Research Project

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an American television series that had aired from March 1999 to 2008 who actress Sarah Michelle Gellar plays as a female vampire slayer. The film genre of Buffy the vampire slayer is supernatural, horror, fantasy and action genre.

 

The trailer is represented in a verity of different ways throughout. For instance, during the first minute of the trailer all of the characters are introduced. The first actual sentence we hear from the main character Buffy is, “I can’t have a job, I just want to date” Buffy is represented as an average teenager  this is intentionally shown so that the audience could gather a sense of realism of Buffy and show that she’s just an actual typical ‘boyfriend hunting teenager’. The first minute of the text stereotypes the typical blonde American teenager who behavior reflects towards that stereotype, for example not caring about working, partying and just dating.
After that one minute, for the rest of the clip they represent Buffy in a whole different way. They represent Buffy as a strong sexy female main character who’s constantly holding a weapon to allow us to understand her role, also Buffy says at 1:54 “I’m trying to protect all I can”, this allows the audience to recognise Buffy as  the ‘heroine’ and also gives them an understanding of what’s going on. 
They are representing Buffy as symbol of empowerment towards females. But also if you watch the trailer carefully you will notice that the rest of the females are not represented in that way, the other females are represented as ‘blonde bimbos, a witch, the sexual hysteric and a madwoman’. Buffy is shown as a positive female and promotes feminism, going against typical female stereotypes such as female fragility and what they can and can’t do as females. Buffy The Vampire Slayer successfully represents a female role model who displays many of the traditionally heroic ideals associated with masculinity while still retaining her femininity.

The type of audience that the show Buffy the vampire attracts is both males and females, for instance Buffy is always seen as looking good, dressed up with hair and makeup done even when she is seen fighting against mainly evil male vampires. This is done intentional for women to envy and what to be like her, female audiences whilst watching this could look up to Buffy and indentify themselves by watching Buffy and also allowing themselves to escape and divert the usual stereotypes of women and be the strong women who they want to be.
Also Buffy being a good looking blonde is also done intentionally for the male gaze, to have a wider range of male audience, some men could have the fantasy of a strong blonde female character that is constantly fighting evil other men, wishing that Buffy could be their female sidekick like within other movies, this could be seen as pleasurable towards males.  These can relate to the theory of Blumer and Katz.
The genre of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is mainly between fantasy and horror to challenge ideologies regarding the heroic stereotype that has always been around, and is a strong leading character due to the multiple levels of her identity that I spoke about previously. This display of gender bending makes a new model of heroism that challenges and changes the patriarchal system by establishing a new gender hierarchy where women are given greater identities.
The Mise en scene that is used throughout the trailer are weapons that are used by Buffy, this is to allow the audience to recognise that she is the main character that is Buffy and that she is in charge and the one that has the power. Also the evil characters are all vampires and demons; they allow us to recognise this by the costumes, blood and teeth. Also the type of narrative is immediately recognizable within the trailer due to the action codes that are shown in the trailer such as the scenes of violence and showing the characters that are seen as either the villains or heroes.

The camera angles that are mainly used throughout the trailer are medium length shots of the characters, this is done to mainly focus on the intense facial expression that are used mainly throughout the trailer and also to show good body language.
The type of music that is used throughout the trailer is rock music, this is done to show influence the type of attitude that Buffy is trying to represent to us. This type of attitude that is shown is an ‘I am powerful’ look. And the type of music that is used influences that attitude and style that they want us the audience to pick up on.