ABSTRACT
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was an extraordinary moment in the history of television. Pitched to a concatenation of audiences generally ignored by producers and programmers-indie kids, vampire fans, and pop culture critics-it made a virtue of trading in practices generally eschewed by television writers-multiple, constant, and demanding intertextual references; complex and anti-realist narrative strategies; and creative and challenging uses of music and sound. This chapter discusses parody, genre, and heteronormativity, together taking stock of the musical in the twenty-first century in a way that scholarship on single films such as Moulin Rouge or Dancer in the Dark has simply not been able to do. It is not only a major contribution to academic Buffydom also a major contribution to the study of music and television. The study of television music is, to put it as generously as possible, in its infancy.
