Undead TV

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.

• 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 433. 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

“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 “Keenly attentive to gender, age, race, and institutional politics, the essays in this collection reverberate with the clarity, cogency, and force of high-quality television studies scholarship. Undead TV is indispensable reading not only for those interested in one of the most important American television series but also for anyone who wants to be informed about the current practices, investments, and prospects of television and other associated media.”-Diane Negra, coeditor of Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture “I was incredibly excited to have the chance to read Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and feel like I was doing ‘academic’ work while still obsessing over my favorite show. . . . [T]he articles about media and marketing aspects of TV shows that use Buffy as an example are interesting, and deserve a reading by any Buffy scholar. As Undead TV proves to its readers, a successful TV show becomes great only after it is already dead. But like any Buffy fan knows, when things die, they’re never really dead, and it is in this undead experience that things really start to get interesting.” - Chelsey Clammer (Feminist Review blog) “This intelligent collection of essays offers a critical commentary on both the ongoing cultural significance of the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and on media and television industries in general. Undead TV makes a great resource for anyone interested in television theory as well as offering fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer an insightful look into the program’s continuingly relevant themes and messages.” - Maryanne Mangano (M/C Reviews)