Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a Cross Cultural Teaching Platform
Critical Discourse on Buffy from a cross cultural perspective in modern day
Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired on March 10th, 1997 in Canada. It was originally supposed to be a low budget TV show aimed at the horror genre of television, but it quickly turned into something more than that. Growing to be known for it’s cheesy one-liners, tackling issues of growing up in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, mirroring feelings of teens and it’s rather emotional and sometimes intellectually thought provoking discussions, the TV show gained a cult following that followed the TV show up until it’s end. Despite some rough patches within the show and the cast, it taught a lot of valuable lessons throughout its seven seasons to the generation that grew up with it. It tried to shy away from stereotypes and deal with real life issues, whether drug addiction, emotional pressures of growing up, or smashing the hell out of the patriarchy every chance it could.
For the purposes of this paper, we will be focusing on the TV show, not the 1992 movie of the same name (In this author’s opinion, it was so bad that it was almost good). Almost 20 years later and the TV show still captivates millions of people globally. It has become a cultural phenomenon beyond writer, director, and producer Joss Whedon’s wildest expectations. Whedon himself, admitted that this was kind of his goal with the TV show in “response to all the horror movies I had ever seen where some girls walks into a dark room and gets killed. So I decided to make a movie where a blonde girl walks into a dark room and kicks butt instead” (Tracy, 1998, p6)
LITERATURE REVIEW
To support my research in this papers, I will be pulling from several scholarly sources: Julianna Beaudoin, Romanld Fischer, Matthew Pateman, Donna Potts and K. Tracy.
Willow Rosenburg is one of the key figures in the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” television series, as the actress that plays her (Allison Hannigan) landed the role of the Vampire Slayer’s best friend, and while quite a few episode deal with her and her character development, there is one thing that is glaringly absent. The television show sets Willow up as a person with Jewish heritage and despite several quotes throughout the television show that show this (mostly in the early seasons), unless her religion is used as a “plot device” in direct contrast with Christianity, her religion doesn’t factor into the “grand scheme of things” within the scope of the TV show (Pateman 2007), her religion and beliefs are practically non-existant. We also need to look at the issue that “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” enforces an “old, white, christian” viewpoint on the show (Pateman, 2007, Potts 2003).
When dealing with things in an inter-cultural context in the television series, we
also have to look at authors such as Julianna Beaudoin and Donna Potts, who deal with cultural issues such as Angel’s Irish heritage (or lack thereof) upon reaching the Americas. After his transformation into Angelus, and the gypsy curse which gave him his soul back, Angel (As he was called then: he was also known as Angelus and Liam) travelled to the Americas where he ended up losing his Irish heritage and his accent (Potts 2003). Julianna Beaudoin takles the other prominent theme that runs through the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Romani (incorrectly referred to as “gypsy” in previous generations (Beaudoin 2015)
Ronald Fischer has a good point in his 2011 article “Cross-Cultural Training Effects on Cultural Essentialism Beliefs and Cultural Intelligence”. “The increasing diversity in Western Society makes intercultural competency an important skill set for all citizens, especially young people preparing to enter the workforce.” (Section 1) Fischer also points out that “The goal of intercultural training is to prepare individuals to deal effectively with cultural differences.” (Section 1.1), pretty much solidifying that inter-cultural awareness is a necessity in today’s society.
One of my sources also made reference to what is known as a “cultural plunge” (Nieto 2006). What this refers to is completely and totally immersing yourself in a foreign culture on their own turf. “Most plunges usually last about one hour . . .” (Nieto 2006) and they force an individual to actually experience the culture in order to gain a wider understanding of the culture which they are trying to gain a wider cultural understanding of. It forces the participant to adapt and it forces the participant outside of what is normally their comfort zone.
HYPOTHESIS
By current day’s politically correct Standards, Buffy can not be used as an inter-cultural teaching tool.
RESEARCH METHOD
The focus of this paper will be critical discourse and textual analysis with a slight anthropological twist. I will be examining articles that other scholars have written, as well as using my own knowledge to fill in the gaps for what is not covered.
METHOD OF DATA COLLECTION
The data in this paper was collected through the Macewan Library Database. I did a general search for basic terms like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and coupled it with terms such as “cross cultural”, “teaching”, and “platform”. When I began having issues pulling up resources with the MacEwan Library Database, I began pulling up articles through Google Scholar and picked out titles that jumped out at me.
DATA ANALYSIS
To analyze the data in this project in a textual analysis, I picked out the six top results from the list I assembled and asked a series of questions: What is this paper trying to tell me, does it have any relevance to what I’m researching, What does it say specifically about the Buffy TV series? What does it say about the inter-cultural nuances and relationships contained within? Is a cultural awareness relevant to today’s society? Do we need such a thing? Is it beneficial?
