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| Singalong: In a musical-themed episode of TV's 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer,' characters such as Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)
express their feelings through song. Courtesy of 20th Century Fox |
For 'Buffy,' it's Fandom of the Opera
Television's cult teen heroine continues to vamp on the big-screen in a karaoke singalong that's touring the US.
from the July 6, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 4
Philip Rodrigues, a fan from Seattle, concurs. "The writing is so precise," he says. "Things in the first season, they'll mention again three seasons later."
While Buffy's saga of battling things that go bump in the night may resemble "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," McClung drew his inspiration from the Coolidge's sing-along to "The Sound of Music."
Cult shows such as "Buffy" have a long shelf life in this new networked culture, says Henry Jenkins, codirector of the Comparative Media Studies Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. People record them while they are airing, discover them in reruns, or buy the DVDs and watch them over and over. Online fan communities in turn generate new rituals that bring aficionados together.
"Music was a special part of 'Buffy' from the very beginning – hence the production of a musical episode in the first place – and so the musical has become a centerpiece for one of the community's shared rituals," Mr. Jenkins says.
Joss Whedon, the series creator and a musical-theater buff, recently startled McClung by slipping into the back row of a Los Angeles screening. "I was totally bowled over. I had no idea he was there," McClung says.
For McClung, it's a joy to watch those who have never seen the television series join in the fun. Getting the viewers out of their seats for the dance sequence can be tough, he says, but you couldn't tell that in Seattle. By the end of Xander and Anya's romantic duet, audiences were up and dancing.
No wonder McClung is convinced that when it comes to "Buffy," the adage should be "once bitten, not shy."
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