But I'm not seeing the connection between the two.

I'm not sure there is one.

OK-- now I am just being argumentative, but isn't the primary "myth" or "trope" or what have you that Buffy sprang from NOT the vampire myth, but rather the horror movie cliche that the young pretty girl will get killed by the monster? But turned on its head? A youngish cliche to be sure, but I think the vampires were just sort of convenient.

100 years is a very short time. Like I said I'm not saying that vampire myths have not become an american cultural reference cos they have, only that they are not an American cultural creation.

100 years is about the whole history of film.

Sorry, can't go back much further.

Also, I realize I can't spell-- I will go back and edit.

Cereal:

OK-- now I am just being argumentitive, but isn't the primary "myth" or "trope" or what have you that Buffy sprang from NOT the vampire myth, but rather the horror movie cliche that the young pretty girl will get killed by the monster?

Yes, that is the particular trope that Buffy set out to trump, and it is, in fact, a trope found more in USian films than in non-USian films.

rather the horror movie cliche that the young pretty girl will get killed by the monster? But turned on its head?

Does this stem from the medievel damsel in distress? {/causing trouble}

Nosebiting vampires? Man, would Buffy be bent out of shape. "Do you know how much Alexis PAID for that nose?"

There are many, many highlanders who would dispute that.

They'd be silly to do so. My great-grandmother was a McKinley born and bred. Doesn't make her (or me) a Scot. The point that we arrogant Colonials are trying to make is that our culture is a blend of other cultures, we relish that, but we have no less right to the classical European myths than do people born on the Old Sod. Back in 1400 my ancestors weren't Americans. I don't know what-all they were; English and Scots for sure, and probably a lot more that I don't know about. But Chartres is mine, and Stonehenge, and Olympus. The Albert Memorial, I'll give you. *g*

What I find rather interesting is that the myth of vampires in the Buffyverse is the same as the real vampires in the Buffyverse. The bumpy face, etc. Until Tabula Rasa, I thought their myth would be more like our (white face, cape, turns into a bat, walk around with fangs).

100 years is about the whole history of film.

Just to tie this back into the thread topic, in 1906 the movie The Story of the Kelly Gang opened in Melbourne. This was perhaps the first narrative film of any significant length in the world.

It isn't an arrogant point at all, Betsy. My ancestors are English, but when I went back to England I felt like the foreigner I was. I relate to the culture a fair bit, but it isn't mine.