Popular culture is saturated in our daily life. It begins from the moment we wake in the morning; our eyes being treated to the sight of the postman’s red and white van out the window, delivering a spell book to your doorstep. While the magic black rectangle buzzes in your pocket informing you of the day ahead.
Buffy the vampire Slayer shaped my perspective of the world. Women are powerful, magic is real and fight for what’s right not what is easy. Buffy “combines the use of magic and technology to create a female hero who can be at once petite and dangerous” (Raffel, 2017 p. 31)
The internet and social media allowed access to diverse worlds of fan culture has bound and welcomed groups of similar individuals to a place where they can share express and love the things they love. ‘Popular culture is a site where collective social understandings are created: a terrain on which the politics of signification are played out in attempts to win people to particular ways of seeing the world’ (Hall, 2009, in Storey, 2015, 4).
Each episode of Buffy the vampire slayer is either an allegory or metaphor the real life demons and struggles we face. The difficulties of growing up from loss of virginity to school shootings, losing a parent, burning of witches, sacrifices, the empowerment of women, struggles in friendships and the daily challenges of merely existing. Buffy the Vampire slayer is key example of breaking female stereotypes in modern discourse. “Buffy is strong, sexy and subversive, not despite her immersion in popular culture but because of it. Alternatively vacuous and vengeful, she is a composite character; her politics cannot be extruded from her post-modernity” (Woofter, 2018, p. 195)
It is evident my taste subscribes to the ideas of cultural proximity meaning “people will gravitate toward media from their own culture” (Kziazek and Webster, 2008, 485). Strong, white female lead, middle class. The show does explore gay/queer relationships however lack prominent cultural diversity, sex and gendered politics.
Buffering Podcast on Instagram, available at <https://www.instagram.com/bufferingcast/>
Buffering Podcast on Instagram, available at <https://www.instagram.com/bufferingcast/>
The migration of old TV shows like Buffy shifting onto new media platforms like Stan and Netflix showcases the relevance and potential of a new analysis. Not only has Buffy landed other streaming services but the fan base has also further extended onto various platforms of media such as podcasts. The Buffering podcast reviews and analyses each episode of Buffy. The hosts, two women; Jenny Owens Youngs and Kristen Russo, recently after its rapid growth has afforded interviews with some of the cast and crew discussing further the social and cultural importance of a show like Buffy and its consistent relevance. “Convergence represents a shift in cultural logic, whereby consumers are encouraged to seek out new information and make connections between dispersed media content” (Jenkins, 2006).
The podcast utilises the utopian concept of the global village as a means to connect with likeminded individuals. Upon the recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, the hosts of Buffering made an announcement “to be more responsible creators, to better centre Black and non-Black POC voices, and to also reduce harm in our own community spaces — isn’t something that has an “end point” but it is work that we know begins with pausing, listening, and challenging the ways in which we’ve moved through spaces in the past (and present!).” In doing so the hosts have since collaborated with a number of POC and Black voices such as screenwriters Alanna Bennett and Ira Madison III regarding race within the television show and the reshaping race casting in the entertainment industry powering a social movement for systemic change. “media representation” has a particularly powerful educational impact on people who have little or no direct contact with members of the groups being treated.” (Cortes, 1987, in Lawson, 2018)
“Popular culture is made by the people, not produced by the culture industry” (Fiske, 1989 in Story)
Sources:
Texts:
Jenkins, H., 2020. Welcome To Convergence Culture. [online] Henry Jenkins. Available at: <http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2006/06/welcome_to_convergence_culture.html> [Accessed 4 September 2020].
John Storey – What is Popular Culture? (Cultural Theory and popular culture: an introduction, Routledge, pp. 1-16)
Kristopher Woofter 2018, ‘I’m Buffy and You’re History: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Contemporary Feminism by Patricia Pender (I.B. Tauris, 2016)’, Monstrum, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 194–197, viewed 5 September 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsdoj&AN=edsdoj.4f9510d15a814cc785fa57115e3f255b>.
Raffel, S 2017, ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Technology, Mysticism, and the Constructed Body’, Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 31–52, viewed 5 September 2020, <https://search-ebscohost-com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=127952166>
Thomas B. Ksiazek and James G. Webster, 2008, Cultural Proximity and Audience Behaviour: The Role of Language in Patterns of Polarization and Multicultural Fluency. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media. 52:3, pp 485-503.
Links:
<https://www.bufferingthevampireslayer.com/about/>
Filmography:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 1997- 2003 [DVD] Directed by J. Whedon. California, USA: Mutant Enemy.
Videos:
1997. Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Title Sequence. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk6iJNSv-vY> [Accessed 6 September 2020].