Coming of Age:
A Journey from Television Culture of
the early 2000s to the Social Media Takeover of the 2020s in American Culture
Chapter
1: Theories on Vampires and TikTok
The
adolescent alienation from dominant culture is a subject that originally piqued
my interest during my graduate program in American Studies. Through texts I was
exposed to at the time, I realized that teens are an important subculture
within America, not unlike women or middle-class workers or the Dust Bowl
migrants of the early 20th century. There’s a plethora of literature
and analysis on these groups, so why isn’t there more about this distinct
subculture of teenagers often ignored by mainstream culture?
During the early 2000s, there were a few shows in
particular that highlighted the teen character as alien or different from
dominant culture. One of those shows was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which
premiered in 1997 and aired its last episode in 2003. Buffy competed
with shows like The O.C., Dawson’s Creek, and earlier shows like Beverly
Hills, 90210. On paper, the shows all fell within the “teen drama”
category, but Buffy brought a new twist to the table, something we’d see in
shows like Roswell and Joan of Arcadia during this time period as
well. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the show that started a genre of
supernatural-based adolescent television shows: dramatic series for teen
audiences that not only look at other worldly phenomena, but incorporate both
spiritual and identity quests into their storylines. Buffy Summers was coming
of age while she was also grappling with being the “Chosen One” of her
generation, the slayer of all vampires (and evil). Her spiritual quest for
fulfillment coincided with decisions about what prom dress to buy and which
test to study for when she’s strapped for time killing vampires in the
graveyard.
Cultural analysts and sociologists have studied the
effects of television on American culture for decades. But what has the impact
been specifically on teenagers with messaging about spiritual and identity
quests like the ones making a regular appearance in Buffy’s storylines?
According to JoEllen Fisherkeller in her work, Growing Up with Television:
Everyday Learning Among Young Adolescents:
The youth in this study, as a group
of peers, understood that television is but one of many options people have for
leisure, getting information, and interacting with others. And for them, TV was
often the only option. Many of these adolescents regarded television as a
necessary given, as shown in their disbelief when I informed them that I lived
without cable TV (for a time). The idea that anyone did not have full access to
television choices made some of their jaws drop.
For teens of the early
2000s, television viewing was an extremely common activity, and teens chose
shows for the ways in which their messages related to them individually. As I
mentioned briefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer deals with other-worldly forces,
mostly because the main character, Buffy Summers, is the chosen one of her
generation. She plays the role of the vampire slayer whom fate has selected to
battle demons, vampires, and other creatures from hell. Being the ”chosen one”
means that Buffy has been pre-selected by destiny to fight evil. According to
the vampire lore explained throughout the series, the history of the slayer
dates back to prehistoric times. Buffy cannot resist her calling, because she
is destined to fulfill this role.
One of the most engaging qualities exhibited by Buffy is
her desire to be a “normal teenage girl”. She has been given this immense
responsibility to save the world (on multiple occasions), and what the viewer
really sees throughout the series is Buffy’s own search for self. Her identity
quest, and oftentimes, her spiritual awareness and discovery is a focal point
of the show. And this would appeal to adolescents in so many different ways, as
they are usually in a place in their own lives where they are trying to figure
out who they are going to be, what and who they love, and how they are going to
exist in this world. Buffy’s relatability and her desire to fit in is an
over-arching them of the show, and one that so many teens of the early 2000s
could relate to.
In undertaking this deconstruction of coming of age in
American culture, I’m exploring the impact of two social phenomenon. The
television culture of the turn of the century (1997 – 2003) focusing on teen
dramas with a supernatural element (through the study of Buffy), and
comparing and contrasting that to the explosion of social media targeting
teenagers twenty years later (through a close look at TikTok). It’s important
to keep in mind the conceptual considerations of the adult construction of
adolescent reality, the introduction of media representations of teens as alien
others in dominant culture in the early 2000s, and the role of television shows
and social media in the lives of real teens across more than two decades. What
is being said (or unsaid) about the supernatural “other” among adolescents in Buffy
the Vampire Slayer that we see repeated in mainstream culture in 2020? What
is the significance of the spiritual and identity quest in the early 2000s as
opposed to the presentation of self to others through the social media lens of
the early 2020s? Television was a shaping force in American culture from its
birth in the 1950s, and more than seventy years later, television is still a
shaping force, but has arguably taken a backseat for adolescents, and social
media is now behind the wheel, driving cultural trends, popularity, and even
celebrity status.
It is the premise of this analysis that teenagers are a
significant cultural group, and therefore adolescent culture is an important
part of American culture. In addition, the belief that “not belonging” in
American society is an ostracizing problem for subcultures throughout the
nation’s history is prominent in this study. We have seen throughout history
that many teenagers struggle to fit in with the popular crowd in high school.
