By Neil Hogan
Joss Whedon, a television auteur, includes foreshadowing, long-term storytelling and callbacks in his shows. He achieves his auteuristic control through his Mutant Enemy Productions company and crew. In this post I will look at Whedon’s auterism in relation to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS), his tapping into the teen TV genre, and that he not only creates a powerful text that encourages interpretation, he also creates television shows that garner a cult following. In this sense, he is not only an auteur, but one of the first true cult auteurs.
Auteur theory “commonly refers to filmmakers or directors with a recognisable style or thematic preoccupation that transcends an otherwise collaborative creative art.” (Donnar 2019). Whedon, like a novel author, decides what appears on screen, thanks to his control and influence through his company Mutant Enemy Productions. Nat Brehmer summarized Whedon’s style in 2018 -“From the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 1997, Joss Whedon began changing the landscape of television with his unique brand of dialogue, long-term storytelling, unexpected character deaths and insanely precise foreshadowing and callbacks to previous events.” Whedon went on to do the same with Firefly, Dollhouse, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, to name a few, but BTVS was arguably his greatest success, mainly due to his addressing the horrors of the teen years.
Episode one of BTVS introduces Buffy (Sarah Michelle Geller) as she attempts to fit into a new life after moving to the ironically named Sunnydale. While this simple narrative is happening, an omnipresent camera explores other areas of Sunnydale, showing us that vampires are killing people, and a group of them plans to open the Hell Mouth, which just so happens to be under the town. As the episode progresses, we learn that Buffy is not just a simple, innocent girl from another town, she is already an accomplished slayer who kills vampires. Whedon has taken the common teen movie narrative of introducing characters via a new person appearing in a high school, then subverted it. In almost every scene, something mysterious happens that says this is not a simple teen show. An example from the first episode shows Buffy getting bumped and dropping her bag, but even though Xander (Nicholas Brendan) did not bump her, he is coincidentally there to help her pick up her stuff. When she goes, he finds she has missed something – a wooden stake. And so, underlying these simple changes to the expected storyline and clichéd scenes is a much more complex narrative also tied up in the horrors of the high school years. “[P]art of teen identity and part of teen TV involves managing the wider stigmatisation or even pathologisation of “the teen” in adult society” (Hills 2004, p54). Whedon tapped into this prevailing undercurrent and BTVS was successful as a result.
What attracts cult followings is not just the idea of well-written and entertaining long-term storytelling that people can relate to, and foreshadowing, but also callbacks – the little rewards viewers discover hidden away in the narrative, deliberately left for the fans. Whedon plans all these frisson moments ahead and also drops tiny clues on the way about what will happen next. “When Kristine Sutherland [Buffy’s mother in BTVS] told [Whedon] in season three that she wouldn’t be around much the next year, he told her that she’d need to be back for her death in season five.” (Brehmer 2018) Then in season four, for the fans, Buffy says a throwaway line, “I can’t wait till mom gets the bill for these books. I hope it’s a funny aneurysm.” Then Buffy’s mother dies in season five from an aneurysm. There are hundreds of these kinds of references in BTVS. An auteur continually refers back and forward to other parts of their narrative, much like a writer does in a novel. A cult auteur would want to make sure there were enough of these included but difficult to find to be able to garner a stronger fan following. “They sometimes explore underdeveloped subtexts of the original film, offer original interpretations of the story, or suggest plotlines that go beyond the work itself.” (Jenkins 2006, p155) “This [also] implies a close audience-text relationship that enables viewers to interpret and think about a text. (Jenner 2005, p305)” “Cult shows become so over time, through audience routines and repeated viewings, as well as through organised fandoms, reading protocols, textual forms, the situated agency of media producers, and media institutional contexts such as syndication or prolonged seriality.” (Hills 2004, p522). A show needs to have certain elements to become cult viewing, and Whedon knows how to make sure they are in his shows.
In conclusion, Joss Whedon is a true auteur, able to control everything about a series, as proven through Buffy: The Vampire Slayer. But, as he also deliberately encourages reinterpretation and a fan following, he is also a true cult auteur.
Word Count: 812
References
Brehmer, N 2018, ’15 Things You Completely Missed in The Whedonverse’, Screenrant, viewed 27 October 2019 <https://screenrant.com/whedonverse-things-missed-easter-eggs-references/quickview/5>
Donner, G, 2019, Lecture 12. TV Auteurs and Cult TV Audiences, lecture recording, Television Cultures COM 1073, RMIT, delivered 17 October 2019
Hills, M 2004, ‘Defining Cult TV: Texts, Inter-texts and Fan Audiences’ in Allen, R & Hill, A, The Television Studies Reader, London: Routledge, p522
Hills, M 2004, ‘Dawson’s Creek: ‘Quality Teen TV’ and ‘Mainstream Cult’?’ in Davis G & Dickinson, K, Teen TV: Genre, Consumption, Identity, London: British Film Institute, p54
Jenkins, H 2006, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York: New York University Press, p155
Jenner, M 2005, ‘Binge-watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom’ in International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 20 (3), p305, viewed 27 October 2019 < https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1367877915606485>
Smith, C (Dir.) 1997, ‘Welcome to the Hellmouth’ in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Joss Whedon (Exec. Prod.), DVD, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, viewed 17 October 2019