Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com The best place on earth for nerds. Tue, 12 Apr 2016 02:11:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/cropped-nerds_head_thumb2-100x100.png Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com 32 32 All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, under one umbrella. We create short run podcasts for nerds, covering D&D, Marvel, Starfinder, and more! You vote for your favorite shows and they just might get a second season. Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Nerds on Earth false episodic Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Nerds on Earth jason.sansbury@nerdsonearth.com podcast All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, the best place on Earth for nerds. Buffy the Vampire Slayer – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/noe-podcast-logo.png https://nerdsonearth.com/blog/ Why Worn-out and Tired Tropes are A Very, Very Good Thing https://nerdsonearth.com/2016/04/worn-tired-tropes-good-thing/ Tue, 12 Apr 2016 12:50:41 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=3308

Genre fiction is built on tropes. So, here is why tired 'ole tropes are a very, very good thing for nerds everywhere.

The post Why Worn-out and Tired Tropes are A Very, Very Good Thing appeared first on Nerds on Earth.

]]>

I don’t watch TV for reality, man, I watch it for zombies and wizards. Mainstream, network television is digital chloroform. Watching just five minutes of it puts me right to sleep.

In other words, I love me some genre fiction. And genre fiction–whether it be pulpy action, science fiction, fantasy, horror, or superheroes–differentiates itself from mainstream media by its heavy reliance on tropes.

What is a trope, you might ask? Well, see if these ring a bell:

  1. A lone survivor in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
  2. A reluctant paladin called to defend his homeland.
  3. The savior-sacrifice in defense of the galaxy.
  4. Splitting up to visit a dark, spooky basement.
  5. A rebellious assault against an overwhelming force.

Buffy the Vamire Slayer tropesTropes are the reason that many horror, action, and science fiction stories ring vaguely familiar as you watch them. All good stories have already been told, as they say.

But, genre fiction succeeds precisely because many writers manipulate these tropes in a cleverly skillful way! They turn tropes on their head, in other words. Maybe the authors subvert them, or unpack them, and maybe either shamelessly point right at them in a way that is meant to simply maximize the familiar fun.

Consider the following examples. Some of the best works of science fiction lately have been those that rely super heavily on tropes, on what we think we know about a certain genre, and then proceed to show us by clever sleight-of-hand what we may have overlooked.

District 9 tropesBuffy the Vampire Slayer Have we not seen the distressed blonde in a horror story before? But Buffy the Vampire Slayer takes that tired ‘ole trope and turns it into one of the all-time best TV genre shows. Speaking of trope-up horror TV…

The Walking Dead A band of survivors face an overwhelming force of numbers in a post-apocalyptic landscape. That’s as tropey as it gets. But viewers know that the real threat are the humans themselves and they watch that emotional roller coaster with just as much (or more) interest than the horror zombie bits. The Walking Dead is a predictable trope turned inward.

District 9 Quoting Joseph Robinson:

Using tropes to tell bigger stories or make bigger points is one of my favorite things about sci-fi, and District 9 is one of the best examples. That movie isn’t about aliens who end up on planet earth and have tension with the humans. It’s about racism, and how seemingly normal, well-adjusted, reasonable people can allow themselves to end up in a situation where they are oppressing people who mean them no harm just because they look different.

Children of Men The story of the movie is that no child has been born for nearly two decades. Society teeters on the verge of collapse when a guy is approached by his estranged wife for a favor – to help smuggle a refugee girl out of the country… who happens to be pregnant.

The Walking Dead tropesThis film has maybe the biggest trope of them all: a hope bringer in a dystopian world. You could feed a family of five for a week on that trope, and still have lots left over for seconds. Not only that, the movie has an intrepid reporter, apocalypse anarchy, the alcoholic who uses his last drop, cyanide pills, a redhead, a Macguffin mission, a racist grandpa, a Viking funeral, a shut up gunshot, and a million more.

You would think that Children of Men–with so many well-worn, predictable, over-used, oft-seen, clichéd tropes–would be a disaster. Oh, friend. Children of Men is brilliant, taking familiar tropes and layering them in a way that creates one of the most wonderful science fiction films ever.


