What are we? adolescence, sex and intimacy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer1

This is a revised, and shortened, version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, 1 April 2002 in New Orleans. The paper was entitled ‘What are we? Adolescent transformations in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’.

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Notes

Chris Richards is the author of Teen Spirits: Music and Identity in Media Education (UCL Press, 1998) and has contributed articles to several edited volumes including David Buckingham (ed.) (1993) Reading Audiences: Young People and the Media (Manchester University Press), Cary Bazalgette & David Buckingham (eds) (1995) In Front of the Children: Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences (British Film Institute), and Cameron McCarthy (ed.) (1999) Sound Identities: Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education (Peter Lang). Correspondence to: [email protected]

This is a revised, and shortened, version of a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, 1 April 2002 in New Orleans. The paper was entitled ‘What are we? Adolescent transformations in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’.

Joss Whedon is the originator and executive producer of the show. He has also written a substantial number of scripts and directed many key episodes.

The reading offered here was originally drafted during the BBC (UK) transmission of season five, particularly during the second half of that season, after ‘Blood Ties’, late 2001, early 2002.

3001—third season, episode one.

The earlier history of this equation between AIDS/HIV and the threat of monstrous invasion is sketched by Peter Redman (1997).

The events of season six bestow considerable gravity on other couples: Xander–Anya, Willow–Tara.

Blood is central to vampire mythology. It is often described in detail in vampire literature or displayed in close‐up (in film and television), making visible the fact of penetration—usually of teeth into necks. Like the ‘money shot’ (the ejaculation of semen, not blood or tears) in hardcore pornography (Williams, 1990), here the appearance of blood seems to offer a compelling sense of bodily connection—and more powerfully so because the visible production of blood, unlike that of semen, does depend on some form of prior penetration. This scene suggests abandonment in orgasm (so intense she has to be rushed to hospital afterwards) and the close up shot of blood welling around the wound in her neck is accompanied by the sounds of penetration and feeding (see DeKelb‐Rittenhouse, 2002).

David Harvey has commented on the importance of such accumulations within domestic space for the construction of a sense of identity in the conditions of postmodernity:

Photographs, particular objects (like a piano, a clock, a chair), and events (the playing of a record of a piece of music, the singing of a song) become the focus of a contemplative memory, and hence a generator of a sense of self that lies outside the sensory overloading of consumerist culture and fashion. The home becomes a private museum to guard against the ravages of time–space compression. (Harvey, 1989, p. 292)

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Notes on contributors

Chris Richards

Chris Richards is the author of Teen Spirits: Music and Identity in Media Education (UCL Press, 1998) and has contributed articles to several edited volumes including David Buckingham (ed.) (1993) Reading Audiences: Young People and the Media (Manchester University Press), Cary Bazalgette & David Buckingham (eds) (1995) In Front of the Children: Screen Entertainment and Young Audiences (British Film Institute), and Cameron McCarthy (ed.) (1999) Sound Identities: Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education (Peter Lang). Correspondence to: [email protected]