Fun with theme and genre: Buffy's existential musical

Buffy essayist Marguerite Krause (yes, there are Buffy essayists) describes the show as using monsters as thin symbolism for the shows true focus: relationships--romantic, platonic, and familial--and how to maintain or ruin them. The common themes in her opinion being: "failure to communicate, lack of trust, [and the] inability to envision or create a viable future".  

Buffy is an unusually good piece of existentialist fiction because, monsters or not, it's actually fairly grounded in what life is like. It just uses a lot of metaphors to get there. And actually one of the funnest metaphors it uses to get there, from a writing perceptive, is the musical episode. 

Easily the most famous existentialist (Nietzshian) slogan is "God is dead," meaning religion is no longer capable of providing spiritual guidance in the modern world. It also works as a great sum up of what existentialism is all about, i.e. the idea that individuals create the meanings in their world, rather than them being defined for them by a deity, authority or so on.

MINOR SPOILERS ('minor' cause, the show *ended* ten years ago, and though a bit of a twist, it's never really played off as one/I don't think takes away any enjoyment from the episodes). For Buffy, 'god is dead' is shown in its own metaphor  Having recently died by throwing herself into a portal, and having her bodyless soul be absorbed into a heaven-like reality, Buffy fails to come to terms with the pains of being alive again. Life's problems are persistent, enduring, at times tedious and end abruptly only in death. In the words of Krause, Buffy's 'inability to envision or create a viable future' leaves her apathetic, struggling to find a sense of purpose. 

The musical episode introduces a new metaphor: having something to sing about. The spell cast over the town reduces its peoples to sing and dance when emotions run high, and ends in human combustion if emotions run too high, sating the evil demon.

Having something to sing about in this case represents whether or not Buffy can find some sort of purpose, her big number being called 'Something to Sing about'. This is the fun thing. Ironically she has a lot to sing about, but it's about how she has nothing to sing about, and we the audience watch as she draws to the bitter-sweet conclusion that, though feeling disconnected from life, for exactly that reason she's the embodiment of what is to be alive.

This is nice genre writing because there's a fun juxtaposition here between the 'everything's alright in the end' world view of the musical and the more gritty, existentialist 'there's no grand plan for your life, nothing really matters' world view. Even the very bittersweet, Les Miserables (which is heavy on the bitter) is ultimately a musical at heart, and relies on a grand, romanisation of its tragedies. Not that that's a criticism of Les Mis, per sa. But it is cool to have a musical by BTVS, that is so about something real and inappropriate for a musical to deal with, and have it get away with it because of the brilliant way in which the musical is meta. Although its fun as a musical, it is ultimately about how life is not a musical.