+THAT POSTMODERN THING+

"Every time people say, 'You've transcended the genre,' I'm like: No! I believe in genre." - Joss Whedon

Season 6 references up to 6.17 'Normal Again' - you have been warned!

The first thing anyone notices about Buffy is, well, it's called Buffy the Vampire Slayer. A first and obvious criticism of the show is that it's 'not serious', that Buffy is fluffy and generally silly. In a way, it is, because Buffy is a show which is intrinsically postmodern, in which the idea of 'taking yourself seriously' is not always relevant. Another first impression is that the show is not 'original', that it's cliched, and recycles any old horror or sci-fi. Again, in a sense it's not 'original' but this is because it's postmodern.

For a potted history of postmodernism, it's a movement which emerged in the late 20th century, largely as a reaction against the elitism of high-art Modernism. No one can say exactly when postmodernism started, but the general agreement is that it comes after modernism (which flourished in the 20s and 30s). Modernism was the movement which encapsulates many people's ideas of what Art is; namely that art constitutes things which are not commercial or made as entertainment, and that the more confusing and oblique something is, the more artistic is it. High culture is better than low culture, and mediums such as TV, pulp fiction, pop music and Hollywood-style movies are not art. Modernism also believed that art is always progressing, that history is less relevant than the future, and that the past should be swept aside when necessary in favour of 'artistic progression'; which is not to say that Modernism embraced new mediums, it certainly didn't. Modernism believed in the advancement of some 'high art' mediums (primarily poetry, difficult prose and abstract art) and that anything that was a popular, or 'lowbrow', medium was not suitable for art, but was merely suited for entertainment. For Modernists, entertainment and art were mostly incompatible.
In contrast to the clear manifestos of the Modernists, no one can really define postmodernism. Which is pretty much the point; it defies strict definitions or categorisations, in the same way that postmodern texts do. But the main thing that's clear is that it's a reaction against modernism, against elitism and the idea that the more opaque something is, the better. Postmodernism is a way of looking at things which is relevant to the modern day, in which there are a huge amount of different forms of art and culture, and postmodern texts reflect this.

FLUFFY BUFFY
You'd have been forgiven for thinking, on first viewing, that Buffy is fluffiness to the extreme, and deliberately not 'deep'. That meaning is all on the surface, as opposed to underneath it. Postmodernism rejects the idea that art is better if less people understand it, and rejects the idea that something which is entertaining has less worth to it than something which is confusing but very 'artistic'. Film and TV is a very postmodern medium because it's very surfacey. And postmodernism loves surface; it loves things which don't have more to them than what we see at first glance. Style over substance, even, where the outward appearance is as important as the inner meaning.

How much of Buffy is style over substance? Quite a lot, really. Just look at the opening credits. Buffy begins each episode by embracing all the tackiness and exuberance of pulp horror movies; and, of course, with the all-pervasive theme tune it embraces punk rock, a musical movement which sought the smash up (what they saw as) the pretentiousness and obliqueness of progressive rock, through straightforward, surfacey rock 'n' roll means. Buffy is often just about the casual quips and one-liners, and many earlier episodes are deliberately designed to be almost pastiches of the uncomplex horror genre:

The First: You think you can fight me? I'm not a demon, little girl. I am something that you can't even conceive. The First Evil. Beyond sin, beyond death. I am the thing the darkness fears. You'll never see me, but I am everywhere. Every being, every thought, every drop of hate.

Buffy: Alright, I get it. You're evil. Do we have to chat about it all day?
('Amends', Season 3)

But the horror genre usually takes itself pretty seriously, because it relies on the audience getting involved with the characters in order to be scared. But in this quote, there's a perfect example of the show not trying to be scary or deep; Buffy rejects all mystical seriousness of the First Evil in favour of a quip that releases the tension rather than building it. Other episodes, such as 'Band Candy', 'Teachers' Pet' and 'Go Fish', for example, seem to be deliberately stylistic and not very substantial; they are designed to be light and mostly funny.

