January 19th, 2004

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Media
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For Buffy Withdrawal Symptoms

I bring you the Encyclopedia of Buffy Studies, which features with such evocative titles as:

  • High School is Hell: Metaphor made Literal
  • Myth Versus Faux Myth
  • Killing Us Softly? A Feminist Search for the ‘Real’ Buffy
  • The Buffy Effect or, a Tale of Cleavage and Marketing (by the unfortunately named Rachel Fudge)

You’ve got to love academia, eh? Now, I certainly enjoyed the show, but this is agetting a bit carried away. This list comes from that most intellectual of Buffy fan sites, Slayage.tv. In truth, when I was at university, I loved inventing goofy titles for my papers. It was a tiny reward after writing the things.

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Mel
January 19th, 2004
2:21 pm

My cell biology prof actually gave away prizes for the most creatively named papers. I won once, for something witty about photosynthesis. I’ll be darned if I actually remember what it was…

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Herb
January 19th, 2004
6:45 pm

Some of the papers are reaching a bit, but I am pleased to see that pop culture is being taken seriously enough to be examined in such form. More often than not in media studies, what you will find are variations on “beware the mind poisoning media” and “you really should be reading Dickens, or Beowolf”.

It also makes sense that there is a focus on Buffy, since there is a great deal of material beneath the surface, as it was written that way.

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Todd
January 20th, 2004
1:40 pm

My senior thesis in historical linguistics was called “To -er is English: A Natural History of the -er Agentive Morpheme.” I picked up a book of Buffy-crit essays last year called “Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in BTVS?” and have yet to finish all of them. For your money, the online encyclopedia is a better value.

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