Tag: Joss Whedon

Roundup of Feminist Celebs’ Political Videos

Screenshot of Amy Poehler in Center for Reproductive Rights’ Draw the Line campaign

Election Day is tomorrow, people! So I’m going to chat a bit about politics.

Many assume Hollywood is a liberal nirvana (or I guess a hellhole if you’re a Republican). But that’s not exactly true. Not only do films lack gender equality, they often purport sexist tropes. While many participate in fundraisers or ads for natural disasters or childhood illnesses or breast cancer, most celebrities remain silent when it comes to supposedly controversial human rights issues like abortion and contraception. But not this year! Because of the GOP’s rampant attacks on reproductive rights (gee thanks, GOP!), more celebs are adding their voices to the pro-choice symphony dissenting against these oppressive laws.

Now some people say, “Who the hell cares what celebs think??” Okay, sure. But I care. I care that people with money, visibility and power use their sway to speak out against injustice.

As I’m kind of obsessed with feminist celebs (aren’t we all??), I thought I would post a roundup celebrating some of the awesome videos featuring Hollywood celebs advocating for reproductive rights and women’s equality and speaking out against “legitimate rape” bullshit and discriminatory voter ID laws. So kudos to Amy Poehler, Meryl Streep, Kerry Washington, Tina Fey, Eva Langoria, Joss Whedon, Martha Plimpton, Lena Dunham, Sarah Silverman, Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, Audra McDonald, Scarlett Johannson, Tea Leoni, Mary J. Blige, Julianne Moore, Kathy Griffin and Cher for taking an unapologetic stand and speaking up for our rights.
And don’t forget to get out and vote!

Horror Week 2012: “We work with what we have," The Subversion of Gender Roles in ‘The Cabin in the Woods’

This is a guest post from Amanda Rodriguez
Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods is a fantastic movie, laying the horror genre bare, critiquing its conventions, and creating a space for a larger cultural conversation. Gender roles (both in and out of horror movies) are a major component of this conversation in which the filmmakers encourage us to engage. Most importantly, the film critiques the virgin/whore dichotomy that cinema and society seem to insist is the only way we can view most women.
A little background info: The scenario in Cabin in the Woods is pretty typical of the horror genre: five college-aged teens spending a weekend at a remote cabin are brutally attacked by a “zombie redneck torture family.” What isn’t typical is that a powerful, secret agency using advanced technology is manipulating the situation in order to complete a sacrificial ritual to ensure the continued slumber of fierce, ancient gods. Yeah, a bit off the beaten path, no?
The sacrifice requires a “transgression” and the resulting deaths of the athlete/jock (Curt), the scholar (Holden), the fool (Marty), and the whore (Jules). The death of the “final girl” aka the virgin (Dana) is optional. Each character is a stand-in for a horror movie archetype. When we examine the two female characters fighting for their lives, we find that they are neither virgin nor whore.
The so-called “whore” is Jules, our heroine’s bubbly best friend and roommate. She is sharp-witted and good-natured, a loyal friend. The agency manipulating the kids is decreasing Jules’ cognitive abilities through a slow-acting chemical compound in her blonde hair dye (she decided to dye her hair on a whim…sounds suspicious to me), and they’ve upped her libido via drugs. As the night progresses, Jules’ behavior becomes more and more out of character.
Apparently, sexy fireplace dancing and making out with a taxidermied wolf aren’t part of Jules’ normal partying repertoire.
Jules is the one who must “transgress” by showing her breasts and her willingness to engage in sexual activity, setting off the release of the Buckners (zombie rednecks) to begin the blood sacrifice. When it comes time, though, Jules doesn’t really want to have sex. She and her boyfriend, Curt, are outside, and she wants to go back inside. She’s cold, and it’s too dark. In order to combat Jules’ reservations about having sex, the agency raises the temperature into the 80’s, shines light into a clearing to simulate moonbeams, and floods the area with a pheromone mist.
Though it can’t be said that Jules is forced to transgress, her free will is certainly called into question. Outside forces are influencing her brain, her hormones, and her physical surroundings in such a way that her downfall becomes inevitable. Taken in a larger cultural context, this calls into question the notion that women who like sex or who own their sexuality are whores. It is as if all the women who are judged for some perceived promiscuity are miscast, just like Jules is miscast. Much like the agency, cultural circumstances manipulate women into these roles. A key example of this is how media representations of women replete with their over-sexualization and overt body focus set women up to take the fall in order to fulfill some arcane cultural need. This need seems to go back to (if not predate) the biblical “Fall of Man” where Eve is the transgressor who is blamed for the birth of sin and then punished. Like the horror movie genre, we repeat this same formula over and over again, craving the same result: the transgression and punishment of a woman for her sexuality. Why do we do this? Because it’s a man’s world? Because men are threatened by the power and autonomy of female sexuality? I’m sure all that and more is true, but it’s safe to say it’s definitely a dude thing. 
On the other side of the dichotomy coin, we have Dana, the archetypical virgin, who is not actually a virgin.
The non-virgin virgin. Talk about not really fitting into a gender stereotype.
Unlike Jules, though, Dana naturally exhibits many of the traits that have cast her in the role of the virgin. She is shy, sexually uncomfortable, brainy, artistic, and somewhat socially awkward. However, as the terrors she must face intensify, Dana has a reserve of strength that aligns her with Carol Clover’s final girl feminist trope. She repeatedly stabs her bear-trap-wielding zombie attacker, Matthew Buckner, with a crowbar and then a knife. She wrestles her way out of the depths of a lake after being attacked by Father Buckner and then withstands an almost inhuman amount of abuse on the dock at the hands of Matthew Buckner. Not only that, but Dana identifies with the killer when she sympathetically reads from the diary of Patience Buckner, thus setting the stage for the ritual by choosing the method of the five friends’ deaths. Also, at the end of the film, in an act that borders on complicity, Patience Buckner stabs The Director (of the agency), and when she does this, Dana sees Patience as her salvation. 
In the end, though, Dana doesn’t fit the horror genre virgin role or Clover’s mold because she isn’t the final girl. Marty manages to survive, thus subverting the entire horror genre and the final girl trope in the process. Marty uses his bong invention to rescue Dana from Matthew Buckner before spiriting her away to show her that he’s discovered a subterranean maintenance override panel that he’s hotwired to take them out of their contained, controlled area down into the agency’s headquarters to confront their true tormentors.
Bong Boy to the rescue!
Marty is our unlikely hero, which I appreciate, on the one hand, because he is smart, inventive, funny, insightful, and not attractive in the typical Hollywood sense of the word. Even as far as characterization goes, Marty is a far more interesting and engaging protagonist than Dana, who is, frankly, about as fascinating and individualized as linoleum. On the other hand, Marty as the hero making the final decision about whether or not to save our corrupt world subverts the possibility of a feminist reading of the ending. Marty decides that we’re not a species worth saving, and after attempting to shoot him and being bitten by a werewolf, Dana goes along with his choice. Ultimately, Cabin in the Woods is a male fantasy in which the nerd becomes the hero, saving the woman for whom he clearly cares while holding in his hands the power to determine the fate of the world.
It’s dubious whether or not Cabin in the Woods passes the Bechdel Test, as even the final conversation Dana has with The Director is centered around the importance Marty plays in maintaining world order. Without a doubt, the movie is doing many exciting, transgressive things. I find particularly important the way the audience is analogous with “the gods” because we are the ones demanding these elaborate, repetitive sacrifices that push people into these stereotypical roles. It’s not only an indictment of the horror genre but of the voyeuristic spectatorship that perpetuates these horror tropes. However, I expected more from the feminist powerhouse team that created Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I find myself wishing Marty had been cast as a woman, and the two women, the fool and the non-virgin virgin, would be the pair of survivors who finally say “no more” to a horror genre that dismembers, kills, and punishes them for being women. Maybe the world isn’t ready for that, but I’d hoped Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard would be ready to tell us that story anyway.

———-

Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

Horror Week 2012: Gender Roles in ‘The Cabin in the Woods’

The Cabin in the Woods
[This article was originally posted at The Funny Feminist.]
A few months ago, the Joss Whedon-directed The Avengers was released, and there was much rejoicing. Fans seemed pleased. I saw it and enjoyed it, but I’m more obsessed with the OTHER Joss Whedon-directed film that came out this year. I loved The Cabin in the Woods and there are so many things I want to say about this movie, but for now I’m going to write about the interesting commentary on gender roles that was in the story.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead. Lots of them.
The Cabin in the Woods is more of commentary on horror films than a horror film in of itself, and the commentary comes to a head with the final scene, as the two survivors of the zombie attack confront the Director (played by Sigourney Weaver). She reveals that the five college students were selected to be killed as part of a ritual sacrifice to a group of ancient gods. Each student was meant to represent a different archetype: the Whore (Jules, played by Anna Hutchison), the Fool (Marty, played by Fran Kranz), the Athlete (Curt, played by Chris Hemsworth), the Scholar (Holden, played by Jesse Williams), and the Virgin (Dana, played by Kristen Connolly).
The five friends hear something in the basement.
Fans and critics have argued over the significance of the ancient gods and what they’re supposed to represent. I think the ancient gods are a metaphor for humanity’s deepest, darkest desires – the ugly side of human beings. This is why the final two survivors sit back and let the world end, instead of Dana killing Marty or Marty killing himself. As they say, if sacrificing people is the key to humanity’s survival, then maybe humanity doesn’t deserve to be saved. (I also think Joss really, really wanted to write at least one story where the world actually ends – there are only so many times that Buffy, Angel, Mal, or Echo can prevent the apocalypse before the writer gets bored.)
With that interpretation in mind, I started thinking about the five college students in The Cabin in the Woods and how their roles are defined by gender. The two women, Jules and Dana, are defined as The Whore and The Virgin – two opposite ends of the spectrum whose deaths are meant to serve as bookends for the others. The order of deaths is irrelevant except in the case of the women. Jules, as the corrupted Whore, has to die first, and Dana, the Virgin, has to die last, if she dies at all. As Hadley (Bradley Whitford) says, “The virgin death is optional as long as it’s last.” The female characters are defined only by their sexuality – nothing else about them really matters.
Dana (Kristen Connolly) will be very surprised to learn that she’s a virgin.
Still, the men don’t fare much better. Their prescribed roles are not based on how much sex they have and don’t have, but shoving them into the roles of The Athlete, The Scholar, and The Fool doesn’t give them much room to breathe, either. If you’re a woman, you can be the virgin or the whore. If you’re a man, you can be athletic or smart or funny. Complexity is not allowed.
What I find particularly interesting, though, is how the “puppeteers” (as Marty calls them) recognize that the five people they’ve selected for the sacrificed don’t easily fit into the prescribed archetypes.
Of the five, Holden is the closest to resembling his actual archetype. He’s able to calculate the distance in the gorge that Curt tries to jump on the motorcycle, and, well, he’s fairly quiet and wears glasses. He’s also ridiculously good-looking, which isn’t typical for the Scholar archetype, but other than that, he fits the role pretty well.
The athletic scholar (Jesse L. Williams) and the smart fool (Fran Kranz)
The same cannot be said for Curt and Jules. As Marty points out, “He’s a sociology major! When did he start pulling this alpha male bullshit?” The little we saw of Curt before the puppeteers started altering his personality was of a pretty intelligent young man who was nice to his friends. Similarly, Jules, a pre-med student, is a seemingly good friend who makes jokes with her boyfriend about anti-drug PSAs. But that won’t do – the puppeteers have to inject drugs into the air to make Curt more aggressive and alpha male, and they put cognition-lowering drugs in Jules’ hair dye to turn her into a dumb, overtly sexual blonde.
(On a side note, one of my favorite things about this movie is the moment where Jules comes onto Marty, calling him her old sweetheart, where he clarifies that they only made out one time. I completely expected a scene where Marty revealed his resentment towards the dumb whore who broke his heart and left him for the hot jock. Instead, Marty worried that this behavior was out of character for his good friends and seemed concerned for them. I really appreciated that Marty primarily saw Jules and Curt as his friends, and that once kissing Jules was such a non-issue for him.)
Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchison) in happier times
Then there’s Dana, the so-called virgin – even though she slept with one of her professors, a fact that is mentioned in her first scene of the film. Dana’s behavior would probably be considered more “whorish” than Jules’s, as Dana is sleeping with a teacher and Jules is having sex within a monogamous relationship. But that doesn’t matter. Dana is still the virgin and Jules still the whore, because Dana is more quiet and subdued than Jules is, and American society thinks of virgins as quiet and subdued and sweet, and whores as brash and loud and more outgoing.
Finally, we have Marty, the Fool who is the first to understand that he and his friends are the victims of a conspiracy. In addition to being the most entertaining character of the five college students – because Fran Kranz is fantastic, even if he is playing a less creepy, more stoned version of Topher Brink in Dollhouse – he’s also the least subversive. Anyone exposed to a small amount of classical literature won’t be surprised to see the Fool as the smartest character of the group, which makes me feel like the puppeteers in The Cabin in the Woods all failed their English classes in high school. Still, he’s the one who throws the wrench in the plans to save the world by sacrificing a group of humans.
None of this analysis is new, but I brought it up because I want to return to my original point of the ancient gods representing our deepest, darkest desires. The ancient gods represent the ugliest traits of humanity – not only the lust for blood, but the need to categorize people into certain roles and to keep them there. We need to see men defined by one character trait and women defined by their sexual choices, and if these particular men and women don’t fit into the roles as we’ve prescribed them, we’ll make them fit. We’ll alter their personalities so they can easily fit into the Whore, the Scholar, the Athlete, the Fool, and the Virgin. And as we can see from the other countries’ failed attempt to appease the gods – including the Japanese tradition of unleashing one monster on a group of elementary school girls – this need to categorize into the Whore/Scholar/Athlete/Fool/Virgin is a uniquely American desire. The desires created by nature and nurture clash together in an ugly mix where we want to see these people killed one by one in a prescribed order.
Yeah, I really loved this movie.
The white board of monsters behind Richard Jenkins distinguishes between “witches” and “sexy witches.”
 
Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Horror Week 2012: Gender Roles in ‘The Cabin in the Woods’

The Cabin in the Woods
A few months ago, the Joss Whedon-directed The Avengers was released, and there was much rejoicing. Fans seemed pleased. I saw it and enjoyed it, but I’m more obsessed with the OTHER Joss Whedon-directed film that came out this year. I loved The Cabin in the Woods and there are so many things I want to say about this movie, but for now I’m going to write about the interesting commentary on gender roles that was in the story.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead. Lots of them.
The Cabin in the Woods is more of commentary on horror films than a horror film in of itself, and the commentary comes to a head with the final scene, as the two survivors of the zombie attack confront the Director (played by Sigourney Weaver). She reveals that the five college students were selected to be killed as part of a ritual sacrifice to a group of ancient gods. Each student was meant to represent a different archetype: the Whore (Jules, played by Anna Hutchison), the Fool (Marty, played by Fran Kranz), the Athlete (Curt, played by Chris Hemsworth), the Scholar (Holden, played by Jesse Williams), and the Virgin (Dana, played by Kristen Connolly).
The five friends hear something in the basement.
Fans and critics have argued over the significance of the ancient gods and what they’re supposed to represent. I think the ancient gods are a metaphor for humanity’s deepest, darkest desires – the ugly side of human beings. This is why the final two survivors sit back and let the world end, instead of Dana killing Marty or Marty killing himself. As they say, if sacrificing people is the key to humanity’s survival, then maybe humanity doesn’t deserve to be saved. (I also think Joss really, really wanted to write at least one story where the world actually ends – there are only so many times that Buffy, Angel, Mal, or Echo can prevent the apocalypse before the writer gets bored.)
With that interpretation in mind, I started thinking about the five college students in The Cabin in the Woods and how their roles are defined by gender. The two women, Jules and Dana, are defined as The Whore and The Virgin – two opposite ends of the spectrum whose deaths are meant to serve as bookends for the others. The order of deaths is irrelevant except in the case of the women. Jules, as the corrupted Whore, has to die first, and Dana, the Virgin, has to die last, if she dies at all. As Hadley (Bradley Whitford) says, “The virgin death is optional as long as it’s last.” The female characters are defined only by their sexuality – nothing else about them really matters.
Dana (Kristen Connolly) will be very surprised to learn that she’s a virgin.
Still, the men don’t fare much better. Their prescribed roles are not based on how much sex they have and don’t have, but shoving them into the roles of The Athlete, The Scholar, and The Fool doesn’t give them much room to breathe, either. If you’re a woman, you can be the virgin or the whore. If you’re a man, you can be athletic or smart or funny. Complexity is not allowed.
What I find particularly interesting, though, is how the “puppeteers” (as Marty calls them) recognize that the five people they’ve selected for the sacrificed don’t easily fit into the prescribed archetypes.
Of the five, Holden is the closest to resembling his actual archetype. He’s able to calculate the distance in the gorge that Curt tries to jump on the motorcycle, and, well, he’s fairly quiet and wears glasses. He’s also ridiculously good-looking, which isn’t typical for the Scholar archetype, but other than that, he fits the role pretty well.
The athletic scholar (Jesse L. Williams) and the smart fool (Fran Kranz)
The same cannot be said for Curt and Jules. As Marty points out, “He’s a sociology major! When did he start pulling this alpha male bullshit?” The little we saw of Curt before the puppeteers started altering his personality was of a pretty intelligent young man who was nice to his friends. Similarly, Jules, a pre-med student, is a seemingly good friend who makes jokes with her boyfriend about anti-drug PSAs. But that won’t do – the puppeteers have to inject drugs into the air to make Curt more aggressive and alpha male, and they put cognition-lowering drugs in Jules’ hair dye to turn her into a dumb, overtly sexual blonde.
(On a side note, one of my favorite things about this movie is the moment where Jules comes onto Marty, calling him her old sweetheart, where he clarifies that they only made out one time. I completely expected a scene where Marty revealed his resentment towards the dumb whore who broke his heart and left him for the hot jock. Instead, Marty worried that this behavior was out of character for his good friends and seemed concerned for them. I really appreciated that Marty primarily saw Jules and Curt as his friends, and that once kissing Jules was such a non-issue for him.)
Curt (Chris Hemsworth) and Jules (Anna Hutchison) in happier times
Then there’s Dana, the so-called virgin – even though she slept with one of her professors, a fact that is mentioned in her first scene of the film. Dana’s behavior would probably be considered more “whorish” than Jules’s, as Dana is sleeping with a teacher and Jules is having sex within a monogamous relationship. But that doesn’t matter. Dana is still the virgin and Jules still the whore, because Dana is more quiet and subdued than Jules is, and American society thinks of virgins as quiet and subdued and sweet, and whores as brash and loud and more outgoing.
Finally, we have Marty, the Fool who is the first to understand that he and his friends are the victims of a conspiracy. In addition to being the most entertaining character of the five college students – because Fran Kranz is fantastic, even if he is playing a less creepy, more stoned version of Topher Brink in Dollhouse – he’s also the least subversive. Anyone exposed to a small amount of classical literature won’t be surprised to see the Fool as the smartest character of the group, which makes me feel like the puppeteers in The Cabin in the Woods all failed their English classes in high school. Still, he’s the one who throws the wrench in the plans to save the world by sacrificing a group of humans.
None of this analysis is new, but I brought it up because I want to return to my original point of the ancient gods representing our deepest, darkest desires. The ancient gods represent the ugliest traits of humanity – not only the lust for blood, but the need to categorize people into certain roles and to keep them there. We need to see men defined by one character trait and women defined by their sexual choices, and if these particular men and women don’t fit into the roles as we’ve prescribed them, we’ll make them fit. We’ll alter their personalities so they can easily fit into the Whore, the Scholar, the Athlete, the Fool, and the Virgin. And as we can see from the other countries’ failed attempt to appease the gods – including the Japanese tradition of unleashing one monster on a group of elementary school girls – this need to categorize into the Whore/Scholar/Athlete/Fool/Virgin is a uniquely American desire. The desires created by nature and nurture clash together in an ugly mix where we want to see these people killed one by one in a prescribed order.
Yeah, I really loved this movie.
The white board of monsters behind Richard Jenkins distinguishes between “witches” and “sexy witches.”
 
Lady T is a writer with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at www.theresabasile.com.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Theme Week: The Roundup

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 1 Trailer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that redefined television in many ways. It combined drama, comedy, romance, action, and horror in an original and unique way. It portrayed a lesbian relationship as mainstream. It centered around metaphors for the trials and tribulations of everyday life that all its viewers, young and old, could relate to. But most importantly, creator Joss Whedon fashioned a world in which the stereotypes of teenage girls (and ultimately all women) were debunked and left at the wayside.

As a lover of Buffy and a theologian, I want Buffy to be theologically and metaphysically coherent. I want it eitherto establish one metaphysical system as true for the world it portrays, or to represent a believable variety of metaphysical beliefs among its characters. The former is an entirely lost cause; the latter is frustratingly undercooked. Willow’s Judaism is wholly Informed, and her turn to Wicca is entirely to do with magic. There is no sense at all of Wicca (or any other religion) as an ethical code, as a way of making meaning, as a way of personally relating to the world and others in it.

Around dinner tables and over cups of coffee, nearly a decade after the series concluded, I’ve witnessed this discussion unfold time and again. And, I think this is the key interpretative moment: are women, the series asks, dependent on men to create a new field of play? Or might the show call into question the norms and expectations of both genders? The answer to these queries may well be found in Spike’s role in the series’ finale. Certainly a number of conversations turn to Spike’s role. In its layers of ambivalence that call upon men to not only transgress but efface normative boundaries, it points to the latter.

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 2 Trailer

And then, of course, Buffy kicked a lot of ass. A very serious amount of ass. Over the course of the show’s seven television seasons, she averted multiple apocalypses. She punned and killed all very large monsters and vampires that she came across. She added clever insult to injury. She never apologized for not being a dumb, weak girl. And it was very physical — in the canon of the show, a Slayer is given extra-human powers of strength, speed and agility. She was a fashionable girl’s girl, and she slayed creatures that go bump in the night. It was Girl Power at its late-1990s peak and taken to an excellent extreme.

Though the show suffers from no shortage of powerful women, the ways in which they relate to one another throughout the series is a constant struggle. This is because the dominant patriarchal paradigm within which the show is operating insists that one powerful woman is a delightful anomaly, but multiple powerful women are a threat to hegemony. By these standards, Buffy, by herself, is set up as a superior paragon of womanhood: strong, independent, sassy, beautiful, smart, courageous, and compassionate. If all women, however, were empowered like Buffy, or even a small group, it would be a subversive threat to male dominance, which is why Buffy and her power are exceptional and solitary. This, in effect, handicaps her, limiting her power.

Xander sexualizes power, instead of maintaining a respectful attitude towards strong women. He lusts for most of the powerful women he meets, good or bad – Buffy, preying mantis lady, Incan mummy, Willow (as she begins to mature), Cordelia, Faith, and Anya. At the same time, he finds himself at odds with this attraction, which manifests into this strange almost self-loathing that drives him to assert dominance. Since he’s a rather awkward boy without strength, he uses his tongue, throwing insults and off-the-mark opinions as “Xander, the Chronicler of Buffy’s Failures.”

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 3 Trailer

Joss Whedon’s writing for Willow’s dream is clever and filled with misdirection. Characters talk about Willow and her “secret,” a secret that she only seems comfortable discussing with Tara. Dream-Buffy constantly comments on Willow’s “costume,” telling her to change out of it because “everyone already knows.” We’re led to believe that Willow is afraid that her friends will judge her for being gay and being in a relationship with another woman…but this isn’t the case at all.
Instead, when Dream-Buffy rips off Willow’s costume, we see a version of Willow that is eerily reminiscent of season one Willow: a geek with pretensions of being cool.