Their search for belonging occurs within their subculture of adolescents, as
well as within the dominant culture. Teens must accept some of the values of
mainstream culture in order to survive in America, but this does not mean that
teenagers are accepted as members of the dominant culture. In many ways, teens
have been outsiders since the recognition of this distinct and liminal social
category in the 1940s. Liminal in this case refers to the in-between life stage
of adolescence, in which one is no longer a child but is not considered an
adult either.
Chapter
2: Television Culture: Shaping a Generation
The impact of television on American culture is a
much-discussed topic amongst sociologists and cultural analysts. The historical
impact of American culture lends a unique understanding to the intensity of the
impact on adolescents specifically at the turn of the 21st century.
Cecilia Tichi, an English professor at Vanderbilt University, has also examined
the emergence of television as a cultural force, but she only extends her
analysis to the late 20th century. In her book, Electronic Hearth,
Tichi explores the many ways in which television has infiltrated American
culture, especially before the social media explosion of more recent years.
Writing in 1991, Tichi claims that “television is by now ubiquitous in
virtually every cultural format and venue in the United States. It takes shape
as familial hearth, as the illuminator/corruptor of children, as the
paradoxical site of sedentary activism, as the locus of a new, multivalent
consciousness.”
Tichi explores the cultural image of the television as the new family center,
replacing the fireplace in American homes, and essentially changing the way
families interact with each other at home. Her book also focuses on the ways in
which television takes over leisure hours for children and adults alike. The
leisure culture that began to emerge in America in the 1950s changed the way
many Americans lived in their time outside of work, and watching television
became one of the mot prevalent ways to spend leisure time. Similar to social
media of the 2020s, the television set acts as a companion for many Americans,
including adolescents, and television became more privatized in the last
quarter of the 20th century. Tichi’s work examines the impact of
television on American culture, as well as the impact on the family unit and
the individuals within the family.
A specific genre of programming for adolescents began to
develop late in the 20th century. In his book, Gen X TV, television
critic Rob Owen provides a broad overview of shows from the 1980s and 1990s,
their impact on familial relationships in America and, specifically, those that
fundamentally shaped the development of Generation X. At the heart of Owen’s
argument lies the contention that the children who were raised on TV and grew
up with the strong presence of consumer culture in the 1980s and 1990s have
made a significant impact on the power of television shows. The changes within
the American family have caused television to be even more important in the
lives of American adolescents. Owen views the relationship between television
and adolescents (specifically Generation X teens) as reciprocal, with each
influencing the other:
Although not the first group of
Americans to grow up on TV, Xers are the first group for whom TV served as a
regularly scheduled baby-sitter. Gen X was the first to experience MTV and the
FOX network, and they are an audience many advertisers are eager to reach. Xers
are the most media-savvy generation ever.
The Gen X teens are
different because they are more likely to be the children of divorced and
blended families than previous generations which, Owen argues, means they adopt
TV families such as the Brady Bunch as their own family. Many teens
admired but could not actually relate to characters on shows like Beverly
Hills, 90210 during the 1990s. Along came shows like Buffy that
spoke to a new audience of teenagers about not belonging, and wanting to be
something more, and that spoke to a lot of adolescents in the late 21st
century. They wanted an unlikely hero, someone like them, but also someone with
a uniqueness that was unparalleled.
As teenagers become more and more marginalized, and
labeled as an outsider, their quest for something meaningful deepens. Teenagers
in American culture are often not taken seriously, because they are not always
recognized as individuals who are part of the dominant culture. Thus, teenagers
exist on the outskirts, in their own subculture within dominant culture. They
walk a thin line of belonging and being ostracizing, of being taken seriously
and written off as meaningless or unimportant. As Lynn Schofield Clark
discusses in her book, From Angels to Aliens, the lives of teenagers are
forever changing and teens are constantly seeking: “Certainly, the teenage
years are a time of confusion, as significant physical, emotional social and
sometimes even spiritual changes define the period that marks the transition
from childhood to adulthood.” As teens search for what
they believe, they often engage in a type of spiritual quest. This search for
meaning and purpose in a larger context than their everyday lives can often
take on the form of religious experimentation for teens or identification with
a certain belief system. In her larger over-arching argument, Clark contends
that the questions many teens face during these formative years are not
confronted or taken seriously by adults in the dominant societal group, and
this has created quite an identity crisis for America’s adolescents. A
phenomenon that we see continuing in the 2020s, as social media encourages
teenagers to be themselves, but then rates videos and compares them to one
another based on likes and shares. It is my argument that tragic events during
the turn of the 21st century (the Columbine High School shooting in 1999
and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001) ignited and intensified this
identity crisis for teens once again.
Chapter
3: Real Teens in Historical Context
Adolescence, as defined by development psychologists, is
a universal life stage that is biologically driven and also reflects
sociological imperatives. Virtually ignored in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, American adolescence has been described as a tumultuous and defining
period of time in an individual’s life since the nineteenth century. Thomas
Hine, author of The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager, examines the
social category of the teenager as it emerged in the twentieth century as an
expression of adolescent participation in American life. For Hine, teenagers
are neither adults nor children, and they are constantly in a state of limbo in
American culture. Hine also suggests that the idea of the American teenager
does not need to continue in our society, due in large part to its negative connotations,
which have developed in reference to teenagers over time.
