Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born
How Buffy Staked Our Hearts
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Explore the history and cultural impact of a groundbreaking television show adored by old and new fans alike: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Over the course of its seven-year run, Buffy the Vampire Slayer cultivated a loyal fandom and featured a strong, complex female lead, at a time when such a character was a rarity. Evan Ross Katz explores the show’s cultural relevance through a book that is part oral history, part celebration, and part memoir of a personal fandom that has universal resonance still, decades later.
Katz—with the help of the show’s cast, creators, and crew—reveals that although Buffy contributed to important conversations about gender, sexuality, and feminism, it was not free of internal strife, controversy, and shortcomings. Men—both on screen and off—would taint the show’s reputation as a feminist masterpiece, and changing networks, amongst other factors, would drastically alter the show’s tone.
Katz addresses these issues and more, including interviews with stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, Charisma Carpenter, Emma Caulfield, Amber Benson, James Marsters, Anthony Stewart Head, Seth Green, Marc Blucas, Nicholas Brendon, Danny Strong, Tom Lenk, Bianca Lawson, Julie Benz, Clare Kramer, K. Todd Freeman, Sharon Ferguson; and writers Douglas Petrie, Jane Espenson, and Drew Z. Greenberg; as well as conversations with Buffy fanatics and friends of the cast including Stacey Abrams, Cynthia Erivo, Lee Pace, Claire Saffitz, Tavi Gevinson, and Selma Blair.
Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born engages with the very notion of fandom, and the ways a show like Buffy can influence not only how we see the world but how we exist within it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entertaining debut, pop culture critic Katz makes a convincing case for why 25 years on, Buffy the Vampire Slayer "remains one of the best television series of all time." Self-annointed as the "world's preeminent Sarah Michelle Gellar historian," Katz asserts that, in addition to indelibly shaping the landscape of modern-day television, the seven-year series "changed lives"—and also ruined a few. As he writes, "to love Buffy is to both contextualize and reexamine it." Delivering on that, he explores the show's enduring feminist narrative and the impact it had on other die-hard fans—such as Stacey Abrams, who, in an interview with Katz, praises Buffy for "grappl with the contours of power." Meanwhile, another fan highlights how Buffy's "experience of otherness" and ability to flourish and find community helped many embrace their own stories; echoing this, Katz movingly reflects how the show gave him "a sense of strength... throughout a youth in which I often felt powerless; it even helped me come to terms with my sexuality." Still, he doesn't shy away from problematic issues with the show, sharply critiquing its lack of racial diversity as well as abuse allegations about its writer Joss Whedon ("It's always the quiet ones, isn't it?"). Mixing keen cultural analysis, wit, and an obsessive's zeal, this will have fans riveted.
