Australian website TheChaser.Com does an excellent job of spoofing the flourish of academic interest in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, etc., with its Onion-like article, PhD student regrets choosing Buffy The Vampire Slayer as thesis topic,
Studying Buffy for a doctoral thesis, an idea she once found politically progressive, now seems both cliched and rather childish, particularly now that the show is no longer on TV.
“My central, and really only idea was to look at how Buffy subverts gender norms by shifting the co-ordinates of received modes of performative gender construction. To be honest it’s just stuff cribbed from Judith Butler,” she admits.