According to Hine, “teenagers occupy a special place in
the society. They are envied and sold to, studied and deplored. They are
expected to break some rules, but there are other restrictions that apply only
to them. They are at a golden moment in life – and not to be trusted.” As a result of this
stereotypical notion of the teenager, there is a huge gap of information
between what Americans believe about “teens” versus the reality of the
individual experiences of teenagers. Also, each new generation of teenagers is
constantly changing, which poses a problem for the mainstream society that
fears deviant behavior and is uneasy about the youth culture at large.
Interestingly, this fearful group of adults in mainstream society is composed
of former teens. According to Hine, this teenage mystique, then, simply serves
to perpetuate a false perception of what it means to be a teenager in America,
because society has chosen to ignore the voices of the real teens.
So what led to the defining of an entire subgroup of
people in American culture? Hine points to the “emergence of high school as a
common experience of young Americans [which] led directly to the emergence of
teenagers as we know them today.” In fact, Hine states that in American
society, “to reject high school is to reject the society as a whole.” High school became a common obstacle that all
teenagers shared. Hine claims that society insists on this shared experience,
and anyone who does not attend high school or drops out before graduation is
labeled as a deviant. Yet, according to Hine, high school is an institution
that has lost its sense of direction, or has been given too many tasks to
differentiate what is actually important for the teenager to learn during these
critical years. Hine argues that the contemporary high school basically serves as
a holding place for teenagers, because society has no specific place for them.
I agree with much of what Hine is arguing here, in that high school has become
a place where teenagers are taught little or no life skills to help them
survive outside of public school institutions. Many high school students who
are unsuccessful in this regimented system lead extremely productive lives once
they leave the peer pressure and standardized testing behind.
It is crucial to remember that the teens of the 1950s
were unlike the teenagers of the 1970s, and both were markedly different from
the teens of the 1990s. Fast forward another thirty years, and the teenagers of
the 2020s are an entirely different animal. Hine, in the late 1990s, argued
that the idea of the teenager does not need to be a part of the future, but if
it is, we need to re-shape the teenage experience into a rewarding one. He
states that teenagers are beginners who need help as they embark on the journey
to adulthood. Teenagers should be encouraged to experiment with different life
paths, and not stereotyped because of their individual choices. Patricia Hersch
echoes Hine’s sentiments in her study of contemporary adolescence, A Tribe
Apart, published in 1998. Hersch writes, “Adolescence is a journey, a
search for self in every dimension of being. It is about dreams, fears, and
hopes, as much as about hormones, SAT scores, and fashion. It is about endless
possibilities as well as dead ends.” Thus, the journey of
adolescence leads down a challenging and often confusing path for many American
teenagers – and no less so for their fictive counterparts on shows of the late
1990s like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Take this a step farther into the
2020s, and the confusing paths have become more varied, as identity quests now
include not only what the teenager wants to do with the rest of their lives, or
what values they hold dear, but also gender identity and fluidity with
categories that used to be fixed in our society. Teenagers are at a crossroads
in so many ways in 2022, as I write this, that I am constantly amazed at their
ability to exist in this world, let alone navigate the whats and whys of their
identity and place in this big, messy world.
Chapter
4: The Chosen One
“I never knew being a teenager was so full of
possibilities.”
In the sarcastic words of Buffy Summers, it is clear throughout Buffy the
Vampire Slayer that the lives of teenagers are anything but easy. In the
case of Buffy Summers, teenage existence is terrifying, unpredictable, and
often messy. The heroine of this series is constantly portrayed as being alone,
the “Chosen One” selected by fate to fight demons, vampires, and other evil
creatures. She has a support system in her mother, friends, and her watcher
(the vampire slayer’s mentor), but at the end of the day, she’s usually
fighting alone. Although Buffy may be at times resistant to her calling as the
slayer, she ultimately knows that she must be independent and capable of
fighting to save the world. She must be willing to sacrifice her own life to
protect the lives of everyone around her.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BTVS) began airing on the WB
network in 1997 and is often credited with the early success of this network.
The main character, Buffy Summers, is “the Chosen One”, as explained in the
opening credits of the first season. “In every generation, there is a Chosen
One. She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of
darkness. She is the Slayer.” These words locate the
viewer in presupposed context of conflict between good and evil, as well as
identifying Buffy as someone special, someone who has been selected to do the
work of slaying evil that many people could not do.
As the Chosen One, Buffy is the lead character of this
television series, but she does not work in complete isolation from her
surroundings or her peers. Buffy exists in two worlds: the teen culture/high
school community and the slayer culture/vampire community. Central characters
such as Buffy’s best friends, Willow and Xander, as well as her watcher, Mr.