But its strengths are strengths that none of the other big US dramas have. For one, the flexibility of its form meant that it could be any kind of show it wanted: one week it’s a goofy comedy, the next it’s a frightening fairy tale, the week after it’s an all-singing all-dancing musical. It was clearly the work of a team of writers, too, and when I was young and watching it for the first time it was the first time I really started to learn how TV was constructed – I got a thrill from seeing who had written each episode and guessing at what kind of episode it was going to be by who wrote it. Above all, though, the thing that Buffy has in spades that most shows lack, and the aspect of the show that season five best showcases, is emotion. Even at its most laid back, Buffy is a show spilling over with emotion, and it’s this that gives the potentially goofy premise of show its weight. Whedon et. al. were absolute masters at making us really care about their characters, and every audacious plot contrivance was easily swallowed when viewed through the lens of the real, human emotion that they would imbue it with. 
 
I don’t want to get bogged down about how it sucks in a way that Buffy’s ability comes exclusively from superpowers. I get that, and I could write about it endlessly, but in this moment, I don’t care because Sophia doesn’t care. She watches Buffy and sees a woman who kicks ass, and she wants to emulate that. It’s tough to over-analyze and intellectualize a TV show when you’re watching a young girl practice roundhouse kicks because she wants to be a strong badass like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I have to say, it’s much more heartwarming to see her excited about becoming a strong woman with martial arts skills than it was to watch her pretend she couldn’t speak–because she wanted to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid. 

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 4 Trailer

When the popular movie Twilight first appeared in theaters, it did not take long for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) to shame Twilight’s Edward with a fan video smackdown (“Buffy Vs. Edward”). The video shows Edward stalking Buffy and professing his undying love, with Buffy responding in sarcastic incredulity and staking Edward. While it may appear that this “remix” of the two characters was about Buffy slaying a juvenile upstart and reinforcing her status as the queen of the genre, there was more at stake, so to speak. Buffy slaying Edward says more about the perceived masculinity and virility of the vampire in question than about Buffy herself as an independent woman. Buffy was never given that much agency in her own show. Buffy’s lovers stalked her, lied to her, and often ignored her own wishes about their relationships all in the name of “protecting” her. Many of these things are what fans of BtVS pointed out as anti-woman flaws in the narrative of Twilight, yet Buffy did not stake the vampires who denied her agency in her own relationships; instead, she pined for them! 

Equality Now: Joss Whedon’s Acceptance Speech by Stephanie Rogers

In 2007, the Warner Brothers production president, Jeff Robinov, announced that Warner Brothers would no longer make films with female leads.

A year before that announcement, Joss Whedon, the creator of such women-centric television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse, accepted an award from Equality Now at the event, “On the Road to Equality: Honoring Men on the Front Lines.”

Watch as he answers the question, “Why do you always write such strong women characters?”

Xander Harris Has Masculinity Issues by Lady T

When I look at Xander through a feminist lens, I find him fascinating because he’s a mass of contradictions. He’s a would-be “man’s man” – obsessed with being manly – whose only close friends are women. He’s both a perpetrator and victim of sexual assault and/or violation of consent. He’s both attracted to and intimidated by strong women. He jokes about objectifying women and viewing sex as some sort of game, but in more intimate moments, seems to value romance and real connection. He’s a willing participant in the patriarchy and also a victim of it.

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 5 Trailer

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 6 Trailer

So whilst Buffy can defeat demons and save the world over and over, her emotional detachment and self-righteous sense of martyrdom (have some humility woman!) make these fights she doesn’t actually win, absolutely crucial to the Series’ greatness. Ultimately that’s why I find it hard not to let out a little yelp of glee when Dark Willow declares, “You really need to have every square inch of your ass kicked.” Faith, Willow and Anya teach Buffy to lose the ego and remember what she’s really fighting for, and that’s feminism in action right there.

A common criticism of Dawn is that she’s much more immature than the main characters were at the start of the series, when they were close to her in age (Dawn is introduced as a 14-year-old in the eighth grade; Buffy, Xander, and Willow were high school sophomores around age 15 or 16 in Season 1).  Writer David Fury responds to this in his DVD commentary on the episode “Real Me,” saying that Dawn was originally conceived as around age 12 and aged up a few years after Michelle Trachtenberg was cast, but it took a while for him and the other writers to get the originally-conceived younger version of the character out of their brains.  But I don’t need this excuse; I think it makes perfect narrative sense that Dawn comes across as more immature than our point-of-view characters were when they were younger.  Who among us didn’t think of themselves as being just as smart and capable as grown-ups when we were teens? Who among us, when confronted with the next generation of teenagers ten years down the line, were not horrified by their blatant immaturity?  

Willow is Whedon’s version of the answer to the underrepresented gay community. But, Willow appears to have had a healthy sexual relationship with her boyfriend Oz, and there is no hint at otherwise. She also pined for Xander for years. Both men. We see her gradually start a relationship with Tara, but she never talks about or reflects on her sexuality or coming out. We see that she is nervous about whether her friends approve. But, it doesn’t get much deeper than that. No characters have a deep conversation with her about her orientation. It’s not a thorough exploration. She goes from being with men to exclusively being with women and identifying as a lesbian. This is fine for Willow, but because there are really not many open gay or lesbian characters within the entire series we are dependent on her narrative alone.

YouTube Break: Buffyverse Season 7 Trailer

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Equality Now: Joss Whedon’s Acceptance Speech

This post previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on December 12, 2010.
In 2007, the Warner Brothers production president, Jeff Robinov, announced that Warner Brothers would no longer make films with female leads.

A year before that announcement, Joss Whedon, the creator of such women-centric television shows as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse, accepted an award from Equality Now at the event, “On the Road to Equality: Honoring Men on the Front Lines.”

Watch as he answers the question, “Why do you always write such strong women characters?”

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Femininity and Conflict in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

This piece by Lindsey Keesling previously appeared at her Web site *! [emphatic asterisk] and is cross-posted with permission.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 7
Femininity and Conflict in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

When the popular movie Twilight first appeared in theaters, it did not take long for fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) to shame Twilight’s Edward with a fan video smackdown (“Buffy Vs. Edward”). The video shows Edward stalking Buffy and professing his undying love, with Buffy responding in sarcastic incredulity and staking Edward. While it may appear that this “remix” of the two characters was about Buffy slaying a juvenile upstart and reinforcing her status as the queen of the genre, there was more at stake, so to speak. Buffy slaying Edward says more about the perceived masculinity and virility of the vampire in question than about Buffy herself as an independent woman. Buffy was never given that much agency in her own show. Buffy’s lovers stalked her, lied to her, and often ignored her own wishes about their relationships all in the name of “protecting” her. Many of these things are what fans of BtVS pointed out as anti-woman flaws in the narrative of Twilight, yet Buffy did not stake the vampires who denied her agency in her own relationships; instead, she pined for them! This is only one area in which BtVS as a vehicle fails to respect the ideals of a generation of young girls who crave a positive female icon. In family life, romance, and success outside of her primary role as Slayer, the show revolves around not Buffy’s strength and independence but the struggle she finds herself in because of it. The constant conflict Buffy suffers sends a mixed message to viewers; women can be granted strength but will be punished for it.

Dressing to Kill

One cannot watch BtVS without noticing the sometimes outlandishly girly way that Buffy is costumed, as well as the berating she often faces as a result. It isn’t uncommon for Buffy to climb into the sewers to head off an impending apocalypse wearing a pink sequined halter top. It is also likely that Buffy will face criticism from her watcher, mother, friends, or teachers the more girlish her garb becomes. While Buffy’s wardrobe may seem to contradict her warrior role, in actuality her feminine appearance helps to “normalize” her in the eyes of the viewer by reassuring them that she retains her female self despite her masculine strength (Jowett 23). When asked to patrol with the military Initiative, Buffy rejects their offer of camouflage garb, stating, “I’ve patrolled in this halter top before” (“The I in Team”). This rejection of the male warrior’s need to wear protective clothing in battle does not weaken Buffy, it instead positions her as a transgressive icon of female strength (Early). Buffy wields her girlish appearance like a weapon, using it to disarm and distract her opponents. Buffy’s unique approach to her role is also evidenced in the way that she and her friends often “resolve conflict nonviolently, through rationality, tactfulness, compassion and empathy” (Early, 20).
Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy, looking pouty in a halter top

Deborah Tannen explains the way in which women are denied a “default” state in the way they dress and portray themselves, stating that “if a woman’s clothing is tight or revealing (in other words, sexy), it sends a message… …If her clothes are not sexy, that too sends a message, lent meaning by the knowledge that they could have been” (622). If Buffy were portrayed as butch, she would just be a girl pretending to be a man. If she were portrayed as too vanilla in the way she dressed, spoke, and acted she would be less interesting; her plainness would also send a message to the viewer by making her more androgynous. Buffy may be saucy and sexy and contrived in the way she dresses, but that is part of what makes her character complex. She is a warrior but also, undeniably, a woman.

Thus it is interesting that the plot and dialogue of the show often does not reinforce Buffy’s feminine dress as a positive thing, but instead condemns her for it. In the episode “Bad Eggs” Buffy and her mother are shopping and Buffy wants a new outfit. Joyce says no, “it makes you look like a streetwalker”. Buffy pouts and replies, “but a thin streetwalker, right?” This scenario is sadly common. Buffy’s peers, her mentors, and authority figures criticize her appearance as if it were offensive, and Buffy deflects such comments with sarcasm instead of defending her right to determine her own physical appearance.

Life Outside of Slaying

The punishment Buffy receives for her appearance is the least troubling aspect of the way in which Buffy is treated. From the first episode, Buffy is perceived of as a delinquent by those who do not know her dual identity as student and slayer. Buffy burnt down the gym of her old school, forcing her mother to quit her job and move to Sunnydale. Despite the fact that telling her mother the truth would assuage some of the resentment Buffy faced at home, Buffy chooses to lie to her mother to “protect” her. This pattern, in which Buffy stoically faces the judgment of others without defending herself repeats with her principal, teachers, and peers; in this way, Buffy accepts punishment that could have been avoided while reinforcing the idea that her treatment, while not deserved, is just.
Buffy working at Double Meat Palace

As the show progresses and Buffy moves out of high school and into college and pursuing a career, she continues to encounter difficulty in her everyday life because of the dual identity slaying forces her to concoct. When her mother dies Buffy takes on the role of provider for her household. Buffy works a minimum wage job at Double Meat Palace to make ends meet as she is incapable of securing better employment. Buffy is eventually offered a position as a school counselor by the new principal in town, Robin Wood. In the episode “First Date” Principal Wood reveals that he knows that Buffy is the Slayer, and this is why he offered her a job. Buffy says, “so you didn’t hire me for my counseling skills?” and Principal Wood responds with a chuckle. Buffy may be powerful as the Slayer, but as a provider for her family and as an employee, her skills are portrayed as laughable.

Buffy’s necessary efforts to cloak some of her actions and engage in subterfuge to protect those unaware of vampires also constantly weaken her standing in society. Dramatic irony is often engaged as a plot device in BtVS, wherein Buffy is posed almost clownishly trying to hide the truth from an ignorant and often judgmental public. It is humorous as well as endearing to see how poorly Buffy lies, and Buffy’s lack of finesse outside of slaying does lend her character a great deal of humanity. Yet one must question why dramatic irony so often has Buffy playing the part of the bozo. Buffy is too often percieved of as flaky, inconsistent, or downright delusional. As one character says, a lot of people think Buffy “is some kind of high-functioning schizophrenic” (“Potential”). While Buffy may be possessing of super-human strength and a higher calling, it greatly impedes her ability to function as a normal member of society. She faces humiliation, prejudice, and conflict on a daily basis.


