Beyond examining the (un-)conscious erasure of racial issues historically in both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the American Film Musical, this paper aims to show how the collision of these two entities in the episode "Once More, with Feeling" (6007) critiques both the series and the genre through its treatment of the musical demon character Sweet, played by Broadway actor Hinton Battle. In her article "The Undemonization of Supporting Characters in Buffy," Mary Alice Money notes that the series' fleshing out of supporting characters, both human and demon, "stands in for race in American society" (98). While her argument is convincing, this does not excuse the odd, conspicuous fact that, for a show set in Southern California, virtually all characters have been white. Even those minorities who make major cameo appearances - Kendra, Olivia, Ampada, Sineya, etc. - are all coded as foreign, non-American minorities. With few exceptions, virtually no American characters of color appear until Season 7. The overwhelming "whiteness" of cast and characters is similar to that of classic Hollywood musicals of the 1940s and 50s. Hence it is appropriate that Buffy the Vampire Slayer comments on the series' own inattention to race by coding a major character as African-American in its homage to the musical. Contrasting Sweet's jazz and soft-shoe coded identity with the rest of the cast's songs and dances, Whedon's condensed history of the American Film Musical subtly exposes how the genre - and arguably, contemporary television in general — has accepted the "othering" of American minorities.

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