Intertextuality in Buffy The Vampire Slayer :: Television Shows TV Essays

Intertextuality in Buffy The Vampire SlayerA magnificent and in truthistic subjective construe of TV dramatic fiction is almost obvious of viewer enjoyment. To feel a personal engagement with the depicted events, to experience a sense of the fictional space as subjectively real and to become bring outn into that space ar arguably defining features of pleasurable television viewing, as they ar of film and of literature. In this paper, I lead argue that certain forms of intertextuality play a key role in producing this experience. In cult TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS), these forms of intertextuality are used in abundance, and BtVS is therefore an excellent vehicle for exploring their psychological impact. Krzywinska (2002) notes that BtVS demands a sophisticated level of engagement by viewers, and that this is encouraged by a number of strategies, including intertextual references. She notes that the show makes many references, for example to shows such as Xen a and the novels of Anne Rice, and that these are Part of a common cultural vocabulary that connects characters to a broader real existence culture. Such references lend the series a greater sense of meaningfulness, and textual richness, further encouraging discussion between viewers and helping to wrap the Buffyverse with everyday life (p 190). Other references to the real initiation (for example the fact that Giles is said to aim brought many of his books from the British Library, and the frequent use of the Internet) provide an important bureau of linking the diegetic world to other texts, to history, and to viewers cultural knowledge This is important to the series project of devising connections with viewers lives the aim of which is to build a cultural vocabulary gleaned from the real world that is common to both viewers and characters (pp 192 3). For Krzywinska, such devices make the audience absorbed and make the viewing experience richer and more rewarding. However, the argument presented here impart be that such intertextuality has further psychological effects that serve to draw the viewer into the fantasy world of BtVS and to intensify the feeling of involvement. So that the rewards for the viewer go beyond merely catching the references. At this point, it seems necessary to enter into a brief discussion of what I am assuming by the terminus the viewer. What follows is fundamentally a textual analysis of the positions that BtVS makes available or offers us, and invites us to take up (however, as will become clear, I am in no way suggesting that these subject positions are identificatory in the chronic sense.