Dollhouse, Firefly, Angel, Buffy : news, photos & videos

Buffy in the Top 10 suckers for vampires

Webmaster — 2009-11-21T16:33:38Z

1.Buffy The Vampire Slayer : Buffy

The first sucker to fall for a vampire is avenger of the un-dead, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Sarah Michelle Gellar). Joss Whedon's ass-kicking sci-fi show saw everyone's favourite heroine sucking face, with the tall, dark and brooding vampire Angel (David Boreanaz). Battling a variety of demons, including their own, Buffy and Angel provided audiences with pure angst-ridden TV gold week after week. However, Whedon eventually parted this doomed pair, sending Angel flying off to L.A. for his own TV series. But the romance didn't end there - several cross-overs were put into play to keep fans entertained, before the Buffy and Angel angst factor died out and the slayer eventually started necking with bad-boy vamp Spike (James Marsters).

(...)

Click on the link :

http://www.lovefilm.com/features/detail.html ?&editorial_id=18564

Spike in STVs Top 12 Onscreen Vampires

Webmaster — 2009-11-21T11:09:31Z

The top 12 onscreen vampires ?

Fans of Twilight : New Moon star Robert Pattinson may claim Edward Cullen's the best ever onscreen vampire - but he has plenty of other blood-suckers to contend with. Well, at least a dozen, anyway.

(...)

Spike (and Angel) from Buffy - James Marsters manages to top Kiefer by having the peroxide hair and a British accent, making him the stuff of several million Buffy fans' dreams. If you don't believe me just do a YouTube search for Spike, then try not to vomit to all the homemade clip compilations set to the worst power ballads ever inflicted on our poor world. But on another note : Spike or Angel ? Unfortunately I just can't think of the latter without remembering that Dido video David Boreanaz was in...

(...)

Click on the link for more :

http://entertainment.stv.tv/new-moon/news/138483-the-top-12-onscreen-vampires/

Buffy is Best of the Decade on Sepinwall.blogspot.com

Webmaster — 2009-11-18T22:31:42Z

Best of the best of the best ?

As we get close to the the post-Thanksgiving, pre-New Year's rerun dead zone, I'm starting to do work on both my Best of 2009 list (which will be a bear, because so many good new shows debuted this year, at the same time that a lot of veteran contenders were still great), and also on a Best of the Decade package that I'm guessing will comprise multiple lists, spanning not only genre (drama/comedy/reality/etc), but also covering things like Best Season, Best Episode, possibly Best One-Season Wonder, maybe Best Import, etc. Some more thoughts on that - and my request for input - coming up after the jump...

Not sure yet. Still trying to suss it all out. But the goal is to spread the wealth as much as I can, because the '00s were a great decade for TV, so no show will appear on more than one list.

I more or less know what most of the series contenders are - and if you've been reading me for a while, you can figure some obvious ones out, like "The Wire," "The Sopranos," "Freaks & Geeks," "Arrested Development," etc. - and just have to figure out how to divvy them up. But the lists for best season (of a show that overall isn't great enough to qualify for a best series list) or best episode (ibid) may require more thought. The best seasons of "Buffy," for instance, were in the '90s, but "Once More With Feeling" (pictured above) or "The Body" might earn a spot on the episodes list. ("Hush," alas, was the final episode aired in 1999, or it would be the pick.)

So I'm curious : if you leave out the obvious contenders listed above (and shows like "The Office" and "BSG"), what are either some great episodes or great seasons from shows that you think merit end-of-decade recognition ?

Buffy's Cordelia Chase on EW's Top 21 Bitches List

Webmaster — 2009-11-18T13:17:32Z

Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

She had incredible growth over the course of seven years — starting an ''I hate that I love you'' relationship with Xander, becoming decent enough that we actually wanted to see her end up with Angel — but she began as vain and self-absorbed as a teenage girl with her own minions could be. Why did we, and the Scooby Gang, tolerate her ? Carpenter's delivery of Joss Whedon-penned gems like this one : ''Senior boys are the only way to go. Guys from our grade, forget about it, they're children. You know ? Like Jesse. Did you see him last night, following me around like a little puppy dog ? You just wanna put him to sleep. But senior boys, hmm, they have mystery. They have... What's the word I'm searching for ? Cars ! I just am not the type to settle. You know ? It's like when I go shopping. I have to have the most expensive thing. Not because it's expensive, but because it costs more.'' — Mandi Bierly

Feminism and the Vampire Novel - Comparisons between Buffy and Twilight

Webmaster — 2009-11-16T21:07:54Z

Feminism and the vampire novel have not traditionally been particularly well-suited bedfellows. The prototype of the genre, the shadow which lurks behind each and every modern vampire novel, is of course Bram Stoker's Dracula, a novel which combines a mastery of atmosphere and suspense with a decidedly misogynistic mythology.

In recent years, however, the vampire text has evolved to encompass a narrative structure and an attitude towards women which moves beyond the virginal victim/deadly whore dichotomy that characterised the genre's precursors. All of which makes Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series and its retrograde take on the role of women all the more infuriating. The success of the Twilight books has wrenched the vampire genre out of dark obscurity into blinding publicity ; but the books have also dispensed with many of the features which make contemporary supernatural literature so interesting.

Meyer's response to accusations of sexism in her books is to claim that, “When I hear or read theories about Bella being an anti-feminist character, those theories are usually predicated on her choices.” However, the real reason Bella is not a feminist heroine is because Meyer fails to develop the role of women in the supernatural novel much beyond what Stoker achieved more than a century previously.

