“High School is Hell” argues that Buffy the Vampire Slayer deliberately addresses contemporary social issues for teens in by using metaphor. The drama of using characters that are both good and inherently evil (demons, vampires, beasts, and monsters) reflects the drama of high school life. Even details of the series show how teens face challenges that more often than not, adults are blind to.
The article continues on to argue that throughout each season, the show metaphorically models how these fears develop and change over time. For example, it describes each season as focusing on separate themes, each more advanced than the previous one. Season one describes the elementary state that entering high school poses, the uncertainty of identity and how others perceive you. The second season focuses on “love gone wrong”, or the terrifying development of relationships and how to deal with them. Finally, the last season addresses how the end of high school is the end of the world that high school students know.
Clearly, the article first establishes how the series show the anxieties of modern teenagers through metaphor and then how these evolve throughout a person’s high school development.
I think that Whedon’s use of metaphors dramatizes the anxieties of high school, but in an appropriate way. To a high school student, these anxieties are truly matters of life and death, the development of who they are or will be, and determining factors in their futures. The assignment of metaphors with such strong imagery emphasizes the importance of these issues to those they affect, something that makes the series relatable to a teenage target audience.
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