They Say Not to Take Work Home

As JP Williams writes in Choosing Your Own Mother (Mother-daughter Conflicts in Buffy), Buffy is “over-fathered and under-mothered” (61). She is reliant on the men around her for her survival, but denied an adequate female role model. For the first two seasons of BtVS, Buffy hides her true identity from her mother, Joyce. When Joyce does find out the truth about Buffy’s powers, they fight bitterly. Joyce tells Buffy, “if you walk out of this house don’t even think about coming back” (“Becoming”). Buffy has to leave or risk the world ending; so she walks out of her home and does not return to it until the third season. Buffy’s powers in this case strip Joyce of the ability to mother because Buffy’s calling must take precedence over her family obligations. Yet Buffy’s relationship with her mother suffers from far more than just the tension created by slaying. Joyce doesn’t seem to know how to properly communicate and often offers meaningless anecdotes, with Buffy reassuring her mother in an apparent role reversal. In “The Witch,” Joyce is attempting to encourage Buffy to follow through on trying out for cheer squad. Buffy says, “what was I trying out for?” and Joyce fumbles for words, having already forgotten. Buffy says, “that’s okay, your platitudes are good for all occasions.”
Buffy and her mother Joyce

As the series progresses Joyce becomes portrayed as less neglectful, but in the first few seasons especially there are serious questions to be asked about her role as a mother. She has a teenage daughter who sneaks out nightly, lies to her, skips classes and bucks authority and Joyce is largely incapable of informing her daughter’s actions. Much of the early dynamic between mother and daughter comes down to the fact that Joyce does not realize the reality of Buffy’s “dual identity as Slayer and Student… a greater failing than Lois Lane’s traditional inability to envision Clark Kent without his glasses” (Williams, 64). The fact that Joyce is kept ignorant and Buffy routinely shuns her mothering is not entirely Joyce’s fault. The Slayer cannot respect her mother’s authority because the Slayer’s role is more important than mother-daughter relations.

Buffy the Relationship Slayer

Buffy’s relationship with her mother is not the only one which is strained. If her relationship with her mother is tense, then her romances are strenuous. Her first romantic pairing is with Angel, a vampire who is cursed with a soul. Unbeknownst to Angel, he will lose his soul if he experiences even a single moment of pure happiness. He finds this happiness when he and Buffy consummate their relationship in Season 2. When Angel then transforms into the demon Angelus, Mary Magoulick writes, it “culminates in a graphic, brutal, and bitter fight scene” (738). This is “particularly disturbing” as it comes in the second part of the episode in which Buffy makes love to Angel for the first time, giving the viewer the message that “being in love is more torment than pleasure” for Buffy (Magoulick 738).
Buffy and Angel

Buffy’s later relationships may not be equally as tormented in terms of scale, but they do continue to revolve around themes of pain and conflict. This conflict is evident not only in romantic relationships, but in all her close relationships with men. Buffy even comes to blows with her mentor, Giles. While often their fighting is only in words, twice she resorts to hitting him. The first time occurs in the final episode of season one, “Prophecy Girl.” When Buffy realizes that Giles is going to sacrifice himself to save her life, she knocks him out in order to protect him. This action does lead to Buffy’s death by drowning, but she is resuscitated by her close friend Xander. The second time Buffy punches Giles echoes the first. In “Passion,” Giles is inflamed with rage after Angelus kills the woman Giles loves. Giles pursues Angelus in a suicidal rage. Again, Buffy resorts to blows in order to get through to Giles where words failed, to save his life. No matter how close the relationship, how deep the trust between two people, Buffy always seems to have to resort to her role as Slayer and her superhuman powers in order to make herself heard. This repeated theme has a serious connotation; Buffy as a girl is powerless. Her authority is intrinsically tied to her physical strength, which comes from her role as Slayer.


The Troubling Issue of Being Female On TV

One might ask how much any of this matters. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a television show, and much of the drama it depends on for ratings necessarily comes from conflict. No one watching the show should be surprised that Buffy’s interpersonal relationships are constantly disrupted, that she wears revealing clothes, or that she has to struggle in some areas of her life. The only problem with such thinking is that it assumes that such tensions could not have been written in a way that strengthened Buffy’s character rather than weakened her. It was not necessary to deprive Joyce and Buffy of a healthy mother-daughter relationship. A strong mother who supported her daughter’s calling would not necessarily have been less interesting to viewers than a mother who fumbled for words and appeared helpless. Nor was it necessary for Buffy to date men who stalked her, lied to her, and deprived her of agency in her relationships. While there is inevitably a price to pay for living a double life, the way in which Buffy is punished for her duplicity speaks volumes when viewed as analogous to the feminist struggle.
From the episode “Hush”

Often Buffy resorts to saying “I’m the Chosen One” when her authority is questioned; she is the Slayer, and that truth defines the way in which she acts and relates. Because of her power Buffy is forced to struggle in every area of her life. What message does this send to a young girl watching the program who is imagining being as powerful as Buffy? Rather than being an encouragement for girls to picture themselves as superheroes as boys so often do, BtVS sends the opposite message. Don’t pursue power, because that power will define your circumstances and those circumstances will define you. You will be forced to lie, to cheat, to sacrifice healthy relationships and to face constant conflict as a result of your independence.

It is unfortunately true that many shows that feature women as primary characters employ the same kind of storytelling. Xena: Warrior Princess, La Femme Nikita, The Closer, Alias, In Plain Sight, Saving Grace, Weeds and Battlestar Galactica all feature women as primary characters. All of the women in these shows have just a few things in common aside from their beauty: their intelligence and capability is challenged regularly; they face conflict in their private lives and homes; and they are punished for their physical and emotional strength. It is almost inevitable that any strong woman on TV would face the same treatment, especially those who play a traditionally masculine role. Starbuck from Battlestar Galactica, Xena, Nikita, Sidney Bristow of Alias, Mary Shannon of In Plain Sight and The Closer’s Brenda Lee Johnson all play traditionally masculine roles. All of those women face conflict and physical violence in almost every episode. Not only do they have to fight for respect, but their good works are seldom rewarded. Appreciation, respect, achievement, and victory are few and far between and must be won at high cost; home is not often a safe haven and interpersonal relationships are constantly disrupted. What is true for all of these female characters is especially true in the case of Buffy; she is a singular icon for female strength as well as for the punishment of feminine power.

Buffy and Faith

Male Superheroes do not receive the same treatment. Spiderman, Batman, and Superman may engage in conflict in their everyday lives as a result of their necessary deceptions, but it is certainly not to the measure which Buffy does; their familial ties are free from extreme stress. They all have close relationships with older figures who mentor them and preserve their familial ties (Aunt Mae, Alfred, and the Kents respectively). They have places they can go home to which are a respite from the pressures their dual identities create. Each of the male superheroes mentioned also receives a certain measure of success both in their chosen careers outside of crime fighting and their romantic lives. While Batman does not have any long term romantic relationships, he is a millionaire and dates often; he is rewarded for his power. Buffy is not afforded the kind of pleasures these male superheroes enjoy. It is because of that truth that Buffy’s story is far from empowering. Rather than showcasing a character who has achieved full agency as a woman and been rewarded for it, Buffy the Vampire Slayer instead chronicles one girl’s fight to be respected; a fight it sometimes seems she will never win.

The fact that women receive unequal treatment in today’s society is made wholly apparent in the fact that feminine strength is not showcased or rewarded in television media as masculine strength always has been. Until women are allowed to be feminine and strong without fear of their homes and lives being disrupted, or facing constant judgment and critical backlash, women will remain less than men. While Buffy the Vampire Slayer may have gone further than any show before it in creating a female character who was independent and powerful, the fact that her strength could not go unpunished leaves a gaping hole. Young women are still hungry for a role model who can navigate all of the complexities of modern womanhood successfully. Buffy’s final fight, the fight for respect, must not be left unwon. It’s time for a female superhero to get equal treatment: strength, intelligence, achievement, and reward.

Works Cited
“Buffy Vs. Edward”. Jonathon McIntosh, ed.

http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/2009/buffy-vs-edward-twilight-remixed viewed 10/28/11

Early, Francis. “Staking Her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive Woman Warrior.” Journal of Popular Culture 35.3 (2001): 11-17.

Jewett, Lorna. Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan. Middletown: Wesleyan, 2005. Print.

Magoulik, Mary. “Frustrating Female Heroism: Mixed Messages in Xena, Nikita, and Buffy.” Journal of Popular Culture 39.5 (2006): 729-55.

Tannen, Deborah. “There is No Unmarked Woman.” Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers. Ed. Sonia Maasik and Jack Solomon. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford St. Martins, 2009. 620-24. Print.

Whedon, Joss. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Seasons 1-7. Television Program.

Williams, JP. Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ed. Wilcox, Rhonda, and David Lavery. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. 61-68. Print.

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Lindsey Keesling is a geeky English major who sets herself apart from the crowd with her pop culture and religious criticism writing for Harlot’s Sauce E-magazine and *! [emphatic asterisk] as well as a venture into re-imagining the female superhero mythos in a serial novel online.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Willow Rosenberg: Geek, Interrupted

This piece by Lady T previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on July 24, 2012 as part of our Women in Science Fiction Theme Week. 

Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan) on Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Joss Whedon is known for creating and writing about strong female characters in his science fiction shows. One of the most popular and complex of these characters is Willow Rosenberg from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Willow speaks to many people and quite a few have named her their favorite character on the show, from Mark at Mark Watches to Joss Whedon himself, who put the most Willow-centric episode of the series (“Doppelgangland”) on his list of favorite episodes.

Another thing that makes Willow so appealing is the fact that her character arc over seven seasons can’t be described in only one way. Some see Willow’s story as a shy, brainy computer geek embracing her supernatural power in becoming a witch.Others relate to her arc as one of a repressed wallflower who explores her sexuality and finds more confidence in coming out as a lesbian. Still others are fascinated with the different ways she handles magic, and her recovery after drifting too far to the dark side.

What story is told when those three arcs are put together? For me, the story of Willow Rosenberg is the story of a woman who spends years defining and re-defining herself, rejecting roles that other people have chosen for her – for better and for worse.

From the very first episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has been presented as a shy, sweet, helpful friend to the titular heroine– and from the very second episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Willow has shown herself not to be as sweet or innocent as everyone thinks she is. When she meets Buffy for the first time, she’s eager and friendly, bubbling over with information, in awe that this mysterious, cool new girl is talking to her, but also wanting to help in any way she can.

Willow (Alyson Hannigan) talks to Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar)

This eager beaver persona is the one that Willow adopts for most of seasons one and two.She becomes the Hermione to Buffy’s Harry, using her computer hacking skills to assist whenever Buffy needs more research for demon-fighting and she can’t find the answers in one of Giles’s books. And for these two years, Willow is notonly content in this role, but she thrives in it. Like her best friend Xander (my favorite character on Buffy), she’s found a place where she belongs. She’s found a purpose in fighting the good fight against the forces of evil, and she doesn’t seem to mind that she’s a second banana to Buffy. As long as she can put her skills to use and she’s fighting the bad guys, she’s happy.

This changes when Willow discovers magic.

Near the end of season two, Willow begins exploring supernatural arts. She doesn’t do much beyond research and reading, but despite her lack of practice, she thinks that she has what it takes to perform a spell that will restore Angel’s soul.

Watching the season two finale with the perspective of hindsight is more than a little uncomfortable, because we know how much Giles turns out to be right when he tells Willow, “Challenging such potent magics through yourself…it could open a door that you might not be able to close.” It’s also uncomfortable because we can see that Willow is more interested in proving her skills in magic than doing the right thing. She wants to help Buffy, obviously, but she also wants to prove to everyone – and to herself – that she can do the spell.

And she does.

Willow possessed as she performs the spell

Angel’s spell is restored several minutes too late, and Buffy has to kill him anyway. But Willow doesn’t think about this potential consequence. She excitedly tells her friends, “I think the spell worked. I felt something go through me.”