At the crux of sexism within the vampire novel is the paradigm of male vamp/female human, a framework which an overwhelming majority of vampire novels are based around. The consequence of this is to represent the male as virtually unassailable in terms of power, and generally intellectually superior due to the centuries of wisdom he has accumulated. It is also a rare vamp novel which features a male (anti)hero not in possession of dazzlingly good looks and the ability to persuade a mouldy carrot into bed with one devastating glance. The female human is physically weaker and, at least traditionally, unable to resist the lure of the dashing corpse. These are tropes which vampire narratives such as Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer have delighted in overturning, yet in one form or another they remain pervasive in the supernatural novel.

In Dracula, the women are faced with two equally unappealing alternatives : forsake their initial quasi-independence and embrace the status of victimhood which the men in the text (both supernatural and otherwise) combine to foist upon them ; or give in to the seduction of the vampire and so gain power - but a power which is represented in the text as sexualised and therefore, according to the morality of the novel, demonic. (Much as all female sexuality is deemed demonic in literature of a certain stance, both supernatural and otherwise.) The same ‘choices' which Meyer parades as being Bella's own in the Twilight series, and therefore above criticism, are in reality almost as narrow. The male vamp/female human set up is a preconfigured metaphor for the dominance of men within society

For most of the series, she can choose only between relying on vampire Edward or werewolf Jacob for salvation from whatever big bad is gunning for her, or relying on Edward to allow her to become a vampire so that she too has access to the power which only he can bestow.

The imbalance of power between men and women in many vampire novels can also be attributed to the capability of the male vampire to completely subsume any independent desires or individuality on the part of the female heroine.

In Dracula, both Mina and Lucy are compelled by the Count to work against their allies. Their own opposing wishes and agency are completely overtaken by the control which he exerts over them. While Jonathan is subject to the same mind control, he manages to maintain a sense of his own identity, and eventually escape from Dracula. The women in the novel are represented as incapable of sustaining any individuality in the face of Dracula's power.

Of course, this is a scenario which will be eminently familiar to ‘Twihards', mirroring as it does Edward's control of all Bella's actions and restriction of her choices. Bella's sense of self is so dependent on Edward that his absence in the second book of the series, New Moon, causes her to enter a state of near-catatonic depression. Some critics have termed Edward's actions in the series emotional abuse and this is certainly apt, but it is also an extension of an attitude towards women that is hardly new in the vampire novel. Sherrilyn Kenyon's series of vampire romances occupy a similar vein of literature, with their focus on submissive heroines who gladly relinquish their agency to the alpha vamps/shapeshifters/gods they encounter, despite initial protestations of independence and a bit of mandatory soul-searching.

Meanwhile, the representation of vampires has long been linked to fears of the foreign Other, since the Eastern European spectre of the Count. As other critics of Twilight have pointed out, Meyer substitutes this for what amounts to a fetishisation of whiteness. The translucent beauty of Bella and Edward's pale skin is lingered on obsessively and contrasted unfavourably to Jacob's “russet” appearance.

Her continued insistence that an extremity of whiteness is integral to beauty and superiority of character (which Edward represents) is nothing if not problematic.

Issues of race are on the whole not dealt with particularly well by the supernatural novel. The television series True Blood has been criticised for its insulting portrayal of black women, for example its use of the stereotype of the “sassy black sidekick”. Yet the depiction of black women - or indeed any women not in possession of snow white skin - in other vampire stories is most noticeable for its shocking absence. The paucity of such characters highlights the fact that the vamp novel may have worked out some of its issues with women but when it comes to race, Twilight is far from the only vampire novel which severely disappoints.

All of this is not to say that the vampire novel is inherently anti-feminist. The power dynamic of male vamp/female human is in fact uniquely set up for the possibilities of subversion and exploration of the nature of power in any male/female relationship. It is a preconfigured metaphor for the dominance of men within society and the varied responses to this power imbalance available open to women.

If Dracula set in place many of the more sexist features of the supernatural novel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also designed to have real-world relevance, paved the way for more intimate relations between the vamp text and feminism. In the world of Buffy, the male vampire with his supernatural powers is countered by a woman with powers of her own, continually underestimated by her opponents. The misadventures of these female heroines do not compromise their independence or their integrity

In Buffy's battles with vampires she does not always succeed, but what it is important is that the outcome is not predetermined - she will not inevitably give in to her male opponent's superior strength and power. By the end of the series, Buffy's slaying aptitude and strength develop to the point where her once threatening foes are increasingly represented as irritants rather than equal opponents. The vampire novel with aspirations of equality will generally give the female heroine some sort of power of her own with which to counter the vampire. Karen Chance's heroine Cassandra Palmer is a clairvoyant ; Sookie Stackhouse, of Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Mysteries, made into the TV show True Blood, is a telepath ; Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake can both kick ass and raise the dead.

The sparkly vamp aficionados will now point out that Twilight's Bella too has powers ; her mind acts as a natural shield against any kind of telepathic interference. Yes, but Bella's power is one of negativity. She has the ability to not have her mind interfered with, although for most of the series not even the ability to choose to use this power. Bella's power gives her no agency, no possibility to redress the power imbalance which exists between men and women in the novel. The dynamic of male vamp vs. human female which characterises many supernatural novels is not necessarily anti-feminist, as the examples above demonstrate, but Meyers chooses to disallow her heroine access to the power accorded to the male protagonists of the series.

