Buffy at Play - Crafty Storytelling

The notion that we are perpetually stuck in the horror that was high school, that, as writer and Whedon’s fellow executive producer Jane Espenson puts it, “There is no one who coasts through [adolescence] without horrible psychic wounds,” relates to the persistence of myths (Buffy “S3 Overview” 3.3). What Whedon calls the “central myth of high school as horrific” is all bound up in “the humiliation, the alienation, the confusion” that is life (Buffy “Interview” 1.1). The ongoing formation of new mythologies, not just the perpetuation of ancient ones, and the recurrence of archetypal figures from heroes to tricksters, all play a part in both the formation and success of Buffy. Myths represent a convergence, a coalescence of meaning in an otherwise apparently diffused and meaningless existence. Probably the most important factor in myth as it relates to Buffy is the manner in which myth allows the reader/audience to explore the possibilities and impossibilities of meaning outside of the framework which represents the often vexing strictures of “reality”.
Northrop Frye asserts that myths stick together because there are “cultural forces” which impel them to do so (179). He further explains that wish-fulfillment, as evidenced in romantic narratives such as Don Quixote, are an outgrowth of myth, and that there is an “encyclopedic tendency” toward myth in both folktale and fable (12). The oral tradition of storytelling, subsequently literature, and now film and television thus evolved out of myth, and are prone to return to it. How this relates to Buffy is explained by Simpson:
For ancient people with a dearth of information, myths explained what humans didn’t understand. For modern people with a surfeit of information, much of it conflicting and confusing, [telemyths], at their best, probe a deeper reality, the moral ambiguities and moments of truth [with a lower case t] that illuminate our experiences as they did our ancestors. One culture’s oral tradition is another’s boob tube. (2)
In Buffy, we can see how myths are still functioning, why we need them, why, in an age of globalization and post-structuralism, they are still relevant. They explore that moral ambiguity which is the domain of the trickster, both in terms of the way a story is told and the construction of it .
To understand the telling and construction of Buffy as a trickster entity, we must look at its nebulous origins. The trickster is polytropic, as Hyde tells us, “changing his skin or shifting his shape as the situation requires” (62). The writing of Buffy, in terms of authorship, is a perhaps unprecedented mixture of intertextuality and hyperauthorship, a polyvalent exercise from any viewpoint. Creator Joss Whedon assembled an often fluctuating team of co-writers who took turns being the lead writer for any given episode. Each episode was then filtered through the team, who gave creative input, and then Whedon himself gave the final approval, often with some additions of his own. Writer and executive producer Jane Espenson relates that whenever someone raves about a particular line from one of the shows she “wrote” it is usually one of Whedon’s additions. Many of the jokes, in particular, were either written by him or pitched when working out the story (Buffy “Buffyspeak“ 3.3).
This process is a somewhat inverted version of hyperauthorship, in which the creative process, as Epstein describes in his letter to Motokiyu about the Yasusada hoax, is “dispersed among several virtual personalities which cannot be reduced to a single "real" personality“ ( Feb. 6 par 4). Yet with Buffy, this is done openly, and the multiple personalities come from “real” people. Furthermore, the practice is then turned around and funneled back through the original author/creator’s voice, somewhat like an hourglass. The progression is further expanded by the input of fan opinion, mostly through chat rooms via the internet, and then impressively reduced by the authorial willingness to be receptive to such communal pressure. Thus polytropic, trickster-like, the writing “colors [it]self to fit [its] surroundings” (Hyde 53)
Furthermore, the writing team is often inspired by other writers or directorial style icons, frequently playing the mimic, often parodically, sometimes with great finesse. Matters of intertextuality are extensive. The Buffy scripts, in their entirety, represent a considerable catalog of not only pop culture references, but also Hollywood, literary, mythological, and legendary history. There are entire websites devoted to chronicling every referent, from Star Wars and Star Trek quips to Shakespeare and William Burroughs (Buffyguide, Buffyology). The basic vampire construct itself relies heavily on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but as Nina Auerbach states, “Every age has it’s own vampire” (qtd. In Wilcox 18). The character of Buffy herself is based on Whedon’s perception that there were “so many horror movies where there was that blonde girl who always got herself killed.” He wanted her to “take back the night [a phrase itself gleaned from rape awareness campaigns],” and created an environment in which “she’s not only ready for [the monster, but] she trounces him” (Buffy “Interview” 1.1).
After thus inverting the horror genre, Whedon and company devote much of the first season, and a considerable part of the second season, to recycled horror themes, including The Bride of Frankenstein (“Some Assembly Required” 2.2) I Was a Teenage Werewolf (“Phases“ 2.15), The Creature from the Black Lagoon (“Go Fish“ 2.20), Carrie (“Witch“ 1.3), Alien (“Bad Eggs“ 2.12 and “Ted“ 2.11), A Nightmare on Elm Street (“Nightmares” 1.10), and the Chucky movies (“The Puppet Show“ 1.9), to name just a few. As the seasons progress, Buffy takes on the horrific elements of fairy tales, at times specifically (Hansel and Gretel in “Gingerbread” 3.11, Little Red Riding Hood in “Helpless“ 3.12), at times allegorically (the Kindestod in “Killed by Death” 2.18, and the Gentlemen in “Hush” 4.10).
But for all the seeming dreadfulness, each of these is executed with such dry humor and irony that we never lose sight of the way that the writing plays with us. Buffy is not just about horror. David Boreanaz, the actor who plays the vampire Angel, explains, “You can’t really pin Buffy as an action show or a dramatic series or a comedy [or horror or romance]; it has elements of all of that [and] breaks it up. One moment you can be enthralled by the adventure, the next you can be saddened by the drama,” and the moment after that you are laughing until you cry. (Buffy “Interview” 1.1) In so doing, the show “appears on the edge, or just beyond existing borders, classifications, and categories,” as Hynes tells us a trickster would (34).
One episode, “Restless”, breaks down the very boundaries of plot construction by engaging in a series of dream sequences. While still drawing on textual styles and motifs including Stephen Soderberg’s The Lymie and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Whedon and company throw in Tom Clancy novels, Death of a Salesman, 1930’s horror films, Barbara Stanwyck-style acting, and a host of Freudian dream metaphors, just to give a sampling (Buffy “Director‘s Commentary” 4.6) . While the dreams expand on and develop the existing storyline, they represent a hodgepodge of images and ideas redolent of popular culture random sampling which are accessible even to those unfamiliar with the characters or plot. We see how, through the medium of dreams, and the way that they are inherently intertextual, a text can “give lie to the inconvenient world of fact” and explore the “otherness” which Hynes associates with “metaplay” (214).