Giles, join her in both of these worlds as she lets them in on her secret
destiny and role. The adolescent characters (Buffy’s friends and enemies in the
high school community) are arguably much like any other teen character on shows
of that era such as The O.C. or One Tree Hill. They are even like today’s
TikTok stars and social media influencers in many ways. Most of these teens
past and present gossip with their friends, argue with their parents, and often
believe that insignificant details are life-altering circumstances. The
supernatural elements of this show, however, set BTVS apart in ways that are
not seen in other teen shows. The presence of a strong female is not a common
trait on television shows on air at the turn of the 21st century,
and the fact that Buffy is the Chosen One complicates her love life, academic
performance, and familial relationships in different ways. the characters on
this show complement the major theme that Buffy has a destiny, a calling in
life beyond boys, school and cheerleading.
The high school years of BTVS are based around the idea
of normalcy in the life of a teenage girl. The issue of “normalcy” and the
“typical” life of an American teenager is constantly at the forefront of this
study. Because Buffy is portrayed as abnormal, her life must be contrasted to
those teen characters who are engaging in practices identified by dominant
culture as standard behavior for teens. As Hersch discusses the subject of her
work in A Tribe Apart, she describes the adolescents most Americans are
familiar with. She writes,
“In
most communities outside inner cities, the kids we see appear remarkably like
the adolescents we remember from our own childhoods. The ordinary everyday
adolescents we see at high school football games, at back-to-school nights, the
kids hanging out at the local shopping centers, the ones who load our car at
the grocery store, the sitters for the children down the street, the counselors
at day camp, the athletes and the cheerleaders and the kids in third-period
English class…”
The teens that Hersch has
described are the “normal teens” are living the same experience as the
characters on shows like Buffy, The O.C. and One Tree Hill,
and even those TikTok and YouTube celebrities of the 2020s. Buffy says in more
than one episode that she wishes she could be a normal girl who is able to
participate in cheerleading, study groups, and high school dances. But fate has
pulled her into another role, one where she saves humanity time and time again.
Buffy even has a high school sweetheart, a tortured vampire by the name of
Angel. She expresses to him in season two her frustrations with not being able
to be a normal teenage girl. “Who am I kidding? Dates are things normal girls
have. Girls who have time to think about nail polish and facials. You know what
I think about? Ambush tactics, beheading. Not exactly the stuff dreams are made
of.” Buffy is trying to define
who she is aside from her calling, and also fulfilling her destiny. She’s
reconciling two identities, while still grappling with the everyday teen angst.
Buffy’s mother is a constant presence throughout the
series, and is the oppositional character to Buffy’s emerging independence and
quest for identity. Although she means well, Buffy’s mom, Joyce, is often in
the way of Buffy becoming who she is meant to be. This is a common obstacle for
many teenagers, as their parents do not know quite how close to hold them, and
when to let them fly free. In season two of the television series, Buffy
finally comes clean to her mom about her true identity as the vampire slayer.
“I
told you, I’m a vampire slayer. Open your eyes, Mom. What do you think has been
going on for the past two years? The fights, the weird occurrences; how many
times have you washed blood out of my clothing? And you still haven’t figured
it out…It never stops. Do you think I chose to be like this? Do you have any
idea how lonely it is, how dangerous? I would love to be upstairs watching TV
or gossiping about boys, or God, even studying! But I have to save the world.
Again.”
This statement could be applied to so many scenarios that
teenagers face! Obviously, not all of us were the Chosen One of our
generations, but we all had secret lives that were hidden from our parents.
Secret relationships, secret hobbies, secret feelings. This statement
encapsulates so many teenagers’ feelings about their parents; that they are
blind to their real lives, that they live with rose-colored glasses on. I think
there’s truth to that statement, as a mom of two teenagers right now. I’m
living proof that sometimes we see things for what they are as parents, and
sometimes our teenagers are different people when they are not around us. Thus
is the constant struggle for teenagers to define who they are, to embrace it,
and to be proud of the person they choose to be.
Despite Buffy being the Chosen One, set apart from her
peers, special in ways that most teenagers could not even imagine, all she
wants at the end of the day is teenage normalcy. Buffy wants to be involved in
the normative teen events of Homecoming and Prom, and she tries to balance that
role with their identity and responsibilities as the slayer. Even though Angel
has told Buffy he wants more for her than a life that he can offer to her, he
still shows up for her, in true knight-in-shining-armor, high school love story
fashion. Angel shows up at the Prom, walking into the haunting lyrics of “Wild
Horses” by the Sundays, because he knows how much this teenage rite of passage
means to Buffy. He loves her enough to be there for this moment, even if he
knows it means saying goodbye will be that much harder. Anyone who has
experienced that all-consuming teenager first love understands the dramatic
tension of this scene, as these two characters and their love for each other
survives the test of time, even if their relationship has to end. This is yet
another teenage climactic moment that BTVS captured so beautifully.