The vampire novel is suffused with desire, defined further by this miasma of fantasy which imbues its language and its narrative. The act of biting a victim, of transforming a human to a vampire, is inevitably linked to sex. This transformation is generally either explicitly linked to sex, as in Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire, or is used as a thinly veiled metaphor for the sexual act, as in Dracula. Both Charlaine Harris and Karen Chance imagine the acts as mingled in their series of books. The ability to turn someone into a vampire is usually the prerogative of the male, and so sexual power in the vampire novel tends to reside with men.

The female heroine is often represented as yearning for the vampire to exercise his sexual power over her, yet in the best contemporary vampire novels the writer uses this desire to explore the nature of fantasy and equality within relationships. Anita Blake, Sookie Stackhouse and Cassandra Palmer each become increasingly assertive in achieving the fulfilment of their sexual desires, as at times several of the books in these series become less about the bloodlust, and more about the lust to bang anything without a pulse. But crucially, the misadventures of these female heroines do not compromise their independence or their integrity. The fantasy of submission to the vamp lover is fulfilled, but this is not the end of the story ; the balance of power can change, and this desire in itself need not lead to a fundamentally unequal power dynamic between men and women in the novel. I admit it ; whatever scruples I may have, I was gripped

In Dracula, Lucy's linked experience of sex/vampirism results in new supernatural, physical and sexual powers. However, once in possession of these powers, Lucy is represented as divested of the attributes of both humanity and femininity which characterised her previously. Power and femininity are not mutually compatible in the world Stoker created. In Twilight also, Bella gains power only through becoming a vampire, which is a result of her much-awaited sexual liaison with Edward. This vampiric power of Bella's ultimately comes to her due only to Edward's decision to grant her with it.

This reluctant bestowal of power is linked to the denial of the fulfilment of desire within the text. Twilight throbs with sexual longing, and this tension is part of what makes the books so compelling. (I admit it ; whatever scruples I may have, I was gripped.) Yet, whatever intentions Meyer may have had with regards to the abstinence storyline, desire in the context of the vamp novel is a means by which the female heroine can explore power and fantasy, and so the abstinence within Twilight signifies a denial of the power that comes with the fulfilment of sexual fantasy. Authority over both the sexual experience and access to power remain with Edward.

The modern vampire novel is overwhelmingly a text written by women, and featuring female heroines. The narrative voice within in the vampire novel is usually female and this in itself lends a certain power to the heroine : the power to tell the story from her point of view, a power not accorded to the male vampire. Certainly, Bella is the narrator of her own story for most of the series, but she loses this agency just before her transformation into a vampire and consequent gain in power. Any advances the fourth book could be seen to make in terms of equality - the introduction of several strong, powerful female characters, Bella's new abilities which in some ways exceed Edward's - are negated by the images of the preceding chapters. Bella as helpless vassal, stripped of agency and voice, and devoured from within as a result of the clash between Edward's power and her own feeble, female humanity cannot be easily rendered equal in the chapters that follow. Meyer's insistence on perpetuating a power imbalance in her novels means that any claim she may eventually have to feminism in the texts is entirely shot to hell.

The feminist vampire novel is certainly possible, although when it comes to equal representations of a wide spectrum of different women the choices narrow significantly. With regards to Twilight, not only does the treatment of race leave much to be desired, but in many other ways it fails to measure up to its supernatural counterparts. While other contemporary vampire novels use the power dynamic of the vamp novel as a way of exploring the nature of power, desire and fantasy, Twilight's denial of the importance of these means that in this eminently popular modern novel, little has changed in terms of the relative roles of men and women since the publication of Dracula in 1897.

Watcher Junior Issue #4 is now available to read

Webmaster — 2009-11-16T20:49:25Z

Click on the link :

http://www.watcherjunior.tv/04/

"Buffy" Tv Series in the Pop culture head trips

Webmaster — 2009-11-16T18:46:59Z

(...)

'Normal Again' ('Buffy the Vampire Slayer')

In this episode from "Buffy's" sixth season, Buffy Summers ( Sarah Michelle Gellar) starts to wonder if her entire life as a slayer is in fact an illusion. As she rattles between realities, thanks to the effects of an encounter with a demon, the viewer is forced to wonder if Buffy's self-empowered superhero is in fact just the wishful thinking of a delusional girl.

(...)

Click on the link for more :

http://www.zap2it.com/news/custom/photogallery/tv/zap-pop-culture-head-trips-pictures,0,7255396.photogallery ?index=17

A Slayer Comes to Town or The Two Types of Fantastic Story

Webmaster — 2009-11-12T13:22:50Z

Creative writing teachers are fond of sweeping generalizations :

“Never use adverbs.”

“Never begin a story with the word the.”

“There's only one plot : the shift from innocence to experience.”

A friend of mine in Louisiana had a writing teacher who enjoyed proclaiming, “The king dies and the queen dies. That's not a story. The king dies and the queen dies of grief. Now that's a story.” I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean, nor what any of these sayings are supposed to do for young writers. Probably make all but the most dedicated break down and get a real job.

But recently I heard a good one : “There are only two plots : a stranger comes to town and someone goes on a journey.” This aphorism helped distill an idea I've developed over years of reading and writing science fiction and fantasy, resulting in my own sweeping generalization : “There are only two kinds of fantastic story : the Alternate World and the Trespass.”

What do I mean by this ? Allow me to define my terms.

In “Alternate World” stories, the reader goes on a journey to another era, another planet, a world that follows different rules. Alternative histories, stories of the far future, and tales of elves and magic fall into this category. In their own way, Lord of the Rings, 1984, and Star Wars are all Alternate World stories.

In “Trespass” stories, a stranger comes to town. Something fantastic—whether The X-Files' aliens or Anne Rice's vampires—invades our familiar world of credit cards and disposable razors. Reality is shown to have cracks and fissures we haven't seen before.

