On day 3 of the 30 Days Tag, I have to choose my favourite TV programme. To be honest with you, I didn’t struggle with this as much as I did with the last two subjects – mostly because even though I have a host of favourite programmes (The X Files, Smallville, Sex and the City, Roswell, Trueblood, Heroes, Ugly Betty, Charmed etc), there is only one that I could watch any number of times and still look forward to watching again. When I was at High school, when I had a particularly bad day, I would look forward to the next installment of this programme with it’s kick ass characters and freaky supernatural beasties. I could relate to the teen struggles and later I could relate to it as a kind of feminist text. It might not be a perfect or even amazingly ‘radical’ feminist text, but for me it was one of the more positive portrayals of a girl growing into a tough woman. The last episodes ever were definitely very pro-feminist, and I loved the ending, even though there was a lot of heartbreak and loss.
Anyway, if you haven’t guessed already, my favourite programme is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was one of the most iconic programmes of the 90s and I feel that there won’t really be anything like it again. Its disappointing because most of the teen dramas I’ve watched since don’t hold a candle to it – Roswell is a bit too involved in ‘romance’ and though I haven’t watched The Vampire Diaries, it sounds romance led too (but then a lot of teen stuff is, in general – it’s a very hormonal time!). I don’t think romance is a bad thing at all, but I do worry that the overtly kick ass teen heroines of Buffy (Willow, Buffy and all the slayerettes) might be a thing of the past unless someone picks up Joss Whedon’s lead. I saw a couple of episodes of Dollhouse (his latest offering) and I wasn’t impressed. I’m really liking Trueblood and I know Sookie is a tough lady (in the books she is more overtly so than in the series), but there is a gap in the teen market (err…Bella Swan is hardly the toughest human ever – she gets rescued a lot).
Most importantly though, Buffy is excellent entertainment; despite my looking upon it with my feminist analysis cap, that doesn’t mean it isn’t exciting and adrenaline packed. We’re losing sight of the fact that Vampires were never supposed to be attractive or ‘safe’ in some way (particularly to the ones they fell in love with…) – Buffy’s relationships with Spike and Angel were never cute or safe. I just really liked the fact that Buffy the Vampire Slayer wasn’t always focused on heterosexual ‘romance’ as such, even though it is a part of the series (remember Willow and Tara?).
Cats and Chocolate 