What is wonderful about all these examples is that the writer shows no embarrassment whatsoever about their pulpy, trope-filled source material. Instead, they dug deep into the how and why and the who, then used tropes we might have considered played out (the astronaut in trouble, the alien invasion, the last man standing, the reluctant hero, the powerless blonde, the zombie apocalypse, etc.) and illustrated profoundly heartbreaking things about the human condition.

That is perhaps genre in a nutshell: cliche turned on its head. And that’s good stuff.

What’s the takeaways? Well, for starters:

  1. Embrace the tropes! Did The Force Awakens ring familiar to A New Hope? You bet it did! But it also introduced new characters and future stories, simply by embracing the same tired chosen savior and small band against all odds tropes. Go with it; have fun with it.
  2. Watch genre movies with a little less credulity. This is particularly true of comic book super hero stuff (which is a trope article for another day). Again, go with it. To be clear, I’m not saying just let anything go, settling for a bad story. Far from it! Even though genre doesn’t often set out to clear the bar of high culture, the examples above remind us that they often do, and can please and audience even as they tell critically acclaimed stories.
  3. Use tropes. But work in a Mad Hatter mashup of time periods, genres, and mythologies – that’s the whole point. Use what is familiar and loved by audiences, but flip it on its head or use it to tell new, bigger stories. Tropes are your friend.

Need more? Here are our top 7 favorite tropes.

The post Why Worn-out and Tired Tropes are A Very, Very Good Thing appeared first on Nerds on Earth.

]]>
7 Greatest Screen Vampires of All Time https://nerdsonearth.com/2015/10/greatest-vampires-of-all-time/ Fri, 30 Oct 2015 12:49:16 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=3861

When I was researching to create a list of the greatest vampires of all time, I found that there have been approximately 143,547,812 vampires who have appeared on televisions or in movies. Needless to say, it was difficult to cut the list down to 7. But this isn’t a Montessori website, there aren’t any ribbons […]

The post 7 Greatest Screen Vampires of All Time appeared first on Nerds on Earth.

]]>

When I was researching to create a list of the greatest vampires of all time, I found that there have been approximately 143,547,812 vampires who have appeared on televisions or in movies. Needless to say, it was difficult to cut the list down to 7.

But this isn’t a Montessori website, there aren’t any ribbons for 17th place. Only the 7 greatest vampires of all time make the cut, meaning that many deserving vampires got cut (Sorry Blacula. You are #8 in my [points to heart]).

[divider]7 Greatest Vampires of All Time[/divider]

7. Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) – Dracula

Bela Lugosi Greatest Vampires of all TimeUs whipper-snapper nerds need to learn the proper respect for our elders, not to mention the Elder Gods, which goes without saying. Much like nearly every video game today owes a debt to D&D, nearly every vampire trope, legend, or cliché owes a debt to Bela Lugosi.

In 1931 Bela Lugosi starred in Dracula and in one turn at playing the role he solidified so many of quintessential aspects of how we visualize Dracula: the cowl, the coffin, the slicked back hair, and not least, the thick, heavy accent that gave us the slow delivery of lines (“I vvont…to drink…your blood….”).

And before we go on to other great vampires, let’s not forget the story beats that Bela Lugosi popularized in our culture:

  • A castle in Transylvania that the local village fears.
  • A carriage driver taking him along a craggy pass, only to have a disappearing driver replaced by bats.
  • A charming but eccentric Count, who unbeknownst to visitors, is a vampire capable of hypnotism.
  • A coffin.
  • Dracula entering rooms, feasting on the blood of young damsels while they sleep.
  • Professor Van Helsing and the trinkets used for protection from vampires.

With Bela Lugosi a legend was born.

 

6. Dracula (Christopher Lee) – Horror of Dracula and a dozen more.

maxresdefaultBefore he was Count Dooku, Christopher Lee was Count Dracula and he took the role to such new heights that he made Lugosi look like an understudy. Sure, Christopher Lee built off of popular beats first seen from Lugosi, but no one questions that it was Lee who became the definitive old school Dracula.

At 6’4″ Lee was physically imposing and used body language and sparse dialogue as he hissed and sneered, creating and sense of menace and monster.

Outside of a silly incident where he fell into a grave on set while carrying and actress around, Christopher Lee was the one who first made us truly fear Dracula.

 

5. Count von Count – Sesame Street

maxresdefaultNow that we’ve established the monster, let’s take a step back for a moment and recognize the other ways that Dracula has made his way into pop culture. And apologies to Grandpa from the Munsters, but it is Count von Count who best exemplifies that the character can be light-hearted as well.