I must admit, before becoming a Buffyphile I had a deep prejudice against Trespass tales. The techniques that bring Alternate Worlds to life are those that originally drew me to read and write science fiction : the top-to-bottom world building, the ubiquitous and yet subtle exposition, the filtering of a strange reality through a viewpoint character who finds that reality commonplace. This kind of tale was what I considered to be speculative fiction at its most literary, sophisticated, textured, and, most important, subversive. SF allowed me to visit and create worlds that had completely different rules from our own, and that called everything in our “normal” world into question.

On the other hand, Trespass stories felt rather more comfortable, designed for readers who prefer to start with something familiar. And there seemed to be a conservative principle at work in most, a tendency for the alien invader to evaporate at the end of the tale. We've all seen this plot, which I call the Elastic Trespass story :

1. “Monsters ! I can't believe this is happening !”

2. “It's true, there are monsters ! Let's kill them.”

3. “Oh, no ! When you burned down the house to kill the monsters all the evidence was destroyed. No one will ever believe us now !”

In the Elastic Trespass, as in a sitcom, everything goes “back to normal” at the end of the episode. A return to an unperturbed, normal, daylight world is always effected. E.T. goes home. It's as if there's some sort of natural law at work, a principle of conservation of normality, that makes all the evidence disappear by the story's denouement. Either all marks of the alien are erased by happenstance, or the characters engage in a frantic cover-up, apparently unwilling to take credit for saving the world.

(A close cousin to the Elastic Trespass is the Elastic Time Travel story, that old chestnut in which time-travelers wind up on the Titanic and no matter whom they tell about the iceberg all they get is “But this ship is unsinkable !” and the ship sinks anyway. History had to happen that way.)

The elastic form of the Trespass story is inherently conservative, saying as it does that the stranger who comes to town is fundamentally unknowable. We can't incorporate the alien into our normal world, because that would imply that the world can change. So when the Other pops up, our heroes stomp it into the ground, obliterating all evidence of its passage. Like history, middle-class normality is fixed and unalterable, no matter how many fantastic creatures, ancient curses, and mystical portals might exist in the margins.

This principle is especially strong in stories with young protagonists, partly because no one ever believes kids anyway. It's as if the young adult Elastic Trespass tale is a training ground for adult conformity. Children in these stories always hide E.T. in the closet, repress their own memories, and find themselves unable to break the conspiracy of silence that is the adult world. In C.S. Lewis's Narnia books, at least one of the kids, George, grows up to “remember” that his trips to Narnia were all a game. He manages to enter adulthood only by repressing the fantasies of childhood. Only they weren't fantasies ; they were alien realities ! (Naturally, he's the one who winds up with the best-paying job.)

When I watched the first few episodes of Buffy with an uncritical eye, the show seemed destined to be trapped in this mold. The vamps conveniently turned to dust when staked, leaving no evidence. The protagonists were marginalized kids, and their adult mentor a mere high-school librarian (and a bit of a toff), a marginal adult without real-world credibility. Buffy hid her calling from her mother and from the adult world at large. Despite her extraordinary powers, she and her friends (and her viewers) instinctively knew the rules of young adult powerlessness : “They won't believe us anyway,” and “We better leave everything as we found it, or we'll be in big trouble.” It's okay to save the world, but not to change it.

But something about Buffy kept me watching. From the first episode, the show was playing with the conventions of the Elastic Trespass tale, subverting the genre traditions in subtle (and sometimes obvious) ways. In Joss Whedon's hands, the elastic of middle-class reality wound up stretching and twisting into new and unexpected forms.

One of the ironclad rituals of the Trespass is the Passage of Disbelief, the moment where the protagonist says, “This can't be happening !” Now, we've all read and watched a million versions of this scene.

And not only main characters have to come to believe that the Trespass is real, but often they must convince their friends and parents, the police, newspaper reporters, government officials, and whoever else they need help from. But it's a waste of the viewers' time, because we've seen the movie trailers or read the back of the book, and we already know the vampires or aliens or killer tomatoes are real. We just want to skip to the part where everyone's on board, especially to avoid dialog like “There must be a rational explanation for all this !” or that most embarrassing line in any science fiction movie : “This is like something out of a science fiction movie !”

Thankfully, the writers of Buffy employ a number of strategies to subvert this little ritual, using humor and understatement to breeze past the usual protestations of disbelief.

Buffy herself, of course, has had a movie prequel to adjust to her place in the fantastic scheme of things. In the pilot (“Welcome to the Hellmouth,” 1-1), she takes over Giles's recitation of a Slayer's duties with, “‘. . . the strength and skill to hunt the vampires, to stop the spread of their evil' blah, blah, blah. I've heard it, okay ? . . . I've both been there, and done that.” For the Slayer herself, at least, no time is wasted in disbelief.1

At the end of this scene, Xander emerges from the library stacks, having overheard Giles's exposition, and condenses his initial Passage of Disbelief to a simple “What ?”

After Willow and Xander are saved from the Master's henchmen in the pilot's conclusion (“The Harvest,” 1-2), they receive a full briefing from Giles. But it is Buffy who mockingly provides the ritual litany of “rational” explanations.

XANDER : “Okay, this is where I have a problem. See, because we're talking about vampires. We're having a talk with vampires in it.”

WILLOW : “Isn't that what we saw last night ?”

BUFFY : “No, no, those weren't vampires. They were just guys in thunder need of a facial. Or maybe they had rabies. It could have been rabies. And that guy turning to dust ? Just a trick of light . . .”

