In Service To Allegory versus Allegory In Service

Buffy The Vampire Slayer is great.

Bet you didn't think that was how this was going to start out.

But yeah, Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a show that first aired two decades ago and somewhere in 2017 is where I finished watching it. It's aged as all things do, but after the credits rolled on the final episode, it was like this click. Like, man, I've actually seen this show before. But it was called The Vampire Diaries when I watched it.

Okay, you got me, I'm just being snarky. Buffy The Vampire Slayer and The Vampire Diaries are two different shows made far apart from one another with different demographics, themes and center-points but they're also two shows that have a lot in common. The Vampire Diaries treads a lot of the same ground but it's wearing a different pair of boots. Yes, there's a healthy amount of teen romance, both show the protagonist going from highschool to graduation as the audience matures with the show, both have a good guy/bad boy dichotomy in their love interests, both get remarkably better after the first season and both shows even had darker and more adult spin-offs starring a lovable cast member. There are articles detailing the similarities far more comprehensively than I have time for but I will say that Julie Plec is definitely a Buffy fan.

The most interesting difference to me is this; Buffy The Vampire Slayer is a show drenched in allegory. Some being more on the nose than others, but the monster of the week often represents something, whether it's fratboy culture, overwhelming grief, the patriarchy and so on. Buffy's friends are allegorical of her spirit, heart and mind (Willow, Xander and Giles respectively). Often story arcs are set up specifically with the intent of paralleling some aspect of society and to use the situation to make a statement. The TL;DR of it is that Buffy The Vampire Slayer often creates stories in favour of the specific allegory.

And The Vampire Diaries is almost the exact anti-thesis to that. Tolkien himself said it better than I'm able to so here's how that goes; "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history - whether true or feighned - with its variable applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but one resides in the freedom of the reader and the other in the domination of the author."

I'm not saying that there isn't coding, symbolism or applicability in The Vampire Diaries. I'm saying that The Vampire Diaries has its story first, and the allegory serve the narrative. It often tackles the themes it wants to tackle directly. A younger sibling with a drug problem isn't a hamfisted metaphor about using too much magic, the younger sibling is seen on screen, taking the drug, and the real consequences thereof. You could argue that the main metaphor comes in the "humanity switch" but it is also directly called "the humanity switch". Vampires have the literal ability to turn off their humanity, which is a scathing critique of what it's like when you choose total apathy and indifference over empathy and dealing with negative emotions. But you could also argue that it's a plot device and a metaphor so thin that blowing air would tear a hole in it. Obfuscating meaning for a clever delivery is not the goal here.

The meaning is in the moments.

A while back a friend criticized me for my attempts in aggressively seeking out the real world parallels in the text. I couldn't come up with much of a definitive answer other than saying that we compare anything we watch or read to everything else we've watched and read. We form connections between these experience. You're going to get the most out of anything if you understand the hidden meaning.

But I guess now I understand that there isn't always a hidden meaning to unearth. There is a joke I remember floating around a while back about how an english teacher might interpret blue curtains as symbolism for depression and grief, while the author may have just liked the colour. Interpreting text is a wonderful and necessary practice, and as someone who enjoyed their highschool AP english class more than they're willing to admit, you can and should try what the author is trying to say.

But I think it's equally valid to search for when the story is written in service to the allegory, and to recognize when the allegory is in service to the story. It's okay to just tune out, because escapism isn't wrong. And I think while some enjoy the act of analyzing and pondering, it's important to recognize that analysis isn't the only method of enjoying storytelling.

Sometimes, it's perfectly acceptable for the curtains to just be blue. The meaning is perhaps what one does behind those curtains.