But while Buffy does frequently rely on simplicity, and style over substance, this isn't the way the whole show is constructed. Lightness is important, but the surface is never all there is. 'Band Candy' seems like a jokey episode, but in fact it has depth, and gives new insight into the characters. But is this not postmodern? Well, not really.While postmodernism does insist on the value of style over substance, it doesn't reject substance. Rather, it might be better to say that postmodernism rejects the idea that meaning must be injected into art, that there isn't meaning unless the art is complex and outwardly forbidding and confusing. Modernism sets more value by art and literature that tries to be art or literature, whereas postmodernism insists that there's as much, if not more, meaning to be found in something which doesn't compromise style in favour of substance. For postmodernists, something doesn't have to be unstylish or unconcerned with surface to have substance.

'Restless' seems to be an example of the show wholly going against the idea of simplicity and surfaceyness. The episodes tries to be oblique, opaque even, and tries to have a great deal of hidden meaning. But is 'Restless' not postmodern, then? Is it in fact modernism? Not at all. 'Restless' seeks to be complex, but it's also very stylistic; not everything in 'Restless' has a specific intended meaning, and much of it is done for its own sake. In the DVD commentary, Joss Whedon talks about the films which influenced him, and the effects he was trying to achieve; while the hidden meanings in the episode are important, the style of the episode is central. Postmodern texts are almost never purely stylistic, purely about the surface, and 'Restless' is no exception. Unlike modernists, postmodernists don't insist that the viewer, listener or reader deciphers their work. So you can decipher 'Restless', and it's doubtlessly intended that you could, but it also works as an entertaining and funny piece of television. 'Hush' worked on many levels, but chiefly it worked on the superficial TV-episode-without-talking level; complexity is there, but 'Hush' doesn't need to be 'deciphered' to work.

PASTICHE PASTICHES
Another key postmodern feature that 'Restless' includes is allusion, and pastiche. Postmodernism looks back as well as forward, and doesn't feel that art needs to 'progress' in some way. The past is unavoidable, and sometimes the Freudian idea of the return of the past (the repressed) is a key feature in postmodern texts; certainly the past never stays buried in Buffy, even if has been killed and laid to rest. Alluding to or pastiching other things is a key element of postmodernism.

In 'Restless', Joss references a number of films and styles, some more obvious than others, such as the Apocalypse Now pastiche with Xander. Joss also alludes to many styles and techniques, ranging from the style 'The Limey' or 'Eyes Wide Shut', to 'Rear Window'. Postmodernists don't feel that art should be, or can be, separated out from other texts and the world around it; in fact, there is no join between art and pop culture. They're both the same thing. Allusions to and pastiches of other things are a way postmodern texts establish themselves are part of a wider world. In Buffy, this ranges from casual references to TV shows, comic books, music, consumer products, all the way to Indian cinema. When Buffy says her spider-sense is tingling, she's establishing herself as a part of pop culture, not as something apart from it or superior to it; in postmodern texts, allusions aren't to obscure literature, but to the everyday.

Buffy exists are a part of the horror genre, but it also seeks to pastiche it. Unlike satire, which represents something satirically in order to make a specific point about it, pastiche pastiches something purely for the sake of it; because they can. In its time, Buffy has done the creature from the black lagoon, werewolves, Frankenstein, the mummy, the bionic man, Dracula and of course the classic head-teacher-that-turns-into-a-giant-snake. Perhaps the last one may be original. Each time a new, Buffy twist is put on the story, but generally speaking the intent is to pastiche, rather than to satirise. Buffy is never soley a satire on the horror genre; while it does somtimes seek to make observations about horror (or science fiction or fantasy) through satire, generally speaking pastiche is the aim: as pastiche doesn't criticise what it's pastiching.

Postmodernism is always interested in stylistic plurality, in the mixing of popular styles and genres, such as Joss' mixing of styles in 'Restless'. But on the more regular basis, the show mixes genres. In an earlier DVD commentary, Joss talks about the way that the show needed to use many different lighting techniques and direction, sometimes within just one scene. This is a symptom of the way the show is constructed; it isn't comedy, horror, romance, drama, science fiction or fantasy, it's all of these, frequently at the same time. Often, it's a genre-clash, horror suddenly undercut with drama, or romance undercut with comedy. Postmodernists recognise that any work of art is influenced by many genres, and that no one genre is more valid than another; pulp horror and serious drama can go hand in hand. Equally, it's completely impossible to ignore other genres and styles; it's not unoriginal to use them, it's merely a natural produce of living in the postmodern age. Genres are not artistically invalid, in the same way that no pop culture is invalid.

