Monday 8 October 2012

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Buffy vs. Dracula




"You are strange and off-putting. Go now."

A new season, then. There's no need for things to get going immediately, so we need a fun episode to start with, perhaps setting in motion a few minor plot arcs. At first sight these seem to be the tension between Giles' need top return to Blighty and Buffy's need for him to help her, again as Watcher, with her newfound suspicions of "darkness" within her role as Slayer. Oh, and Buffy and Riley are drifting apart; the pre-titles sequence confirms this in the blatant contrast between the speedily shot scenes of her "hunting" and the slow, peaceful scenes of her in bed with Riley. The subtext seems to be that he really isn't her type.

There's another arc thing at the very end, but… let's leave that for the moment.

So, Dracula. To show the most famous vampire in all of fiction, and use the character to make loads of metatextual points about the tropes of the vampire in fiction, is a sign that the show is really riding high with confidence. Obviously, there are parallels with the novel, and early twentieth century stage play but, in a nod to those early episodes which homaged universal movies, the main influence is clearly Tod Browning's Dracula, right down to Xander as Renfield, although there are also nods to the Hammer version in the ridiculously strong erotic charge to the scenes of Dracula feeding on Buffy. Best of all, of course, is the fact that Buffy knows he always comes back and makes sure she kills him properly; she's seen the movies.

There's also something else going on, though: Dracula, with his slow, seductive sexual ways of sucking blood from his invariably female victims almost seeming to imply that all other vampires in Buffy are bloody awful lovers, his unexplained turning into a bat, his three concubines, and his fancy home, simply doesn't fit the definition of a Buffy vampire. We're clearly intended to see him as a vampire from another fictional set of rules (everyone is star struck, which hints at this, and is funny to boot) and, I think, we're intended to see the influence of Anne Rice as well as Bram Stoker. This is Buffy, upholder of the old fashioned evil vampires, taking a dig at the whole vampire romance genre that has since become so ubiquitous. I rather suspect that we're supposed to agree with Spike. A show which mentions the Count from Sesame Street is not a show which means to take Dracula seriously…

So, it's an episode that had to happen, and a rather entertaining bit of meta-textual, and really rather erotic, fun. But what's this? Who's this young girl who everyone seems to think is Buffy's sister…?

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