‘Buffy’, Memes And Drunk Shia LaBeouf Fans: My 24 Hours At BingeFest
Pop culture invaded the Opera House this weekend.
Is TV art? Where do memes come from and what’s the point of them? What are the six most important episodes of Buffy?
Over the weekend that most venerable temple to the highest of high art, the Sydney Opera House, played host to BingeFest: a 24-hour+ pop culture festival that attempted to answer those questions, and more.
BingeFest was a very different kind of festival compared to regular Opera House staples like the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. There were cat videos, a pop-up convenience store, a Street Fighter tournament, a Beyoncé vs Rihanna dance class, an overnight Buffy marathon and even a Shia LaBeouf performance art project.
But there were still plenty of serious and engaging conversations too. Julie Snyder, the executive producer of Serial, and Radiolab‘s Jad Abumrad delivered lectures, Community‘s Dan Harmon recorded a live podcast and a crew of local comedians dissected the year in memes.
The festival kicked off at 3.45pm on Saturday and ran all way through ’til the early hours of Monday morning. For my review I decided to draw inspiration from the festival’s name and binge on 24 hours of it. My plan was to attend the festival non-stop for its entire duration. Which sounds equal parts fun and incredibly dumb. And it was.
3.45pm, Saturday: Memes, Memes, Glorious Memes
BingeFest kicked off with a panel discussion on the year’s best and worst memes covering where they came from, where they went and why they were so, so bad. The panel, which had the cringeworthy title of “Harambe Memorial Service” was helmed by Australian satirist Dan Ilic and featured comedians Celeste Barber, Bec Shaw, Theo Saidden (better known as Superwog), writer Jenna Guillame from BuzzFeed and meme scholar Emma Balfour. (Saidden deserves a special shout-out for his incredibly brave decision to grace the Opera House stage wearing thongs).
My main takeaway from the session was how terrible most memes are and how quickly they age. Damn Daniel was really from 2016? Even Obama/Biden memes seem desperately outdated and they only came out a month ago.
The highlight was the section on political memes — both local ones (remember Fake Tradie?) and memes from the US. The crowd cheered at the Bernie Sanders Dank Meme Stash and booed at the ALP Spicy Meme Stash.
But what made it interesting wasn’t just the display of memes, but the discussion around why they work (authenticity and spontaneity) and don’t work (hiring political staffers to make memes is bad) from people who make them, write about them and study them.
And of course, it was just great to be talking about memes in a place as auspicious as the Sydney Opera House.
4.45pm, Saturday: Egg Sandwiches
I was only one session in with seven to go, but I was already craving snacks. I’d forgotten to eat lunch and it was starting to dawn on me that I was going to be here for a very long time. So I bought a small box of overpriced sandwiches, smashed them down, played a quick game of Street Fighter with a random person, said hello to a few friends and jumped back into the Playhouse theatre for Round Two.
5.30pm, Saturday: When TV Got High
Christopher Borrelli had me right from the start when he declared The Sopranos to be one of the most important televisions shows of all time (which is absolutely correct).
Borrelli is a feature writer for The Chicago Tribune and his talk traversed the history of television and explored the cultural and technological shifts that have led to the so-called ‘Golden Age’ of TV.
It was a shame the theatre wasn’t packed out for Borrelli’s presentation. He’s clearly a guy who loves his television and knows an awful lot about it. He would regularly link some of most popular shows of the last couple of years like True Detective to random, terrible cop shows and soaps from the ’80s, but it somehow always made sense. TV didn’t magically get good overnight, Borrelli argued, it’s been a long, painful process full of a lot of incredibly shit programs.
So is TV art? Of course it is. And it’s bloody good art. You’re a Junkee reader, you already know that! But it wasn’t always good, and it was fascinating to hear Borrelli talk about how we got here, even if he didn’t seem to be all that into female writer and directors. All of his favourite showrunners were men, and when he mentioned Broad City he described it as a “less precious version of Girls“.
I’m not the biggest fan of Girls, but it was weird that his only critique of Broad City involved comparing it to another show written by and starring young women, and then used a word like “precious” to dismiss it. Both shows have been hugely successful and influential in their own ways and both are very different. Lumping them together like that seems a bit lazy, and it was a odd note for an another wise sharp presentation that taught the audience plenty about good TV.
7.30pm, Saturday: Harmontown
Dan Harmon’s live show (which also gets turned into a podcast) was one of the fastest selling events of the entire festival. Fans started lining up an hour early, an experience so unusual for the Opera House that the attendant even suggested everyone should go away, grab a drink and come back later.
