Slayage (Mar 2001)
From the Valley to the Hellmouth: “Buffy”’s Transition from Film to Television
Abstract
The Buffy who fights demons on television in Sunnydale is a far cry from the Buffy who fought vampires on the big screen in the early nineties. In the transition from film to television, Buffy has mutated from a bubbly Valley girl into a feminist heroine more in accordance with Joss Whedon's original vision. This essay examines the cultural currents which allowed for the emergence of a stronger, more complex Buffy, the differences in medium that facilitated this change, and the consequences of this transition on the depiction of young women in the media, and touches on the Girl Power wave of the mid-nineties, its impact on the character of Buffy as part of a larger media impact, and, in turn, Buffy's impact on the portrayal of young women on television and beyond. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV show).