WILLOW : “Oh, I—I need to sit down.”

BUFFY : “You are sitting down.”

WILLOW : “Oh. Good for me.”

And thus the original Scoobies' Passages of Disbelief are dealt with, once and for all. Five minutes of screen time later, Xander is ready for action, uttering a line that could be from any Buffy episode of any season : “So what's the plan ? We saddle up, right ?”

Done and done.

In most Trespass stories, the demarcation between those who know the secret and those who are blissfully unaware is carefully maintained. Initiation is an important ritual. But in Buffy, that border is shown to be delightfully fuzzy. When Jenny Calendar is recruited into the Scooby Gang (“I Robot, You Jane,” 1-8), Giles attempts to break the existence of demonic forces to her gently.

GILES : “I need your help, but before that I need you to believe something that you may not want to. Uh, there's, um . . . Something's got into the um, inside, um . . . There's a demon in the Internet.”

JENNY : “I know.”

End of scene.

In the standard Elastic Trespass tale, Jenny would have sputtered in disbelief, requiring hard proof of Giles's extraordinary claim. But instead it is Giles who winds up sputtering. When in the next scene he asks if Jenny is a witch, she answers, “Technopagan is the term. There are more of us than you think.”

That last line could be the motto for Sunnydale's Trespass-aware citizens. While guarding supposed non-initiates from the dark truths of the Hellmouth, the Scoobies are repeatedly shocked to discover how pervasive secret knowledge is in Sunnydale. In “Lie to Me” (2-7), Buffy attempts to explain away a vampire attack glimpsed by her old school friend, Ford.

FORD : “What's going on ?”

BUFFY : “Um . . . uh, there was a, a cat. A cat here, and, um, then there was another cat . . . and they fought. The cats. And . . . then they left.”

FORD : “Oh, I thought you were just slaying a vampire.”

BUFFY : “What ? Whatting a what ?”

Again, Ford doesn't sputter, Buffy does. Ford went to Buffy's previous high school, and already knows that she's the Slayer. The mystical forces at work in the Buffyverse are a matter of teenage rumor, dark and knowing humor, an open secret, so even bit players don't waste time with the usual Passages of Disbelief. Any number of Sunnydale residents, students and adults, turn out to be more or less aware of that ultimate Trespass, the Hellmouth, and all it implies about the reality of their world. Time after time, Buffy's grateful rescuees blurt out some sort of reversal similar to Ford's. Perhaps the most underplayed of these inverted Passages of Disbelief comes from the laconic Oz (“Surprise,” 2-25).

WILLOW : “Are you okay ?”

OZ : “Yeah. Hey, did everybody see that guy just turn to dust ?”

WILLOW : “Uh, well, uh, sort of ?”

XANDER : “Yep. Vampires are real. A lot of them live in Sunnydale. Willow will fill you in.”

WILLOW : “I know it's hard to accept at first.”

OZ (nodding) : “Actually it explains a lot.”

Like the dark secrets at work in any small town, only the most willful Pollyanna is completely unaware of Sunnydale's special dangers. Even the optimistic Larry, in the long traveling shot that opens Sunnydale High School for season three, isn't entirely clueless : “This is our year. I'm telling you, best football season ever. . . . If we can focus, keep discipline, and not have as many mysterious deaths, Sunnydale is gonna rule.” (“Anne,” 3-1)

The pervasiveness of this open secret is most touchingly demonstrated in “Prom” (3-19), when the students of Sunnydale High elect Buffy as Class Protector, recognizing her years of service as Slayer. As Jonathan explains in his presentation speech, this award is ad hoc (“This was actually a new category. First time ever. I guess there were a lot of write-in ballots.”) and represents a shared knowledge rarely given voice : “We don't talk about it much, but it's no secret that Sunnydale High isn't like other high schools.” But it is precisely on this unofficial level that understanding of the Trespass operates in Sunnydale. The official line may be that monsters don't exist and that the fantastic and mystical must be repressed. But in the Buffyverse there is a significant space set aside for improvised and heartfelt recognition of realities outside the official narrative, and write-in votes for the people's hero do not go uncounted.

Of course, the Passage of Disbelief is only half of the Elastic Trespass. With every monster that emerges from the Hellmouth, the elastic of reality is stretched out of shape, and according to the rules it must snap back to normalcy. After each resolved crisis—the monster slain, the spell reversed—comes the inevitable Cover-Up. All evidence must be erased. (Famously, the original Scooby Gang of Scooby-Doo never needed a Cover-Up, invariably discovering that there were no real mystical forces at work. It was always just “old Mr. Withers the caretaker, trying to scare folks away.”2)

Buffy knowingly underplays its Cover-Ups, trotting out genre clichés without much time wasted on believability. At the end of “Harvest” (1-2), Cordelia recounts the rumors meant to explain the mass vampire attack at the Bronze. “Well, I heard it was rival gangs, you know, fighting for turf. But all I can tell you is they were in an ugly way of looking . . . I mean, I don't even remember that much, but I tell you it was a freak show.” Moments later, Giles provides, “People have a tendency to rationalize what they can, and forget what they can't.”

Memory repression is a frequent device, but even such tenuous Cover-Ups aren't always in earnest. In “The Pack” (1-6), Xander claims to be unable to remember his experiences when possessed by a hyena spirit (particularly his attempted seduction/rape of Buffy, one suspects). But Giles comes to doubt his story.

GILES : “I've been reading up on my animal possession, and I cannot find anything anywhere about memory loss afterwards.”