She was politely ignored.
You can read my full recap of Harmontown here.
9.30pm, Saturday: The Hunt For A Burger
At this stage I was feeling both hungry and tired. I’d been binging on cultural content for nearly six hours and all I’d consumed were a few tiny sandwiches and a small bottle of sparkling water.
I had an hour to sort out something to eat before the Buffy marathon kicked off. So I did what any sane person would do in this circumstance: I went to McDonald’s.
Circular Quay McDonald’s is always an experience, particularly on a Saturday tonight. The first challenge was navigating the hordes of English backpackers at Opera Bar. I maintain that Opera Bar’s location gives it the capacity to be one of the greatest drinking establishments in the world, but it’s rendered inhospitable by sheer number of loud English lads that permanently dominate.
The next hurdle was dealing with the enormous crowd of drunk punters and tourists at McDonald’s itself. The longest line I experienced all weekend was the one at McDonald’s. But eventually I secured my Grand Angus meal, sat on a bench outside, smashed down my burger and had a guy vomit next to me.
Ah, Sydney. Never change (actually change a lot, very rapidly. Please.).
10.30pm, Saturday: Welcome To The Hellmouth
The eight hour Buffy marathon was definitely, for many, the most anticipated event of the weekend. Binging television is one of the top five human experiences. Binging a show like Buffy surrounded by 350 die-hard fans in a giant slumber party like environment at the Opera House has to be in the top three.
The fans were lining up early and most had brought pillows and snacks to get them through the night.
I’d only seen a few episodes of Buffy previously (I know, shame, boo etc.) and was feeling anxious about what episodes would be aired. Were they going to do the first season? The last season? How will I know what the hell is going on?
Turns out I wasn’t alone. While the majority of the audience were clearly massive Buffy fans, there were quite a few people who had never seen the show before in the crowd. They, like me, were just keen to experience it and hopefully learn a bit more about one of the most important pop cultural phenomena of the past two decades.
The episodes were curated by the folk from The A.V. Club. We were told they were going to play a selection of six episodes, and those episodes definitely weren’t going to be the first six. The crowd went wild at this point. I guess the first six aren’t that great?
The first episode was ‘School Hard’ — a fan favourite because it features the first appearance of Spike, one of the series’ most loved characters. It had been years since I last watched a Buffy episode, but immediately I understood why people loved this show so much. It was funny, relatable (sure there are vampires, but it’s also about a bunch of teens dealing with the pressures of growing up) and the cast is perfect.
My take after one episode: Buffy is… good. #BingeFest
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) December 17, 2016
I couldn’t imagine a better place to watch a show like this than in a theatre surrounded by lifelong fans. They laughed at the in-jokes, they cheered when Buffy slayed vampires and they were kind enough to answer my dumb questions about what was going on.
The final episode before the intermission was one of the most critically acclaimed: ‘Hush’. A bunch of terrifying demons called The Gentlemen descend on Sunnydale, take away everyone’s voices and start cutting out people’s hearts. It was dark and scary as hell.
To add to the atmosphere, and make it even more frightening, a couple of real-life Gentlemen popped up in the theatre and started wandering around.
ARGHHHH look who rocked up!!! #BingeFest pic.twitter.com/wW6QBfLL82
— Osman Faruqi (@oz_f) December 17, 2016
People (including me) were screaming. It was a great touch and something the fans clearly appreciated it. The Gentlemen were even kind enough to pose for photos during the intermission.
Credit: Prudence Upton
2am, Sunday: Pizza, De Rucci And Shia LaBeouf
Halfway through the Buffy marathon we hit pause for an intermission. Samsung, one of the BingeFest’s event partners, had bought plenty of pizza for everyone, which definitely added to the sleepover vibe.
The break gave me an opportunity to check out the rest of the late night activities on offer, including a De Rucci furniture installation (it sounds weird but it was super comfortable) and the much anticipated Shia LaBeouf performance art experience.
LaBeouf reunited with his regular collaborators, Luke Turner, and Nastja Säde Rönkkö, for a new work called #ANDINTHEEND.
The trio had previously worked on #IAMSORRY, a six-day performance where LaBeouf sat in an art gallery with a paper bag over his head and invited visitors to interact with him in whatever way they wanted too.
With #ANDINTHEEND, LaBeouf, Turner and Rönkkö invited people to enter the large Joan Sutherland Theatre one by one and tell them a phrase beginning with “And in the end…”. The experience was broadcast live and each phrase was displayed on a screen outside the Opera House.
