Help! The wind changed and now I'm stuck like this!

 


post Buffy s4

Recently on Buffy, we’ve seen the vamps stuck in ‘Game face mode’ continually, with no ‘morphing’ in sight! A friend of mine, who’d only seen Buffy a few times, even asked me how the vampires managed to integrate into society if they looked like that! (I explained to him about ‘morphing’, and showed him the tape of The Prodigal to demonstrate. As a side effect, he’s now hooked on ‘Angel’!) So just what has happened to Sunnydale’s vampire population? Here are a few musings;

The 'bumpy forehead' makeup of Joss’ vampires is truly brilliant, and unique to Buffy. It really adds the sense of menace to the un-dead that is so often lacking in other films/series. (The vamps in 'Blade', for instance, just didn't freak me out the way buffyverse vamps do. I just kept thinking; "Vamp out already!" throughout the entire film!)

However, because the design is so effective, the producers are often tempted to over-use it. This leads to the 'constant game face disorder', or CGFD, we so often see on Buffy. The Game face adds a look of menace to non-speaking, background vamps, and also renders them instantly identifiable to the audience. The result is CGFD!

When I first watched Buffy, I assumed that the 'Game Face' was fixed on all vamps at 'birth', and they only learned to 'morph' back to human form over time.

I gradually began to doubt this, however, and it was finally disproved in The Prodigal, when Angel 'arises' in human form, & then swiftly morphs into snarley mode to drain the unfortunate Irish cliché. (Sorry, gravedigger!)

On the whole, Angel has finally sorted out the whole game face deal, and does not suffer from CGFD! Angel's vampires only 'vamp out' when going into attack mode, and are in complete control of their use of the game face. (For example, the vamps in The Prodigal remained in human form until using Kate's Father as a life size milkshake! )

However, Buffy has not adopted this reasoning. Recently, all the vamps seem fixed in game face mode, with CGFD being all-prevalent! This may be because we've seen so little of them lately, while 'Angel' has had time to develop its characters further. (Plus the vamps on 'Angel' are a hellava lot smarter than those on Buffy! Just compare Penn to that jerk in Who are You! )

This seems to indicate that Joss really is stretched between his two 'baby's', and has sacrificed decent vampires on Buffy in an effort to cope. (Which is quite ironic in a show with Buffy’s title!)


Opinions

Vox 9/10/00
At the other end of the spectrum to CGFD is Spike in Where the wild things are who couldn't actually go game at will, he had to ask Anya to make him angry.

The game face is the expression of the demonic essence within vampires, so it seems that quite aside from the additional control that the older vampires seem to have over their features, if a vampire is not violent, not demonic, as Spike has had enforced on him, he might have trouble 'getting it up'. This might also go some way to explaining why Angel doesn't go game in every single fight he's in, aside from the loss of control it represents, he can only do it when he's really angry.

Or perhaps it is not the lack of violence that has this effect, after all, Doyle warned Angel back in City of... that it was his misanthropic lifestyle that was drawing him closer and closer to temptation rather than any pacifism. Perhaps the explanation lies rather in what Doyle suggested, human contact. For most vampires this it tends to be quite brief, they don't take the time to get to know their meal as a person before scoffing them right down. Both Angel and Spike are different, Angel had two years knocking around the edge of Buffy's friendship group and Spike has actually become far more familiar with the Scooby Gang in his half season at their tender mercies than Angel ever managed. Who knows what he might be reduced to if his association with them continues?


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