Sunnydale
From Wikinfo
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.
Sunnydale is designed largely for comic effect and narrative convenience. With a population of 38,500, it has one high school but nineteen gothic cemeteries, and despite having only one modest main street, it sports a campus of the University of California system, many dark alleyways, abandoned mansions and factories, and an airport. It is located along the coast, near beaches and forests and is a short drive from a desert. Sunnydale possesses many common horror-movie characteristics, most notably the divide between its demon-fighting, supernaturally aware teens and the sinister or clueless, perpetually in-denial adults.
Sunnydale is "located" ambiguously between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The fictional high school which was originally the centerpiece of the series is located on a "Hellmouth," a portal between our world and the darker demon dimensions, which serves as a nexus and attracting point for all manner of evil creatures and happenings. 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.
While there is no exact real-life counterpart for Sunnydale in California, theories exist that it is closest in nature to Santa Cruz. In several episodes of the fourth season, when Buffy is attending university at the University of California, Sunnydale, Kresge and Stevenson Colleges are mentioned as part of the UC Sunnydale campus. Both Kresge and Stevenson are colleges on the campus of University of California, Santa Cruz.
References
- Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Sunnydale" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunnydale, used under the GNU Free Documentation License
