‘I think the thrall has gone out of our relationship’: Buffy and Dracula; A Parodic Adventure in Romance | Sian Mitchell

Summary: Vampires, Vamps and Va Va Voom | Sian Mitchell <a name="sian-mitchell" id="sian-mitchell"><strong>“I think the thrall has gone out of our relationship”: Buffy and Dracula - a parodic adventure in romance</strong></a> The first episode of season 5 <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> the television series sees Buffy come up against arguably the most famous vampire in the literary and cultural world, Dracula. The relationship formed between the ‘The Chosen One’ and ‘Prince of Darkness’ is an exercise in parody, a meeting between modern literature and post-modern television, a comment on the past and present through the romance and rejection of these two characters. Using the definition of romance as the ‘lure of the quest’ (Sorenson, 2004) this paper analyses the relationship between Buffy and Dracula as a rewriting of the modern romance associated with the literary version of the vampire through the post-modern lens of television and parody. Through the analysis of key scenes, I will argue that this episode turns Bram Stoker’s story on its head, undermining the seduction and preternatural masculinity that Dracula offers (to all the Scooby Gang, not just Buffy!), through the sardonic wit that has become associated with <em>Buffy</em> the series. Their relationship not only leads Buffy to question her own existence as a slayer (a criticism repeatedly aimed at this particular episode), but also subverts, and at times confuses, gender roles, a convention commonly linked with the post-modern romance. More broadly, associated erotic relationships within the episode, such as that between Dracula and Xander, will also be approached to further elucidate the post-modern nature of this episode with regard to romance. Sian Mitchell is a PhD candidate in Film and Television Studies at Monash University. Her thesis is entitled “Human Nature: Psychoanalysis, Identity, and Cinema in the films of Charlie Kaufman, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry.”