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herinsectreflection · 3 years

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Buffy has a really interesting relationship with its genre. It's always a mash-up of different genres at its core - light horror crossed with comedy, melodrama and superhero comics - but on top of that, each season is infused with another genre, so each has its own very distinct style.

Season one is definitely the heaviest with B movie campy horror, filled with man-eating bugs and puppet monsters. There's a heavy emphasis on Sealed Evil In A Bottle-type villains, like Moloch, the hyena spirits, and of course The Master. This is a style that is present throughout the show, but it's heaviest here.

Season Two is all about the Gothic. It's all old churches and villains living in mansions, extreme melodrama. The doomed romance between Buffy and Angel, filled with intense, passionate declarations. Drusilla walking around in Victorian dress. The ancient curse that is set off in Surprise. The lighting is all darkness and shadows. It's the perfect way to tell this romantic tragedy, using the style of the Gothic to bring us into the story.

Season Three takes its lead from teen movies. There's a lot more brightness and use of pop music montages. There's emphasis on typical American high-school "coming of age" milestones like Homecoming, Prom, 18th birthdays, and Graduation. Entire episodes centre around these (and three of them even make the title). Buffy has to shake off the influence of a "bad girl". Buffy and Angel's relationship, while still melodramatic, is framed less as an epic doomed romance between a vampire and slayer, which is ended because of an ancient curse as in S2, and more as a mundanely doomed romance between a girl and an older guy, which is ended because authority figures disapprove of it. This all makes sense for the season that is all about Buffy coming into her adulthood and throwing off the vestiges of adult authority.

Season Five is the High Fantasy season. The plot centres around a magical macguffin protected by good clerics against an evil god. There are literal Knights riding around on horses talking about their noble destiny, as well as "insane" people who talk in actually very accurate prophecies like Shakespearean fools. There's trolls and magic weapons and a big honking castle suddenly appearing in the premiere. The villain's mooks are referred to as hobbits repeatedly. At the finale, Dawn is literally dressed up in a medieval gown and held hostage atop a high tower, as the archetypal Princess (a dragon even shows up very briefly), with Buffy as the shining Knight coming to rescue her. This ramps up the stakes to genuinely epic proportions, with the fate of middle the earth in the balance. And in a truly brilliant stroke, all this high fantasy is smashed against the brutal mundane reality of Buffy's mother becoming sick and dying, with Buffy helpless to stop it.

(You could also see Dawn as a play on The One Ring - she's an item of great mystical power, she's sought after by the villain, destroying her would save the world, she's precious to the main character, she wonders many times if she is evil by nature. Both stories end with the hero unable to destroy this thing precious to them, though Buffy makes the decision that the show suggests is the action of a true hero - throwing herself into Mount Doom instead.)

Finally, Season Seven is the war movie. There's constant framing of the Scoobies and the Potentials as an army. They refer to assets, arsenals, bases, mutiny, weapons sleeper agents and other military-adjacent terminology. The main fear driving Buffy throughout the season is the idea of not everyone being able to make it, and deaths being inevitable, which is a major theme of a lot of war films.

I find it more difficult to pick one specific genre inspiration for seasons four or six. S4 obviously has elements of college movies, but it doesn't really centre them in the story. Obviously the Initiative and Adam invoke the military, but it doesn't have the "we're all going to die and our sacrifices might mean nothing" feeling that war movies and S7 have. S6 has elements of psychosexual thrillers with the Buffy/Spike dynamic, and borrows a lot from soap operas with stories centered around money troubles, drug addiction, and people being left at altars. There are multiple flavours at work in both seasons, but whatever they are, both seasons have a really distinct and unique style when compared to the rest of the show.

I can't really think of any other show that takes an approach to genre like this (though I'm sure they are out there) - letting one type of story shape an entire season, but then phasing that out and bringing in a new genre the next season. Shows like Community, Doctor Who, or Rick and Morty are big on swapping genres every episode to tell a new story, but Buffy takes a more seasonal approach. I think contributes to this phenomenon in the fandom of seasons being very divisive and particular. Every Buffy fan knows their favourite and least favourite seasons, and that's at least partially because each one has such a unique style atop what we know as Buffy.

#btvs #s1 #s2 #s3 #s4 #s5 #s6 #s7 #genre #meta #general #Buffy The Vampire Slayer

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