8/28/2023 0 Comments Eddie jemison which tv shows buffy"I liked the fact that Buffy was the one who makes the monster scream, as opposed to the other way around," says Becky Darke, a podcaster and writer on film, horror and 90s pop culture. When Whedon first envisioned Buffy in the original 1992 film of the same name, before developing the series for Warner Bros' newly created WB network (now called CW), he wanted to subvert the pretty blonde stereotype of a young woman whose sole purpose in horror movies had been to scream and be murdered. Specifically, it took teenage girls seriously. "It felt like it was saying, 'we think you are interesting, grown-up people who want to be interested in interesting grown-up things,'" says Pateman. Sure, it was mostly set in a high school but compared to the in-some-ways equivalent Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, it took its audience more seriously, with its dark humour and complex characterisation. "It felt like a really smart, witty, well put together and incredibly fresh piece of television unlike anything else that I was aware of at the time," Pateman tells BBC Culture. He has subsequently written a book, The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, along with a book about Whedon's work. He began including it as part of a popular culture class he taught in the early 2000s, then later in 2006 made it a core feature of his "televisual narratives" module. Professor Matthew Pateman, head of English and creative arts at Edge Hill University, first caught on to Buffy as a lecturer in his late 20s. Buffy Summers was a badass teen goddess, and I worshipped the hellish ground she slayed on.īut now, 25 years ago this week since it first premiered in the US, a cultural reappraisal is happening as fans have increasingly found themselves confronted with certain questions about the show: does it still hold up as the important piece of groundbreaking, feminist television it was once heralded as, in the cold light of 2022? How do they square their ardent affection for the iconic cult series with its more problematic elements? And given the disturbing accusations made by the cast about its creator Joss Whedon and his allegedly "toxic" and "not appropriate" behaviour on set, to what extent should the art be separated from the artist – or not – in this case? And for me, as for many a schoolgirl and boy at the time, tuning into Buffy became a religious endeavour. With each new episode and season following the superpowered escapades of Buffy, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, it acquired a bigger and ever more passionate fanbase. – The 100 greatest TV series of the 21st Century Limited to five terrestrial channels in our household, I didn't catch the original British premiere on Sky One – but when it then launched on the BBC, more than a year after its US debut, on 30 December 1998 at 8pm, my brothers and I were glued to our seats to watch Welcome to the Hellmouth, the feature-length season-one opener. As a UK-based Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan, I can remember the first time I was acquainted with the now era-defining show about a Californian high school girl with the job of protecting humankind from various bloodsuckers, demons and supernatural forces.
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