not as an accurate representation of life itself, but as a representation of what is perceived to be the high school experience. I found the episode very enjoyable due to this very aspect of the series so far (which appears highly unlikely to change), and I happen to be a big fan of the cult-like atmosphere of the shoe as well.
ReplyDeleteThere is much truth to the world presented so far in Buffy. However, many aspects of this world are accentuated to such an extent that there is a clear division between the reality of Buffy and reality itself. The episode seemed to touch on many of the facets encompassing teenage life as a whole, some displayed more extensively than others. The notion of fitting in is thoroughly examined in the pilot episode, and although exaggerated, provides a fairly accurate depiction of one of the several difficult components of teen life. Buffy displays the incredible difficulties regarding the conflict found between assimilating into a homogenous society and retaining one’s individuality, the latter of which Buffy attempts to achieve.
Buffy exemplifies many of the qualities of a newcomer, and spends much of the episode attempting to immerse herself into the community of Sunnydale. However, Buffy differentiates from the stereotypical newcomer in the respect that she purposely isolates herself and makes conscious efforts to avoid assimilation with the overbearing and dominant social group (e.g. Cordelia). This likely due to the fact that while ostensibly an unimposing teenage girl, Buffy truly displays many of the qualities found in strong, powerful women: qualities which isolate Buffy from the rest of Sunnydale to a considerable extent.
I liked the first episode. I watched the first few seasons of Buffy about four years ago, so it was nice having the suspense and then remembering what happens next. I love the cheesy suspense and the drama of this show.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reality to this show. We see the increased responsibilities that come with being a teenager. Buffy has the responsibility of being The Slayer, while most teenagers have to focus on being responsible for doing homework or setting up appointments. Although the responsibilities manifest themselves in different ways, both can bring various pressures. This one rings true to me especially because I have a few big commitments that always seem to conflict at least twice a year. While in past years my parents would’ve dealt with my schedule, I have to keep track of most things on my own. This responsibility creates a lot of stress. Another reality is the fact that Buffy simply wants to fit in in high school and be like everybody else. This is the goal of most teenagers. We struggle to find our place and to fit in to the machine of high school.
Willow embodies the “naïve and nerdy bookworm that doesn’t have much of a social life” stereotype. She has little knowledge of boys and this leads her into trouble that Buffy, the more experienced and street-smart one, has to save her from.
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ReplyDelete1. I liked the episode, although I would not consider it a favorite. A part which stood out to me in particular was Buffy’s resistance at playing the part of a hero/chosen one, a role often coveted and sought after but in her case treated more as a burden. It is interesting to see her struggle with the life she would prefer to lead, full of typical teenager normality and slightly superficial motives, versus the one she must lead, full of sacrifice and danger but ultimate world saving necessity.
ReplyDelete2. Yes, parts of the episode ring true not only in Buffy’s fictional life but also in the reality around us. In particular, the social hierarchy of Sunnydale High School demonstrated by the cliché popular girl, Cordelia, can be found in some sort of fashion in almost every social setting. The blatant distinction and overt bullying may not be as clear, but in a large group of teenagers in a high school, a divide between those considered “cooler” than others and those considered “losers” seems to inherently take place whether you like it or not.
3. Xander enters the scene as a joke, a goofy unbalanced skateboarder fallen victim to the pretty new girl and an unfortunately placed stair railing. How fitting, though, because throughout the rest of the episode, Xander keeps up his role as a sort of jester among the characters. His slightly awkward social skills and blabbering habits put him at the butt of not only others’ jokes, but also his own as he kiddingly self deprecates his attempts at flirtation with Buffy and admits to becoming a rambling idiot in her presence. However, he also maintains a sense of wit and cleverness about him, and almost all of his line elicit a chuckle. Xander exemplifies characteristics which do not fit a stereotypically masculine character: he does not have macho strength, coordination or other obvious athleticism; he lacks any smooth moves with the ladies; and he personifies nearly none the cool, tough guy images found in a conventional masculine role. While Buffy fights off the vampires in the mausoleum, he must take a more weaker and traditionally feminine approach of helplessness and incapability.
I really enjoyed the first episode! It remains surprising and interesting no matter how many times you’ve seen it. It’s impressive how Buffy the Vampire Slayer can come off as such a unique and witty show when it takes place in such a stereotypical and overworked high school scene. Although the school and its students are very cliché, the high school atmosphere presented in Buffy has some truth to it. The teenage characters are stressed about schoolwork, relationships, friends, fitting in, etc.: all very real worries of the average American high schooler. Something I can relate to is Buffy’s (and really all of the character’s) desire to find the place where she belongs – in school and ultimately in life. We see this desire in Buffy as she tries out different friend groups throughout the first episode and refuses to pay any attention to Giles and the impending Harvest, making it clear that her main focus is on fitting in to her new surroundings and living her life as a normal teenager. Of course Buffy’s high school scene is different from my own due to the fact that it’s crawling with vampires threatening the apocalypse, but other than that we’re living in very similar worlds.
ReplyDeleteWillow is the stereotypical nerdy girl who allows other people to push her around and is too scared to stand up for herself. She’s extremely smart and does well in school, but doesn’t have many friends or interactions with boys. She’s portrayed in the first episode as kind of weak and helpless, but she also seems sweet and caring.
I liked the episode well enough, though it is hard to tell how much of it is the actual episode and how much is knowing I like the other episodes. It was very over the top and choreographed in this episde. I had forgotten, or it haden't seemed so choreographed when I first watched it.
ReplyDeleteThere is truth in the world of Buffy. The kids really would scope her out, see how cool she is, etc. They just may not do it in the quick, hyperbolic version they used to get the point across in 2 minutes. You also get the "first day of school: I now have two close friends" in real life as well.
Xander: He is set up from the begining to be the stereotypical slacker boy. He comes in on a skateboard, sees Buffy and automaticly checks her out. He jokes with Willow on where the library is and is awkward around girls. Yeah, they set up that stereotype very quickly.