Matthew Pateman
Introduction
[1] This special edition of Slayage is an important
moment, not only in Buffy studies,
but in television studies more generally. It is important, not because it
heralds a new approach to the subject, but because it demonstrates the extent
to which the consideration of aesthetics is inherent in and central to nearly
all serious assessment of television drama.
Sarah Cardwell’s recent essay ‘Television aesthetics’ in Critical Studies in Television, makes
the claim that aesthetics is ‘a relatively recent innovation in the broader field of television
studies’ (72). And, indeed, with very notable exceptions, explicit engagement
with the aesthetic dimension of television drama has been limited in critical
works. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the most important is
television studies’ growth from Film studies and Literary studies where aesthetics as a critical tool was rejected as
either ahistorical or elitist or both. It has taken a long time for what
Eagleton has called the ‘ideology of the aesthetic’[1] to
allow its re-introduction in various guises back into cultural criticism more
generally.
[2] However,
from its inception, Buffy
studies has involved itself with questions of aesthetics. Two of the
three first essays published on Buffy
were explicit in their aesthetic concerns. Rhonda Wilcox’s seminal essay
‘“There will never be a very special Buffy”:
Buffy and the monsters of teen life’[2]
seriously considered the use of symbolism as a technique of social engagement.
And Michael Adams’s ‘Slayer-Slang’ made language use (and therefore script
writing) the central concern of his argument.[3] From
that point, aesthetics has been a recurring theme in Buffy scholarship. A brief sample of some of the work would include
the following: ‘“They always mistake me for the character I play!”: Transformation, identity and role-playing in the
Buffyverse (and a defence of fine acting)’ by Ian Shuttleworth’[4]; S.
Renee Dechert’s ‘“My boyfriend’s in the band!” Buffy and the rhetoric of music[5]; ‘A
reflection on ugliness’ by Charlaine Harris[6]; Robert
A. Davis’s magisterial ‘Buffy the Vampire
Slayer and the pedagogy of fear’[7] Janet
Halfyard’s equally splendid ‘Love, death, curses and reverses (in F major):
Music, gender and identity in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer and Angel’[8]; and
Sue Turnbull’s keynote address and subsequent article, ‘“Not just another Buffy paper”: Towards an aesthetics of
television’[9] There have also been the recent monographs, Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the
Vampire Slayer by Rhonda Wilcox[10], and my
own The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer[11]
[3] This small
selection, and there are scores more essays and papers that could have been
highlighted, demonstrates that Buffy
as a programme has fostered an appreciation of its aesthetic dimension.
Clearly, this has been aligned with a whole range of thematic concerns. And
this is where the contribution of Buffy
studies to television scholarship more widely will come to be seen as so
important. Scholars working on Buffy
(as well as Angel and Firefly) have taken seriously the
efforts of Joss Whedon and his team to provide intelligent, thoughtful and
good-looking television. While the look and sound of the show can be thought of
as ancillary to the story (although the story as narrative is still, of course,
a part of the aesthetics), this is to miss the fundamental connection between
those production values and the emotional strength of the shows—an emotional
sincerity that is at the heart of most of Whedon’s endeavours.
[4] So Buffy scholarship insists on the
artistry of the show as a key aspect of any critical investigation. By
foregrounding this part of the experience of Buffy, television studies gains a valuable tool. Aesthetics becomes
the cornerstone of criticism. The enormous range of methodological applications
of aesthetics ensures that it is not some monolithic burden, but rather a
wonderfully flexible, and theoretically and thematically sensitive approach
that augments arguments seemingly distant its concerns.
[5] The essays
here illustrate the diversity of aesthetically-oriented criticism, as well as
providing for the beginnings of a typology of Buffy criticism, contributing as they do, to the emerging themes
and traditions of this young area of research.