DISCUSSION:
Given the standards of today when it comes to being politically correct, not wanting to offend or upset anyone (even accidentally), and the shift in cultural norms; from what we have seen in the above resources and information, we can clearly see that while “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” definitely tries to be culturally sensitive (and may have been considered to be at the time), it misses the mark more than once and in rather large ways. By today’s standards, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer cannot and should not be used as a cross cultural teaching tool, and in fact, if used in this respect, may actually cause more harm than help. We can see this conclusion clearly in the way Willow Rosenburg is written to be Jewish, but doesn’t really acknowledge this unless it is in direct opposition to Christianity or serves some other purpose just as “plot developing”, or the way that the television how deals with the Romani and issues surrounding their negative stereotypes. We can even see this in the way that the series “Americanizes” Angel/Angelus once he moves to the Americas. One cannot, however, deny that the show absolutely tries to be culturally sensitive and relevant, but it does so at a time in which this particular outlook was considered “culturally appropriate” in the form that it is in.
This show did what it was supposed to, what it was designed to: it was a cultural phenomenon unlike anything we’d seen up to that point, with its feminist views, challenging gender norms and smashing the patriarchy every chance that it got. It inspired hundreds of thousands of people (we can see this through a cursory Google search) to be more than they were. It spoke to my generation in a way very few shows could. It inspired countless hours of debate in online communities, research papers and millions of pieces of artwork. It also spawned a graphic novel saga that continued this series well past the television show and untold numbers of compendiums, guides and collectibles.
On a more personal note, this show helped me through a rather rough time in my life. When this show first came out, I was on the verge of trying to commit suicide, so I think you can imagine exactly what this show means to me. It let me know that everything was going to be all right, and that there was eventually an end to what I was going through at that time in my teens, and I feel like I know the characters intimately. I have continued to watch the series over and over; usually I marathon the series when I do. What I discovered while writing this paper was that there is more to this show than just what they show on the surface, there are more than two or three “levels” of meaning to it, and it forced me to critically examine this series in regards to cross-cultural intonation.
While we do see something kind of like a “cultural plunge” at the end of Season Two of Buffy The Vampire Slayer when dealing with Angelus’ plot arch, it cannot be truly said to show such, despite how hard the television show tries to show that. The series dips into the Romani curse, and the whole arch, which includes one of the secondary main characters Jenny Calendar (Robia LaMorte). At the time, this show was fresh, inventive, and had a unique way of looking at things that were considered culturally appropriate in a cross-cultural setting, but it is sadly lacking when held up to the politically correct standards of today, especially when one takes into account that those standards are continuously changing, evolving and never the same from one moment to the next.
CONCLUSION
In the scope of this research, the results are pretty much only relevant with this current sampling, which is by no means a complete sampling. Further on down the line, this may be a different story. It should also be noted that this research is for an introductory course, and as such is extremely limiting in the amount if time and words that can be spent on discussing the topic. More research may be needed at a later date in order to come to a more solid conclusion on this topic, given the limited scope of this paper. Can Buffy the Vampire Slayer be used as a cross-cultural teaching platform tool? In the opinion of this researcher: given the evidence presented at the time of research and the sample articles used, the series cannot be used in this context. It makes a great pop-culture phenomenon, and it does teach several amazing lessons (which are outside the scope of this paper), but it is the opinion of this researcher that the cross-cultural teaching applications are only on the surface of this television series.
It was rather fun to do this research, as it happens to be for a TV show that is rather close to my heart. It is something I know well, and it’s something that all of my friends come to me for if they need information on it. With that said, the research itself was rather disappointing. I was hoping that I could use this show as an example of inter-cultural sensitivity. On the surface, it appears to be, but when one digs a little deeper, there are certain issues that become apparent. If I could, I’d take an entire semester to study this topic in further to gain a more accurate opinion, but this topic and the research provided definitely has me wanting to dig deeper. Perhaps that is an idea for another major term paper.
Works Cited:
Beaudoin, Julianna. (2015). Exploring the Contemporary Relevance of “Gypsy” Stereotypes in the Buffyverse. Journal of Popular Culture Volume 48 (Issue 2), pages 313–327 (15 pages). Retrieved from: http://library.macewan.ca/library-search/detailed-view/sih/102655551?query=Buffy+the+Vampire+Slayer
Fischer, Ronald (2011). Cross Cultural Training Effects on Cultural Essentialism Beliefs and Cultural Intelligence. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Volume 35 (Issue 6), pages 767–775. Retrieved from: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0147176711000794
Nieto, Jesus (2006), The Cultural Plunge: Cultural Immersion as a Means of Promoting Self-Awareness and Cultural Sensitivity among Student Teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly Volume 33 (Issue 1) pages 75–84. Retrieved from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/23478735.pdf
Pateman, Matthew (2007). “That was Nifty”: Willow Rosenburg Saves the World in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Shofar, volume 25 (Issue 4), 64 pages. Retrieved from: https://library.macewan.ca/library-search/detailed-view/edsjsr/edsjsr.42944415
Potts, Donna L. (2003). Convents, Claddagh Rings, and Even The Book of Kells: Representing the Irish in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Simile: Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education, Volume 3 (Issue 2), Pages unknown. Retrieved from:https://library.macewan.ca/library-search/detailed-view/mzh/2004361535#fulltext_html
Tracy K. 1998. The Girl’s Got Bite: The unofficial Guide to Buffy’s World. LosAngeles, CA: Renaissance.