After that,Willow becomes less meek, less shy, and more risky with her use of magic. She tries to use magic to make her and Xander fall out of lust with each other (in a plotline that I hate and always will hate, by the way), and is angry with him when he confronts her for resorting to spells. She becomes even angrier in season four when she, Oz,Buffy, and Xander are trapped in a haunted house and Buffy criticizes her aptitude in magic, saying that Willow’s spells have a 50% success rate. Willow responds with a flustered, “Oh yeah? Well – so’s your face!” but then follows up with a bitter, “I’m not your sidekick!”

Shortly afterwards, Willow tries to perform a spell that winds up failing. This is in an episode entitled “Fear, Itself,” where each major character confronts his/her major fear. Oz is afraid of the werewolf inside him, Xander is afraid of being invisible to his friends, Buffy is afraid of abandonment, and Willow…seems to be afraid of her spell going wrong?

Willow’s spell goes wrong

Compared to her friends’ worries, Willow’s fear seems a little superficial. At the end of the season, though, we learn that Willow’s fears are about much more than simple experiments going wrong.

By the end of season four, Willow has gone through a few pretty significant changes. She’s become more focused on magic and less focused on her scientific, “nerdy”pursuits. She’s farther apart from Buffy and Xander than ever, despite loving both of them. She’s entered a romantic relationship with a woman. Most significantly of all, Willow is confident. She has a life that is fully her own, where she has two things (Tara and magic) that are hers. She’s entered a new phase in her life.

Or has she? After watching Willow’s dream in “Restless,” we can’t say that this new Willow is any more confident or self-assured than the old one who couldn’t stand up for herself when Cordelia Chase insulted her by the water fountain.

Joss Whedon’s writing for Willow’s dream is clever and filled with misdirection. Characters talk about Willow and her “secret,” a secret that she only seems comfortable discussing with Tara. Dream-Buffy constantly comments on Willow’s “costume,”telling her to change out of it because “everyone already knows.” We’re led to believe that Willow is afraid that her friends will judge her for being gay and being a relationship with another woman…but this isn’t the case at all.

Instead, when Dream-Buffy rips off Willow’s costume, we see a version of Willow that is eerily reminiscent of season one Willow: a geek with pretensions of being cool.

Dream-Willow delivering a book report
In her dream,Willow is dressed in schoolgirl clothes, delivering a book report on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.Anya and Harmony are snarking at her from the audience, Buffy is bored, Xander is shouting, “Who cares?!” and Tara and Oz are mocking her and flirting wit heach other.

This sequence is haunting, heartbreaking, and foreboding. Those of us who watched Buffy for the first four years know that Willow’s perceptions are far from accurate. Buffy was supportive of Willow far more often than not and Xander defended Willow against anyone who threatened her. As for her love interests, well, Tara practically worshiped the ground Willow walked on, and Oz admitted that Willow was the only thing in his life that he ever loved.

But none of that changes the way Willow feels. Despite the friends she’s made, despite thechanges she’s had, she still thinks that everyone will eventually discover her secret: that she’s an uncool, childish, awkward geek.

I think that this fear, more than anything else, is what motivates Willow’s actions over the second half of the series. The show talks about magic addiction and getting high off of power, but ultimately, Willow wants to change who she is. She doesn’t want to be the nerdy, lonely bookworm that defined so much of her childhood and adolescence. She jokes to Tara, “Hard to believe such a hot mama-yama came from humble, geek-infested roots?” and she might as well be pleading, “I’m not that geek anymore, am I? Tell me I’m not.” She says to Buffy, “If you could be, you know, plain old Willow or super Willow, who would you be?…Buffy, who was I? Just some girl. Tara didn’t even know that girl.” 

Willow talks to Buffy after coming down from a high

Eventually, Willow confronts her addiction and power issues with magic. Her arc in the last season of the show is largely about the way she learns to be more careful with magic, her steps forward and her steps back, until she handles her power more responsibly. But one thing she never does is confront her deepest issue: her fear of being an unlovable geek.

I could write for another two thousand words about how Willow’s insecurities made her dangerous to people around her, and how her arc paralleled the arc of the three misogynistic sci-fi geeks who provoked terror all throughout season six, and how her fear of abandonment turned her into the abuser in a controlling relationship, but that’s an essay for another day. I will probably write that essay in the future, but for now, I want to talk about how Willow’s insecurities affected Willow.

A part of me feels truly sad that Willow could never find it in her to reclaim the geek label. I look back at the cute, eager computer nerd from the first two seasons and feel nostalgic for her Hermione Granger-like enthusiasm. I wish she had felt comfortable enough in her own skin to realize that being smart and knowing a lot about computers is a good thing, dammit!

At the same time, I wonder if there’s another lesson in Willow’s story. Audience members like me might yearn for the days when Willow was more interested in computers than she was in magic, but who’s to say that hacking and breaking into government files was the best way for Willow to spend her life? Sure, she was good with computers, but did she had to let that skill define the rest of her life? Isn’t it positive for her to branch out and explore that she has talent in other things in more than one area? After all, even if we’re nostalgic for Willow’s nerdier days, doesn’t she have the right to explore other sides of herself, even if she makes mistakes along the way?

To this day, I still don’t know how I feel about Willow’s arc. I’m glad she discovered another side to her personality, but I’m disappointed that she couldn’t reclaim her geeky days and make it a source of power instead of embarrassment and loneliness. Ultimately, I would have liked to see the show address Willow’s “geek-infested roots” in the last season of Buffy,so we could have seen her make a choice about that part of her life and her identity, instead of seeing that part of her character fall to the wayside. 


Lady T is an aspiring writer and comedian with two novels, a play, and a collection of comedy sketches in progress. She hopes to one day be published and finish one of her projects (not in that order). You can find more of her writing at The Funny Feminist, where she picks apart entertainment and reviews movies she hasn’t seen.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Xander Harris: Hyena Boy

Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Guest post written by Monika Bartyzel originally published at The Hooded Utilitarian. Cross-posted with permission.

As soon as Buffy hit television on March 10, 1997, Joss Whedon became the poster boy for geek feminism. Raised by a radical feminist, he always merged his creativity with gender studies which he called his “unofficial minor.” Buffy was created to defy stereotypical expectations, a blonde superhero whose adolescent growing pains were the blueprint for the supernatural evil she vanquished. This balance struck a chord in viewers, inspiring theoretical interpretations running as rampant as fanfic. But it was never the feminist dream that we thought it was. It couldn’t be, as long as Buffy was friends with Xander Harris, the thorn destroying any so-called feminism in Sunnydale.
Ironically, Alexander LaVelle Harris is based on Joss himself. As he told NPR in 2000, “Xander is obviously based on me, the sort of guy that all the girls want to be best friends with in high school, and who’s, you know, kind of a loser, but is more or less articulate and someone you can trust.” But instead of the radical feminist upbringing, Xander is the product of a highly dysfunctional family. He has no healthy male role models or friendships. (His only male friend, Jesse, is turned into a vampire he accidentally kills, and the act barely fazes him.) Xander only has Willow, the awkward girl who is in love with him, who he romantically ignores. 
When Buffy Summers arrives, Xander immediately wants her. His first words to her: “Can I have you?” He lusts over her power, sexiness, and defiance of school politics and adult authority. His willingness to accept her position of power has often been seen as an example of his feminism; moreover, it’s been used to frame him as a “subversive image of masculinity,” because “confronted with the feminist reality that women are at least equal to him … he doesn’t try to dominate it, he doesn’t try to deny it, and he doesn’t try to ignore it.” But that is precisely what he does. 
Xander sexualizes power, instead of maintaining a respectful attitude towards strong women. He lusts for most of the powerful women he meets, good or bad – Buffy, preying mantis lady, Incan mummy, Willow (as she begins to mature), Cordelia, Faith, and Anya. At the same time, he finds himself at odds with this attraction, which manifests into this strange almost self-loathing that drives him to assert dominance. Since he’s a rather awkward boy without strength, he uses his tongue, throwing insults and off-the-mark opinions as “Xander, the Chronicler of Buffy’s Failures.”
It begins rather benignly. Xander complains about Owen’s “shifty” eyes and rants that Angel is a “girly name.” But it becomes a real problem after “The Pack.” When Xander is possessed by a hyena, he becomes the misogynist alpha male. Though he acts like an animal, he also reveals observations he wouldn’t dare to as human. He acknowledges that Willow likes him, and he challenges Buffy: “We both know what you want… You like your men dangerous.” Hyena juju might make him sniff things and eat piglets, but hyenas aren’t cognizant of high school politics. Possession merely removes Xander’s filter.

Xander possessed by a hyena spirit
Though he is quickly freed of hyena (which he never apologizes for, claiming amnesia), the possession seems to spark an egocentric attitude deep within – Xander’s questionable moments increase in a flurry of sexism and hypocritical commentary that sometimes wanes, but never disappears. In “Angel,” he begins calling Cordelia a hooker. There is no provocation for the term, he’s merely trying to neutralize Cordelia’s power by slut-shaming her, and sadly, the show backs these opinions by drawing a line between acceptable and over-the-top Cordelia-centric insults in “When She Was Bad.” “Hooker” is okay, but Buffy calling Cordelia a “moron” is framed as highly questionable.
“Angel” also marks the beginning of Xander’s war against the souled vampire. When Buffy learns that Angel isn’t human, Xander fails to think of anyone but himself. Though it isn’t wrong for him to note that Buffy should slay Angel (they don’t yet know about his soul), it is not for her benefit or Sunnydale’s. Xander wants Buffy to remove his competition, and urges her to kill him without thinking of her feelings.
Even Willow suffers Xander’s egocentrism. As she develops feelings for someone else (“I Robot, You Jane”), he is immediately critical: “I don’t like it; it’s not healthy.” For these women to be his friend, each must tolerate jealousy and/or insults. Xander is loyal and will help in any deadly fight, but if there is even the slightest question or challenge to his “territory” or masculinity, Xander’s sexual interests and ego come first. He even makes boundaries for Buffy’s strength – it’s okay for her to be an unstoppable Slayer, but she should not protect him from the class bully. Female strength is okay in their private, vampire night, not in the public halls of high school.
Sadly, Xander is continually rewarded for his worst moments. Increasing, sexualized insults towards the most popular girl in school lead Xander to win over Cordelia, creating one of his two highly problematic relationships. When Cordelia momentarily dumps Xander because of her waning popularity, he wants to control her by blackmailing Amy into performing a love spell. He yearns to remove Cordelia’s free will and gain the power, and he’s rewarded for the action. Though Giles chastises him, Buffy praises him for being a gentleman when the spell goes wrong and she hits on him. Likewise, Cordelia is charmed by what Xander has done, and is willing to lose her friends and social standing to be with him.
Dating Cordelia, however, doesn’t stop Xander’s Angel hatred. Yes, Angel killed Ms. Calendar and Xander has a right to be mad. But while the rest of the team hope for the best outcome in “Becoming,” and are concerned for Buffy’s feelings, he just wants Angel dead and couldn’t care less about its effect on Buffy. “The way I see it, you want to forget all about Ms. Calendar’s murder so you can get your boyfriend back.” One might forgive his reductive anger in this particular situation, but it’s not a one-time event. Xander again refuses to acknowledge Buffy’s feelings, or provide comfort that could possibly make her job easier. Instead, he lies, giving her a false message from Willow to “kick his ass.”
Buffy kills a freshly re-souled Angel and runs away. When she returns, Xander quickly condemns her in “Dead Man’s Party” as “incredibly selfish and stupid.” As he sees it: “I’m sorry your honey was a demon, but most girls don’t hop a Greyhound over boy troubles.” Xander is so wrapped up in his own ego-driven world that Buffy’s wildly complicated and emotionally scarring situation is framed as “boy troubles.” Again, no one questions him for his actions. Zombies descend, fighting begins, and everyone forgives each other. Xander begins to be framed as the voice of reason who tells her how it is. 
Cordelia, meanwhile, is treated terribly. Xander, with his overt weakness for Slayers, openly gushes over a newly arrived Faith in “Faith, Hope, and Trick,” until Cordelia tersely asks him to “find a new theme.” He’s in love with Buffy, lusting for Faith, and dating Cordy. Two episodes later, he’s cheating on her with Willow, having become increasingly attracted to his rapidly maturing friend. And this fictional incarnation of Joss isn’t done. When Cordelia discovers the affair and nearly dies, Xander can only feel anger over his loss. He repeatedly gripes about his own unhappiness, blaming his actions on other people, and is desperate to make Cordelia feel even worse. He is completely unable to atone for his actions: “You want to do a guilt-a-palooza? Fine. But I’m done with that.” As Xander later states about his incessant, mean-spirited ranting: “I can’t help it; it’s my nature.”
Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Xander (Nicholas Brendon)