BUFFY ISN'T REAL
Another aspect of postmodernism is the idea of fiction recognising its own fictionality; that is, of a book realising it's a book, or of a film understanding that it's a film, drawing attention to this fact through devices which make it seem artificial, undermining the illusion of reality. Does Buffy do this? At first glance, this seems like the one postmodern feature the show doesn't adhere to at all. Buffy exists within its own uniquely constructed world, and believing in this world and in its characters and morals is key to enjoying the show. But Buffy has subtly drawn attention to the fact that it's TV. Many TV shows follow a common, almost invisible, style of directing, in which style isn't supposed to get in the way of the events on screen. While you obviously know you're watching a TV show, the program tries to keep the directing as inobtrustive as possible, in order that the storylines and characters can seem more plausible and less like a construct. In episodes such as 'Restless' and 'The Body', the show does deliberately draw attention to its own artifice. However, at no point in this episodes do the characters know that they're in a TV show; the illusion of some kind of reality is preserved, merely the means of portraying it (through directing and editing) is made a feature of the episode.

However, there are instances in which Buffy has called into question the 'reality' or plausibility of the Buffyverse. At times, there is a suggestion that there is some kind of real world (the world the viewers live in), in which vampires aren't real. In 'Tabula Rasa' and 'Halloween', some or all of the Scoobies revert to this state. Quickly this new reality is exposed as ignorance of the truth, but it seems to imply that the supernatural elements of the show are fictional, taken from comics, myths and films, rather than 'real'. The familar nature of the monsters in the Buffyverse further suggests a certain fictionality, as if the characters were living in a world where its very unreality is central.

This fictionalised world seems fragile. In the episodes 'Superstar' (Season 4) and 'Normal Again' (Season 6) the whole elaborate world of the show was torn down; in Season 5, Dawn was introduced, history was rewritten with apparent ease. Many postmodernists, while acknowledging the importance and inescapability of history, have made a feature of the fact that history itself is a construct; Season 5 and 'Superstar' showed us that memories were constructs and easily changed, and that the past can't be relied upon to ever be concrete or objective. These constructed worlds in Buffy are somehow less 'real', and more rooted in genre or other cliches than is usual; Jonathan's world in 'Superstar' drew on James Bond and on media perceptions of heroism, using a variety of different formats (comics, TV, film, sport, advertising) to demonstrate Jonathan's fake-heroeness. I'd also argue that Dawn's constructed personality, in Season 5, is taken from TV 'family drama' shows; she is the archetypical bratty teenager (though later episodes seem to show her breaking out of this role). Whether or not this is an example of the show drawing attention to its own fictionality, or an example of it making a point about the nature of reality, is debatable; but this view of history is very postmodern.

'Normal Again' presents the possibility that Buffy's world is itself a construct. For a while, the audience is expected to wonder how 'real' the show is; it's very significant that the new world Buffy finds herself in is more conventionally 'real' than that of the Buffyverse (vampires and demons are no longer real), similar to the group amnesia in 'Tabula Rasa' and 'Halloween'. This makes the audience wonder if Buffy is 'real'. Of course, it isn't, it's a TV show, but 'Normal Again' makes us question the believability of vampires and demons, and question whether or not we should 'believe' the show, and find it plausible. The ending of the episode seems to tell us that, while Buffy is never real, it's interesting, and exciting; so while it is a fictional construct, 'reality' is itself often no more real. Postmodernism always understands that texts are fictional, but also recognises that whatever we call 'real' or 'realistic' is often a construct itself.

COMPLETELY UNSERIOUS
While Buffy, in some way, fits in with many postmodern features (allusion and pastiche, anti-elitism, stylistic plurality), one key feature which Buffy seems to generally oppose is that of playfulness over seriousness. The show is often playful, but it frequently requires an involvement with the viewer which a complete lack of seriousness, of taking itself seriously, doesn't give; to work, Buffy has to take itself seriously.

Is seriousness not postmodern, then? Postmodernists often believe that no TV series, or any art, can take itself too seriously. I'd argue that's the better phrase, then; Buffy take itself seriously, but not too seriously. We're expected to believe, as Buffy and the Scoobies do, in the fight of good against evil, and in loves and romances in the Buffyverse. But, when it succeeds most, the show is always able to see and lighter perspective; even at the most intense moments, there are always jokes. This isn't really a lack of seriousness, but rather recognising that no piece of art can ever take itself entirely seriously. Not so much playfullyness over seriousness, as a use of both.

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