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Buffy the Vampire Slayer: imagery by season

This is a masterlist of posts about Buffy’s imagery by season. Most written by me, but not all. I started the series as an attempt to explore the visual side of Buffy, which is often not given very much credit outside of showpiece episodes. Perhaps because of the show’s lower-budget aesthetic, or perhaps because the show has always been more well-known for its wit. But imagery can be meaningful even if it isn’t “pretty.” I found that each season was rich with visual motifs that echoed the ideas the season was exploring. Sometimes those motifs had to do with the content of the shot, and sometimes they had to do with the way the shot was composed. Season six, for example, has many images of fire, and season three has many instances of characters wielding crosses. Whereas season two has a gothic atmosphere that affects the “mood” of shots as much what the shot is looking at. Or season seven uses heavy foregrounding and backgrounding effects to frame the action in a way that emphasizes the subjectivity of perspective.

The intention of the series is not to identify every single motif in every season of Buffy, or to describe every theme. I tried to limit myself only to motifs that had an undeniable visual component. When picking images for season four’s “identity” motif, for example, I didn’t consider it good enough just to show a random image of Faith in Buffy’s body, and let the reader remember that Faith had stolen Buffy’s identity in that shot. Because in that case, the visuals weren’t necessarily doing obvious thematic work. The story was. But that shot in which Faith-as-Buffy stares at herself in the mirror, and at the audience by proxy? That sort of image suggests self-contemplation, and highlights the bizarreness of the fact that it’s not Buffy staring at you. Which absolutely connects to ideas around identity. In other words, I tried to limit myself to images where it really is the image that matters, and not just the context. Even if the context is relevant to what makes the image work.

Adding commentary to all of the posts is an ongoing project. For now I’ve marked all entries that have some sort of explanation attached–whether in essay format or in the tags–with an asterisk (*). 

Season One:

iconography * | horror * | the unexpected  *

high school is hell * | youth; age; the horror of adulthood * (by @visitingthefuneralhome)

Season Two:

voyeurism ( 1 * / 2 / 3 ) | duality * | romance | loss | desire | the gothic *

revivification * | transformation * (by @visitingthefuneralhome)

Season Three:

alter egos * | names | high school | decay * | imprisonment * | precipices * | community * | propriety * | rebellion * | authority vs leadership * | crosses * | crime and punishment * | law and order *

Season Four:

the panopticon ( 1 / 2 / 3 ) | identity * | magic | guns and the military | science and technology | authority * | magic vs science *

Season Five:

mortality * | blood | myth * | strength * | family | love * | boundaries * (more on this motif in no place like home specifically) | grief * | crazy *

Season Six:

the fourth wall | voyeurism and surveillance | fire ( 1 / 2 * ) | disorientation | sex | death * | collapse * | depression | guilt | puppetry * | alcohol * | food ( 1 / 2 * ) | control * | light * | black and white * | the mundane *

Season Seven:

gaze * | frames | isolation | captivity * | touch | the unsafe house * | windows and doors | reflections | communication | perspective | beneathness | overlays * | blindness (and sight) * | foreground/background *

is it time for frank cho and milo manara to die or what