ABSTRACT
For Buffy the Vampire Slayer pre-existing textual conventions were so often a source of tension against which to distinguish what was new and different about itself. In "Hush" and "The Body" the primacy of the "flow" or "hum" which informs the very basis of the sonic codes of television are reworked for their affective potential. Television is subject to more rigid sonic constraints than the cinema for it is bound by rules of seeking and ensuring constant engagement with its easily distracted audience. In Visible Fictions John Ellis notes the centrality of the soundtrack in the medium: The role played by sound stems from the fact that it radiates in all directions, whereas view of the TV image is sometimes restricted. What manipulation of televisual sonic conventions achieves is a paradoxical reliance on the soundtrack, but less on the flow of noise and more on the expanse it can provide through silence and its juxtaposition with sonic density.
