Seven Seasons of Buffy: Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors Discuss Their Favorite Television Show (Smart Pop series) by Gilene Yeffeth
Authors: Gilene Yeffeth
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evidence. The protagonists were marginalized kids, and their adult mentor a mere high-school librarian (and a bit of a toff), a marginal adult without real-world credibility. Buffy hid her calling from her mother and from the adult world at large. Despite her extraordinary powers, she and her friends (and her viewers) instinctively knew the rules of young adult powerlessness: “They won’t believe us anyway,” and “We better leave everything as we found it, or we’ll be in big trouble.” It’s okay to save the world, but not to change it.
But something about Buffy kept me watching. From the first episode, the show was playing with the conventions of the Elastic Trespass tale, subverting the genre traditions in subtle (and sometimes obvious) ways. In Joss Whedon’s hands, the elastic of middle-class reality wound up stretching and twisting into new and unexpected forms.
One of the ironclad rituals of the Trespass is the Passage of Disbelief, the moment where the protagonist says, “This can’t be happening!” Now, we’ve all read and watched a million versions of this scene.And not only main characters have to come to believe that the Trespass is real, but often they must convince their friends and parents, the police, newspaper reporters, government officials, and whoever else they need help from. But it’s a waste of the viewers’ time, because we’ve seen the movie trailers or read the back of the book, and we already know the vampires or aliens or killer tomatoes are real. We just want to skip to the part where everyone’s on board, especially to avoid dialog like “There must be a rational explanation for all this!” or that most embarrassing line in any science fiction movie: “This is like something out of a science fiction movie!”
Thankfully, the writers of Buffy employ a number of strategies to subvert this little ritual, using humor and understatement to breeze past the usual protestations of disbelief.
Buffy herself, of course, has had a movie prequel to adjust to her place in the fantastic scheme of things. In the pilot (“Welcome to the Hellmouth,” 1-1), she takes over Giles’s recitation of a Slayer’s duties with, “‘. . . the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil’ blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it, okay? . . . I’ve both been there, and done that.” For the Slayer herself, at least, no time is wasted in disbelief. 1
At the end of this scene, Xander emerges from the library stacks, having overheard Giles’s exposition, and condenses his initial Passage of Disbelief to a simple “What?”
After Willow and Xander are saved from the Master’s henchmen in the pilot’s conclusion (“The Harvest,” 1-2), they receive a full briefing from Giles. But it is Buffy who mockingly provides the ritual litany of “rational” explanations.
X ANDER : “Okay, this is where I have a problem. See, because we’re talking about vampires. We’re having a talk with vampires in it.”
W ILLOW : “Isn’t that what we saw last night?”
B UFFY : “No, no, those weren’t vampires. They were just guys in thunder need of a facial. Or maybe they had rabies. It could have been rabies. And that guy turning to dust? Just a trick of light . . .”
W ILLOW : “Oh, I—I need to sit down.”
B UFFY : “You are sitting down.”
W ILLOW : “Oh. Good for me.”
And thus the original Scoobies’ Passages of Disbelief are dealt with, once and for all. Five minutes of screen time later, Xander is ready for action, uttering a line that could be from any Buffy episode of any season: “So what’s the plan? We saddle up, right?”
Done and done.
In most Trespass stories, the demarcation between those who know the secret and those who are blissfully unaware is carefully maintained. Initiation is an important ritual. But in Buffy , that border is shown to be delightfully fuzzy. When Jenny Calendar is
But something about Buffy kept me watching. From the first episode, the show was playing with the conventions of the Elastic Trespass tale, subverting the genre traditions in subtle (and sometimes obvious) ways. In Joss Whedon’s hands, the elastic of middle-class reality wound up stretching and twisting into new and unexpected forms.
One of the ironclad rituals of the Trespass is the Passage of Disbelief, the moment where the protagonist says, “This can’t be happening!” Now, we’ve all read and watched a million versions of this scene.And not only main characters have to come to believe that the Trespass is real, but often they must convince their friends and parents, the police, newspaper reporters, government officials, and whoever else they need help from. But it’s a waste of the viewers’ time, because we’ve seen the movie trailers or read the back of the book, and we already know the vampires or aliens or killer tomatoes are real. We just want to skip to the part where everyone’s on board, especially to avoid dialog like “There must be a rational explanation for all this!” or that most embarrassing line in any science fiction movie: “This is like something out of a science fiction movie!”
Thankfully, the writers of Buffy employ a number of strategies to subvert this little ritual, using humor and understatement to breeze past the usual protestations of disbelief.
Buffy herself, of course, has had a movie prequel to adjust to her place in the fantastic scheme of things. In the pilot (“Welcome to the Hellmouth,” 1-1), she takes over Giles’s recitation of a Slayer’s duties with, “‘. . . the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil’ blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it, okay? . . . I’ve both been there, and done that.” For the Slayer herself, at least, no time is wasted in disbelief. 1
At the end of this scene, Xander emerges from the library stacks, having overheard Giles’s exposition, and condenses his initial Passage of Disbelief to a simple “What?”
After Willow and Xander are saved from the Master’s henchmen in the pilot’s conclusion (“The Harvest,” 1-2), they receive a full briefing from Giles. But it is Buffy who mockingly provides the ritual litany of “rational” explanations.
X ANDER : “Okay, this is where I have a problem. See, because we’re talking about vampires. We’re having a talk with vampires in it.”
W ILLOW : “Isn’t that what we saw last night?”
B UFFY : “No, no, those weren’t vampires. They were just guys in thunder need of a facial. Or maybe they had rabies. It could have been rabies. And that guy turning to dust? Just a trick of light . . .”
W ILLOW : “Oh, I—I need to sit down.”
B UFFY : “You are sitting down.”
W ILLOW : “Oh. Good for me.”
And thus the original Scoobies’ Passages of Disbelief are dealt with, once and for all. Five minutes of screen time later, Xander is ready for action, uttering a line that could be from any Buffy episode of any season: “So what’s the plan? We saddle up, right?”
Done and done.
In most Trespass stories, the demarcation between those who know the secret and those who are blissfully unaware is carefully maintained. Initiation is an important ritual. But in Buffy , that border is shown to be delightfully fuzzy. When Jenny Calendar is
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