Ingenuity you can still sink your teeth into

Your likes and dislikes and your perceptions are tempered by experience as you get older, so your reactions to what you see can be radically different. Something you once thought was the epitome of cool can seem completely mindless 10 years down the line.

I’ve recently been re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I adored when I was in my 20s.What strikes me the most is how little my view of it has changed in comparison to how I might react to other shows I hadn’t seen in a decade or more.

I thought Buffy was something special back in 1997; and I still do now.

It’s beautifully written, with layer upon layer of metaphor, morality and message all wrapped up in teenage angst and fighting the baddies. And it has a strong female central character who really is strong, rather than just being a sassy hook for the boys or a producer’s strained idea of something a bit different.

Buffy started the fashion for cool teen vampire movies. And it’s deeply unfortunate that the young people of today get the likes of the Twilight saga with its simpering heroine mooning over the good-looking vampire boy who treats her badly, rather than a woman who wouldn’t let anyone – undead or not - walk all over her.

It’s a step backwards when so much more can be learned from Buffy than ‘kids like vampire shows’.

I’m not the only one to think that. The series is the most studied pop culture work in academia, and it always features in any lists of the best TV shows of all time.

Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies once commented that the standard of Buffy “raised the bar for every writer – not just niche/genre writers, but every single one of us”.

The title reflects another reason why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was something different.

Its creator, Joss Whedon, having watched many a horror film in which an empty-headed bimbo-type goes to investigate a suspicious noise and you just know she’s serialkiller fodder, thought ‘wouldn’t it be good if, just for once, she was the one you should be scared of ?’.

No one is going to take a little blonde cheerleader called Buffy seriously, are they? Even though we all know you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.

Quite a few people did, and didn’t watch the series simply because of its name.

I like to think that Whedon still has a little giggle every now and then over the irony of that.

Readers who submit articles must agree to our terms of use. The content is the sole responsibility of the contributor and is unmoderated. But we will react if anything that breaks the rules comes to our attention. If you wish to complain about this article, contact us here