The cultural importance of presenting a certain image of
what normative teen behavior means whether we’re analyzing newspaper clippings
from the 1950s or teen television series from the 1990s or TikTok celebrities
of the 2020s, we are looking at the physical and emotional changes and the societal pressures that tie every member
of this subculture experience in America. In her study of adolescents, Patricia
Hersch goes in search of the real teens who are being labeled by the adults
studying adolescence at the time. Hersch states,
“Styles
change, music changes, but the shadow of a mustache on a thirteen-year-old boy,
the rough-and-tumble pickup basketball games, the groups of giggling girls, the
lingering kisses of young lovers, the Homecoming celebration, the prom,
graduation, all look similar to what we recall. There is a confounding lack of
congruence between what adults see and what we are told is true. What
constitutes a ‘normal” adolescence in today’s world may or may not be
camouflaged by appearances.”
In keeping with Hersch’s
argument, the normative qualities of teens in everyday experiences are being
overshadowed by the theories of “bad kids” of this new generation and the
societal images of adolescents as deviants. Yet, Hersch sees the reality that many
of today’s teens are quite similar to adolescents of the past. The normative
behaviors of teens have not changed so drastically that they are unrecognizable
to the adults who once were teens themselves and are now part of the dominant
culture.
Instead of being set apart from adult culture in the most
basic of ways, David Elkind, professor of Tufts University, and specialist in
the field of adolescent psychology, contends that teens are forced to deal with
adult issues but are extremely unprepared for these grown-up demands. Elkind
claims,
“Adolescents
are now seen as a ‘niche market’ whose emerging sexuality, need for peer-group
approval, and search for idols can all be manipulated to motivate them to buy a
variety of goods from clothing to CDs. High schools that once afforded many
different adult-organized activities have become, in many communities, centers
for theft, violence, sex, and substance abuse. In a variety of ways, therefore,
the world of adolescents today is continuous with, rather than separate from,
the world of adults.”
In contrast to Hersch’s
argument, Elkind sees a real transition from what teens used to be and what
teens are today. He argues that the consumerism that has take over since the
1960s has caused a gradual shift in the societal demands for adolescents to operate
in the world of adults. Both Hersch and Elkind are arguing in favor of the
existence of a normal adolescence in today’s world. While they do not agree on
the way in which cultural pressures affect how teens are treated by dominant
culture, both recognize normative qualities that characterize teen culture.
While Hersch sees the symbols of teen culture as separating adolescents from
mainstream adult culture, Elkind views teen culture as bleeding into the
dominant culture because of societal pressure for teens to cope with adult
issues. The recognition of adolescent culture as containing normative qualities
is important to my own argument, because these normative behaviors and symbols
of teen culture are both represented by the teen characters on BTVS as well as
the real teen viewers of the television series. Likewise, the celebrities of
TikTok and YouTube influence the real teens of the 2020s, and have become idols
and icons to today’s adolescents.
In shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it is the
combination of normative characteristics and supernatural connections of the
central characters that appeal to the real teen audience. As cultural media
critic Lynn Schofield Clark points out, “Today’s young people want to be a part
of something that is bigger than themselves: they want a destiny, a calling, a
challenge that is ultimately worthy of their time and energy.”
Buffy rejects and
embraces the cultural values of what it means to be a teen girl by representing
normative qualities of adolescent females. At the same time, she is
specifically chosen for a purpose in the supernatural world. She constantly has
one foot in each world, and the balancing act is exhausting for her at times.
Buffy is a heroine for her generation of teenage viewers, despite the
girl-poisoning culture that Mary Pipher discusses in Reviving Ophelia,
in which she discusses the media images of perfectly thin adolescent and young
adult females. Her strength and power are what set Buffy apart in the
supernatural world, not her beauty or clothing size. Pipher writes, “As I
looked at the culture that girls enter as they come of age, I was struck by what
a girl-poisoning culture it was…America today limits girls’ development,
truncates their wholeness and leaves many of them traumatized.” From body shaming to
pressures to have sex before they’re ready to self-injury and eating disorders,
teenage girls from the 1950s through the 2020s can all relate to the society
pressure to be thin, beautiful and quiet. In a media-saturated world where teen
audiences in the 1990s saw horror films such as Scream and I Know
What You Did Last Summer feature the female teen victim who is tormented
and chased, Buffy comes on the scene with a strength and a destiny that
distinguishes her as a girl warrior.
In certain episodes of BTVS, the audience sees a glimpse
of what the typical teen girl should be: physically weak and in need of male
protection, attractive, loved by her peers, and obedient to her parents and
authority figures. For example, in episode six of season two, entitled,
“Halloween,” the residents of Sunnydale who have purchased their Halloween
costumes from a specific shop in town turn into the monsters, ghosts, and
characters that they have dressed up as. For Buffy, this means she literally becomes
an 18th century girl. The first element here is the fact that Buffy
has chosen this costume to impress Angel, because he lived during this time
period and associated with women whose entire existence was built around their
ability to dress well and marry young (hopefully catching a wealthy man).
