Buffy The Vampire Slayer Popularity

[Irati Klute]

Apopular American TV show from the late 1990s through early 2000s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has had a tremendous influence on popular culture that has attracted serious scholarly attention. Even the language used on the show has affected modern colloquial expressions.[1]

Buffy and its spinoff, Angel which employed pop culture references as a frequent humorous device, have themselves also become a frequent pop culture reference in video games, comics and television shows, and has been frequently parodied and spoofed. Sarah Michelle Gellar, the actress who played Buffy, has herself participated in several parody sketches, including a Saturday Night Live sketch in which the Slayer is relocated to the Seinfeld universe,[2] and adding her voice to an episode of Robot Chicken that parodied a would-be eighth season of Buffy.[3] There are also several adult parodies of Buffy, web comics, and music.

In the 2004 family comedy Johnson Family Vacation one of the main characters is seen watching the episode "Chosen" where Buffy is seen fighting ubervamps during the climactic battle seen within the Hellmouth.

The 2005 Australian film Hating Alison Ashley also briefly refers to Buffy. When brainstorming plots for a school play, two girls talk about "a normal girl, who's beautiful..." and "one day as she is walking through the cemetery she realises she's...BUFFY!" Their idea is knocked back immediately.

In the 2007 film The Jane Austen Book Club, directed by Robin Swicord, also starring Marc Blucas who played Riley Finn on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jocelyn finds herself surrounded by Buffy fans as to she is around a "Buffy convention" called the "Buffy Contingency."

In 2011 film remake Fright Night vampire hunter Peter Vincent (David Tennant) refers to Charley (Anton Yelchin) and his girlfriend Amy (Imogen Poots) as their "little Scooby Gang" because of their desire to kill a vampire.

Fan films parodying or paying tribute to Buffy have become more common, as computer and digital technology has advanced and become affordable, and distribution over the internet has become easier.

In the French fantasy novel "Mattew Whiter et la dague de Midas" (2009) by Alexis Pichard, Mattew, a young sorcerer who just discovered he is a sorcerer, is appalled at the magical community's knowing who he is. Trying to comfort him, his talking cat then ironically asks him whether he wants to change names, saying: "do you think Buffy and Harry changed names? Well, they didn't! You are who you are."

In the webcomic Little Alice, the creator frequently mentions Buffy as one of his most prominent influences. Buffy is credited as the creative outlet for the story, characters, and many of the panels.[18]

Buffy is referenced throughout issue #11 of the Marvel Comics series The Unbelievable Gwenpool, in which the titular Gwen Poole is hired by the Mayor of Doodkill to defend his village from a vampire (who turns out to be the dhampir Blade, who nicknames Gwen "Pink Slayer"), mentioning the television he has watched (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) to indicate the best vampire slayers to be teenage girls, to which Gwen thanks him in agreement, stating that they have "seen the same television".

Also in World of Warcraft during the "Brewfest" world event, a human NPC with the name "Anne Summers" can be found as a Cheese Vendor in the event area outside of Ironforge. "Anne" being Buffy's middle name and the name she went by during her summer in Los Angeles and the NPC's status as a cheese vendor referencing when Willow tells Riley "She likes cheese... I'm not saying it's the key to her heart, but Buffy... she likes cheese."

In the video game Fable II, one of the optional quests the Hero can undertake consists of helping a farmer in Brightwood Farm called Giles take revenge upon a bandit called Ripper, or helping Ripper expand his operations by killing Giles. This may be a reference to Rupert 'Ripper' Giles (Farmer Giles' son is called Rupert).

Entertainment Weekly named the show No. 10 on its list of best TV shows in the past 25 years.[23] It also named the season 2 episode "Halloween" #11 on its list of top 25 Holiday Themed Episodes.[24] It also named Joyce Summers's exit on "Buffy" No. 20 on its list of top 25 Farewells. In 2012, the show was listed as No. 1 in the "25 Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years," with a remark on "the show's fierce following."[25]

In Dave Barry's 1999 novel "Big Trouble", main character Elliot Arnold is watching Buffy and eating Cheeze-its. When he receives urgent news and leaves the house, the narrative focuses on Buffy struggling against a vampire..."things didn't look very good for Buffy."

In the 2004 novel, Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris, Sookie Stackhouse has season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on tape, which was originally given to her as a gag gift from her friend Tara Thornton. She lets Eric Northman, a vampire, watch the show.

