The Influence of Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Indication of Buffy’s influence on pop culture has been felt strongly long after the show ended its run in 2003. Outside of the TV series, the Buffyverse has been officially expanded and elaborated on by authors and artists in the so-called “Buffyverse Expanded Universe.” Dark Horse has published the Buffy comics since 1998 and in 2003. Whedon wrote an eight-issue miniseries for Dark Horse Comics titled Fray about a Slayer in the future. Following the publication of Tales of the Vampires in 2004, Dark Horse Comics halted publication on Buffyverse-related comics and graphic novels. The company produced Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight with forty issues from March 2007 to January 2011, picking up where the television show left off—taking the place of an eighth canonical season. The first story arc is also written by Whedon, and is called “The Long Way Home” which has been widely well-received, with circulation rivalling industry leaders DC and Marvel’s top-selling titles. Also after “The Long Way Home” came other story arcs like Faith’s return in “No Future for You” and a Fray cross-over in “Time of Your Life.” Dark Horse later followed Season Eight with Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine, starting in 2011, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Ten, which began in 2014.
Buffy’s influence has also reached scholastic levels as well. The show is notable for attracting the interest of scholars of popular culture, as a subset of popular culture studies, and some academic settings include the show as a topic of literary study and analysis. National Public Radio describes Buffy as having a “special following among academics, some of whom have staked a claim in what they call ‘Buffy Studies.” Though not widely recognized as a distinct discipline, the term “Buffy studies” is commonly used amongst the peer-reviewed academic Buffy-related writings. The influence of Buffy on the depiction of vampires across popular culture has also been noted by anthropologists such as A. Asbjørn Jøn. Popular media researcher Rob Cover argued that Buffy and Angel speak to contemporary attitudes to identity, inclusion and diversity, and that critiquing the characters’ long-narrative stories lends insight into the complexity of identity in the current era and the landscape of social issues in which those identities are performed. Buffy eventually led to the publication of around twenty books and hundreds of articles examining the themes of the show from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives, including sociology, Speech Communication, psychology, philosophy, and women’s studies. In a 2012 study by Slate, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was named the most studied pop culture work by academics, with more than 200 papers, essays, and books devoted to the series.
Buffy’s impact has also influenced other forms of media, especially genre shows that built followings in their own right that are quite similar. Commentators of the entertainment industry including The Village Voice, PopMatters, Allmovie, The Hollywood Reporter, and The Washington Post have cited Buffy as “influential.” Some of these publications even cite it as the ascent of television into its golden age. Stephanie Zacharek, in the Village Voice, wrote “If we really are in a golden age of television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a harbinger.” Robert Moore of Popmatters also expressed these sentiments, writing “TV was not art before Buffy, but it was afterwards,” suggesting that it was responsible for re-popularizing long story arcs on primetime television.
The show’s effect on programming was quickly evident. Autumn of 2003 saw several new shows going into production in the U.S. that featured strong females who are forced to come to terms with supernatural power or destiny while trying to maintain a normal life. These post-Buffy shows include Dead Like Me and Joan of Arcadia. Bryan Fuller, the creator of Dead Like Me, said that “Buffy showed that young women could be in situations that were both fantastic and relatable, and instead of shunting women off to the side, it puts them at the center.” In the United Kingdom, the lessons learned from the impact of Buffy influenced the revived Doctor Who series (2005–present), and executive producer Russell T. Davies probably has the best quote to sum up the influence of the series as whole and the influence of its creator:
“Buffy the Vampire Slayer showed the whole world, and an entire sprawling industry, that writing monsters and demons and end-of-the world is not hack-work, it can challenge the best. Joss Whedon raised the bar for every writer—not just genre/niche writers, but every single one of us”.
20 years is a long time to leave your mark. I’m not quite sure anyone involved back in 1997 really knew what the show would become and how important it would be. The series continues to engage fans all over the world and even initiates a new generation of fans thanks to Netflix, Hulu and various forms of syndication. It means one thing to be a pop cultural phenomenon during your initial run but to continue to endure and stand as a classic puts Buffy the Vampire Slayer in a league of its own.