Buffy, as the 18th century girl, tells Xander, “I was brought up a
proper lady, I wasn’t meant to understand things. I’m just meant to look
pretty, and then someone nice will marry me. Possibly a baron.” Although the writers of
this show are using a two-hundred year age gap to exaggerate this idea of
girlhood, it is possible that this is not such a foreign concept in today’s
world.
It is a common cultural model in America today that girls
are meant to be more fragile than boys, they are not supposed to “understand”
the complexities of life, and adolescent girls are not expected to be warriors.
As feminist writer and founder of the National Organization for Women, Betty
Friedan, argues in The Feminine Mystique, the cultural model of
femininity restricts women to the role of subservient housewife.
“Beneath
the sophisticated trappings, it simply makes certain concrete, finite, domestic
aspects of feminine existence – as it was lived by women whose lives were
confined, by necessity, to cooking, cleaning, washing, bearing children – into
a religion, a pattern by which all women must now live or deny their
femininity.”
However
insignificant this cultural model may appear to be today, it is, in fact, still
in existence in American culture. Ideas regarding the femininity of adolescent
girls still reflect the major philosophy behind a cultural model such as the
feminine mystique which is founded on the belief that women are in need of male
protection and are incapable of taking care of themselves financially,
physically, and emotionally. This is displayed in the cultural insistence on
little boys playing in the mud from an early age, where little girls are
dressed up in frilly outfits and told to stay out of the dirt. Yet, as Joan
Jacobs Brumberg discusses in The Body Project: An Intimate History of American
Girls,
“Contemporary
girls seem to have more autonomy, but their freedom is laced with peril.
Despite sophisticated packaging, many remain emotionally immature, and that
makes it all the more difficult to withstand the sexually brutal and
commercially rapacious society in which they grow up.”
In contrast to the
females that Brumberg describes, Buffy challenges these cultural definitions of
female characteristics, as she fights to save the world from demons and forces
of evil.
Even as she challenges the cultural model of femininity,
Buffy does not completely reject the cultural expectations of teen girls. In
many episodes involving typical events of high school life such as
extracurricular activities or sports, Buffy is quite envious of the normal teen
girls. In the “Homecoming” episode from season three, the audience sees that
Buffy wants to have some semblance of the life she lived as the popular
cheerleader before she was chosen as the slayer. As Buffy argues with one of
the popular girls vying for Homecoming Queen, Buffy argues against the notion
that she doesn’t need Homecoming Queen because she’s already the slayer. Buffy
retorts, “This is all I do. This is what my life is. You wouldn’t understand. I
just thought, Homecoming Queen. I could pick up a yearbook someday and say, I
was there. I went to high school, I had friends, and for one moment I got to
live in the world….” Buffy Summers is seeking
validation that, vampire slaying aside, she is a particular kind of teen girl.
Granted, she was predestined to save the world as the one girl in all the world
chosen to fight dark forces, but at her core, she is an adolescent female
attempting to find her place in the world. Participating in the teen culture at
Sunnydale High School is extremely important to Buffy. She wants to be
recognized in this teen culture, not just in the slayer culture that takes her
away from adolescent normalcy. But, as Hersch contends, adolescent normalcy is
difficult to define. Hersch asserts:
Whatever constituted ‘normal adolescence’ for ‘regular
kids’ today had been eclipsed by an emphasis on the sensational. There was a
huge gap in the knowledge so necessary not only for parents, but also for
society. If the statistics were true, we needed to understand better how
the sensational issues might play out in
a young person’s day-to-day life.
Adolescent normalcy is not a concept easily defined,
because it is comprised of the cultural view of adolescence and the actual
characteristics of ordinary teens in America. These normative characteristics
can be seen in the everyday behaviors of the average high school student, from
talking with friends to being branded in a certain way by consumer items to the
language of teens. Hersch notes that oftentimes the normative qualities of
teens are ignored in favor of examining the more dramatic issues that some
teens must face. For David Elkind, the language markers of teen culture are
significant in the transition from childhood to adolescence. “In many ways,
moving from the culture of childhood to
the culture of adolescence is like moving from one society to another. The
abrupt change in the language as well as in the rules and expectations
regarding conduct can lead to another variety shock – peer shock.” Just as with any
subculture, a certain behavior or physical appearance identifies an
individual’s association with a group. For adolescents, not belonging to a
specific group leaves many adolescents feeling alienated. Thus, adolescent
normalcy can be defined by those characteristics that connect teens from many
subgroups under the umbrella of a distinct subculture of teens. Elkind’s
recognition of the negative effects of not belonging is an important concept to
understand when looking at adolescent normalcy and the everyday experience of
teens in America.