[6] Leigh
Clemons’s essay ‘Real vampires don’t
wear shorts: The aesthetics of fashion
in Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ provides an analysis of the ways in which
the characters’ involvement with fashion impacts upon their different meanings
in the show. By relating current research into the field of fashion and fashion
theory to the culturally polyvalent readings of the characters, Clemons draws
the aesthetics of dress into the reading of a television show via the tripartite
interaction of costume design, characterisation and plot development. By
focussing on fashion as a specific subset of dress more generally, Clemons’s
essay also alerts us to the ways in which Buffy
is able to offer commentary upon fashion internally, as well as being itself a
site of historical analysis. So we see in her essay the ways in which fashion
enables part of the actors’ performance of their characters, and the
characters’ performances of themselves. The relation between fashion and
performativity, characterisation and the aesthetics of appearance locates
Clemons’s essay in a group of Buffy scholars
whose interests vary widely, but who nevertheless regard the aesthetic aspect
of characterisation as vital. Patricia Biezsk’s assessment of vampire dress and
style in ‘Vampire hip: Style as subcultural expression in Buffy the
Vampire Slayer’[12] is an
excellent essay that locates style and fashion in the context of subcultural
introjections into dominant modes of behaviour in a manner similar to that undertaken
by Clemons’s essay. The aforementioned
‘A reflection on ugliness’ by Charmaine Harris is concerned about the
(surprising) morally simplistic equation of ugliness with evil in Buffy, an argument I continue in chapter
four of The Aesthetics of Culture in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Clemons, then, presents a timely and engaged
discussion of fashion, and in so doing proffers an explicitly aesthetic method
for analysis which itself extends related arguments that may not have had such
an explicit relationship with the aesthetic before.
[7] Erin
Hollis’s essay chooses a very different way into the aesthetic in Buffy. As its title ‘Gorgonzola
sandwiches and yellow crayons: James Joyce, Buffy
the Vampire Slayer and the aesthetic of minutiae’ suggests, this essay has
a twin focus. Part of its interest lies in Buffy’s
use of ‘minutiae’, or the mundane, ordinary everydayness of things. The small,
human-scale of things in the construction of
the world of Buffy is vital. It finds its extreme expression, as
Hollis’s essay explains, in Xander’s confrontation with
[8] Additionally,
Hollis’s essay reads Buffy alongside Ulysses. In so doing, the essay asserts
a homological relation to literature. This places the essay in a different
critical tradition, one which includes essays that make comparisons with
previous vampire, gothic and horror literature, such as Michelle Callender’s ‘Bram Stoker: Traditional gothic and
contemporary culture’[14]. Other
literary antecedents have also been observed, and these include T.S Eliot in
Rhonda Wilcox’s groundbreaking ‘T.S. Eliot comes to television: Buffy’s “Restless”’[15];
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in my
book; fascinatingly, Virgil is central to C. W. Marshall’s ‘Aeneas the Vampire
Slayer: A Roman model for why Giles kills Ben’[16]; and
David Fritts finds room for Beowulf
in his ‘Warrior heroes: Buffy the vampire slayer and Beowulf’[17].
Hollis’s essay, then, traverses a range of aesthetic possibilities and acts as
a neat converging point for two distinct strands of enquiry.
[9] Further
distinct areas of analysis are uncovered in David Kociemba’s ‘”Actually, it
explains a lot”: Reading the opening
title sequences of Buffy the Vampire
Slayer’. This painstaking piece of work looks at one of the paratextual
elements of Buffy, its opening
titles. By providing such a detailed account of the different season’s
sequences, the relative amount of time devoted to different characters, the
placing and timing of actors’ names, the typography and other issues, Kociemba
reminds us of the signal importance of one of the least studied aspects of
television. The thematic and aesthetic mission statement which the titles present
to the new and returning viewer is central to that viewer’s understanding of
the show’s intent. Its attention to the paratextual places this essay in a
tradition that includes Janet K Halfyard’s ‘Love, death, curses and
reverses (in F minor): Music, gender and indentity in
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel’, an essay that ranks as
one of the most impressive in the whole corpus of Buffy studies; and the equally fascinating and informative ‘Previously
on Buffy the Vampire Slayer...’ by
Philip Mikosz and Dana Och[18]. My own work in The Aesthetics of Culture is also
heavily involved with paratextual elements.
[10] Cynthea Masson and Marni
Stanley’s ‘Queer Eye for that vampire guy:
Spike and the aesthetics of camp’ is an exploration of the uses of camp
in the show, especially as deployed in the creation of Spike. The study of
Spike is one of the most popular in the field, but what Masson and Stanley add
to the debate is a clear and informed promotion of camp as both a positive
aesthetic in its own right (contra Joss Whedon, for example) and a specific
aspect of Spike’s characterisation. This pulls the essay into notions of
performativity more generally, along with Clemons’s essay, while retaining its
specific and significant contribution to the area.
[11] These four
essays, then, demonstrate the extent to which aesthetics is a central tool in
television criticism. Much more than a mere blunt formalism, aesthetic
criticism offers new insights into established areas of analysis, and allows
for a range of approaches to be gathered together. Television studies in
general can only benefit from the contributions made by these and other Buffy scholars who have all promoted the
aesthetic.