In November 2011 was announced that Facebook tapped Taiwanese cellphone maker HTC to build a smartphone that has the social network integrated at the core of its being. The phone is code-named "Buffy", after the television vampire slayer.[27]

British YouTuber Phil Lester is a notable fan of the series. He stated that his favorite episodes are Once More, With Feeling and Hush during a fan Q&A.[30] He also mentioned Buffy Summers as his favorite fictional character.[31]

In Jennifer Estep's first book in the Mythos Academy teen series, Touch of Frost, the main character says "I wondered if I was stuck in an insane asylum somewhere, just dreaming all this. Like Buffy." alluding to the episode in the sixth season where Buffy has flashes of being in an insane asylum and is not able to tell which world is real.

What at first appears new is often something remembered. The human mind has trouble categorizing and finding meaning in anything that is truly unique or alien. Good storytellers know that originality is not always a virtue. The construction of meaning is rooted primarily in what we feel to be familiar.

Instead I would like to ask what Martial Arts Studies might reveal about the shows popularity and its enduring legacy decades after its first release. Joss Whedon deserves a huge amount of credit for his ability to tap into young adult interests and insecurities, and to draw from them universal stories about growing up and growing old, finding your place in the world, and then discovering that this is daily process rather than a singular glorious achievement. He deftly wove together horror, comedy, adventure and drama in a way that few have.

Yet even the most casual visitor to the Buffyverse would quickly notice that the martial arts were one of the most important tools employed in telling these stories of victory and stoic defeat. For a demonically empowered group of superhuman predators, the average vampire in these episodes expressed a notable interest in taekwondo. One newly risen fiend even bragged about having studied taekwondo in college! (He did not last long, but I still found the reference fascinating).

Yet how original was this? The 1960s and 1970s generated an entire legion of fearless female heroes and adventures. They seem to have been mostly forgotten in the current crop of Buffy inspired think pieces. It may be the case that Buffy appeared to be very novel to a new generation of fans who had grown up in the 1980s. This was a decade in which the traumas of the Vietnam war ensured a turn towards increasingly masculine heroic figures. It is easy to name the male martial arts and action stars from the period (Bruce Lee, Chuck Norris, Steven Seagal, Van Dam and Sylvester Stallone), but coming up with a list of their female counterparts is more difficult. For a generation of teens in the 1990s, Buffy may have felt very new.

This is where a certain awareness of recent trends in the martial arts becomes especially helpful. As I sit at my desk I can look across my study and see an entire bookshelf full of modern publications on Wing Chun and other forms of Chinese martial arts. If you flip through these books it quickly becomes apparent that their production is not scattered evenly over the last 40 years. Rather they have come in distinct waves. The early and middle years of the 1970s saw the first big wave of Kung Fu books. This was followed up by another wave in the early 1980s.

After revealing parts of his own backstory, Spike proceeds to narrate his first victory. In 1900 he and a small group of fellow vampires had gone to Beijing to revel and feed in the then erupting Boxer Rebellion. As the city burned around them Spike managed to corner a Chinese slayer (who was, as one would expect, a phenomenal martial artist) named Xin Rong, in a Buddhist Temple. Xin Rong, played by the Wushu performer and stunt woman Ming Qiu, repeatedly advanced on Spike with elegant jian techniques, and managed to cut him above one eye. But a random explosion in the street caused her to lose her weapon just as she was about to finish him. Spike used the opening to kill the slayer as she reached for her fallen weapon.

A quick comparative study of the lore surrounding Yim Wing Chun and Buffy reveals both important parallels and differences. Taken as a set these may help to shed light on the growing popularity of both figures at roughly the same time. Both Buffy, the blond cheerleader, and Yim Wing Chun, an adolescent female refugee living in a province far from her birthplace, began their martial journeys as somewhat marginal figures. Obviously, Buffy enjoys a degree of economic privilege that Wing Chun does not share. Yet it is probably significant that both come from single parent homes in societies that values the nuclear family and heteronormativity above almost all else.

It is no coincidence that this happens at the moment of their transition between adolescence and adulthood. Both seize the fertile potential inherent in the moment of liminality and grow into something more than what their parental figures and local social elites anticipated. Both then vanish rather abruptly leaving the audience to contemplate their accomplishments but giving little indication as to what came next.

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