Chapter
5: A Tribe of Their Own
Throughout
her study of America’s adolescences, published in 1998, Patricia Hersch argues
that today’s teens have been set apart from dominant culture and are left
feeling alienated and alone. Hersch contends that teens are “a tribe apart”
because their everyday experiences are unlike the lives of their adult
counterparts. She writes, “Adolescence is rife with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes,
sex, lying, violence, unstable and broken families, and so on. This is the
mainstream of adolescence today.” Hersch highlights the
identity quests of real teens, as a normative experience of teen culture. An
identity quest is most easily described as discovering one’s own identity and
sense of purpose. As Lynn Schofield Clark describes, “Identity is understood as
the way in which we adopt certain strategies of action to maintain a connection
with others, with our past, and with our own aspirations.” Thus, an identity quest is a search for the
formation of an identity that will allow individuals to make connections with
others, with the past, and with personal goals and a purpose in life. As seen
in Hersch’s analysis of teens in America today, the everyday trials and
tribulations of life as a teenager are challenging enough without added
pressures of existing in both teen culture and the supernatural world, as is
the case with Buffy Summers.
The
historical importance of the slayer, as well as the autonomous nature of the
vampire slayer combine to identify Buffy Summers as the slayer. She’s the “one
girl chosen in all the world” to fight the forces of darkness, creatures of the
night, and all things girls should traditionally be fearful of and run away
from. Yet, Buffy is just trying to be a normal teenage girl, all while
fulfilling her duties as the slayer. According to Clark, many real teens engage
in a quest for spiritual meaning and a feeling of purposefulness in the world.
In this search for meaning and attempting to merge the worlds of teen consumer
culture and individual autonomy, many teens struggle with their own identities.
Clark writes, “Identity construction is an ongoing process guided by the need
each of us have to consciously make sense of our choices, and the often
unconscious ways in which these choices create a form of social solidarity with
(or distinction from) others.” Buffy has been spurred on
to a spiritual quest by her calling as the “Chosen One.” As Buffy struggles to
understand why she has been chosen as the slayer, she must also confront
everyday issues of life as a teen girl. Yes, in trying to fulfill one role,
she’s almost required to disregard the responsibilities of the other. She’s
constantly in this tug-of-war with herself and her own wants and desires.
The
characterization of Buffy Summers is one of the strongest representations of
both independence and feminism within the teen television genre of the 1990s.
Buffy’s search for self and her influence on the lives of those around her are
both central issues on this series. The spiritual and identity quests that
Buffy takes up are a direct consequence of her existence in two worlds –
adolescent culture and the supernatural world of vampires and good versus evil.
Buffy is both a feminist character and a teen heroine which influences her
quests throughout the series.
The
character of Buffy gave teen audiences hope that they too would be able to play
a larger role in society, and have an impact on the lives of others. She allows
the audience to imagine their lives as something bigger. Because of the shift
to home-based activities such as watching television in the last half of the 20th
century, the role of the teen audience at the turn of the 21st
century when Buffy was airing, became a multimedia experience. Not only are the
teens watching the television series, they are going online and discussing the
shows with their peers in chat rooms and message boards. This network of
technology that emerged at the turn of the 21st century continues
into the 2020s and has exploded even more with the popularity of social media
sites like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. The audience has become
the star of the show in many respects.
The
teen audience of shows like BTVS in the late 1990s were finding storylines and
characters they could connect with because of their own familiarity with such a
situation or because of their desire to participate in something outside of the
normative realm of teen culture. In a focus group study conducted in the
mid-2000s, one male teen viewer of the show contended, “Throughout the run of
BTVS, there were messages that were intended to speak directly to teens. When a
character has sex something bad happens; when they drink something bad happens;
there were shows dealing with being an outcast, suicide, drugs, sexuality, peer
pressure, race, fitting in, etc. Still the show never got too preachy with its
messages. The writers were smart enough to work the messages in through the use
of metaphors, allegories, and lots of vampires.” Another female former
teen viewer of the show in the focus group stated, “I found the teens to be
pretty relatable, except for the slayer aspect. But all the stereotypes were
present: The Brain, the Nerd, the Outcast, the Cheerleader. But as time went by,
the stereotypes were stripped down to show the real human aspect of these
characters.”
The fact that these real teens are able to identify the normative aspects of
teen culture, including cliques and labels from most American high school
campuses, because of their own experiences as real teens suggests that the
characterization of teens on these supernatural teen television dramas are in
many ways representative of real life for many teens at the time of Buffy’s
airing.
The
supernatural elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer display how special
and set apart teens are, not only the fictive teen characters of television
dramas but also the real teens who are watching these teen series. As cultural
critic Patricia Hersch comments,
“America’s
own adolescents have become strangers. They are a tribe apart, remote,
mysterious, vaguely threatening. The tribal notion is so commonplace that it is
hard to know whether it derives from the kids or from adults, but the result is
that somewhere in the transition from twelve to thirteen, our nation’s children
slip into a netherworld of adolescent that too often becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy of estrangement.” This tribe of teens has
been left feeling lost in American culture, and the wish fulfillment that is
offered by teen television such as BTVS gives real teens a chance to see their
lives in a new way. Instead of feeling ostracized from dominant culture and
lost in the shuffle of fast-paced,
consumer-culture-driven American life, teens are given an outlet to
believe their lives can have an impact beyond their own existence, just as the
main teen characters on these television series have been called to do something
spiritually or supernaturally significant with their lives.