If the show ever decided to question Xander for his sexist, problematic nature, these moments would serve a purpose and help the character evolve into a more worthwhile person and true “heart” of the group. Instead, the Powers That Be continue to reward him for his bad behavior: he loses his virginity to Faith. She’s not Buffy, but she is a powerful Slayer.
When the girls head off to college and Xander becomes the townie, the series gets a break from the sexism. This does not mean Xander is silent; he’s just the marginalized menace. He continues to joke about his lust for Buffy; he never lets her forget that he wants her, marking her as his ideal prey. He might stubbornly accept that they won’t be together, but he lets it fuel his every action as a friend, and the show never questions it or lets him evolve beyond it. 
Meanwhile, Xander begins a rather combative relationship with Anya, chastising her every comment and story – whether they’re demon memories or normal interpersonal communications. When she tells him he isn’t showing an interest in her life in “Hush,” he retorts: “You really did turn into a real girl, didn’t ya?” No man comfortable with female equality equates real concern with nagging, though we can’t be surprised that Xander does – not only because of his many previous and problematic actions, but also because of his attitude towards Anya. He clearly believes he is the better person, the moral center who will teach Anya to be human. Luckily, as he grows into his relationship with Anya, he seems to mellow, becoming a regular Scooby member and friend until Buffy’s relationship implodes in “Into the Woods.” 
Riley and Buffy are a good-on-paper couple. He’s the strong and heroic human offering the security Angel never could. But he’s also a deeply flawed man who cannot stomach Buffy’s strength, especially when she’s in crisis. When Joyce becomes ill and Buffy refuses to fall apart and cry on his shoulder, Riley’s inferiority complex leads him into the arms of blood-hungry vampires he willingly feeds. When she discovers his infidelity, he issues an ultimatum: immediately give him a reason to stay, or he’s going to run off with the Army and leave her forever.
It’s a ridiculous, callous ultimatum, and Xander supports it. Once again, instead of comforting her, he ridicules her. He chastises her for wanting to hide, though she’s barely had a second to process what’s happened. (Riley, meanwhile, had tons of time to process the back story Xander told him about Angel and Buffy.) Xander castigates her for not seeing the problems earlier, though she’s been dealing with her mother’s very serious illness and the arrival of a sister-shaped key. Buffy asks: “What am I supposed to do? Beg him to stay?” Xander looks downright shocked at her hesitation and asks: “Why wouldn’t you?” He continues: “you’ve been treating Riley like the rebound guy, when he’s the one that comes around once in a lifetime. He’s never held back with you. He’s risked everything, and you’re about to let him fly because you don’t like ultimatums? … Think what you’re about to lose.” It’s not much of a jump to wonder if Xander is pro-Riley not because Finn is perfect for Buffy, but because he’s the safe, human choice – the almost-Xander. He continues to be the voice of faulty reason, setting the stage for his utter hypocrisy in season 6 and 7.
Xander is relatively normal for the next year, until his wedding to Anya. He disappears when he’s presented with an obviously fake ‘50s version of his so-called marital future; he flees just like Buffy did, but for much less. (And of course, Buffy and Willow don’t ever condemn him for fleeing, they only support him.) Xander leaves Anya at the altar, telling her “I don’t want to hurt you. Not that way. I’m so sorry.” He lets fear guide him to publically humiliate her and break her heart as if it’s some sort of moral, heroic choice. 
Astonishingly, he destroys her, yet still expects to be with her. Everything surrounding Xander’s cancelled wedding speaks to his egocentrism and hypocrisy. He’s so used to Anya being head over heels in love with him that he expects their relationship to go back to normal. And though he finds it simple to ignore Riley’s infidelity, he prepares to kill when he discovers that his ex is having sex with Spike. Xander questions Anya’s maturity and insults her: “I’m not joking now. You let that evil, soul-less thing touch you. You wanted me to feel something? Congratulations, it worked. I look at you, and I feel sick, cuz you had sex with that.” Though he left her at the altar, he still believes he is the moral center with a right to judge her choices.

Xander and Buffy
Yet it’s Buffy’s sex with Spike that really breaks him. Again, it’s up to Buffy to explain herself in “Seeing Red,” as if she needs to apologize for her own personal life. Ever the egomaniac, when Buffy says: “You don’t know how hard it’s been,” he thinks she’s talking about lying to him about Spike, not about struggling with her newly revived life. Xander even stretches to condemn her choice based on Spike’s previous violence: “I didn’t say I haven’t made mistakes, but last I checked, slaughtering half of Europe wasn’t one of them. He doesn’t have a soul, Buffy.” Though he’s never believed that having a soul makes a vampire an okay bedfellow, he uses that qualifier to denounce Buffy and absolve his own choice of Anya — who was was much more dangerous than Spike, and killed and tortured men for over a thousand years.
Anya rightly tries to temper Xander’s egocentrism in “Two to Go,” but it doesn’t work. She explains that sex with Spike “wasn’t vengeance. It was solace,” and she refuses to let him “play the martyr,” but Xander is still too wrapped up in his own ego. In the next episode he carelessly removes Buffy’s agency and tells Dawn about Spike’s attempted rape. Not only that, but he continually and persistently brings it up through the rest of the series. He takes that power and repeatedly uses it against her.
Xander’s hypocrisy is finally center-stage in “Selfless,” yet he still manages a hypocritical attack. Though he fiercely fought for Angel’s death, he now insists that “when our friends go all crazy and start killing people, we help them.” When his feelings aren’t enough to change Buffy’s mind, he chooses to once again attack her sexual choices: “You know, if there’s a mass-murdering demon that you’re oh, say boning, then it’s all grey area.” He refuses to acknowledge that Anya consciously chose to become a demon both times, and tries to frame Buffy’s responsibility as another example of her capriciousness: “You think we haven’t all seen this before? The part where you just cut us all out? Just step away from everything human and act like you’re the law?”
But it’s the next words that really sum up his complete and utter refusal to acknowledge or consider Buffy’s feelings and power: “If you knew what I felt,” Xander says. He can’t see the similarities between killing Anya and killing Angel, or notice what Buffy went through when she sent Angel to hell. This is our moment to finally call Xander out for his hypocrisy and chastise him for lying about Willow’s message those years ago, and his attitude since. Yet only one line is tossed in, and Willow’s reaction to the “kick his ass” quote is buried in the heated argument. As much as Xander’s hypocrisy is displayed for those eager to see it acknowledged, it’s all words of anger – Xander never learns a damn thing from the exchange; he never gets punished, or feels remorse for his actions. 
The series continually, passively, upholds Xander’s skewed viewpoint, never forcing him to repent and never allowing him to change. Instead, they give him the ultimate gift – Buffy’s strength. In the series’ penultimate episode “End of Days,” Buffy says: “You’re my strength, Xander. You’re the reason I made it this far.” By this point, the idea of the Slayer is already problematic – she’s the result of a vicious supernatural rape on the first Slayer, a lineage controlled by a white, patriarchal council. And now she attributes her strength and survival to the man who constantly sexualized her, belittled her, and condemned her. Not only that, but he’s given more power in the comics, having dominion over all the slayers as the “unofficial Watcher.” 
Upon reflection, it’s hard to link Buffy the Vampire Slayer to feminism because Xander, the self-proclaimed “perspective guy,” continually nullifies the agency of the women around him. His respect for powerful women is qualified. No woman enjoys her power without Xander trying to exert some form of control (judgment) over it. As one fan once described it, “he hurts people with an uncanny casualness of a true bully.” Through casual banter, his egocentric power struggle is framed as comedy. We’re supposed to laugh at this superficially witty and charismatic everyman, and ultimately listen to him as the group’s moral compass, which undermines the show’s push for female empowerment.
This isn’t mere oversight or writer missteps, these moments come again and again and they cannot be excused. The minute Joss and his team embraced the feminist label and strove to create a feminist heroine, they accepted the responsibility of upholding those ideals, or at the very least, not continually undermining them. Buffy cannot be a feminist heroine if her strength comes from a do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do man, especially one happy to remove her agency and morally judge her.
Monika Bartyzel is a freelance writer and creator of Girls on Film, a weekly look at femme-centric film news and concerns, currently residing at Movies.com. Her work has appeared in the likes of The Atlantic, Moviefone, Collider, Splice Today, Hooded Utilitarian, Toronto Screenshots, and the now-defunct Cinematical, where she was a lead writer and assignment editor. You can follow Monika on Twitter at @mbartyzel.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: Buffy Kicks Ass

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Guest post written by Erin K. O’Neill originally published at FemThreads. Cross-posted with permission.
“We saved the world, I say we party. I mean, I got all pretty.” ~ Buffy Summers

“Yes, date. And shop and hang out and go to school and save the world from unspeakable demons. You know, I wanna do girlie stuff.” ~ Buffy Summers

Let us now discuss the epic feminist awesomeness that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is exactly what it sounds like: A girl, named Buffy Summers, slays vampires and demons and wages war against evil supernatural forces. The major complicating factor? She’s a blonde, fashion-and-boy-obsessed California high school student who becomes a social outcast because of her secret identity and nighttime activities.

But first, a short personal history lesson:

One fall night in sixth grade, my B.F.F. Marcella came over after swim practice. She made a big stink about watching Buffy that night, since it was the second season premiere. I was reluctant to watch, as up to that point fantasy/horror hybrids were really not my thing (I was still in a lengthy L.M. Montgomery phase). However, Marcella sat my ass down and made me watch it. It was love at first (I’m so sorry) … bite.

In middle school Marcella and I used Buffy to cement our friendship. It held through attending separate high schools and my yearlong absence while I was an exchange student in Australia. We religiously analyzed last night’s Buffy episode every Wednesday at lunch. I had a buff-colored kitten named Buffy, and Marcella had a black kitten named Angel (after Buffy’s vampire-with-a-soul boyfriend). Marcella got all the DVDs as soon as they came out, and we would often soothe our teenage angst (break-ups, placing badly in the state water polo tournament, rejection by our first-choice colleges, etc.) with mochas and Buffy marathons. It became a common language of cultural and fashion references that were always fodder for conversation (and often girlish shrieking). When our other commonalities fell away as we grew up and away from each other,
Buffy kept us together.

But I digress.

Buffy created by Joss Whedon

The coolest thing about Buffy is that creator Joss Whedon conceptualized the show as a deliberate inversion of horror movie clichés. In traditional horror, when the girl wanders into a dark ally the audience expects her to meet a horrible fate. On Buffy, the girl hunts the monster in that ally, and then fights and defeats it. Whedon purposely created the show as a way to subvert and redefine the audience’s expectations about women.

The show layered this feminist perspective upon a strong tradition of high school and coming-of-age-stories in American pop culture. “In Buffy‘s world, by contrast, the problems teenagers face become literal monsters,” Rhonda Wilcox wrote in an essay in the Journal of Popular Film and Television. “Internet  predators are demons; drink-doctoring frat boys have sold their souls for success in the business world; a girl who has sex with even the nicest-seeming male discovers that he afterwards becomes a monster.”