Credit: LaBeouf, Rönkkö and Turner
The line for the performance looked much shorter than I expected — the Opera House had set up temporary barricades in the event thousands of people decided to rock up — but it was still moving very slowly. I joined in with some friends I’d run into at Buffy, but the combination of its slow pace and an incredibly drunk man who was convinced he was LaBeouf’s best friend and wouldn’t shut up convinced us to ditch it and check out the fancy furniture instead.
Turns out it was a good move, as some people ended up waiting four hours or more to get in.
We decided to head back into the Buffy screening, but the next episode was definitely one just for the fans. The plot was confusing and required a lot of someone who only figured out the general storyline a few hours ago. I was tired and the coffee machine was broken. It was time to a call it a night, exactly 12 hours into my 24-hour binge.
On the way home I ran into a squad of about a dozen drunk teens chanting “Shia, Shia, Shia” on their way to the Opera House. Good on them.
1.15pm, Sunday: Podcast Heaven
The second day of BingeFest had a very different tone to the first, at least for the first few sessions. The crowd on Saturday skewed heavily towards younger people into memes, Dan Harmon and Buffy.
Sunday kicked off with talks from two of the most successful radio and podcast brains in the business. Most of the audience looked like they’d dressed up as Ira Glass for an NPR themed Halloween. But good on them, because radio is good and Ira Glass is great.
Julie Snyder, the executive producer of the wildly successful Serial podcast, walked us through the background to the program, the challenges in putting it together and what the response was like. In keeping with the theme of the festival, she directly addressed the idea of podcasts, and Serial in particular, as “bingeworthy journalism” and asked whether journalism could be art.
It was interesting to hear her explain how the reporting behind Serial was based on hard journalistic tactics like going through thousands of impenetrable court records, but the medium allowed for a new kind of engagement with the audience, particular on social media. Snyder seemed uncomfortable with the amount of discussion Serial generated, which is fair enough considering the delicate nature of reporting criminal cases.
But it was a bit strange considering she had decided to throw a decent chunk of resources into making Adnan Syed’s story more popular, and succeeded. Of course the response was going to be loud and messy.
Snyder was followed by Jad Abumrad, the creative genius behind Radiolab.
Abumrad’s talk was a massive highlight for me, even in my semi-delirious state. He explored the nature of contemporary journalism and storytelling, signposting his presentation with some of his favourite radio stories, anecdotes from industry legends like Glass and his own musical compositions.
Like with Snyder’s talk, the takeaway was the format and tone of radio storytelling is changing, but its purpose and method isn’t. Ask big questions. Let those questions absolutely take over. Keep pushing boundaries.
"Nothing gets interesting until it stops being reasonable." Brain's buzzing after @JadAbumrad #BingeFest
— Scott Spark (@scottspark) December 18, 2016
Especially loved the notion of embodying the questions. Are you asking enough of them and taking them far enough? #BingeFest
— Scott Spark (@scottspark) December 18, 2016
5pm, Sunday: And In The End…?
There were two more panels to go, a Beyoncé vs Rihanna dance class and another round of LaBeouf. BingeFest wasn’t done, but I was.
More than 24 hours after I first walked into a discussion on memes, I was capital-C cooked. It had been a wild ride. I learnt a lot, I saw Dan Harmon impersonate Peter Garrett and I developed a belated crush on Buffy.
So what’d I think all up? BingeFest was a fun, smart and timely look at pop culture and its impact. We needed a festival like it, and good on the Opera House for taking a risk and putting it on. Even though most of the events didn’t sell out, I hope they stick with the format and theme and keep it going.
There was an overwhelmingly positive response from the attendees I spoke too. For many, it was their first experience at the Opera House. And that’s great. Let’s smash down the silly, completely arbitrary barriers between “high art” and pop culture.
What confused me most about the festival is why the programmers seemed scared of embracing local talent. Out of the nine or so talks, panels and presentations, only two featured Australians – though the second Harmontown performance included local guests Josh Thomas and Lee Launay, and Amrita Hepi’s sold out all three of her dance classes.
Having well-known Americans come down to Sydney and talk about their fun stuff they make is great, but there’s a wealth of talent already here when it comes to cultural criticism and analysing pop culture.
We shouldn’t be afraid to embrace and support Australian voices, and we don’t always need Americans to tell us what to watch.
Other than that, bring on the 24-hour The Sopranos marathon for BingeFest 2017.
Feature image credit: Prudence Upton