Search Results for: Buffy

Totally Radical Girls and the Bitchin’ Burden of Civilization

I mean, she doesn’t wrap her arms around some guy’s waist to hold on for the ride of her life or even jump onto a Vespa or something weak. Nope, she’s a zombie-fightin’ shoulder-padded biker who escapes danger on her own and looks just as feathery-haired good when she gets to her destination as when she put down her attacker in the alley (although this was the early 80s while CFCs were being phased out, so big hair treated with a half-bottle of AquaNet always had some hold).

Let’s Hear It for the Boy! Masculinity and the Monomyth

As the monomyth evolves, the question is: will it evolve to include the “everywoman” hero archetype, or will the nature of myth itself change to embrace not just the messaging of individualization, but the representation of unique stories for unique people?

Misogyny Demons and Wesley’s Tortured Masculinity in Joss Whedon’s ‘Angel’

Not only does the characterization of this violent misogyny as “primordial” imply that violence toward women is the natural state of men, it also implies that gender itself is an essential and natural state of being. Men are men and women are women. In a universe that generally operates in gray areas, such a distinction is uncharacteristically black and white.

‘Viy’: Incestuous Mother as Horror Monster

For women, male anxieties over female abusers combine great risk of demonization with great opportunity to forge connection. Men, like women, understand boundaries primally through their own bodies and identification. Rejecting one’s own abuse teaches one to fight against all abuse; excusing it teaches one to abuse.

#iamnotavessel: Joss Whedon’s Romantic Reproductive Coercion

Whedon and director Jeunet thus systematically demolish Ridley Scott’s original metaphor by consistently representing Ripley’s experience of forced maternity as akin to both chosen motherhood and loss of self, and essentially different from the forced impregnation and reproductive coercion of the male characters.

In ‘Appropriate Behavior’: What Does It Take for a Woman to Author Herself?

What’s more, to understand ‘Appropriate Behavior’ as the bisexual Iranian version of someone else’s work would be to miss the point of the film entirely. While on the surface, the film is about a bisexual Iranian American coming to terms with a breakup and with the messiness of her sexuality, it’s really a film about identity, about what it means not to take the easy way out by shaving off or hiding the parts of yourself that don’t fit into a neat package. By failing, spectacularly, to fit, the film, like its main character, becomes something more than the sum of its seemingly discordant parts, something entirely of its own.

Reclaiming Conch: In Defense of Ursula, Fairy Octomother

Ursula’s show-stopper, “Poor, Unfortunate Souls,” presents case studies of mermen and mermaids made miserable by culture. What this song really teaches is that internalizing cultural messages is a fatal weakness, and rejecting cultural conditioning is a source of great power. Small wonder that Ursula had to die the most gruesome onscreen death in all of Disney.

Blurred Lines: The Cinematic Appeal of Rape Fantasy

While Whore stigma is gradually declining, kinky desires remain stigmatized, especially in women. By vocally disowning that desire, “Madonna” Anastasia Steele qualifies herself to serve as an avatar for readers who struggle to acknowledge and integrate their sexual urges. The “displaced consent” model of rape fantasy may be recognized, and distinguished from the “sexual assawwwlt” model, by its masterful Ice Prince hero, whose full control is essential to eliminating the heroine’s responsibility.

The Golden Gogol Awards: Gender, Psychosis and Big, White Rabbits

“You’ve got a lot to learn, Myrtle Mae, and I hope you never learn it.” These words, from 1950’s ‘Harvey,’ apply equally to sex and sanity. Harvey’s young women, Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly, are open and assertive about their sexual desires and frustrations. It is the older woman, Veta, who is inhibited. She flinches when a bosom jiggles and squirms when discussing sex. Society’s usual concept of sexual inhibition, as a natural innocence corrupted by experience, is flipped in Harvey: female sexuality is the natural innocence that experience disciplines into inhibition. Myrtle Mae and Nurse Kelly have a lot to learn, and we hope they never learn it.

The Superficial Yet Satisfying Feminism of ‘Agent Carter’

It’s not just seeing a badass chick beat the wide ties off of sexist dudes with a stapler that makes ‘Agent Carter’ so gratifying (although that’s a big part of it). I’ve been lucky enough to live my adult life in a post-‘Xena’ and ‘Buffy’ world where I can count on a fairly steady stream of ladies who can kick butt in my media. I think the heart of what makes ‘Agent Carter’ feel like a feminist triumph is that we are watching a would-be love interest as the hero of her own story

“Smurfette Syndrome”: The Incredible True Story of How Women Created Modern Comedy Without Being Funny

Far more than a common trend in cartoons and superhero teams, the Smurfette Principle is an ingrained interpretative framework that limits female achievement to a model for male imitation, rather than an argument for female inclusion. In comedy, “Smurfette Syndrome” is a bias that asks whether individual women are “as funny as men,” rather than assessing women’s collective contribution as creators of comedy genres.