Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Ever since the debut of the movie Buffy the Vampire Slayer on July 31,1992 and then the TV series, which aired from 1997 until 2003, people have been writing about it in a variety of different ways.

LCC librarian, Don Macnaughtan is no exception.

Macnaughtan wrote Buffyverse Catalog: A Complete Guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel in Print, Film, Television, Comics, Games and Other Media, 1992-2010, which was published by McFarland Publishing and is available at Amazon.com for approximately $45.

The book is also at LCC’s library and is available for check out.

“It’s been about a five year project,” said Macnaughtan, “I started about 2005, and then I spent the last three years just working pretty much non-stop on it.”

It’s a big book with about 260,000 words, which is about a third of the size of War and Peace.

“I started realizing that people were writing about Buffy, academics, critics, and people like that were writing about the show,” said Macnaughtan when asked why he decided to write about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

What he has done is gather everything that has ever been written about the movie, TV series, comics, games, and all other forms of media and compile it into one place.

Macnaughtan included the sister television series Angel in this bibliography.

“What I started to realize is that there’s layers to it. On the surface it’s just a silly teenage show, but when you start peeling back the layers, you start finding there’s more interesting things underneath,” said Macnaughtan.

Macnaughtan added, “What I do is take the literature that’s been written about it and collected it all, so it’s collected all the knowledge that’s been written on the show until now.”

That’s 6,000 pieces of information gathered into one, easy to use bibliography.

“Essays, articles, books, and dvds,” said Macnaughtan.

When the show ended, the creator made comic books, giving it yet another dimension for fans everywhere.

“What its intended for is students and people like that, to find out what’s already been written; it’s a reference book,” stated Macnaughtan, when talking about what type of people would read his book.

Macnaughtan said that the creator took the idea of the horror movie cliché, where the blonde goes down the alley, gets attacked by a monster and then she’s dead, and flipped it around.

In Buffy, the blonde goes down the alley and gets attacked by the monster, and then comes back and wins because she’s more powerful.

It’s for just that reason that Amber Zluticky, a third-year early childhood education major, loves the Buffy series.

“It made me feel empowered to see this female hero kick so much ass, as if it was nothing and then turn around and say, ‘I’m hungry, let’s get a pizza,” said Zluticky.

She said she wasn’t aware that the college librarian had written a book on the subject, but would definitely read it and wants to buy it.

“I started watching it in middle school with my mom and all my friends. I grew up on this show,” said Zluticky.

Macnaughtan explained why the creator chose to make the character of Buffy the way she was.

“He deliberately chose the name Buffy because it’s a silly fluffy name. He could have called her Cynthia or Cheryl or something like that, but he deliberately called her Buffy and he deliberately made her a cheerleader because it’s a contrast between the two things,” said Macnaughtan. “A silly, fluffy surface, with a deep, dark strong beneath.”

Not everyone is a Buffy fan, however.

Tyler Rutherford, a first-year, undeclared student, said he’s seen maybe one episode.

“It doesn’t surprise me that our librarian wrote a book on this,” said Rutherford, “but I probably wouldn’t read it, it’s not what I’m into.”

Macnaughtan is putting the book on display for approximately 10 days and then students, faculty and staff will be able to check it out of the library.

Approximately six other libraries have bought the book, so if it’s not available at LCC’s library, you can still find it from another one.