There is a lot of scholarly research and criticism of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s a Wikipedia page dedicated to “Buffy Studies.” There’s even an academic journal called Slayage: The Journal of the Whedon Studies Association. No, I’m not kidding. The show has become a bit of a zeitgeist for feminist criticism, in particular for scholars interested in Third Wave Feminism.

And then, of course, Buffy kicked a lot of ass. A very serious amount of ass. Over the course of the show’s seven television seasons, she averted multiple apocalypses. She punned and killed all very large monsters and vampires that she came across. She added clever insult to injury. She never apologized for not being a dumb, weak girl. And it was very physical — in the canon of the show, a Slayer is given extra-human powers of strength, speed and agility. She was a fashionable girl’s girl, and she slayed creatures that go bump in the night. It was Girl Power at its late-1990s peak and taken to an excellent extreme.

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar)

Buffy deals with homework, dating and a single mother who’s just a bit clueless. Despite being labeled a loser, she navigates the social hierarchy of high school with her friends who assist in her fight against the undead. She goes through the many painful stages of sexual initiation and maturity. She fights the good fight of college admission, and later the decision to drop out of school when her mother dies and she must take care of a younger sister. She makes mistakes, and fails sometimes. While Buffy’s circumstances were different, they embodied situations and emotions I often felt as an adolescent trying to make my own way.

Buffy was not just a warrior, but a leader. Less than half way through the series, she quit taking orders from the Watcher’s Council, an ancient group of British people who identify and train the Slayer, and decides to go it alone with her friends. While Buffy defers research to her Watcher (who was fired from the Council) and friends Willow and Xander, she is the member of the darkness-battling team that makes, coordinates and executes the final plan. She essentially becomes the general of a guerrilla army, which becomes a more and more literal role as the series progresses.

Buffy is a hero. She has a destiny. She fought and died (twice). She saved the world a lot. And yet, the show wasn’t really about Buffy’s sacred duty to fight things that go bump in the night. It was, at it’s core, about how to deal with and survive the pressures of being a young woman in American society.

Buffy

And, hot damn, the girl looked good doing it. In the tradition of WB teen show characters dressing like they had unlimited budgets and stylists, Buffy had the BEST clothes. Well, for 1997-1999, she had the BEST clothes. If there was ever a fashion icon Marcella and I strove to emulate, it was Buffy. Her very short skirts, leather pants, spaghetti strap tank tops and platform boots were the holy grail of sartorial achievement in middle school (mostly because we had to fight our mothers to be allowed to leave the house dressed in them). Buffy rocked super-feminine styles tempered by leather, denim and practical pieces. While most of her wardrobe is horrifying in retrospect, there are still a few items I’d wear and rock the shit out of today.

In the first season finale, Buffy accessorizes a white satin and chiffon prom dress with a black leather jacket and a crossbow. Fashion doesn’t get more bad-ass than that.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a concept that could and did go terribly wrong. Its first incarnation, a 1992 movie of the same name, is awful. Yet the film showed signs of brilliance nonetheless. The TV show rectified all the problems of the movie, by making the fictional universe and characters deeper, wider, darker and much more interesting. The show wouldn’t have been such a phenomenon if it were crap. It really is excellent television on all levels. The writing was clever and intelligent without being preachy, the characters were real, and the action was fantastic. It is really fun to watch. Joss Whedon is a singular talent—he really can do no wrong. He loves super-powered women, and that shows in all aspects of his storytelling.

Looking back, I honestly believe that Buffy had a profound effect on my own development as a feminist thinker. At the time, I was just watching a cool show with fun dialogue, tragic romance and drool-worthy shoes. But I internalized a lot of the subtext and it helped shaped how I view modern womanhood: A girl can kick ass, and look pretty doing it.

Erin K. O’Neill is an award-winning writer, photographer, visual editor, and digital marketing professional currently located in her hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. A devotee of literature, photography, existentialism, and all things Australian, Erin also watches too much television on DVD and Netflix. Follow her on Twitter, @ekoneill.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: The View from the Grave: Buffy as Gothic Feminist

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Guest post written by Jennifer M. Santos.

“It’s a relief to hear papers that don’t go on about feminism.” Such was Patricia Pender’s report on the mood of attendees at the second Slayage Conference in 2006, just three years after Buffy ended (5). Pender punctuated her discussions of an atmosphere rife with concerns of contextual redundancy with the exclamatory parenthetical, “not more feminism!” (5). Nonetheless, the prevailing mood of 2006 did little to halt the “Is Buffy feminist debates?” during the following year: in 2007, C. Albert Bardi and Sherry Hamby claim that Buffy “revel[s] in her phallic power (yes, phallic –don’t forget the omnipresent stake)” while Misty Hook returns to Joss Whedon’s self-proclaimed “radical feminist” roots (107, 119).
Which perspective reigns in 2012? Which should? Neither. Or both. More precisely, Pender’s 2002 piece – now a decade old – got it right when suggesting that Buffy’s “ambivalent gender dynamics”makes it a “site of intense cultural negotiation” (35, 43). When considered from the perspective of the Gothic tradition from which the earliest English-language vampire first sprang, ready for mischief, in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Buffy defies easy categorization. Instead, the show invites viewers, along with its characters, to negotiate – rather than “simply” navigate – cultural gender norms.
The Gothic has long been known for its tendency to transgress boundaries, especially those boundaries associated with gender. So much so, in fact, that an industry of gendered Gothic scholarship has grown from Ellen Moers’ first invocation of the term “female Gothic,” used initially to refer to Gothic novels authored by women (and which typically function as “birth myths”) to Anne Williams’ more inclusive, dynamic formulation wherein female Gothic “does not simply break the rules, it creates a new game with different rules altogether” (172). Buffy not only creates a new game; it suggests a new field of play for the game by transgressing – and then effacing – traditional gender boundaries.
In 2012 – an era of the female as victim (as seen in the Twilight series and even to some extent in the Sookie Stackhouse novels) or “more masculine than the men” (perhaps a holdover from the Lara Croft or Xena) in Gothic and in larger popular culture – the available spaces for female representation are typically depicted as domestic entrapment or usurper of patriarchy (a role distinct, it should be noted, from that of matriarch). From the pilot episode to the conclusion, Buffy enters and redefines each space. She may be, as Hannah Tucker describes, a “Wonderbra’d blond chick fighting vampires” meant to invert the convention of “the blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed” as Joss Whedon has described his vision of the show, who elides the domestic sphere (quoted in Byers185, Belle). She may also be the means of celebrating what Whedon has called “the joy of female power: having it, using it, sharing it” in the final episode of Buffy – where any female who could receive slayer powers does receive slayer powers  (quoted in Gottlieb). She may elide the domestics pace in each of these examples.
But for all her “on field” triumphs in revising the game, her exodus from domesticity is not “complete.” Nor need it be. In fact, Buffy continually cycles in and out of domesticity, as her mother pressures her to lead a normal life even as her Watcher prods her towards her destiny, and as she sets out for college on her own only to return to the home a year later to care for her ailing mother and, later, her sister. [1] And, notwithstanding the celebratory conclusion of the series, Angel episode “The Girl in Question” situates Buffy in a new domestic space in Rome with the Immortal. These series-wide arcs indicate that the either/or dichotomy no longer reigns as such; Whedon neither wishes to simply “expos[e] perils” (although Frances Early convincingly argues that Buffy does just that) nor create “a dark mirror reflecting patriarchy’s nightmare” (Williams 107).[2] Instead,the series as a whole unpacks, overturns, and undercuts – in other words, it transgresses – traditional understandings of not only female/male, but also of feminism itself.

Buffy in the series finale
The key to understanding Buffy’s contribution to feminism in 2012is remembering that Buffy is more than a simple representation. It is meant, Sherryl Vint explains, to “reshap[e] the subjectivities…of adolescent boys as well as women” (13). [3]
The final episode – “Chosen” – is case-in-point.When Buffy shares her power with all women, vanquishes the First Evil, destroys the Hellmouth, and leaves a literally decimated Sunnydale behind to start a new life, the oppressive, exclusionary, and controlling “signs of the father” are defeated.[4] Buffy,with Willow’s assistance, imbues all would-be-slayers with mystical strength,actualizing power in all women with the potential to receive it.  We may further rejoice in the revelation that a mysterious emissary of female Guardians not only predates man but also contributes to Buffy’s quest in providing a pivotal tool that enables empowerment. But its representational power is complex, and has led a number of viewers – academic and nonacademic alike, in my experience – to probe their own subjectivities.  
One argument goes something like this: given these overtly feminist messages, the troubling intrusion of masculine power structures complicates a “happy ending.”  Recall the scythe that enables sharing of female power.  The visual representation of this tool might well be considered symbolic of the phallus. To be effective in empowering women, Willow must join with the scythe in a scene rife with sexual imagery, from Willow’s initial resistance and nervousness to her gasp of awe (“oh my goddess”) to her physical collapse that implies post-coital bliss.  Of course, female pleasure here is not sublimated to the male, unless one considers that act as coerced for the greater good, much as Victorian mothers told their daughters to”Lie still and think of England” on their wedding nights.[5]  Her virgin-like nervousness before the act –and her statement that such an act will take her beyond anywhere she’s been before – also speaks to a sublimated sense of self for duty in encountering the phallus (“Chosen”). Here, an engaged viewer might ask (and have asked), “can this support a feminist message?”
Indeed, the implications of this act are all the more poignant when one considers that Willow is a lesbian in a committed relationship. That the phallus was thrust upon this woman by other, albeit well-meaning, women speaks to the deep-rooted patriarchal use of women by culture, similarly attested to by the Watchers’ Trials where Buffy is placed in a dilapidated house, stripped of powers that were initially forced upon her predecessors, and exposed to mortal danger – all “in the name of the father.”  Yet it is Giles, the father-figure, who breaks from tradition and assists Buffy in this trial, thus indicating a deeply complex and ambivalent perspective on the cultural positioning of women.
Around dinner tables and over cups of coffee, nearly a decade after the series concluded, I’ve witnessed this discussion unfold time and again. And, I think this is the key interpretative moment: are women, the series asks, dependent on men to create a new field of play? Or might the show call into question the norms and expectations of both genders? The answer to these queries may well be found in Spike’s role in the series’ finale. Certainly a number of conversations turn to Spike’s role. In its layers of ambivalence that call upon men to not only transgress but efface normative boundaries, it points to the latter.

As Wilcox notes, Spike only glows with his own power after power has been distributed to women; it is, ultimately, the eternal man, in the form of the undead Spike, whose heroics save the day (104). Indeed, while Spike assumes his heroic pose, Buffy and her cohort of potentials-turned-slayers operate as helpmeets, distracting the minions of evil until the male sacrifice – reminiscent of the Christ promoted by patriarchal religious structures – can deliver the women from a dark destruction. This comparison gains credence from the fact that this unlikely hero, after the destruction of his vampire form, is again resurrected in Angel,revealing a reification of a patriarchal structure: the female can only be empowered – can only share her power – at the behest of a man. This ambivalent twist on a seemingly-feminist agenda asserts itself further in “Chosen”  when the phallically-named Spike shoots beams of light across the female expanse, with one slicing upwards and directly into the room of the lesbian witch who embraced the phallus to empower others.[6] This final act seems to reclaim phallic power through intrusion.