As
a member of the dominant adult culture at the time of her publication, Hersch
argues in her conclusion to A Tribe Apart, “We have to reconnect the
adolescent community to ours. It is not so hard. We just need to reach out and
embrace them and take the time to get to know them – one by one, as
individuals, not a tribe.” As Hersch contends, it is
crucial to look at teens as individual people, not as one group whose members
are completely identical to each other. Although teens do comprise a distinct
subculture, they cannot all be classified as one particular type of person.
Teens in America must be considered as individual people as well as members of
the teen culture. And to make it even more complicated, they must be considered
in their individual surroundings – time period, socio-economic status, family
system, educational opportunities, ability to participate in sports and
extracurricular activities and so much more.
As
argued by many cultural critics I’ve referenced thus far, teenagers have been
in a state of crisis since the 1950s when the term adolescence became mainstay
in American culture. Teenagers are in crisis because their role to play in
society is undefined. The lines are blurred. this is the liminal quality of the
teen years as a life stage identified by David Elkind, in that teens are no
longer children but are not mature enough to be treated as adults. They are
literally between life stages, and the crisis occurs because society has not
defined the roles to solidify the cultural importance of the life stage of
adolescence. One viewer commented that “The supernatural just adds another
facet to the problems/challenges the characters [in BTVS] would already have to
face.” Therefore, for the teen
characters on television series of the 1990s, and specifically those featuring
supernatural elements like Buffy, they are not only faced with the
identity crisis brought on by normative teen culture as Elkind discusses, but
they are also faced with supernatural elements that complicate their identity
quest even more.
Chapter 6: Adolescents as
the Real and Imagined “Chosen Ones”
Adolescents
are often represented as the chosen ones, both in reality and in teen
television dramas of the 1990s. The liminal stage of adolescence, the element
of mystery that often surrounds the American teenager in their unpredictable
thought and behavior patterns, and the treatment of adolescents as a distinct
subgroup in the youth culture of America all factor in to the representation of
teens as chosen ones in our culture. Yet, teenagers can also be seen as
outsiders, troubled individuals who stand in opposition to the dominant order
of things. This precarious position held by adolescents in American culture is
one that defines who they are and how they react to the adults that they must
interact with on a regular basis.
One
of the greatest messages of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one that still
stands the test of time over twenty years later, is that in being the chosen
one of her generation, the ultimate choice Buffy makes at the end of the series
is to decide that she should not be the only chosen one. She extends that power
to all females with the potential to be chosen, to be called as the vampire
slayer. Buffy re-writes the narrative. She empowers an entire generation of
females to fight on the side of good. This message of female empowerment is not
seen in the same magnitude in any other shows on the air at this time,
especially not with a targeted teen audience like shows on the WB of the 1990s
and early 2000s.
In
the post-September 11th culture existing in America after the
terrorist attacks in 2001, the constant possibility of an attack and the
questions of identity and inquiries about other life forms or threats to
national security surround us. Now, in 2022, we don’t just worry about physical
attacks, but about cyber security and identity fraud and hackers attacking us
using technology. Teenagers also still pose a threat to dominant society in
that they question the order of things – they are a societal “other” that
proposes alternatives for a different kind of future. They’re capable of
re-writing the narrative once again, and I’ve seen that happen in my adulthood
more than once.
Teens
have the power to change things – and most of the time, they do not even
realize their collective power. In certain instances, we see a glimpse of the
power of teens to make a difference. For instance, when school shootings
occurred in the late 1990s and teens rallied in support of their fallen friends
and teachers, America saw the impact of teens on our culture at large. In small
gatherings on university and high school campuses across the country, we see
examples of teens raising funds for charity, speaking out for activism, and
rallying for reproductive rights for women. It is in these times that the power
of teens to make a difference is truly seen.
Unfortunately,
by eliminating the supernatural from teen television dramas in the early 2000s,
we have essentially tried to squelch the questioning and questing of American
teens. Teens have found a new way to embark on identity and spiritual quests,
and can now share that for all of their friends and fans to see online. Shows
like Buffy the Vampire Slayer resisted and dominant cultural ideology in their
search for a teen identity and a calling for these adolescents who are
struggling to find their way in a world that dominant culture has created. Only
when the true voice of real teens is heard in the way that characters like
Buffy Summers have spoken out and re-wrote the narrative, will the power of
teens truly be felt in American culture.
I,
for one, am anxious to see the impact that these teenagers can have in today’s
society once they collectively speak their minds and care out a distinct place
for themselves in American culture.
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