I’ve been away from the US for so long that I’ve got a few blind spots regarding US popular culture. But I’m working on it! One of the things I truly regret missing are some of the better TV series, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (March 1997 until May 2003). Just the snippets of teen and college humor you’ll hear in the trailers and scenes uploaded to YouTube were enough to make me fall in love with the series, e.g. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say: Huh???” Great Buffy quotes are collected here, in Wikiquotes.
My initial knowledge of this series and the role it played comes from an outstanding blog on US society written in German, USA Erklärt, whose author, Scot W. Stevenson, is a declared Buffy fan. Your search for “Buffy” there is richly rewarded. Now I’ve found an additional great Buffy resource in a wiki called TV Tropes.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is the trailer for season 1:
Here’s a promo video of the animated series, which never came to be:
This looks like a fun drama activity to do in an English class, taken from “Whose line is it anyway?”: Students play a given scene with famous characters and have to insert lines they get. In this case, the scene is moments before sunrise, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer has come to kill Count Dracula as he is draining the last drops of blood from his latest victim.
Since those nice inexpensive US DVDs don’t run on my computer (they’re not Region 0, and I refuse to shut off the universal standard), I’ll have to break down and rip a few. Sigh.
5 Responses
I’m a big Buffy fan, and I know that as a language expert you will have fun. Only one piece of warning: Some episodes of season 1 are brilliant, bu there’s also quite a bit of filler like material. “Buffy” really came into its own with season 2.
Another idea from Whose Line…
The Press Conference.
Someone (any student) stands facing the press (the other students)
On the board behind the someone you write up the “event’ they have just survived – eg rescued from living inside a whale.
the press ask questions – eg how long were you in there? what did you eat.
The someone answers any way they want.
Eventually they have to guess who they are.
Is that clear?
Great idea 🙂
Here’s a hillarious video to illustrate the variation where that event is still in progress, and the reporter on the scene hasn’t got a clue and gets his prompts from the audience:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLwMrqFeaZg
Going to try these ideas out!
Thanks for the tip, Udo, then I’ll get the second season DVD!