Buffy and Spike
Seemingly,then, the series remains locked in the outmoded feminist argument, regardless of the subjectivities it invites viewers to explore, that describes a binary power struggle that becomes even more insidious when we consider that Spike refers to Buffy in his final words as “lamb,” implying that Buffy herself must sacrifice power to empower others. Further consideration of this thought is disturbing, as it implicates Buffy herself in the totalizing power of a patriarchal system (as the “one girl in all the world” who is chosen), as does the elitist selectivity of the chosen few who receive the newly redistributed power.  These plotpoints beg the question of whether collective female empowerment can exist within current structures.
The answer to this query, it seems, lays in the very ambivalence that the show’s conventions hint at across the seven-seasons. These various genderings indicate that it is only in comfortable ambivalence that true empowerment can be achieved for all members of society. Perhaps it is our own discomfort with this ambiguity that compels us to return to the either/or feminist debate surrounding Buffy again and again, in print and in casual conversation. Yet, in fact, it is the liminal– the space in-between – that is brought to the foreground, through the characters of Spike and Buffy. As a vampire, Spike exists on the borders, oscillating between life and death,between human and demon and between good and evil (even without a soul, Spike often acts for the greater good).[7]  It is his liminality that makes his identification with the phallus so intriguing: his story is that of a sensitive, somewhat effeminate, human male lacking self-confidence in life thatis gained in unlife. This newly-found confidence sends him on a quest for power as conceived of by cultural norms:his self-assertion takes a violent turn during which he quite literally eliminates the “other,” and, during this time, trades his given name, the ubiquitous William, for his phallically-charged nickname. That he follows the traditional conquest path to “glory” makes his shift to champion of the people all the more interesting: he moves from the effeminate male (the “momma’s boy”) to the”masculine” male, experiencing both worlds before consciously choosing to “be a better man,” as Buffy puts it, a task that for Spike involves embracing both the male and female cultural norms (“Never Leave Me”).[8] It is not insignificant that it is Spike who sacrifices himself – often the female role (excepting, for a moment, the Christ comparison) – to save the world.  By adapting cultural gender norms for new purposes, Spike offers a form of feminism that might be characterized, stripped of jargon, as “human” feminism.
Similarly, Buffy herself operates as a liminal figure, oscillating between her home life and her sworn duties, the human part of her and the demon part of her. She relies on what may be seen as a patriarchal form of power: violence and control.  She further maintains the traditionally-male isolationist stoicism while attempting to reconcile her place in the world with cultural norms, yet only when she becomes comfortable having – and not having – power is she able to empower others.  This is the crux of the issue: only by blurring binary distinctions that constrain men and women can the rules change within the system.  The staples of oppressive conventions have not been overturned: the system remains in place:globalization of female power, then, does not simply cross boundaries or”turn around” as revolution may imply in this context.[9] It instead offers the hope that if one cannot rend asunder what William Blake would call “mind forged manacles” of cultural norms, then it can infuse them with elasticity. And in 2012, when male and female icons alike so often return to the repressed as with Gothic of yore, the role Buffy can play in renegotiating a space for feminism from beyond the grave is worthy of continued attention.
Jennifer M. Santos has taken a break from professoring to do more writing about fun, feisty females. When she’s not writing about Buffy or Lady Gaga, she’s using her Ph.D. in English to unearth nineteenth century vampires. And when when’s not doing that, she continues the never-ending battle to convince her cats that she’s the alpha.

Works Cited
Angel: Season Five on DVD.  Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment,2005.
Bardi, C. Albert and Sherry Hamby. “Existentialism Meets Feminism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”  The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly.  Ed. Joy Davidson.  Psychology of Popular Culture Ser. Dallas: BenBella, 2007.  105-117.
Belle, [E] Slay. “Lady Ghosts of TV Past: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Thinking about Season 1.” Persephone Magazine. 25 Mar. 2011. Blog. 3 Aug. 2012 <http://persephonemagazine.com/2011/03/25/ladyghosts-of-tv-past-buffy-the-vampire-slayer-thinking-about-season-1/>.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Chosen Collection.  144 episodes.  DVD.  Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2006.
Byers, Michele. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Next Generation of Television.” Catching a Wave: Reclaiming Feminism for the 21st Century. Eds. Rory Cooke Dicker and Alison Piepmeier. Hanover, MA: Northeastern UP, 2003. 171-187.
Chandler, Holly.  “Slaying the Patriarchy:Transfusions of the Vampire Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”  Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.  3.1 (Aug. 2003): 62pars. 17 Jan. 2006 <http://slayageonline.com/PDF/chandler.pdf>.  
DeLamotte, Eugenia C.  Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth-Century Gothic.  Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990.
Early, Frances. “Staking Her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive Woman Warrior.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. 2.2 (Sept.2002): 30 pars. 17 Jan. 2006 <http://slayageonline.com/PDF/early.pdf>.
Gottlieb, Allie. “Buffy’s Angels: The Blond Girl with Cleavage Really Isn’t So Feminist – but the Men in Her Life Are.”  Metroactive.  26 Sept.2002.  17 Jan. 2006 <http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/09.26.02/buffy1-0239.html>.
Hook, Misty K.  “Dealing with the F-Word: Joss Whedon and Radical Feminism.”  The Psychology of Joss Whedon: An Unauthorized Exploration of Buffy, Angel, and Firefly.  Eds. Joy Davidson and Leah Wilson.  Psychology of Popular Culture Ser. Dallas: BenBella, 2007. 119-129.
Jowett, Lorna. “The Summers House as Domestic space in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. 5.2 (Sept.2005): 40 pars. 17 Jan. 2006 <http://slayageonline.com/PDF/jowett2.pdf>.
Pender,Patricia.  “‘I’m Buffy and You’re…History:’ The Postmodern Politics of Buffy.”  Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Eds. Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery. Lanham, MD:Rowman, 2002. 35-44.  
—. “‘Where Do We Go From Here?’: Buffy Studies and Slayage 2006.” Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies. 6.1 (Fall2006): 24 pars. 9 Aug. 2012 <http://slayageonline.com/PDF/Pender.pdf>.
Wilcox, Rhonda V. Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005.  
Williams, Anne.  Art of Darkness: A Poetics of Gothic. Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1995. 
Williamson,Milly.  “The Predicament of the Vampire and the Slayer: Gothic Melodrama in Modern America.” The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy. London:Wallflower, 2005.  
Vint, Sherryl, “‘Killing Us Softly’? A Feminist Search for the ‘Real’ Buffy.”  Slayage: The Online International Journal of Buffy Studies.  2.1 (May 2002): 26 pars.  17 Jan. 2006 <http://slayageonline.com/PDF/vint.pdf>.
Notes
[1] Jowett’s “The Summers House as Domestic Space in Buffy the Vampire Slayer” provides an excellent account of the Summers’ house as a site of domesticity both with and without the presence of Buffy’s mother. Her analysis, coupled with Eugenia C. DeLamotte’s observation that Gothic heroines perpetuate a cyclical enclosure by venturing out of the home simply to return to it again, reinforces the problematic nature of Buffy’s own empowerment. That is not to say that a woman cannot be a stay-at-home feminist if she chooses the home for herself, but rather to develop the sense of cyclical entrapment that Buffy experiences for seven years.
[2] In her discussion of Buffy as a “narrative of disorderly rebellious female as well as an effective experiment in…’open images,'”Early asserts that Buffy “expose[s]stereotypes and coded symbols that shore up a rigid war-influenced gender system” (3, 29).  Further, Holly Chandler asserts that “Buffy confidently yanks the ugly face of the patriarchy out into the light of day, where, she hopes, it will be burnt to a crisp”(62). Both Early and Chandler author valuable arguments portray Buffy as subversive from a woman’s studies standpoint, and I build on their observations in probing the nature of subversion as applicable to both men and women.
[3] Whedon has articulated his desire to “make teenage boys comfortable with a girl who takes charge of the situation” (quoted in Vint 13).
[4] For additional “signs of the father” in Season 7, witness Giles’ attempted murder of Spike, the villain’s adoption of the patriarchal garb of religion, and even the villain’s assumption of a female form named Eve.
[5] A corollary problem to note is that the female creators of the scythe choose to bury it deep within mother Earth, violating,on a broad level, the natural world. Although one may explain this violation as a justified critique of a world that denigrates women and enslaves them to fight monsters or even as what Williams calls a “metaphor for accomplishment, a mode of self-creation,”the ultimate use of the scythe further complicates the issue (158).
[6] Rhonda Wilcox makes a similar observation, discussing Spike and Willow in relation to subconscious and conscious in Why Buffy Matters (104).  Wilcox also provides further evidence for those who may question Spike’s phallic associations: in “Tabula Rasa,” wherein the characters experience an amnesia spell, Spike discovers the name “Randy” sewn into his jacket and assumes it for his name,complaining, “‘Why didn’t you just call me Horny Giles or Desperate For A Shag Giles?’  Given the fact that the episode after ‘Tabula Rasa’ is ‘Smashed’ (6.9), in which Buffy and Spike first have sex, the names seems more than appropriate. One might argue that the name Randy reiterates the sexual implications of the name Spike” (60).
[7] In fact, it is worth mentioning that the soulless Spike undertakes his own journey and trials to retrieve his soul, while the only other ensouled vampire in the Buffyverse, Angel, is cursed with a soul as a punishment.
[8] Milly Williamson notes that, “[l]ike the pre-twentieth-century Gothic, the appeal of today’s ‘new’ vampire tale is to do with its ability to represent what is disavowed, to speak to anxieties and desires that are difficult to name” (69). That the anxieties of gender remain ambiguous further connects Buffy to the Gothic tradition.
[9] Williams returns to the etymology of”revolution” and reminds us that “the word means to ‘turnaround'” as well as to “cross forbidden boundaries” (172).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Week: A Love Letter to Buffy: How the Vampire Slayer Turned This Girl into a Feminist

Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar); Buffy the Vampire Slayer

 
Guest post written by Talia Liben Yarmush originally published at The Accidental Typist. Cross-posted with permission.

Before Bella, before Sookie, there was Buffy. She fought her way on to the silver screen and slayed her way through seven seasons on prime-time. I was in seventh grade when I turned on Buffy the Vampire Slayer for its premiere episode. I was immediately mesmerized. There she was – a pretty, thin, blonde with tight pants and high heels, kicking bad-guy butt, dismissing authority, arguing with her mother about curfew, and sticking up for the social pariahs of high school. I looked at Buffy and saw who I wanted to be. She was tough and sensitive. She was beautiful and full of spunk. She had attitude and humor. And she never left a friend behind.
In this modern age, after several waves of the Feminist Revolution, the 19th Amendment granting suffrage, Title Nine allowing equal academic and athletic educations, and three women on the Supreme Court, we still live in a society in which young girls choose beauty over brains, and victimization and reliance over independence. In the modern day of media, where a movie can gross over half a billion dollars in the box office; where TMZ is the site with the most hits in 2007; and where gossip rags like US Weekly and OK! dominate the magazine aisle, female role models for girls and young women are more important than ever before.

Buffy cast
Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a series that redefined television in many ways. It combined drama, comedy, romance, action, and horror in an original and unique way. It portrayed a lesbian relationship as mainstream. It centered around metaphors for the trials and tribulations of everyday life that all its viewers, young and old, could relate to. But most importantly, creator Joss Whedon fashioned a world in which the stereotypes of teenage girls (and ultimately all women) were debunked and left at the wayside.
I was fortunate enough to grow up with a strong mother and a supportive father. But what of all the girls who grow up without encouragement? Buffy turned the stereotype of the dumb blonde upside down. It portrayed a young woman who was stronger than any man she came up against. It showed girls that they could be both pretty and smart, be in relationships and be independent, and wear stilettos and still be respected.
As a writer, I admire Buffy for its witty dialogue and its gripping drama. As an avid TV watcher, I am drawn to Buffy for its unique storylines and its accomplished acting. As a woman, I applaud Buffy for its messages of feminism and equality. As a mother, I can assure you that my son will be indoctrinated with forced viewings of Buffy, and I hope that the messages of the show, and the portrayals of all the characters, will help guide him to be a feminist too.
Talia Liben Yarmush is a freelance writer and editor, and an aspiring author.  She earned a Minor in Film Studies from Bryn Mawr College. Talia lives in New Jersey with her husband and son, where she is an avid TV and movie watcher, and blogs at The Accidental Typist.