XANDER : “Did you tell them [Buffy and Willow] that ?”

GILES : “Your secret dies with me.”

In the climax of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” (3-16), after Xander is saved from an adoring but violent horde of love-spell-bedazzled women at the last minute, Cordelia offers the gathered crowd this stunningly lame Cover-Up line : “Boy, that was the best scavenger hunt ever.” In the next scene, Buffy rolls her eyes at this one.

BUFFY : “Scavenger hunt ?”

XANDER : “Your mom seemed to buy it.”

BUFFY : “So she says. I think that she's just so wigged at hitting on one of my friends that she's repressing. She's getting pretty good at that. I should probably start worrying . . .”

More often, the Cover-Up is left to entities other than the Scooby Gang. As early as “Out of Sight, Out of Mind” (1-11), government agents show up to take the invisible girl away for covert ops training. And in “School Hard” (2-3), maintaining the secrets of the Hellmouth becomes a matter for local Sunnydale officials. Parent-teacher night is invaded by Spike and his gang, and Principal Snyder barely survives, coming into close contact with the vampires. It seems as if there will be some hefty Covering-Up to do. But instead of Buffy making explanations and excuses, we overhear this exchange between the police chief and Snyder :

CHIEF : “I need to say something to the media people.”

SNYDER : “So ?”

CHIEF : “So ? You want the usual story ? Gang-related ? PCP ?”

SNYDER : “What did you have in mind ? The truth ?”

CHIEF : “Right. Gang-related. PCP.”

This conversation not only neatly provides a Cover-Up, but again shows the fuzzy border between knowing and not-knowing in Buffy. If the chief of police recognizes a vampire attack when he sees one, then knowledge of the mystical must extend beyond the unspoken secrets of high school. After this scene viewers must ask themselves, How far up does this Cover-Up go ?

As we learn in the third season, adult awareness and even complicity goes all the way to City Hall. And, of course, in season four the federal government itself is implicated. (Presaged by government involvement in “Out of Sight, Out of Mind,” 1-11). As the wider world beyond Sunnydale becomes embroiled in the crises of the Hellmouth, we are forced to reconsider to what extent Buffy is set in “our” world. Despite the credit cards and SUVs on screen, the show begins to leave the strict confines of the Elastic Trespass tale, until the Buffyverse seems almost transformed into an Alternate World.

Of course, every fictional TV show takes place in a fictional reality. Although there is a Tom's Diner in New York, we don't expect to find Jerry and Elaine there. But such shows work to minimize their departures from the familiar. In Seinfeld's New York, the Bronx is still up and the Battery's down.

A show like West Wing, however, has a far more problematic relationship to reality, given the high profile of the US president. This discomfort is especially apparent when events like the September 11 attacks must be portrayed on the show, but only by analogy. West Wing worked best in the relatively sedate 1990s. Presumably, as our current unsettled era goes on, that show's reality and ours will unavoidably drift further apart. (Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels frequently used blanks in proper names to prevent this sort of discomfort, referring to the town of “———shire” or “certain officers of the ———rd Regiment.”)

But of course my privileged term “Alternate Worlds” refers to fictions like Dune and Brave New World, in which new realities are created wholesale. The Buffyverse may become less and less like our reality, as its bestiary of government agencies, demons, and alternate dimensions expands, but when those demons rampage in Sunnydale's pedestrian malls, they still encounter coffee shops and sushi bars. In my book, that's a Trespass.

Except when it isn't. Because there's that other kind of Buffy episode. That one in which reality changes around the characters, altered for one screen hour into a different universe. The Scoobies are the same, but the rules have changed.

Nightmares come true, Halloween costumes possess their wearers, a high-school loser is the super-competent center of a cult of personality, the conventions of the Hollywood musical replace the familiar structures of social discourse (“Nightmares” 1-10, “Halloween” 2-6, “Superstar” 4-17, “Once More, with Feeling” 6-7, respectively). In these episodes, the new rules of reality must be decoded and understood, the cause unmasked, the change reversed. The Trespass is the world itself.

But “The Wish” (3-9), in which Cordelia inadvertently asks Anyanka to change the history of Sunnydale, creates not so much a Trespass as a fully-fledged Alternate World. In this reality, Buffy never came to town, the Master completed the Harvest, and the elastic of normality has snapped. The worlds of light and dark have become intermixed : the Bronze a vampires-only club, the abandoned factory back in business as a human abattoir. Vampires are no longer hidden ; the open secret is no longer a secret at all. And as goes Sunnydale, so goes the world. Even Cleveland is experiencing “a great deal of demonic activity.” The result of Buffy's absence is apparently nothing less than the beginning of the end of the human era. This is It's a Wonderful Life on a grand scale, or perhaps a quicker version of Ray Bradbury's cautionary time-travel story “The Sound of Thunder,” in which the accidental trampling of a butterfly millions of years ago turns the present into something barely recognizable.

Like any Altered World, “Vampworld” (as Buffy fans have dubbed it) has its own internal logic, its own rules : humans no longer wear bright colors and always get home by dark. It's not a fevered dream, but a meticulously worked out reality. Curfew signs and strands of garlic replace the HIV/AIDS awareness posters on the high school's walls, and classes are suspended for the “monthly memorial.” As Anyanka explains to Giles : “This is the real world now. This is the world we made.”

Interesting choice of words. In the Buffyverse, “we” are responsible even for a reality created by a wish. Vampworld is the world as it very well might have been, had Buffy been a little weaker, a little less lucky, or picked the wrong time to move to Cleveland.

