Are you my mummy? Complicating the mother in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

• Main Author: Vasnani, Bhavna Ramesh
• Other Authors: School of Humanities and Social Sciences
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52198
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television show that aired from 1997 to 2003, was created by Joss Whedon with the intention of subverting the typical idea of the helpless blonde damsel in distress being killed by a monster in a horror movie (Whedon, qtd. in Chandler). The heroine of the show, the titular Buffy Summers, is the physical representation of this stereotype: blonde and petite. But Buffy is not a damsel in distress; she is the Vampire Slayer, the “one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, born with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires…to stop the spread of evil” (“Welcome to the Hellmouth”, 1:012). Under the guidance of her Watcher and mentor Rupert Giles, Buffy repeatedly saves the world – or Sunnydale, at least – from vampires (like the Master, Angelus, and Spike) and the forces of evil (like the god Glory and the First Evil). She is assisted in her fight against evil with her best friends Willow Rosenberg, computer whiz and later powerful witch, and Xander Harris, bumbling sidekick and the heart of the group.