Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elana Levine is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. She is the author of Wallowing in Sex: The New Sexual Culture of 1970s American Television, also published by Duke University Press.

Lisa Parks is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual, also published by Duke University Press.

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"Aiming its Mr. Pointy at preconceived ideas about the show, this collection tackles "Buffy" from cultural, economic, and aesthetic angles. Cancellation has clearly done nothing to blunt the show's cutting edge. Read it along with Joss Whedon's new eighth-season comic book and you'll agree: Buffy is dead--long live Buffy!"--Heather Hendershot, author of "Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before the V-Chip"

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UNDEAD TV

Duke University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments................................................................................................................................................viiIntroduction Elana Levine and Lisa Parks......................................................................................................................11. The Changing Face of Teen Television, or Why We All Love Buffy Mary Celeste Kearney........................................................................172. I Know What You Did Last Summer: Sarah Michelle Gellar and Crossover Teen Stardom Susan Murray.............................................................423. Vampire Hunters: The Scheduling and Reception of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel in the United Kingdom Annette Hill and Ian Calcutt.....................564. The Epistemological Stakes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Television Criticism and Marketing Demands Amelie Hastie...........................................745. "Did Anyone Ever Explain to You What 'Secret Identity' Means?" Race and Displacement in Buffy and Dark Angel Cynthia Fuchs.................................966. At Stake: Angel's Body, Fantasy Masculinity, and Queer Desire in Teen Television Allison McCracken.........................................................1167. Buffy as Femme Fatale: The Cult Heroine and the Male Spectator Jason Middleton.............................................................................1458. Buffy and the "New Girl Order": Defining Feminism and Femininity Elana Levine..............................................................................168Bibliography...................................................................................................................................................191Contributors...................................................................................................................................................197Index..........................................................................................................................................................199

Chapter One

THE CHANGING FACE OF TEEN TELEVISION, OR WHY WE ALL LOVE BUFFY

For over a decade, the press has repeated ad nauseam the U.S. Census Bureau's projections that the teenage population will peak at close to 34 million by 2010. Not surprisingly, journalists who cite these figures often draw attention to the large amount of money teen consumers spend each year, estimated at $153 billion for 1999. In turn, these phenomenal demographic and economic statistics have been used to explain the rampant juvenilization of American popular culture, particularly the increased proliferation of teenpics, such as Scream, teen magazines, such as Cosmo Girl, and teeny-bop musicians, such as NSync.

More specific to the world of television, numerous trade articles have appeared in recent years bearing titles such as "Smells Like Teen Demos," "Fountains of Youth," and "Media Taps into Zit-Geist" and connecting the teen population boom and teenagers' buying power with the greater number of teens depicted on TV. Trade hype about teen-centered series was the most prolific from 1998 to 1999, largely due to the popularity of the WB's Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek, and the resulting deluge of copycat series on both that and other networks. Virtually all press reports about this latest crop of "teen shows" reveal some rendition of the logic exhibited by James Poniewozik, a reporter for Time: "The business motive behind these shows ... is simple enough: ... the large (about 31 million), fickle 12-to-19-year-old demographic draws ad money."

Several crucial points remain obscured in such reasoning, however. Most significantly, teenagers watch less TV than any other age-based demographic. In fact, despite the large number of contemporary series featuring teens, the fifty-year tradition of teenagers' minimal TV consumption has continued. While adults over eighteen currently average almost 10 hours of television viewing per week, teenagers watch only about 6 1/2 hours. Moreover, many reports show that today's teens are seeking out television entertainment less than ever before due to their involvement in other leisure activities, particularly surfing the web. With so few teenagers watching TV, the teen audience has been spread extremely thin among the numerous programs that vie for its attention, so thin that none of the contemporary teen-centered series would make it on the air, and stay there, if they relied solely on teenage viewers.

Unlike many journalists covering television programming, TV executives recognize that appealing to the teen demographic alone is a risky proposition. As Sandy Grushow, the chair of Fox Television Entertainment Group, argues, "I ... don't believe that targeting teens in and of itself is a sustainable business." Jamie Kellner, the former Ceo of the WB network, agrees: "You don't get as many dollars for teen viewers as adults 18-34." As Kellner suggests, advertisers are similarly tentative about putting all of their eggs in the teen basket, and many have been rethinking their marketing strategies for this particular demographic due to teens' continued deprivileging of TV viewing and their increased interest in other media forms. For example, Frank Castiglione, the vice president of marketing for Mervyn's California, reports, "We're absolutely shifting media.... Traditional TV ... [is] not the way to go."

In order for teen shows to be viable, therefore, other age groups besides teenagers must watch them. Who, then, are the viewers who make up the teen show audience? To understand the construction of this audience more fully we must first move beyond the problematic assumption that media texts featuring characters of a particular age are consumed primarily by viewers of that same age, an assumption relied upon not only by most journalists, but also by scholars studying teen-centered TV series. Although several media theorists have explored how spectatorial identifications cross the boundaries of sex, race, and sexuality, little attention has been paid to how viewers' televisual identifications may blur boundaries associated with age. Nevertheless, the widespread popularity of contemporary teen-centered series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer suggests the prevalence of transgenerational identifications among many TV viewers.

Explorations of cross-generational forms of cultural identification necessitate thinking outside the age-specific frameworks of identity, taste, and desire upon which we have depended for far too long. The work of Philippe Aris and Joseph Kett is useful in this regard, for these theorists demonstrate that although generation and life-stage status typically are linked to chronological age, such modes of identity are also, and perhaps primarily, socially constructed and thus have no essential, fixed meanings. In other words, "childhood," "adolescence," and "adulthood" are empty terms that have been associated with different meanings at different times according to different social, political, and economic needs. As a result, the experiences, practices, and identities associated with these various stages of life are contingent, unstable, and mutable.

This chapter explores the shifting dynamics of aged-based consumer sensibilities and their relation to contemporary...