Of course, this contingent nature of reality is to be expected ; the Buffyverse is a place in which the world is contested real estate. In “Prophecy Girl” (1-12) (the episode to which “The Wish” is, in effect, an alternate outcome), Willow describes the horrific aftermath of a pre-apocalyptic vampire attack. “And when I walked in there, it wasn't our world anymore. They made it theirs. And they had fun.”

This Trespass means business. It doesn't just cross the borders of normality, it invades with intent to remake normality in its own image. It is a potentially world-altering Trespass.

But only potentially. Unlike the wounded future of Bradbury's “Sound of Thunder,” the Buffyverse snaps back to its “normal” state at the climax of “The Wish.” Giles smashes Anyanka's necklace and history is repaired, with none of the characters even remembering what happened. (Because it didn't happen.) Buffy's Altered Worlds are Elastic. Nightmares lose their grip on reality ; Halloween archetypes turn back into cheap costumes ; Jonathan turns back into a loser ; the last song ends.

So how do these Elastic Altered Worlds fit into my schema ? Are they like that tedious Elastic Time Travel story, the one in which the Titanic sinks no matter what the travelers do, proving that history is immutable ? Not quite. In “The Wish” (3-9), history is not itself elastic, naturally springing back into its “rightful” state. Setting it aright takes hard work. Not only the work of Giles overpowering Anyanka and smashing her necklace, but, by implication, all the work that Buffy has done since coming to Sunnydale. The possibility of Vampworld, and its disappearance, prove that Buffy and the Scoobies are not powerless observers of history. They are nothing less than makers of history.

As the climax of “Prophecy Girl” approaches, the Master watches the Hellmouth creature emerge, saying, “Yes, come forth, my child. Come into my world.”

Buffy reveals herself, and retorts, “I don't think it's yours just yet.”

Across a certain number of story arcs, any fantastic fictional world begins to change and to reflect the alien forces at its narrative center. Like the Bush-era, post–September 11 West Wing, the Buffyverse resembles the nonfictional world less and less as time goes on. But one of the great strengths of Buffy is that the show doesn't shy away from plot points that have no escape back into normality. No Trespass—an army of zombies, a town unable to speak, a mayor transforming in public into a giant demon—is too extreme for a half-baked Cover-Up line. Or none at all.

Buffy does not repress her memories, no matter how strange or painful. She doesn't sputter with the arrival of every new monster ; just saddles up. Her friends and family die, some never to be reanimated. The strangers who come to town—werewolf, demon, or witch—turn out to be something knowable, even worth loving. The elastic gradually frays until it's beyond fixing. The fantastic leaves its mark on the world.

The Buffyverse is not simply a Trespassed world, one that snaps back to middle-class normality as a function of natural law. It's not quite an Altered World either ; there are those credit cards and cell phones. But it is a world that, like ours, can be and is changed, for better or worse, by the actions of the people who live in it.

Angel & Spike in the TV Vampires than you can shake a stick at

Webmaster — 2009-10-31T16:50:01Z

Vampires just keep getting hotter. Perhaps not literally "hotter" – being undead and all, I would imagine their pre-meal body temperature is negligible to non-existent. But between the Twilight series of books and movies (the latter's much-anticipated sequel is due Nov. 20), the cable hit True Blood and its network counterpart, Vampire Diaries, the nocturnal stalker of myth and legend has never been sexier or more desired.

So there is something to be said about dying young and leaving a good-looking (reanimated) corpse.

Mind you, the vampire has always been something of a romantic figure, going back the grandaddy of them all, Bram Stoker's Count Dracula, who has himself just been literarily sequel-ized by Stoker's own great grandnephew.

Through many movie adaptations, from Bela Lugosi on through Christopher Lee, Frank Langella on Broadway and then exponentially with the book and film versions of Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire (Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt ? That's just excessive), the concept of "necking" has taken on a frightening new connotation, as the afterlife of the average, red blood-drinking vampire becomes increasingly sexual, and thus more attractive to the living.

Particularly on True Blood, a two-year-old ratings hit – HBO does not disclose its audience numbers, but if they did, those numbers are estimated to be in the neighbourhood of 12 million in the U.S., taking into account "on-demand" and DVR recording.

HBO Canada, despite a similar no-tell policy, will happily acknowledge that True Blood has, in its first two seasons (a third had been ordered), become the highest-rated HBO original on the franchised channel, and also on The Movie Network's on-demand service.

The series is based on the Charlaine Harris Southern Vampire Mysteries novels, adapted by showrunner Alan Ball as a follow-up to his earlier, similarly macabre HBO hit, the funereal Six Feet Under.

"After five years of peering into the abyss and contemplating life in the presence of mortality," he says, "I felt like, `Let's do something else.'

"This was really my first foray into the world of vampires. I really wanted it to be a show about characters, and to really explore what it means to be 170 years old, and what it means to fall in love with somebody, and not be able to see that person, except at night ... (when) basically part of the relationship would involve, in a world that's mutually satisfying, being fed upon ..."

(Try explaining that to your next cheeseburger.)

The freshman Vampire Diaries, originating on The CW and carried here on CTV, is, like Twilight and True Blood, based on a successful series of novels, in this case by bestselling young-adult fantasy author L.J. Smith.

In Canada, the show commands an impressive 900,000-plus weekly viewers. Its American audience has hovered around the 5 million mark, a record for The CW, above average for any other network (except perhaps the basement-dwelling NBC).

Diaries' considerably more youth-skewed appeal owes much to veteran writer/producer Kevin Williamson, a man who has proved himself equally adept at high-school and horror as the creator of Dawson's Creek and writer of three (soon four) Scream movies.

