The Cult of Buffy.

• Author: SALAMON, JULIE
• Position: TV show 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' - Includes interview with Michelle Trachtenberg - Brief Article

It's not the vampire battles that inspire millions of fans to sink their teeth into the show--it's the smart take on life

Lily Rothman, 15, goes to Hunter College High School, one of New York City's most competitive schools. Besides her academic load, she's on the debate team and studies clarinet and piano. She reads a lot and plays an hour of Snood, a Tetris-like computer game, every day.

But her most enduring passion is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the popular WB show now revving up for its fifth-season finale this May. As soon as she finishes watching, Lily gets on the phone or the Internet to analyze the episode with other fans. Her fellow Bully kibitzers are far-flung; she's met many of them through one of the thousands of Web sites devoted to the show. She learned HTML to contribute to the Buffy sites, and she has lately begun writing online fan fiction.

"I have so much in common with the people I meet through Buffy," Lily says. "I can't pinpoint why, exactly, but we tend to like the same music and the same books and the same movies."

The evolution of Sarah Michelle Gellar's show has generated a devoted legion of Buffy Watchers. When Buffy first appeared quietly, as a midseason show in March 1997, a reviewer for The New York Times was amused but dismissive of this supernatural fantasy set in a California town that happens to sit on the mouth of hell. "Nobody is likely to take this oddball camp exercise seriously," he wrote.

BEYOND VAMP CAMP

But younger viewers took Bully very seriously. It has a powerful cult following, with a steady 4.7 million viewers each week. Adults began analyzing Buffy, finding the metaphoric implications that were particularly appealing to teens. While a typical episode might on one level be about the heroine's latest battle with a demonic force, it could also be seen as dealing with demons that teens confront every day: fears about sex, feeling too smart or not smart enough, alienation from the grown-up world, wanting independence but also fearing it.

Henry Jenkins, the director of comparative media studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently exchanged notes on Buffy with his 19-year-old son. "For him it connected with very real issues he's going through as he goes through school," Jenkins says. "Fights within the family, dealing with teachers and principals. For him, it's anchored to reality."

Like the best fantasy fiction and movies, Bully offers a stylized and often witty expression of the...