Information AboutSunnydale |
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Sunnydale, California is the fictional Suburban setting for the popular television drama '' Buffy The Vampire Slayer ''. Series creator Joss Whedon conceived the town as a representation of the typical, anonymous, generic suburban city, as well as a narrative parody of the all-too-serene towns typical in traditional horror movies. FICTIONAL ENVIRONS Sunnydale's size and surroundings are implausible, as it was designed largely for comic effect and narrative convenience. Moreover, the size of the town changed as the series progressed. During the first three seasons, Sunnydale was depicted as a small s, forty-three churches, a small private college, and one modest main street. Even so, it had twelve Gothic Cemeteries . However, in later seasons it was revealed that Sunnydale sported a campus of the University Of California system, and enough witches to keep a magic supply shop profitable. Sunnydale possesses many common horror-movie characteristics, such as an abundance of dark alleyways, abandoned mansions and factories, and an inexplicable divide between its demon-fighting, supernaturally aware teens and the sinister or clueless, perpetually in-denial adults. Sunnydale is somewhat isolated, and is not adjacent to other urban or suburban areas. It has a train station, a bus station, and a small airport. Sunnydale is adjacent to several acres of woods, and has an ocean port as well as tall cliffs overlooking the sea. There is a nearby beach, and the desert is a short drive away. In the final episode Sunnydale is shown as being in the middle of the desert; however, this can be explained as a consequence of the forces unleashed in the town's destruction, which laid waste to everything around. By the final season, the population had fallen to 32,900. FICTIONAL LOCATION Sunnydale is "located" on the California coast, two hours northwest of Los Angeles. This has been indicated as follows:
If Sunnydale is to be identified with an actual college town in this region, Santa Barbara (or perhaps San Luis Obispo ) would be the logical choice. In Season Three, the mayor's office is shown with a giant map of "Sunnydale County"; this map is an actual map of Santa Barbara County with a new name pasted over it. In other episodes, actual street maps of Santa Barbara are used to represent the town. Many of the long-range outside shots of the town are actually shots of Santa Barbara. These are especially clear in the widescreen versions of seasons four to seven; some of the Spanish-style buildings are obviously in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara to anyone familiar with the city. However, there are a few indications that associate Sunnydale with other California locations:
FICTIONAL HISTORY Sunnydale’s local newspaper was called the Sunnydale Press. It can be seen in ''Never Kill a Boy on the First Date'', ''Reptile Boy'', ''Becoming (Part 1)'', ''Bad Girls'', ''Consequences'', ''Graduation Day (Part 1)'', ''Hush'' and ''Once More, With Feeling''. The fictional high school which was originally the centerpiece of the series is built atop a "Hellmouth," a portal between our world and the darker demon dimensions, whose emanations attract all manner of evil creatures and precipitate weird events generally; it's a good place for Witchcraft and Mad Science . The Hellmouth serves both as a narrative conceit and one of the central metaphors of the show, which specializes in drawing supernatural elements as analogies for the difficulties of adolescence. Besides Sunnydale High School, which was blown up during a fight between the students and the town's mayor after his "ascension" to pure demon form and was later rebuilt in a more modernistic design, teens congregated at The Bronze , a club where Daniel 'Oz' Osborne and the other members of the rock band Dingoes Ate My Baby used to play. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg occasionally repaired to the Espresso Pump, a local coffee shop with a retro Gas Station motif, to drink lattes and cappuccinos, and she and Angel attended a movie at the Sun Cinema. Buffy's mother, Joyce , owned an art gallery in Sunnydale, and Buffy's Watcher , Rupert Giles , was the Sunnydale High School librarian until the building burned down, after which he bought The Magic Box, which offered lotions, potions, and other supplies to witches, sorcerers, and other practitioners of the mystical arts. An old acquaintance of Giles, the warlock Ethan Rayne , briefly operated an enchanted costume shop ("Ethan's") until he was run out of town by Giles. Angel lived in a deserted mansion, which he shared for a time with Spike and Drusilla , after the three moved there from the abandoned factory in which they'd lived previously. For a time, Buffy and Willow attended the Sunnydale campus of the University Of California . The rogue Slayer, Faith Lehane , lived in the Downtowner Motel until the mayor rented her an apartment in a more upscale section of the city. As college students, Buffy, Willow, and her other friends discovered that the U.S. government was operating a secret military complex, The Initiative , in a cavern beneath the UC Sunnydale campus. After dropping out, Buffy worked at a fast-food restaurant, the Doublemeat Palace, before landing a job as a youth counselor at the new Sunnydale High School, which her sister Dawn attended. Buffy's friend Xander Harris worked at a number of jobs in Sunnydale before becoming a construction foreman, helping to build the new Sunnydale High School, and Cordelia Chase worked at a local boutique for a short time before relocating to Los Angeles following graduation. ''Buffy'''s final episode, '' Chosen '', sees Sunnydale destroyed in a successful attempt to stop The First Evil from opening the Hellmouth. A sign on the city limits gives Sunnydale the same population as it had in early seasons. FOOTNOTES |
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