"We're sort of cross-genre," he says of his Diaries. "There's a lot going on here. We have the teen element, which I guess you can compare to Dawson's Creek. But it's not just a teen show. We're trying to not make it a high school show.

"Once we you get past the premise of, you know, girl and vampire, we start to develop the story about a town. And that's what we love so much about the books, the mythology of the town and what they created ... the vampires are (just) our way into that."

And possibly the way out ? Has the sexy young vampire sub-genre finally reached saturation point ? How long can this resurrection renaissance last ?

"It's not really a fad," insists series star Nina Dobrev, a Toronto-bred Degrassi grad. "It's timeless. Vampires are ... they don't die. They're always around. They're eternal.

"It just seems like right now, people are really responding."

"Everything is cyclical," Williamson shrugs. "Who knows ? I mean, I still ... when I think of The Lost Boys, I get all excited. And Near Dark, I have great, fond memories of that.

"I hope maybe we're building that for this generation."

MORE TV VAMPIRES THAN YOU CAN SHAKE A STAKE AT

1. Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel) : Of all the eligible undead floating around Sunnydale and later Los Angeles in the two Joss Whedon series, James Marsters' British bad-boy was the most sinister and sexiest, at least until he was figuratively de-fanged and turned into an unwilling good-guy.

2. Angel (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel) : Credit where it's due. I mean, the guy did have his own show. And he (actor David Boreanaz) is back and even better in Bones.

3. Barnabas Collins (Dark Shadows) : If you are old enough to even remember this hybrid horror soap of the `60s, you know what I'm talking about. Interesting to note, no one ever referred to Jonathan Frid's toothy anti-hero as an actual "vampire" until well after the series' 400th episode.

4. Grandpa (The Munsters) : More mad scientist than monster, with son-in-law Herman the inevitable victim of his latest failed experiment. Sitcom veteran Al Lewis' defining role.

5. Nick Knight (Forever Knight) : The first fanged frostback on our list, portrayed by stage star Geraint Wynn Davies – the original TV-movie pilot for the Toronto-shot series also inspired last season's short-lived Moonlight.

6. The Count (Hilarious House of Frightenstein) : Yet another carnivorous Canadian, one of several memorably out-there characters portrayed by the late Billy Van on the cult-hit kiddie show.

7. Count Floyd (SCTV) : Canadian by origin if not by birth, a bargain-basement midnight movie host created by Pittsburgh-born Joe Flaherty as the alter-ego of his SCTV News anchor, Floyd Robertson.

8. Vampira The original late-night movie hostess, later immortalized in the Edward D. Wood Jr. schlock classic Plan 9 from Outer Space. Portrayed by the late Finnish model Maila Nurmi, whose 36B-21-35 measurements made it appear as if at any moment she might just snap in half at the waist.

9. The Count (Sesame Street) : Okay, so he could count to 10. But would you leave your kids alone with him ?

10. Count Chocula What I'm wondering is, how did he manage to keep all those shiny teeth when all he ever ate was sugary crap ?

20 hottest male vampires

Webmaster — 2009-10-31T16:02:15Z

1. James Marsters as Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

Well, we've come to the end of the list and I know what you're all thinking. "Dude, really ?" I mean, those of you who have seen Buffy know exactly what I'm talking about, but to some...this might be a mystery. He has bleached blonde hair, you may say, and wears red and black together which is not only a vampire cliché, but looks horrendous. Why does he get to be number one ? Allow me to tell you : for one, he has a British accent and not just any British accent. It's a cockney British accent. If you don't think this is hot, you simply need to hear him say "bugger" and "bloody" a few times. It's awesome. Two, the character of Spike is really funny. This is an incredibly rare trait in a vampire and I don't know about you guys, but a guy who can make me laugh gets major points. Three, he's love's bitch. His words, not mine. Spike is man enough to admit that when it comes to love, he pretty much let's himself be taken over by it. We see this consistently throughout the show, whether it's his total and complete devotion to the very weak vampire Drusilla in the first two seasons (he nearly kills himself to save her), or his quest to obtain a soul to prove himself worthy of Buffy in season six. When this guy falls in love, he falls all the way in. Finally, he's ridiculously handsome. Not only does he have one of the most chiseled bodies I've ever seen, he has amazing blue eyes and very defined cheek bones. And while his style isn't exactly what'd I'd seek out on a normal day of vampire watching, William the Bloody makes it work for him. The Billy Idol, punk rock persona adds a level of vampire uniqueness that is greatly appreciated in a world of brooding, old-fashioned bloodsuckers. In the end, Spike can suck my blood any day of the week.

(...)

5. David Boreanaz as Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

Even though he was kind of a stalker in the first season, Angel made girls around the United States swoon - myself included. Apparently David Boreanaz was only meant to appear in a select few episodes of the first season, but the overwhelming support from fans not only caused Joss Whedon to keep him in the series, but motivated him to create a spin-off TV show entitled, Angel. And who can blame him ? Not only does Angel have one of the all time epic forbidden romances with vampire slayer Buffy Summers, he kicks major ass. With billowing black coats, very gelled hair, and an incredibly chiseled face, Angel is sort of the perfect male specimen. And while some may gripe that he sometimes loses his soul when he achieves perfect happiness, his evil, soulless, counterpart is even more entertaining to watch. To start with, he wears leather pants on a regular basis and becomes ten times more snarky. It's not only fun to watch, it'll convince you that the bad guys probably do have a lot more fun.

(...)

Click on the link for more :

http://www.guidetobeautyschools.com/hottest-twilight-vampires