Sure, it’s hard to picture Count von Count as among the greatest vampires of all time, but it’s equally hard to picture having no representation for the playful ways that vampires have invaded our culture. Around since 1972, Count von Count is the reason that kids know how to count to 10, while also letting us know that it’s OK to let out a slow, deliberate laugh after every number. “AH! AH! AH!”

(Interestingly, one of the lesser known myths about vampires is that they are, in fact, obsessive compulsively obsessed with with counting. This was demonstrated once by Mulder in a brilliant X-Files episode where he tried to distract a vampire using sunflower seeds.)

 

4. Santánico Pandemónium (Salma Hayak) – From Dusk to Dawn

54cb50b94669b_-_coolest-vamps-09-1014-deAs much as it is important to recognize that vampires have also invaded our culture in innocuous ways, it’s foolish not to recognize that the past couple of decades has focused on the sex appeal of vampires. And it was largely Salma Hayak who ushered in that trend.

Hayek played Santánico Pandemónium, an erotic dancer at a south-of-the-border nightclub that doubled as a popular vampire hangout. Hayek wasn’t the first female vampire by any means, but she was far from just another Bride of Dracula. She was the star attraction – the Queen Vampire – who both upped the sex appeal of vampires, while also eradicating any pretense that vampires needed to be in grim and stodgy Transylvanian settings.

 

3. Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) – Dark Shadows

Barnabas Collins Greatest vampires of all timeAs much as Salma Hayak helped to usher in the sex appeal of vampires, it was the Barnabas Collins character from Dark Shadows that helped usher in the sympathetic vampire, a trope that certainly persists to this day.

In keeping the classic look of Lee and Lugosi, Collins sported a black onyx signet ring, a double-breasted suit, and a silver-handled wolf’s head cane. He also sported the same danger and bloodlust.

But then there was another side as well, a kind of kindness, an element that has been picked up and threaded in most vampires since. It was a seductive mix of both danger and an attempt to mind his manners.

 

2. David (Kiefer Sutherland) – Lost Boys

THE LOST BOYS, Brooke McCarter, Alex Winter, Billy Wirth, Kiefer Sutherland, Jami Gertz, 1987. ©Warner Bros.

But before vampires could fully latch on to that sympathetic thread and star in Young Adult novels everywhere, that had one bastion of pure unabashed hedonism in the character David, played by Keifer Sutherland in Lost Boys.

There was no way that Keifer Sutherland was going to settle down in the suburbs and drive a Volvo. No, he was motorcycles, thrill-seeking, and self-indulgence, mainly in using his powers of suggestion on young damsels.

And while the character injected the self-gratuitous fun back into vampires, it also injected something else into the psyche of popular culture, which was the idea that a bleached hair bad boy teen vampire is cool. Without that, we might have never had #1 on our list.

 

1. Angel and Spike (David Boreanez and James Marstens, respectively) – Buffy the Vampire Slayer

angelBecause I’m a cheating cheater who cheats, I’m using one spot to list two vampires, mainly how would you choose between Angel or Spike?

Angel had that lovestruck, moping, shadow-lurking, agonized, sulky, pathetic, in need of a hug, sympathetic  vampire down cold. No vampire on screen has ever done it better.

Angel was a vampire with a soul, a brilliant schtick that opened up innumerable story opportunities, all of which David Boreanez took advantage of.

Likewise, there was Spike, but much less mopey and much more bad boy. In contrast to Angel, Spike’s personality remains the same, soul or not, but underneath it all, Spike loves deeply and earnestly in a way that was very human.

Spike_serious_mad_A57It helped that James Marsters played Spike perfectly with his posh 18th Century London mockney accent with a quick, sarcastic wit.

In fact, as much as it is difficult to place Spike or Angel above one another, it’s worth noting that the other vampires from both Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and later Angel) – Drusilla, Darla, Harmony – could have made this list as well, proof that those characters now stand as the quintessential take on vampires in popular culture. I’m good with that.

––

Thanks for reading. If you’ve enjoyed Nerds on Earth, please help us spread the word by using the social media buttons located around the site.

The post 7 Greatest Screen Vampires of All Time appeared first on Nerds on Earth.

]]>