Cult TV/ Buffy

It’s been over ten years since Hills(2004) outlined for us the three competing components which define cult TV, and I believe it is fair to say that the definition of cult TV today is something like trying to lasso a worm. It is difficult, and only getting more so.

Back in the mid 2000’s Hills was using a “three part model of text/ inter-text/ audience” to broadly define cult TV based on these characteristics. Though it would seem that with new media and television given ten years to mature, according to Hills definitions, almost anything could be considered cult TV today.

Hills after Grisprud, explains that true fandom is directly related to the term ‘cult’. Hills then draws from this the differences between such cult fans as opposed to soap fans, and thus their contribution to the rise of the genre of ‘cult television’, the term cult bringing a whole new intensity to the term ‘fan’.

The intense difference between cult fandom and regular fandom might have been more clearly distinguished ten years ago than it is today, and the line which separates the ‘cults’ from the rest is becoming increasingly blurred with advancing technology. Ease of access for everyday people to create their own blogs, Facebook pages, and websites means that cult fans are having an even bigger impact on defining cult TV than Hills could have summarised ten years prior.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as said by Wilcox(2005), is “a part of a long cultural stream” (pg.2). She links it to previous pieces of popular fiction and makes a note to mention that given the history of literature “even great work is not always immediately appreciated”(pg.2).

Wilcox writes that “science fiction or fantasy television is more likely to be described as Cult TV than Quality TV. And the term cult is typically pejorative, with the suggestion that admirers of such series are few and fannish” (pg.175). Nearly 20 years down the track since the first episode of Buffy aired, there is enough scholarly writings, as well as dedicated fan texts online that help to reassess these generalisations about Cult TV. The rise of blogging and social medias has allowed the seemingly ‘few and fannish’ to unite and question Cult TV vs. Quality TV.

New media makes it so easy to create fan-based communities for all types of television today. The definitions that Hills outlines are quickly becoming dated. Cult or Quality? Is there really a difference between the two anymore?

References

Hills, M. (2004). Defining Cult TV; Texts, Inter-texts, and Fan Audiences, The Television Studies Reader, in R.C. Allen and A. Hill. London and New York: Routledge.

Wilcox, R. (2005). Why Buffy Matters. London and New York: I. B. Tauris & Co Ltd.