THE BURNING MAN. BtVS Intertext/Allusion.

When Giles meets Jenny Calendar in the hall on the first day back at Sunnydale High after the summer break in the episode “When She Was Bad,” he makes small talk by enquiring about her vacation.

Giles: How was your summer?

Jenny: Extreme. I did Burning Man in Black Rock, ohhh, such a great festival, you should’ve been there. They had rituals, mobile sculptures, raves, naked mud dances, you would’ve just . . . . hated it with a passion!

Giles: I can’t imagine any redeeming – uh . . . naked?

Burning Man is the annual self-described “experiment in temporary community dedicated to radical self-expression and radical self-reliance”. After its inception in San Francisco in 1986, it has been held in the Black Rock Desert, 120 miles north of Reno, Nevada, where performance artists, visual artists and other like-minded souls create the temporary community of Black Rock City. The credo of the five day event that takes place the week before Labor Day and attracts as many as 25,000 people is “No spectators, only participants”. The festival culminates in the burning of a forty foot tall Burning Man effigy on the playa.

--Janice Chan